America is the land of systems and indeed much work can be done by using computers and automatic tools, but since they are available to many, I am afraid that the “people component” remains one of the single true differentiating factors. It can be the people using the system or the people that appear in your message.
The most “personal” type of media today is definitely video. It communicates the reality of the event just as it is, with all the characters involved, the surrounding scenario, the emotions and the comments. Some just don’t feel confident with this medium and don’t use it or use it occasionally. Yet it is very powerful and if the information or situation you provide has some unique value and can be attractive to the public you are targeting, you shouldn’t worry too much about the quality of lighting, the perfection or you speech or the steadiness of the image.
Some of the best video bloggers actually suggest to never edit your videos at all, but use intead the first take and just make sure you feel as authentic as possible. If you don’t feel like shooting straight video, there are sites that produce very neat animations starting from your still images. Animoto.com is one example, Slide.com is another one.
You can’t be successful anywhere unless you feel at ease where you are and doing what you do. It is all right stepping out of the comfort zone in order to achieve some change or some important progress in your life, but you should still be able to find a new comfort zone after the change is accomplished otherwise the results won’t be stable.
This at least has been my experience and also what I have observed of several people around me. When you feel uncomfortable in a particular location or place, you will not accomplish much and you will definitely not build for the future. Everything will have the tendency to be makeshift or temporary and even the people you’ll meet or that you will partner with will not stick with you.
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You will attract the things and people that best suite your attitude, so this will further develop your feeling of not belonging in that place. But there are a few tools that I found helped me a lot in feeling at home even when I arrived here in the US, a totally new place for me. I used the Web to keep in contact with people that still live in my own town and country of origin, while developing local contacts as well and crossing them together. So my US friend have known my Italian friends and viceveras, both online and in person and therefore there a new wider community at play. Read the rest of this entry »
It took me just a few hours to recognize that my life was completely changed when I first got the news that I was going to become the father of two twin boys about 11 years ago. They have arrived at a time when my career was at its peak back then and when I was not so sure I wanted to have kids. When I got the news over the phone I was in the US, during a business trip with a major computer company and I was attending to a dinner with other journalists in at a restaurant in Palm Springs.
My twin sons Alex and Stefano at the far right with a black suit and papillon during the recent school play.
My host commented then that God was sending them because he knew I could “take them”, and indeed that gave me the immediate concept that there was something special to their arrival. Now I am back in the US and I am here particularly because I want to give them a better education and a better future life by allowing them to see different cultures and live closer to nature.
My professional and personal life has probably changed more deeply in the last three days than in the last three years combined. In the first place my wife Maria has decided to join forces with me also in my business activity. She has been giving invaluable advice and support so far, but now she is ready to jump into the fight with me and make 2010 the most surprising year ever.
Me and Mark working on our new project for 2010.
Then my business associate Daniele Bogiatto has returned to the US after three very full months during which we have developed our respective side of the business on the two sides of the Atlantic. It has been like meeting after three years and we discovered that the changes we have created in our working life have also deeply affected our personal relationship that now is even stronger and can bring us to a whole new level of expansion and cooperation.
Yesterday I spent some time with my family at a carnival in the parking lot of the biggest local mall. Our attention was captured by the game where you drop a coin hoping that the scooping movement of a sliding mirror will make many more coins and gadgets fall on the table in front of you. We spent some time the all four of us dropping quarters and winning quarters and then dropping some more. We knew that by the very fact that the lady running the game was in business, the odds were against us. Statistically the must be more coins that stay inside the box than those that fall out.
The game where you drop a coin into a slot and hope to win the jackpot.
But there were so many coins just on the verge of falling and sometimes one little coin would produce a whole waterfall of coins for us to gather, that the game continued long enough to keep us entertained without spending too much money, but we did lose most of the coins that we put in despite, the many wins we had in the meantime. We walked away putting our last win in our pocket and we felt we had won anyway since the game turned out exactly as we expected. The odds were all against us, but it was fun to try.
In life you often find similar situations: get rich quick systems that are being offered you where you just have to throw that extra coin to gain all the previous money that has been amassed by the people that came before you. And sometimes the system seems credible enough and the guy selling it sound really convincing.
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