The Free Facebook 2012 webinar held January 31, 2012 had OVER 12,000 registrations, at last count, and more than 5,000 people attended the Live event.  Mari Smith did a beautiful job with a new format and outstanding information.  The big announcement during the webinar was her LiveStream webinar beginning February 14th offered twice a week for four weeks -EXTREME FANBASE GROWTH.

There is no doubt that Facebook has changed the landscape of business and further changes happening at the speed of light means you have to use every available opportunity to stay up to date on all changes.  There is no one better to help you do just that than Mari Smith!

I registered for EXTREME FANBASE GROWTH before the January 31st webinar was over.  As one of the first to register, I have a chance to win a 1-1 session with Mari to evaluate my Facebook profile and pages.  Fingers crossed.  3 of the first few people registering for EXTREME FANBASE GROWTH will be randomly chosen for the 1-1 session with Mari Smith – a value I could not afford if not chosen.  Again, fingers crossed.

I’m sharing this with my readers because I think the value of $197 is an EXTREME value.  Please consider elevating your business using Facebook techniques from the respected Facebook Ninja, Mari Smith!

Leave a comment or question below if you need more information.  Thanks!

As I consider backing up my aging computer to avoid the inevitable – losing all my stuff – with an online service, I’m looking at the different offerings, advantages and disadvantages.  A Mashable Google + post referencing this post got my attention.  Megaupload Data Could Be Erased This Week  by Stan Schroeder which led me to Christina Warren’s, Mashable post of January 20, 2012:

What Megaupload Teaches Us About the Cloud SOPA and Backups.

Topics covered: “Could a Service Like Dropbox get TKO’ed Megaupload Style?” and “The Cloud isn’t always forever.”  A must read if you are working in the cloud or are thinking of backing up your valuable data online.  If you do, be sure to have other sources as advised.

I’m off to update my backup system that stays with me and I’ll have another copy at a different location.  Just makes sense if you are in business.  It makes sense if you value your family photos, financials and history as well.

Security issues and the “where’s my data if I need it and who has control of it” feeling is keeping me out of the Cloud.  How about you?

Leave me a comment if you have a strong feeling either way.  I’d love to read your opinions.

Generation Flux (full title below), is a series of interviews and profiles written by Robert Safian, editor at Fast Company which offers the reader a glimpse of our next generation of influential business leaders.

I read profile after profile; so interested in how they got where they are and fascinated by their process.  You’ll find their stories shocking while at the same time refreshing.  You may even be left with a feeling of confidence that the business world is actually in pretty good hands.

Many who are excited about the massive change technology brings to personal and business lives are also overwhelmed.  Trust me, these men and women are not overwhelmed!  They are locked in overdrive and focused. They embrace change as their sustenance.

Read each profile to get the full experience and on the right side of each profile, notice the list of people each person profiled added to the group as Generation Flux pioneers.

This Is Generation Flux: Meet The Pioneers Of The New (And Chaotic) Frontier Of Business is the full article – long but very important that you endure to the end.  But if you just read the profiles of each in this group, you’ll get the feeling I described before.

danah boyd         D J Patil         Baratunde Thurston        Beth Comstock

Pete Cashmore             Raina Kumra             Bob Greenberg

I’d like to know how reading these profiles affected your feelings about the future of business as it changes.  The 41 comments on the original article were for or totally against the representation but most seemed to be written by advanced and knowledgeable participants in the conversation .

Good comments make the article so please leave me your thoughts.  I particular want to hear from people working in their businesses day to day, just trying to stay in business.

Now this is just a bit too big brother for me.  Although why we didn’t see it coming, I can’t say.  The security issues we have are enough to think about.  Now we have a lab that will define us as “entities”  and based on our social interactions “relationships”,  they will  notify us of what we want to purchase!!  They really don’t know me that well.  Do they?  I know Amazon.com does it based on our purchases but we’ve opt-ed for that when we purchased.

On Facebook, Mandy Jenkins,  Social News Editor at The Huffington Post opined, ” Uh-oh, should we ‘little guys’ in social media be worried that Walmart’s moving into our business?”, which got my attention.  I was not expecting what I read.  I think this goes further than just invading the social media space.

From WalmartLabs - who knew they had Labs, I know we should have guessed – we are introduced to Social Gemone.  @WalmartLabs defines the Social Genome as

” . . . a giant knowledge base that captures interesting entities and relationships of the social world.”

“. . . the Social Genome is indeed a crown jewel at WalmartLabs. It is a giant entity-relationship knowledge base built using a wide range of cutting-edge data management, semantic analysis, and human computation techniques. It is used to perform deep semantic analysis of social media, the result in turn is leveraged to power a broad array of social commerce applications.”

Don’t know if you’ve ever experienced a “Deep semantic analysis” but it sounds painful.

Additionally they list other offerings on the site labeled

• Social Commerce – using Social Genome to improve shopping experience ( no live link to this for further explanation)
• Social Analytics - Gaining customer insights from social data  (ditto on the link and further explanation)

Granted, they may not care that I need further explanation.  They don’t have to care.  Not their job, really.

You decide what you think after you read the explanation page.   Even if you decide you don’t want them to have your preferences it doesn’t matter.  They deal in entities and relationships in social media and then sell to those entities with those particular relationships.  You won’t even see it coming.

Reminds me of the CBS  TV series Person of Interest where the “machine” kicks out numbers to identify which “irrelevant” will die if they are not helped by the characters in the series.  I’ll watch it with a different point of view now.   After reading about @WalmartLabs  Social Genome the TV series doesn’t seem so futuristic does it?

Leave me a comment if you have a strong feeling about this issue and/or if  you think we should back away from giving so much of ourselves over to social media.

Leave you name and email in the RSS feed to receive these posts by email – upper, right corner of this site.  Thanks!

Update to my last post Urgent – Purchase Now !

Not to brag here,  but I thought Chuck Wending’s post on Google+ was great fun.  I’ve enjoyed both 25 Things a Writer Should Stop Doing . . .  which has over 350 comments and counting.  I’m continuing to benefit from Chuck’s ebook 500 Ways to Be A Better Writer  but I was surprised and please to see another reference in my Google+ stream today.

——————————————————————————————————-

Chuck Wendig  -  8:18 AM  -  Public

In a sign that the Mayans were right and this is clearly going to be the end of the world, my post “25 Things Writers Should Stop Doing (Right F**king Now)” got linked to by the blog at Oprah.com.

Kiss your children. Say goodbye to your pets. The end is nigh.

http://www.oprah.com/blogs/What-Were-Grateful-for-Today_29

Gratitude Journal on The Oprah Blog – Oprah.com

  -  Comment  -  Hang out  -  Share

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Yesterday I attended a webinar – one of four this week. I’m learning to teach through webinars and attend any I can – no matter the subject – to get experience while learning about social media, WordPress and marketing. My hope is to learn all I
can, then teach my subject with my style. The mechanics of conducting these webinars are not as easy as they may seem when you’re attending. However, it must be seamless or attendees will leave in a flash. Webinar attendees are VERY demanding.

There are many webinar presenters I respect and one relatively new source for me is Courtney Engle. She has partnered with Kimberly Bohannan.  Kimberly and Ben Cope began  Go For Your Dream WordPress Training a platform to learn about WordPress and, I’m told constructed a fabulous Dream Theme using WordPress . I use WordPress and started listening to Kimberly and Ben about a year ago to learn how to handle my own websites. Very valuable information. Courtney was featured yesterday.  Courtney is fabulously self-educated (as we all are today) in social media and technology. Her presentation skills are very pleasing so learning from her is easy and a joy.

However during her first presentation as Social Mobile Local Marketing Pros lead presenter . . . the screen froze. Yes, hundreds of people listening to a recorded session and we simply stopped! Dead air time. How impossible was this ??? This had never happened before in my experience and I was totally mesmerized by the incident. How in the world would these two get
out of this situation? No one left!  I think we all were curious how it would end. It was like watching a train wreck and we couldn’t leave!

To summarize, Courtney and Kimberly were champs. They handled the situation the very best they could, made decisions off the cuff, were respectful of their audience and kept us there. Thursday they will reproduce the entire webinar and we’re all invited back for a do-over.   Email Kimberly for an invite and directions to join the replay at Social Mobile Local Marketing Pros or goforyourdream@gmail.com.

This will be my first do-over webinar! I learned so much from the way Kimberly and Courtney and Ben handled this horrible situation. What troopers, what professionals. I immediately went to their new website at SMLMP.com and became a Charter member of their tribe. I have much more to learn from these three individuals and can’t wait to continue my learning experience with them.

I can state that I learned more from the problem they experienced than I ever expected. What a bonus! Thanks Ladies – and Ben who helped fill the dead air time while Kimberly and Courtney struggled to fix the problem and continue the webinar on a timely basis.  Nothing they did solved the problem.  What I learned today was more valuable than the mechanics and details of the session. The capital they earned from handling this situation so well is more valuable to their listeners than they know. Congratulations! See you Thursday.

By the way . . . being a charter member I can say this with authority . . . the training videos Courtney produced are fabulous and extremely valuable. Great Job Courtney. Nice find with Courtney, Kimberly and Ben – Kudos.  Courtney is the real deal!

Are you ready yet?  Are you willing to take a chance and change your thought process?  Consider getting paid for what your do and learn the changes taking place in the real estate market today.  Learn why free is not acceptable any longer for both the real estate professionals and real estate consumers.

Julie Garton-Good championed this philosophy in 2000.  She’d say back then that we were on the “bleeding edge” of the change in compensation structure for real estate brokers and agents because the power brokers would not accept ANY change.  Instead they threw arrows and rejected the suggestion.  But Julie – and her followers - kept going and never gave up.

The association updated to the International Association of Real Estate Consultants in 2011 and Julie spent many hours updated her original course – now offered at Real Estate Success Center.

Watch Julie’s video below to learn why the old compensation model is no longer viable.  Read more about the designation and course here.

Julie Garton-Good Video

 Amy Chorew has been a real estate/technology trainer for a long time but she’s truly found her place in today’s marketplace.  Her  use of video is extraordinary.  She combines real estate experience with superior technological skills to explain social media and the tech tools we all need. 

Amy gives you the confidence to go forward and not look back by using all the most important new technology.  Excellent stuff! 

“Amy Chorew and a coaching student discuss new technology for real estate. Produced by Boonedog Video.”

A record number of TN licensees are taking the TREC Core Course online.  Tennessee Real Estate Commission requires 16 hours of continuing education credit and 6 must be the TREC Core Course. 

Reason for popularity:

• You have 16 hours CE – then you realize that you have not included the 6 hr core course. 
• You’re license renewal date is within the next two weeks and you can’t find a TREC core class scheduled to meet your renewal deadline.
• You simply forgot and must have it in tomorrow!

These and many other reasons are valid and what I hear from agents weekly.  It happens; and the online course solves the problem.  Real Estate Success Center submits your CE credit to TREC electronically within hours of receiving your completion email during normal working hours.  If you need it to go up on the weekend, all you need do is call and I’ll handle it personally.

Don’t panic if you find yourself in this situation.  We’re here to help.

Please call if you have questions or visit our school site for this and other offerings.

Sheila Hensley 901-373-3167 direct    Cell 901-652-3167

Is Personal Learning Network a new term??? 

A tweet from Chris Brogan (who I now know is a part of my own personal learning network) led me to this podcast

Clearly this podcast is geared toward universities and educators, but it made me question. 

Why aren’t we using this more in our businesses and personal development?  

I searched YouTube for other videos of the same subject.  Most were posted from 1 to 8 months ago with a few listed from over a year ago so clearly not an age old concept. 

I needed a good description and history quickly so I searched Wikipedia for a definition:

Personal Learning Network: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Learning_Networks

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Personal Learning Networks consist of the people a learner interacts with and derives knowledge from in a Personal Learning Environment. An important part of this concept is the theory of connectivism developed by George Siemens and Stephen Downes. Learners create connections and develop a network that contributes to their professional development and knowledge.^[1] The learner does not have to know these people personally or ever meet them in person.^[2] The following is an excerpt from Dryden’s and Vos’ book on learning networks:^[3]

“For the first time in history, we know now how to store virtually all humanity’s most important information and make it available, almost instantly, in almost any form, to almost anyone on earth. We also know how to do that in great new ways so that people can interact with it , and learn from it.”

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Personal Learning Environment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_personal_learning_environments

“Personal Learning Environments are systems that help learners take control of and manage their own learning. This includes providing support for learners to

• set their own learning goals
• manage their learning; managing both content and process
• communicate with others in the process of learning

and thereby achieve learning goals.

A PLE may be composed of one or more subsystems: As such it may be a desktop application, or composed of one or more web-based services.”^[1]

Important concepts in PLEs include the integration of both formal and informal learning episodes into a single experience, the use of social networks that can cross institutional boundaries, and the use of networking protocols (Peer-to-Peer, web services, syndication) to connect a range of resources and systems within a personally-managed space.

While PLE is a very new term, the concept represents the latest step in an alternative approach to e-learning which can trace its origins to early systems such as Colloquia, the first peer-to-peer learning system, and in more recent phenomena such as the Epsilen Environment developed by Ali Jafari and the Elgg system developed by Dave Tosh and Ben Werdmuller and PebblePAD developed by UK-based Pebble Learning. This alternative approach developed in parallel to that of Learning Management Systems, which unlike the PLE take an institution-centric (or course-centric) view of learning . . .

SOoo - PLN seems to be a new learning style that is fast developing based on our full access to social media tools and open access to information important to us individually.  We get to decide what we learn!!  Brilliant!  Just what had happened to me as I researched a subject I didn’t understand.  I experienced the above described learning style and loved it.  It is very close to the learning experience of online education.  The Wiki definition corresponds with the information offered in my recent Certified Distance Education Recertification Course.

Is Personal Learning Network a new term???  It seems to be relatively new; however some of us have been learning like this for a lifetime. It just wasn’t as cool and we didn’t have access to as much information.  Maybe our time has come

This is what I want Real Estate Success Center and Social Web Learning to be.  One focused on real estate learning and the other focused on social media tools, tips and etiquette. 

Upon discovery that we are encouraged and free to develop our own learning environment and network, I’m off to organize my Personal Learning Network with the intention of using this “new” style to share information through my school and blog. 

Please feel free to join, learn and contribute.  Would love to hear your comments about your Personal Learning Network.