One request was from a REALTOR® I have never heard of or met, a second from a guy who is friends with 11 real estate related people I know in Phoenix, but I have no clue who he is, none, and his Facebook page and photos don’t help me at all. The third is from one Kimmy Humu from Ghana Town whose photo (shown on the right) seems inviting enough. And while the sultry look on her face is enchanting, we have no friends in common, mainly because she only has only one Facebook friend. Forgive me for being skeptical, but I’m not a naive linebacker from Notre Dame, so I question the validity of her profile. Those are the three that came in during the six hours between when I went to sleep and when I woke up.

Why am I telling you this? These came in on the heels of a fairly lengthy late night discussion about whether Brian Copeland should just accept all 931 friend requests he had not responded to recently. That’s a lot, but it doesn’t surprise me. He’s is, quite frankly, someone anyone, REALTOR® or not, would love to be friends with. He is a loving, caring man, a dynamic speaker in the real estate field, and one of the most engaging people I know on or off Facebook. He can probably manage more engagement than most. I understand the reasons why Brian might want to, however, especially since most of those are probably real estate agents, like him. And there are obvious benefits to him doing so. Personally, I tried that route and it didn’t work for me, and that’s how I responded in the thread. What didn’t work for me, however, might work very well for Brian. We’re different people.

Which brings me to a specific comment in the stream from Nobu Hata.

“I do think that all this online stuff is self-fulfilling in a bad way sometimes,” Nobu said. “Only seeing and hearing what you want to hear and know is kinda boring. I accept most folks, but if they don’t make me laugh or think with their first couple shares I hide and unsubscribe ‘em. You’d be surprised at what you can learn from new peeps.”

It’s hard to argue with that thinking, but I’m going to do it anyway. Of course, I’m not arguing against diversity. I value diversity, especially diversity of thought. I can only learn something from someone different than me. Diversity is essential to growth and learning. That said, not all diversity is created equal. I seek quality diversity. And quality relationships.

How do you achieve that in this current Facebook world? Of course, I could do in-depth research like I did on those three new friend requests this morning. I could do it for  every person who sends me a friend request. I’m not going to. That’s really more work than I want to do. So, if I don’t recognize a name or face, I simply hit “not now.” 99.9% of everything I post on FB is public anyway. Nothing is stopping someone from subscribing and interacting if they have a desire. And in the last few weeks I’ve become friends with people who have done just that. Just as others have done with me when I’ve commented in their public streams.

That we can potentially create an environment where there is a distinct lack of diversity of thought is a fact, but even with my self imposed limitation of “knowing” someone, I’m still connected to over 2200 people on Facebook. The key to diversity of thought is actually knowing more people who think differently than you, not just being loosely connected to them in some social network. If I accept a friend request from someone and I never interact with them, given Facebook’s edge rank methods and my limited ability to manage large numbers of people, the chance of my seeing their diverse thinking is very, very small. That may improve, or not, with the changes Facebook is making to their feeds. I won’t be able to judge that for a while.

I used to accept friend requests from unknown people and put them in a list called, “I have no idea who these people are,” so I could go to the list and listen and engage if I saw something I enjoyed. That list grew so large that it became it’s own burden. So I became dependent on others reaching out and engaging in order to assess the potential quality of the relationship. That’s too one-sided for my liking.

Never discount the potential in random, out of the blue, social connections.

“I don’t want a feed full of crap I’m not interested in, but I am ALWAYS interested in meeting new TRUE friends,” Brian added. “Had you asked me 7 years ago if I needed new friends, I would’ve said no. Two random, I have no clue who they are, people befriended me on facebook several years ago. They were the Jane Does of the internet world. They’d never met me in real life or even seen me anywhere. Years later, Leigh Thomas Brown and Maura Carey Neill, those two random people, are now family…serious family.”

I’ve had similar experiences. But what I’m finding is this, as the numbers grow for everyone, this becomes harder and harder and increasingly more rare. There was a “golden age” of social media for me that spurred relationships I cherish. Mine happened to coincide with what I believe was the early golden age of of social media in general. And there is a golden age period for everyone who enters the social media space. Smaller numbers of random people mixed with known friends can be managed during that time and the potential for creating deep relationships is more easily realized. However, at some point, numbers become so big, new deeper relationships becomes harder and harder to achieve.

An anecdotal example: If my memory serves me correctly, Scott Monty and I became friends on Twitter then and then on Facebook, because of his participation in the launch of ooVoo.com, or some other video platform. I didn’t know Scott at all, but the number of people we were both connected to at the time was so small that we were able to get to know each other much more easily than we could today. I don’t want to speak for Scott, but my guess is that someone trying to get Scott’s attention among the 26K plus that he follows on Twitter today would have a much harder time. I know it was true for me, which is why I pared down my follows on Twitter as well.

My objective in keeping my numbers lower on both Twitter and Facebook is to allow me to see, more easily, the random communications that have the potential to turn into new cherished relationships. I know how to use lists and listen effectively in the social spaces, and I’m still not sure I can effectively accomplish that in these spaces when too many voices crowd my streams.

My advice on how to keep the options open for new, cherished relationships:

• Have an authentic desire to interact with people, not just collect friends. (This will require some commitment of time and effort and necessarily place limits on how many people will be able to participate with you.)
• Set an appropriate benchmark for judging who you’ll connect with on any social platform. My “know” may be higher than others, but it’s not a particularly hard benchmark to meet.
• Actively seek out engagement from any new connections. And do it soon after connecting to see what their real level of desired engagement might be.
• Weed out connections where no engagement is taking place to free up “space” to engage more. There is a time cost to engagement when the goal is cherished relationships. I use different criteria for different networks. Like others, I use birthdays as a trigger to assess my desire to continue developing a relationship in the Facebook space. I either need to be able to sing you happy birthday, or have a strong desire to want to be able to. We’ve got a year to build a deeper relationship, I think that’s an appropriate window.

Those are my thoughts, I’d love to hear yours.

I bought a tall soy latte at a Starbucks in Huntington Beach this morning. That’s not unusual. What was unusual was that the young lady behind the counter, recognizing that I normally pull out my laptop to work, asked me, “Would you like that in a to go cup or in a ceramic cup?” I chose ceramic. It was my first Starbucks latte in a ceramic cup.

Why? I had never been asked that question before. When I told her that, she shared with me that it is a question every Starbucks employee is supposed to ask. We continued our conversation and as I stood waiting for my latte I noticed a small white board with a large number 81 prominently displayed on the door from the front of the shop to the back of the shop. It was their “customer voice” number.

Of course, I asked what the number meant and she somewhat reluctantly told me it was the past month’s percentage of customer satisfaction for this store. She wasn’t particularly happy with it. She pointed out that things like her being the first person to ask if I’d like a ceramic cup contribute to that low score. “The score is only from those who actually fill out the online survey if they’re asked to,” she said. “And only a small percentage of people actually do that.” And those survey requests are random and spit out by the cash register. She can’t just ask me, someone she knows is engaged and satisfied, to go fill out a survey.

What struck me most about the sign was not just that the number was so large and easy to see, even by customers, but that the goals derived from the survey responses were made clear as well. The survey was not there to simply provide a rating, but to inform their behavior and suggest ways to improve. The goals for the month were expressed as “opportunities.” They were:

• Taste of beverage – a specific area of focus for improvement
• Speed of service – a specific area of focus for improvement
• Mondays/Saturdays – the days they received their lowest scores.
• MidDay/Evenings – the times of the day they received their lowest scores.

All of this was communicated to me by a barista, not a manager. The information gathered by the surveys had been communicated in a way that the employee could understand and put into play in improving the consumer experience. And she seemed to genuinely care. There’s magic in that.

The latte vision for real estate.

“We need a big vision for the overly complicated real estate process. Here is mine: Make the mechanics of buying a home as easy as buying a latte, so homebuyers can focus on the right things,” Brad Inman said. Whether you believe this is an achievable goal or not, the vision is certainly worthy of conversation.

Brad laid out this vision in the months preceding January’s Inman Connect in New York. His focus, and the focus of the panel dedicated to the topic, was clearly set on the mechanics of the buying process, with a special emphasis on paperless transactions. It’s more generic focus was on bringing already existing technologies to bear on the process of buying a home to improve the customer experience. Notice the focus on “customer experience.”

“The biggest problem (in the real estate industry) is in the age of technology, the age of social, the age of mobile,” Eric Bryn offered, “how can I better align the client with the sales associate to make sure that conversation is meaningful, engaged and informative?” When I asked Eric what he meant by “informative,” he told me the following.

In this context, I was using “informative” in the following manner: (a) ensure that an agent has all the necessary, timely, relevant, and contextual information necessary to meet the needs of his or her client and (b) the client has the same so as to make better decisions related to a transaction and the advice received from his or her agent. It’s essentially about data and systems design empowering better decision-making and collaboration.

How do you make sure agents have “all the necessary, timely, relevant, and contextual information necessary to meet the needs of his or her client?” That’s a big question. But you don’t have a chance if you don’t really understand the needs of the client, and whether or not they are being consistently met. Some of the data that must be collected must be collected from the client directly. This seems obvious to me. Apparently it’s obvious to Starbucks as well.

The latte vision necessarily must include listening to your customer.

And by listening to the customer, I mean listening in a way that can be measured. My vision for bringing RealSatisfied to North America was NOT to make it easier for real estate agents to collect testimonials, or to make it easier for agents to push customer satisfaction ratings to Yelp, Realtor.com, Trulia or Zillow, though it enables all of those things. The goal in bringing RealSatisfied here was to make it easier for real estate companies to collect information from consumers that would allow them to make informed decisions about what was right and wrong with how their brand was being experienced.

We use the Peter Drucker quote “things that don’t get measured, don’t get managed” all the time at RealSatisfied. But there is another Drucker quote that applies here as well. “Management by objective works – if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don’t.”

The objectives for the Starbucks at 7881 Edinger Avenue are clear, make your beverages taste better, get them out faster and pay attention to your performance on Mondays, Saturdays, mid-day and evenings. They only arrived at those by asking random customers to give their feedback. They’ll only know they’ve improved by doing it over and over again, month after month after month.

Starbucks has a system for getting direct customer feedback, and a way to communicate goals derived from that feedback to the people who touch their customer every single day.

If you’re a real estate company leader, do you? It should be part of your own latte vision.

Sites like Pinterest are littered with beautifully designed values pieces. An industry has been built around selling motivational posters based on popular, ethical values. They’re inspirational and aspirational. They make us feel good. Often, however, they don’t represent reality.

Too many companies have values that are not in line with popular, ethical values. Of course, that’s not what their website will say, or the sign in their reception area. It’s one thing to have a “We Value Mutual Respect” sign prominently displayed to visitors , it’s quite another to actually live that value in a way that makes the sign redundant. Values are more accurately displayed in actions, than in words. Often values are confused with morals or ethics and treated as statements of hope, not as an accurate reflection of the actions of the organization.

Todd Carpenter shared the following video in his post, There Are No Glenngarry leads.” He used the clip as an illustration for not making excuses for “bad leads” and to drive home the point that, “if every lead was gold, these companies (Trulia, Zillow, Realtor.com, et al) would figure out how to keep them for themselves, or they would charge a heck of a lot more for them.” Of course, not everyone will see the video or their “leads” that way.

What I saw in the video was something different. I saw a good example of clearly articulated values in action. The following clip is NOT SAFE FOR WORK. If you’re easily offended, you can skip to the text below. However, watching it will help you understand my point.

“Nice guy? I don’t give a shit,” Blake says in the clip. “Good father? F***K you, go home and play with your kids. You want to work here? Close! You think this is abuse?” That depends on your perspective. More accurately, however, Blake, played by Alec Baldwin, was simply and clearly articulating his values and the values of the company leaders who sent him. And he gave them teeth by adding, “You don’t like it? Leave.”

“Go to war” values.

“You don’t like it? Leave.” The values that matter are the values we’re willing to fight over. If you can’t say, “I will let someone go if they are unwilling to live these values,” then those values don’t really matter. They won’t have any power. And this is true whether the value is “always be closing” or  ”mutual respect.” What matters is whether you can and are willing to enforce them.

Regardless of how you feel about the quality of the values displayed by Alec Baldwin’s character in that clip, and I’m certainly not a fan, there are lessons to be learned. Inspirational, aspirational, or otherwise, in the end, whatever values you subscribe to are largely impotent unless they’re accompanied by a conscious plan tied to making them a reality in your organization. Blake had a plan.

What did Blake do right in that video?

• He defined the company values and clearly described how they should be lived.
• He made the values, “go to war” values. He focused only on the values that he was willing and able to enforce.
• He disseminated those values and required that the agents were to live them.
• He explained how he would measure desired behaviors.
• He explained how he would reward desire behaviors.

What are your go to war values? How have you communicated them? How will you measure them? How will you reward them?

Despite my openly expressed concerns for our culture’s infinite appetite for distraction, I’m a fan of gamification. Gamification, as Taige Zhang states, “leverages our natural desire for competition, achievement, status, reward, self-expression, altruism, and completion.” Done well, it helps promote user engagement and has been linked to improved ROI, customer retention, learning and other areas of improvement.

Gamification shouldn’t be confused with games. It is game mechanics used in a non-game context. We used games at my previous venture, J.J. Grace, to successfully train graphic designers how to use keyboard commands more to decrease production time. Zeek Interactive built Monster Commands and Key Commando for us as tools to improve productivity and make the tedious task of memorization fun and exciting. It worked. Our production artists knew every key command available and used them. Those game tools were integral in our winning major newspaper contracts.

We played the games. We didn’t allow the games to play us.

The games were a tool, not an objective. That was more than a decade ago. I’m not sure the term “gamification” was even used then. Today, sites and apps use game mechanics to increase engagement everywhere we look. As a result, it’s valuable to be aware of whether the game is designed to simply engage or train, or whether it is part the goal itself.

Last week on Twitter I couldn’t resist commenting on a tweet from Michael McClure. “Nothing polarizes a population like a conversation about @klout,” He said. “Join the dialogue, if you dare! on.fb.me/UUQbTD” He is right about that, and, of course, I had to dare.

We bantered back and forth a bit and Michael explained that he interpreted the deleting of my Klout profile as me expressing that Klout has no merit. Looking back at it, I can certainly see how he or anyone else could to that conclusion, so I may not have communicated my point effectively. I believe it has merit for anyone who chooses to give it merit, not unlike an IQ score. Like IQ, the weight you place on it is up to you. My response to Michael was that I was simply tired of playing the game.

And that brings me to the part that got me thinking. Thank you, Michael. 

Michael: “I don’t see it as a game. I see it as the best measure – to date – of online influence. KNOWING it IS flawed, but still the best.

Me: “I would say all of the +K’ing is a game. And I agree, though flawed, it is probably best.”

Michael: “I don’t know. What if people really give +K to people who truly influence them? Does that qualify as “game-esque?”

Me: “Yes. It’s still a game, even if sincerely played.”

No matter how sincerely and honestly anyone interacts with this gaming element, they’re still playing a game, whether they want to believe it makes a difference or not. And more importantly, when the gamification on a site becomes part of the metric, when the game itself becomes part of the objective, despite player intent, the game is no longer simply an engagement tool, or a learning tool.

The Klout “+K” system, at it’s core, is simply a basic form of gamification. It successfully leverages our natural desires for status and achievement. Where things get cloudy is that Klout uses the +K’s as one of the factors to judge topical expertise, according to a former marketing manager. And since nobody knows for sure how +K’s are really weighted in determining overall Klout score, advice on how to behave around them often sounds like this advice offered just a few days ago: “A little Klout goes a long way! These actions will serve you well by boosting your online engagement levels, adding value to your community and increasing your Klout score! It’s a win-win all around!” My fear has always been this… “We play by their rules long enough and it becomes our game.” - Orson Scott Card.

So, allow me to offer a few suggestions on how one might engage with Klout. 

First, never let “increasing your Klout score” become an objective. The Klout score should be reflective of what happens in the social spaces Klout monitors. The score should result from actions you take inside those networks that are specific to the purpose you have in those networks. The moment your actions in those networks are driven by “increasing your Klout score,” you’ve missed the point. The score means nothing if it’s based on actions that only benefit the score.

Second, understand your motivation for any action. If you’re giving out +K’s right and left in the hopes that others will do so in return, hoping they’ll validate your expertise, regardless of their actual experience with it, I seriously question the validity of any of it.  So should you. There are both good and bad reasons to give a +K. Intention means something. At least it should.

Lastly, don’t allow yourself to be fooled into thinking that it’s not a game. It is. Recognizing that, you have two options. Your first option, the one I like, is to let the game play itself. Set it and forget it. Link your social channels and let Klout judge your interactions without interfering. Don’t participate in the gamification. Just do what you would do if Klout didn’t exist. If everyone did that, the scores would probably more accurately reflect our relative online “influence.”

Your second option is to play it to win. Embrace the game as a game. Go have fun. Ignore my first suggestion and make raising your Klout score the objective. Focus on the actions that contribute to raising your score or increasing your perceived topical expertise. Distribute +K’s religiously. Retweet the +K’s you get, and be ironic by adding a +1 to your +K retweet. Openly thank those who give you a +K, being careful to put something before the @ symbol so every one of your followers will see the tweet. Reach out to people with high Klout scores and try to get them to engage with you. It will probably help your cause if you tell them you’re giving them +K’s openly, in the hope that they’ll thank you. Participate in the hottest memes to increase your percentage of messages shared, whether it has any relevance to your business or not.  Do whatever it takes. Just embrace the game and play it with gusto. It will be fun, like a game should be.

At the very least, if you do either option “right,” it should allow you to enjoy some pretty cool perks. Hey, somebody’s going to get the perks. It might as well be you.

Last Sunday I read a “real” book for the first time in a long time. I don’t buy paper books anymore. This one was a hard cover version of Trust Me, I’m Lying that was sent to me to review.

I sat in the leather chair in our family room and just read for most of the day. I was not feeling great, so it was a good excuse to not move and just relax. At some point in the afternoon, my 8 year old daughter said to me, “Daddy, I’ve never seen you read a book before.” Wow. Since I read constantly, that statement hit me hard.

Now, what I really hope she meant was this, “I’ve never seen you read a paper book.” She’s seen me read books lots of times, but only on my iPad. She’s too young to remember life before the iPad. And I was quick to change my reading habit from paper to digital. I enjoy carrying my library around with me, and I like the ability to have highlights saved in the cloud for easy retrieval anywhere I can access my Amazon account. I especially like it when I’m writing and can simply copy and paste quotes from my notes to posts.

But the words, “I’ve never seen you read before” have left me questioning the decision. How are my children to know whether I’m on Facebook playing a game or watching YouTube videos when I’m staring at my iPad? Should I hold up a sign that says, “I’m reading a book?” Or should I change my behavior?

If one of my jobs as a parent is to model behavior, what behavior am I modeling? 

If my kids can’t tell the difference between one behavior and another on the iPad, I’m certainly not sending the message that reading is important. The only message I could possibly be sending is that the iPad is important. And while I certainly love my iPad, that’s not the message I’d like to send with my reading behavior.

“I’ve never seen you read a book.” That’s really not a statement I ever thought I’d hear come from the mouth of one of my children. So I’ve decided that I’m going to start reading more paper books, especially on Sundays. I enjoyed it. It honors my “disconnect from social media on Sundays” rule. But most importantly,  I now convinced my children need to see book reading as a distinct and separate behavior from other things I do in the digital realm.

It’s important.

Two things have happened in the past 6 weeks to make me want to write this post. And Inman was involved, in one way or another, with both. The first was the Inman CEO Summit and the second was the Inman Connect Recap Trialogu.es podcast.

I sat in the room at the CEO summit having two conflicting thoughts for most of the day. “I belong here,” and “I don’t belong here.”

I belonged there because I knew I could hold my own with anyone in the room, both conversationally and experientially. My business experience allows me to see things from varied perspectives. I’m comfortable in almost any business setting, from a public company boardroom to a white board session with twenty-something coders who have nothing more than an idea and energy.

But I also felt that I didn’t belong in THAT room because I spend most of my time on the periphery of the real estate industry. I don’t have a direct impact on the operations of a real estate organization. I don’t run a company impacting major inflection points in the consumer’s relationship with a real estate company. My influence in real estate is limited at best. And I asked myself, “why?”

My only answer is that I had limited my opportunity to have significant influence because I had decided to not commit fully to the real estate industry. That’s why I recoiled at being placed on the Inman 100 list. It feels wrong that I’d be on the list of an industry publication that I’m focused on only partially. And it’s also why I didn’t feel like I belonged in that room.

A few weeks later, I listened to the Inman Connect recap that Rob Hahn, Gahlord Dewald and Matthew Shadbolt recorded for their Trialogu.es podcast. I was not expecting the takeaway I received.

Both Rob and Matthew are also on the Inman 100 list. So, Gahlord congratulated them and a short conversation about influence erupted. “What does this even mean?,” Rob asked. “I don’t know that I feel influential.” I certainly could relate to that. And simply listening to them discuss it openly allowed me to set aside my recoil reaction and simply embrace the fact that I have been recognized by a respected industry publication.

Now I feel compelled to do and be what I deem necessary to warrant being acknowledged and sit in the CEO summit room or any other room where real influencers are present. I must become more fully engaged with the real estate community.

What will my actions look like?

First, I’m going to take a different approach to my writing. Recently, several of my close friends in the real estate industry have told me that I’ve become cynical in my writing tone, especially around social technologies and real estate. They tell me it has flowed into my speaking as well. I can see why they think that. Looking back at the headlines of some of my posts, I’ve not been particularly positive about some of real estates hot button topics, like Pinterest for example. While I don’t think it’s my responsibility to find the real estate use for every new online tool that pops up, I do think my tone can change. I can and will communicate my ideas about helping real estate professionals make better decisions in a more positive way.

Second, I’m going to find a way to focus more on the real estate industry. For whatever reason, I love the real estate industry. I love the people in it and I love the challenge it poses. And I think I can help make a positive difference in the coming years. Purposefully limiting that focus just simply doesn’t make sense to me any longer.

And third, my emphasis is going to be on the importance of values-based leadership. When I stop and analyze what really gets my juices flowing, conversations about vision and values and their connection to culture, brand and profits are what really excite me.

It’s time for me to provide specific, actionable guidance to help the real estate industry execute and bring about needed change: Executable strategies; Measurable action plans; Accountability; Transition to values driven cultures; Brand awareness and Brand strengthening; ROI. Not another in an endless list of quick-fix “tips,” but roadmaps to substantive, long-term, well reasoned guidance and success. It’s time.

I don’t yet know the timeline for this, but I know that I’ve been recognized as having some measure of influence in the real estate industry. To recoil from that now would be a mistake. And wasting the opportunity to do something positive with it would be an even bigger one.

A random link to the “about” page of Respres.com showed up in my Feedly stream as part of a search result designed to find instances when photos from my Flickr account are used outside of Flickr. I navigated to the page and found that Respres.com was, “an editorial services provider based in the US and Germany.”  They “specialize in serving clients with scientific editing needs and have experience assisting those whose native language is not English.” I then quickly browsed the site, scanning a couple of blog posts to get a feel for what they did.

It took me all of about 60 seconds to decide that Sarah Mikula, a neuroscientist, and Respres.com should have my old Twitter account, @respres. I “abandoned” that account last February and switched it out with @jeffturner. The nickname “respres” was the result of  login mistake on ActiveRain. Somehow the nickname stuck and I became attached to it. It became a recognizable part of my online identity, but last year I felt it was time to move on.

In my initial email to Sarah I told her that I had stumbled on her website and just felt she should have the Twitter handle for use with Respres.com. “That would be excellent and it’s very kind of you,” she said. “I’m happy to send you an admittedly modest amount for the name. I really appreciate your thoughtfulness!”

I told Sarah I didn’t want payment for the Twitter handle. “I got if for free. It’s value is in the content people add to it,” I said.  ”However, if you feel compelled, I’d rather you make a donation to my wife’s charity, http://mffo.org … that would make me smile.”

Then she made me smile in an unexpected way.

Her response to that email set off a brief exchange that made me smile wider than I could have possibly anticipated. She gave me permission to share it here.  ”I was homeless as a kid,” she told me, “and made it through college to be a neuroscientist now. It’s really amazing what kids can recover from if they’re just given the opportunity and resources. Now that I have a daughter of my own, I have a new perspective on my own childhood.” She added later, “it’s charities like your wife’s that allowed me to get as far as I did.”

Suddenly, two strangers with seemingly nothing in common had connected across thousands of miles. It was quick, but real, and all over an abandoned Twitter account. She validated, in a very real way, my gut instinct to send the original email. And right now, I could not be happier.

@respres is now in Sarah’s hands. I have no idea what she is going to do with it. But somehow I feel confident, @respres is going to be just fine.

@demelzack very nice to meet you. Take good care of @respres.

— Jeff Turner (@jeffturner) February 26, 2013

At a point in my run where three days earlier I had cruised, my legs were struggling, and my right hip and knee were acting like anything but stable joints. I had to stop, swallow my pride, and dial my wife to come pick me up. I simply couldn’t go any further. 2.2 miles in, I was finished.

My body has been telling me for a few weeks that something might be wrong, but I haven’t been listening. Until now. The LA Marathon is on March 17th and I keep telling myself that the pain I am feeling is just the usual pain associated with marathon training. If I just push through it, everything will be fine, just like the last time I ran the LA Marathon, 18 years ago. Some days are good, some days are bad. That’s just the way endurance training goes.

This past Tuesday’s 5 mile run was strained. Thursday’s 8 mile run was actually pretty good. I cruised through the miles ahead of my desired pace, but following the run my hips and back started screaming at me. They kept screaming, right up until the moment I started my 6 mile run on Saturday. And Saturday’s run was just painful. I fought through every stride. I really shouldn’t be surprised that my body finally said, “No more. Take a break.” So that’s what I’m going to do, give my legs a few days rest and let my body heal.

The pain in my joints is bad, but the bruise to my ego might end up being worse.

Nobody likes to fail to reach a goal, especially one they’ve made public, even if it’s one they’ve achieved before. And often it’s hard to know if a struggle you’re facing is a speed bump or a road block. I’m hoping this is just a speed bump. I wouldn’t want to have to explain to my children why the LA Marathon they’ve seen me training months for will no longer have their Dad as a participant. I’m not enjoying the prospects of that thought right now. But I’m increasingly convinced that shifting to a different exercise goal might be the right thing for my  body. If missing this long run doesn’t let me heal fast enough, I may have to switch goals, even if it means my ego gets bruised in the process.

Yes, much to my dismay, evidence is mounting that I may need to pick a new mountain to climb, and a new lesson to teach my children. The one I wanted to teach them was about working hard toward a goal. Instead I may get to teach them the lesson about getting up after you fall. That one will not be as fun to teach, regardless of how important it might be.

I’m certain there are other lessons in here for me as well. I’ll save those for future posts.

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Photo: Creative Commons license via Flickr user VeggieFrog

I’ve been blocking porn sites using OpenDNS for a long time. But Tumblr.com doesn’t fall into the category of porn site in the OpenDNS directory. It falls into the social media category. However, make no mistake, there is a large part of the Tumblr network this is dedicated to porn. Porn is actually part of Tumblr’s meteoric rise, and it’s easy to access.  Just do a simple search on Google for Tumblr and porn and you can see for yourself. Or go to Tumblr and search under the tag #erotic. Be warned, it’s not safe for work.

Tumblr is aware of their porn issues. In fact, Tumblr is doing everything it can to NOT get labeled a porn app in the iTunes store. And I believe Tumblr’s actions are a symptom of why Internet safety lessons are being urged for 5-year-olds.  ”We are facing an e-safety time bomb,” Claire Lilley, of the NSPCC, said. “Young people tell us they are experiencing all sorts of new forms of abuse on scale never before seen.”

And while I have hosted JustDugUp.com on Tumblr since the first days of Tumblr’s launch, I have blocked access to it from within my house. It’s unfortunate. Tumblr has a lot of very redeeming qualities. And I have good friends who use Tumblr wisely for business.

Tumblr Should Be Doing More To Limit Porn Access To Children

As a popular social sharing site for teens and tweens, Tumblr should be doing more to provide parents with the tools and information they require to limit access to areas of their site that are overrun by porn, and limit the possibility of exposure to those seeking to prey on children. Or provide a way for sites like OpenDNS to help parents by selectively limiting access.

Why, besides the obvious? Here’s a staggering number, of the 3765 calls about internet abuse that came into the ChildLine last year, 250 involved children being groomed for sex. This was in the United Kingdom. I can only imagine what the numbers would be in the United States, with five times the population.

So, until Tumblr takes actions to limit access to porn by children, it will be blocked on my home network.

These incidents have repeated themselves over and over the past few months. I’ve logged hundreds of miles on the streets around my house in that time frame and I’ve noticed a pattern. Other runners will return or initiate a greeting almost 100% of the time, with or without direct eye contact. People on bikes will do so only about 80% of the time and people working in their yards will return or initiate a greeting only about 30% of the time.

I have a theory about why this pattern exists. It is based in our individual recognition of community. Other runners and walkers see me as part of their community, so they are eager and willing to engage in the casual greeting, stranger or not. Bikers have their own community and often ride in groups, but we have some overlap as a community of people who are out getting exercise, so they greet me fairly consistently as well, if they’re not head down, pressing toward their own goals, or in conversation with their already established group.

The people who are working in their yards, even though we live in the same community, don’t see me as part of their community. If I’m running, that action seems to signal to them that I may not really be their neighbor. I could be coming from miles away, and so there is no immediate community bond. I say this because if I’m walking, the percentage of people in their yards who initiate or return a greeting increases dramatically. My actions are different, my pace is different, and their response is different. We have more time to recognize each other.

Pace is only part of the issue.

When I was growing up, if you drove down Turner Road in Grafton, WV, literally everyone waved as you passed by. It was rude, and odd, if you didn’t. We’d wave at passing cars we’d never seen before. We’d wave at people we didn’t know. We looked for opportunities to wave. And our behavior was rewarded with a smile and a wave back. Anyone travelling on that road was part of our community, stranger or not.

That was 40 years ago. It’s only partially true today. A Super Walmart was built at the end of Wickwire Road and now Turner Road is a short cut if you’re driving on Route 310 from Fairmont to the megastore. The act of driving down Turner Road no longer signals that you’re part of the community. You may just be someone going to Walmart.

This translates easily to online communities. Every action we take online signals that we’re part of some community. The conversations we participate in, the photos we post, the places we frequent, they all indicate what community or communities we identify with. And by definition, our actions either restrict who we see as part of our community or expand our community boundaries.

I have a lot of real estate friends on Facebook, for example. I often watch them write status update after status update about their business, posting listings and comments about how happy they are to be showing homes or about their most recent sale. Some do a great job of weaving those in and around other more personal and diverse status updates, and some spend the vast majority of their time posting things that could only appeal to the real estate community directly, or to someone who might actively be seeking a home to buy or sell, or to their mom.

And that realization has me asking some questions. What communities do I belong to? What communities do I want to belong to? How do I let them know I’m in their community? How can I do a better job of recognizing others in that community? How can I do a better job of waving to the cars as they pass by?

When I’m running, if I make eye contact with someone, whether they are running, walking, riding a bike, or working in their yard, they are more likely to return a greeting. It’s very hard to ignore someone who is looking you in the eye and saying good morning or waving to you. While it’s easier to ignore someone online, I think the same principle holds true.

How do you make eye contact online? 

When I make eye contact while someone is talking with me it says, “I’m listening to you. It’s just you and me in this conversation.” And the key to online eye contact is  listening. It’s about talking with someone, not just to someone or at someone. It allows them to understand, clearly, that you recognize that they are there and that you care. I don’t have to initiate a conversation to do that, but I have to be willing to have one.

I’ve written a lot about listening in the past. And, in truth, I often forget its importance online. And I fear that, often, I’m a lot like that guy tending to his flowers as people run by online. They’re waving and saying good morning and I’m not recognizing it. I need to look up more, smile, and say good morning back.