Funny Quote of the Day – “If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.” – Milton Berle

Yes!

For me, at this particular point in time, and specifically for today, this quote resonates with me. (serendipitous? maybe) As someone who’s actively job-searching and networking, I’m discovering that you can’t always wait for opportunities to present themselves to you. (At times, you can — maybe before the job market took a downward spiral — but if you want to move forward, and keep moving forward, you have to put yourself out there and seek opportunities on your own.) If you’re lucky enough to come across a great opportunity, run with it. I’m thinking of doing just that these days…why not? Maybe it’s time I make my door.

This is a small part of the detailed carvings in the bronze doors of the Plummer Building - taken at night.

Thoughts of fear, failure, or uncertainty shouldn’t hold you back. Sometimes the unknown has propelled me to some of my most rewarding life experiences…in school, work, and my personal life.

For anyone else on the job search, or life search for that matter, think about building that door…and as Mike Holmes would say, stay in hustle mode.

Thanks, Adam for this video from @GoogleTalks, through the Authors@Google series.

In The Time Paradox, Drs. Zimbardo and Boyd draw on thirty years of pioneering research to reveal, for the first time, how your individual time perspective shapes your life and is shaped by the world around you. Further, they demonstrate that your and every other individual’s time zones interact to create national cultures, economics, and personal destinies.

So far there’s not much to Hunch – it hasn’t fully launched but has started sending invitations to people who sign up. The landing page says

Hunch helps you make decisions and gets smarter the more you use it.

Check out more info on the Fact Sheet. Over-generalizing, it sounds like it’s a much smarter, technologically-oriented Magic 8 Ball. After giving users 10 questions, Hunch will “will propose a concrete and customized result for hundreds of decisions of every kind”. By utilizing user-created responses (edits, ideas, suggestions, etc.) and customizing results per user, Hunch aims to harness group think and machine learning – with the ultimate goal being to help you and I out with decision making.

The idea of Hunch sounds fascinating – harnessing group think/collective intelligence to help people solve problems makes sense, right? And the fact that results will be based on structure — algorithm, increased user involvement, etc. — makes for a potentially convincing and useful service. I think Hunch is one to watch – Flickr co-founder Catarina Fake, is co-founder, so you’d think these people believe in design, usability, and solutions.

“Shampoo [Alternate Version]“ / Elvis Perkins

“Slow Burning Crimes” / East Hundred

“The Echo” and “Why Not” / Voxhaul Broadcast

“Round N Round [feat 77Klash]“ / Bosco Delray

“Pine On” / Obits

And speaking of music – today I was at the bookstore and came across This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession by Daniel Levitin. Levitin, a musician turned neuroscientist, reveals the science behind our preferences for music, among other topics such as:

• Is there a cutoff point for acquiring new tastes in music?

• What do PET scans and MRIs reveal about the brain’s response to music?

• Is musical pleasure different from other kinds of pleasure?

This is yet another book I’m adding to my ‘must read’ list!

My fave parts are at :26 and 1:06, respectively.

Today (2/13) Fallon posted “What ‘Kittens, Inspired By Kittens’ Teaches Us” – the serendipity and science of viral…

Unfortunately, this event isn’t running now, but check out other fun and educational events at learn.walkerart.org.

STAMPS!

HAND-FOLDED – It was harder than it looked.

TXT SPEAK ONLY…

PHOTO LAB

FRONT

INSIDE

HAD TO USE THE WORD ‘RAD’.

THE END.

At the moment I’m following 115 Twitterers. I doubt that’s a lot by Twitter user standards (anyone know a stat? have a link?), but I will say that it is becoming more challenging to keep up with the tweets and weed out what information I want or should be noting. By now I know there are certain followers I should be paying more attention to (i.e. the agency planners, marketing innovators, marketers, etc.). But what about the new people I’m following? If I find their tweets are valuable and informative, how do I stay as close to their tweets as possible?

I think the answer right now is that I just need to become a frequent tweet checker. For a quick scan of updates, I use Twitterfox, which is a nice app that alerts me to my latest tweets. However, it’s a bit addicting as I’m always seeing pop-up notifications and then I of-course need to check out the various links being tweeted.

I wonder, what will Twitter create for its users in the future, so they/we can make the most of our network and the information being shared?

Twitter, like Facebook, should incorporate some kind of filtering tool. On Facebook, users can adjust (to a degree, and I don’t know how Facebook does this from a technical standpoint) the amount of updates they receive from certain friends. This feature is found under “Options For News Feed” at the bottom of the main page. Do you want to see more updates on certain stories (news, i.e. status updates, photo updates, etc)? Slide your preferences up or down. Do you want to more closely stalk someone? Does someone post too many updates (that’s probably me, apologies)? Add these people to the appropriate lists.

A filtering/tweet tool would be most helpful for users utilizing Twitter for professional means, i.e. marketers, research people, and job seekers like myself. For instance, I’m following a few Twitterers who post social media jobs. If I had a tool that could put their tweets ahead of the majority of tweets, I could save time reading through updates that aren’t as relevant to my job search.

Another option Twitter could consider that is different from Facebook’s model would be to create a tool that would allow for tweets on a timed basis. For example, a user could choose to receive tweets from @”name” every 3 hours, or once a day.

Or, maybe this is a combination of these two ideas – creating groups or tiers of preferred Twitterers. Twitter could create three tiers and users would add people to tiers according to how valuable they find them. So I would choose to put the most interesting or job-related Twitterers into my top tier, and their tweets would appear more frequently compared to those under tier 2 and tier 3. Perhaps a simple slide tool or ranking button could be added to each Twitterer’s info under “following”. Next to Device updates, add the slide tool or tier option.

I’m kind-of surprised Twitter hasn’t already done this. Thoughts, anyone?

Because I’m looking for a planning/strategy job after finishing an internship @ Fallon, knowing that so many agencies are chopping their staff down, makes me less optimistic about my job prospects. Looking for a job as a jr anything, and especially a jr planner, is tough, but I’ll just have to keep up the hard work, figure out ways to hunt for leads more strategically, and hope for the best.

First, I enter my name in Google. Next, I count the number of times other Courtney Kuehns appear on the first three pages of results. Then I answer a series of questions, asking for my interpretation of the results’ influence on my aspirations of who I want to be in the professional sense. (because remember, this tool is about helping you determine your online idenity as ‘your brand’) I’ve Googled myself many a time (who hasn’t?) so I didn’t expect a shame-inducing report…and the results? Apparently, “Courtney Kuehn” is Digitally Distinct.

According to this graph, I put forth high volume and am highly relevant. I think this generally means two things: I have online presence (I blog, I Tweet, I leave comments, I’ve been in news stories) and there are no negative links out there. With a short analysis of why I am Digitally Distinct, I learn I can fine-tune Courtney Kuehn online in Ch. 11 in Career Distinction: Stand Out By Building Your Brand.

I think almost everyone knows it’s becoming more and more obvious that today it is easy to build the ‘online You’. And, depending on the industry or field in which you work, having a high level of positive online presence can act as a career booster. A key factor in creating the online You is consistency. This is something I need to work on. I.e. I should blog more, I should write more, I should probably kick up my commenting activity. But sometimes, it’s tough. (Hey, I’ve been trying to establish and create the Real World Me for the past 20-something years. This is more important than the online Me, right?)