A.Connector

20 Years?

Yes in fact-today is the 20th Anniversary of my arrival in Taiwan. Wow, so much has happened here, throughout the world and in my life during this period. Originally my plan in coming to Taiwan was to spend at least 2 years to work on my Mandarin Chinese language skills at which point I’d re-evaluate whether I wanted to stay longer or not. In fact I made excellent progress in Chinese partly due to meeting my wife Anne shortly before the 2 year mark.

I’ve had lots of amazing experiences here (mostly good) and am thankful for the friends I’ve made here both from here and elsewhere, my business associates, and of course my family. Now I have wedding anniversary #16 to look forward to in 3 days.

Not good at receiving thank yous…

I must confess it is far easier for me to give a compliment or thank someone than to receive one. I’m not referring to flattery, which is very common here in Asian culture. I’m talking about more genuine thanks or “props.” My impetus for writing this piece is from a friend who thanked me for some help and information. So I reflected on this. Don’t we have a moral imperative as connectors to share good information with the right person? I love doing this and the internet makes it so easy. I’ve done it many times, and have experienced someone reaching out many times as well. Since we are approaching the holiday season for most countries and cultures I encourage everyone to take advantage of the technology and tools at hand to connect with someone.

PR for a good cause…

Not often that I’m asked to blog something, but in this case it certainly merits it. A social network friend is involved in a very noble and cool work called E-Mail Our Military. Say what? Yes. Your A.Connector dude is still a lover not a fighter, but has massive love and respect for the young men and women that heed the call of duty and step up for their country. Not gonna get in to politics here, just wish them love and show gratitude and hope for peace and speedy return to their homes. Please stop by site and if you feel like it help out in some way. The internet was made for this-show them love and concern just an e-mail away!

No Rocket Science…

In fact a rocket scientist or one that is a scientist dealing with rockets. I saw a Tweet(Twitter message) the other day from @geosteph: Steph Stockman in real life. A scientist working for Goddard/NASA. She mentioned how she would love to give Bruce Springsteen and his crew a tour of the LRO… Well to make a long story longer, my buddy and fellow Dvoices member @aronski the music tour scenes hardest working and most poetic and photographic roadie got linked together by me. Now, Steph and Aron and bunch of other musical people are all getting a dose of rocket science and making diverse ends of the world and galaxy meet up do to a Tweet. Love when I can help connect the connectors. So yeah, there is some value to social networking after all..

Seth Godin if only you weren’t male…

and bald and… Right, time to get serious and write the post. In this day of socnet self-proclaimed experts, that ceaselessly remind us of their expertise, even on their Moo cards, it’s still refreshing to me to have the Seth Godins that continually demonstrate their expertise by what they say adding to the conversation not by many words, but by a few right ones. My new media friends, work your plan, sharpen up your game, but avoid the trap of sticking your foot so far down there it is difficult to get it out later on when you do know better. Just sayin.

Utility. Who knew?

Wow, amongst a plethora of useless shiny gadget devices that offer no useful qualities or are copies of others I was pointed at Fleck by David Weinberger’s blog. Fleck allows you to put movable bullets and “sticky notes” on web pages which you send to friends or business associates. So it allows web pages to perform like a white board in your communications. Nice to get something useful for a change…

Cool series…

Carrie from My Several Worlds blog has a very interesting series on East/West key cultural differences expressed by symbols and text. If this is the type of thing that piques your curiosity, check it out.

Connecting with family…

Just got off a Skype call with my uncle. He has been on Skype for last several months and is loving it. Blows him away how good connection is, being able to see me(glad someone is happy about that :D) and for the price. Was particularly happy to speak with him and find out about recent trip to North Carolina(he is in Georgia) and the changing colors of the Autumn leaves. So I just got a brainstorm-why don’t I tell my Internet savvy uncle to get a Flickr account so we can enjoy pictures. We have such good tools at our disposal to remove distance and keep the conversation going. Truly a shame if we don’t use them, right?

A.Connector Cast #11

Well it’s good to be back in audio presence again. Here is the bullet list for this episode:
*Hukou, Taiwan Blogger Meetup and video
*Kudos to Mur Lafferty for Playing For Keeps novel (podiobook and pdf free publication)
*Kudos to Jack Hosley on Insomnia Radio News
*Rich Palmer audio comments
*Liz Strauss SOB winner
*New Blog Theme and A.Connector focus
Hope you enjoy and feel free to comment,join in and add to discussion. Please feel free to send audio comments,voice line:206-338-3950,e-mail, or here at blog. Thanks!

Playing For Keeps

New media content producing dynamo(prolific and GOOD-how does she do it?) Mur Lafferty has new novel project out. “Playing For Keeps” in serial pdf download or podiobook(audiobook) formats. Some of you will recall Mur contributed an excellent audio piece on last A.Connector Cast. Check out her work.