The discussion forum continues to grow…whew! Right now, I’d call it something of a self-empowerment strategies discussion group, which is very cool. We have a few more public background stories available in the guest area; you’ll have to join in to participate in the braoder discussion. It’s been a fascinating blend of personal stories mixed with project and career ideas; the analogy that comes to mind is that it’s like a raw version of Po Bronson’s book What Should I Do With My Life, with a little bit of Gig : Americans Talk About Their Jobs. One happy difference from that book; this is an international crowd.

Some of the topics from the past week:

• 60-second Pitches — I’m trying to figure out how to do them, and am posting them publically for all to heckle. I’ve never really gotten it smooth, but trying it in the context with a bunch of people who have to deal with the same issues (or imagining that) has been nice.

• Identifying Your Benefits for Others, So They Can Connect With You — The question on my mind lately. It’s related a bit to marketing, but also toward making connections in general that produce useful collaboration. It’s marketing in the sense that you have to know what your benefits are, and how to portray them to someone else so they “get it”. Remarkably hard.

• Creating a Revenue Stream Based on Writing — Also on my mind, with great perspectives from other people. It might just help to talk about this stuff in general.

• The University — I decided to make this private again, but I’m starting to post the groundwork for various “how do I do” topics of current interest. Right now I’m looking at actionscript and rich internet application development, seriously considering Flex or OpenLaszlo. There are tons of things I want to look into, but I’m very irked at the lack of clear documentation and workflow examples. So I might as well research my own.

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p>There’s been a lot of interesting discussion in the Background stories areas too as we get to know each other. I personally am finding it inspiring and thought-provoking, hopefully others are feeling the same way.

More next week!