Here's A Way To Ask For And Get Support For Personal & Pro Challenges, On An On-Going Basis

Graduates of my program are prepping to bring GlobalNiche's online presence & online community building methodology to their own worlds as servant leaders in peer-based workshops (like this group led by Silvana Vukadin-Hoitt starting in November). With this framework, in six weeks the network is connected and has a model to continue working together and a place to do so.

I've also been brainstorming the groups of people in my life I want to connect with more effectively. (You try it. Bet you can name three groups of people close to you that you want to see succeed.)

My groups share a common thread.

We are peers and colleagues and friends and acquaintances -- and we are siloed in what we know, what we are trying to do,  how we do it, and with whom. We don't fully consider or know how to tap the resource we represent to each other.

That's what I'm proposing. A methodology to work in community on our own goals, with a stronger network as a result. A way we can all be cocreators of an effective network using the backbone of the social web. A way to ask for and get help and support for personal and professional challenges, on an on-going basis.

I see you.

You are people whose dreams I've been privy to, whose skills and talents I'm aware of, whose personal and professional pressures I know, whose untapped potential I recognize, and who I feel a commitment to helping put it all together to get where you want to go.

You're also people I would love to be better connected to, and who I'd like to connect better to fellow kindred spirits in my network. People you'd like to know. People who can help you and improve your life.

Groups I'd like to be a servant leader to are:

1) people I've collaborated with professionally or been in peer work groups with, including writers and media pros and publishing world types.

Often coming out of traditional models and feeling the brunt of disruption, I understand your skepticism and why you are slow to adopt today's social web tools and ways of operating;

2) friends whose work and dreams I'm aware of but we've never really brought our full professional selves together to make things happen.

We can go beyond commiserating over coffee and silo-ing the personal and professional in our relationship;

3) people I have a history of interacting with intellectually in the long term, like fellow alumnae of my college;

4) acquaintances who ask me about what I do or how I do it, but don't imagine yourself doing it.

This would include my hairdresser who as an independent professional who moves from salon to salon could use the continuity and discoverability of an online portfolio. The young pilates instructor I met at the Wisdom 2.0 conference who could be establishing her practice with instruction videos online. The woman I met at a cocktail party recently who hadn't heard of local and online gatherings of people who share her cross-cultural experience;

5) people who have followed and appreciated my cultural work like Expat Harem the book and also the blog but don't see how it translates into GlobalNiche's social web training and online community building and personal brand building -- or why any of that is a way to help you live in the world the way you saw glimpses of in my cultural work.

People who haven't yet grasped that your cultural understandings, sensitivities, interests, experiences are assets and guidance you can use to live more fully with the help of social, mobile, and online tools and life. People who don’t yet see how your cultural understanding can help you on the internet, and in fact, give you an advantage online.

I see you, and I can envision what will emerge from our better connection. Don't wait for me to contact you. Reach out right now and let's get started.

Our Grads Are Brand Advocates & Servant Leaders In Their Communities

Excited about a new chapter at GlobalNiche. One year after launching our program, we're equipping our graduates to build out their own communities.

In doing so, we're hitting a major, longterm milestone: GlobalNiche is an online platform to build community. We're equipping our graduates with the infrastructure and support you need to bring our continuity practice to your wider communities....to the very people in your lives you want to build something with.

Once you have a handle on your own goals for an online presence and you've got some pieces in place, you can help the-people-you-want-to-be-connected-to get connected.

So proud to see the study group Silvana Vukadin-Hoitt is hosting in November for the creative, entrepreneurial and global nomad women in her world. (If this sounds like a work community for someone you know, pass it on!)

As Silvana writes,

"Increasing your online visibility at your own pace, creating a digital presence that looks, sounds and feels like you and that helps you meet your aims is key to the age we’re now living in. In theory, yes, we all want to belong to a productive group of people who understand us and our aims. In practice, it’s difficult to be accountable to your plans and to keep showing up for yourself and for others. What would it be like to have a practical foundation to further your current artistic endeavors?"

When it comes to the business of building an online presence to meet one's goals, you can imagine how the target moves and goals evolve.

That's why, just like me and my cofounder Tara, our graduates see themselves as 'leading learners'.

That's something I heard Natalie Sisson of The Suitcase Entrepreneur describe this summer about her role in the Freedom Business movement. It's being the person who's just a couple steps ahead of the people you're making a path for.

You can show others in your life what you DO know, and you can work alongside them learning what you don't yet know.

What a GlobalNiche study group leader does is foster our culture of sharing, and collaboration, and experimentation on the social web, and doing big things in small steps.

Part of the GlobalNiche experience is practicing finding what you need by tapping into a network of people ahead of you on the path. Googling stuff to find out how people got answers to the same question you have today.

Our group leaders are also servant leaders. (Thanks to grad Shirley Rivera for bringing this concept to my attention!) Helping the people in your life develop and improve, using a non dogmatic system that you just so happened to find out about before others did.

...being a cocreator of your community by bringing practical, useful, transformative tools to help the group be effective.

Besides the infrastructure we set up for our grads (including access to the multimedia curriculum and material for several-times-a-week prompts, a branded G+ community for their study group, and all the back-end invoicing and payment structure ) we have also created a support community at G+ for study group leaders.

During September's two week training for grads considering leading a study group I believe I was the one who learned the most! Leading learners learn more.

My Advice To 40,000 Professional Services Pros On How to Make Your Digital Strategy Sustainable

Thrilled to contribute my perspective to this month's "Ask The Expert" column on how to combat digital overwhelm in the business-to-business (B2B) space.

I answer this question from the community of executives and services professionals:

"I’m mentally exhausted from my social media responsibilities. What can I do differently with my digital strategy to make it more sustainable? Automation? Passing it to the intern?"

As you can imagine my approach and method for sustainability hinges on making your engagement with your online social networks one that nourishes you rather than depletes you.

Your network should delight and challenge you; bring you fresh insights and curated news you can use; it should activate you and engage you.

Once you start receiving true value from your network by curating your connections, you’ll have a better sense of how to provide value in return.

As your online communities begin to sustain you, participating in them will become sustainable.

Thanks to my fellow editorial pro Meryl Evans (who I met on Twitter many years ago!) for the invitation to share my perspective with the 40,000 subscribers of this 11-year-old newsletter for consultants, lawyers, accountants, architects, and other professional services professionals.

What Happens When You Connect Without Meaning

Culture hacker and 'social alchemist' Seb Paquet noted this phenomenon: in an explosion of connection, too few of us have found any belonging.

I believe that's exactly what happens when we connect without meaning.

Mashable Lifestyle Features My Social Media Advice To College Students Applying To Grad School

Thanks Mashable Lifestyle -- part of the Mashable news site for the connected generation, one of the largest blogs on the Internet-- for featuring my social media advice to college students in your new weekly Twitter chat on the digital life!

Other guidance for college students applying I shared during the live tweeted #mashadvice column this week:

• demo via social media (activities, blogs, commentary) strengths you'd include in your application
• besides showing interest in a topic via social, also show *engagement* (what you DO about it)
• Twitter, LI, any service: what's findable should reflect you/path you're on, match up w/what you present in applications
• think about using Pinterest to create portfolios of your work (actual, or imagined-future), curate your vision
• photos can be used as complement: to create atmosphere, demo aesthetic, show history

Fast Company On Creative Career Reinvention For GenY & Boomers Through Social Media Savvy & Storytelling, Sounds Like The GlobalNiche Recipe

Loved to see this "Second-Act-Career Success Stories" article in Fast Company today by Lydia Dishman, focusing on non-digital-natives who have been using digital tools and social techniques to dynamically reinvent themselves.

They're not at a disadvantage because they're non-native digital beings. In fact, as these examples show -- we digital immigrants have more to work with for our online transformation.

The second-act career successes Dishman writes about sound very much like GlobalNiche recipes. It's what we've been pioneering in our own lives, creating training and showing others how to enact.  For instance:

Reframing your experiences for value

• using your previously produced content/material to reach goals you set today

Embracing the power of the social web to grow

• to find communities of mentors, peers, employers, clients, and customers, as well as to rapidly educate yourself in leading edge business techniques

Dishman also notes that 94% of recruiters are using or plan to use social media to find candidates and 78% of them already have placed people they found online. That only underscores my point here about the need for career counseling and training personnel to meet rising expectations....wonder what the percentage of trainers for mid career counseling are embracing these new realities.

Mapping My LinkedIn Network

My network has a new branch since I last did this network map in March 2013. That maroon group on the lower lefthand side is from PJ Van Hulle's 90-day list-building challenge, Listapalooza.

The blue are Turkey and Expat Harem-related. The green are Turkish diaspora. The pink is Bryn Mawr College, the orange is social media and online marketing pros, and professional coaches. The bronze is NYC, SF, writing and travel peers. The yellow at center is Silicon Valley, startups and the VC world, while the light blue is the TED community.

Click on the image to see a larger version. Here's where to get your own.

The Bellyflops of Social Media Mismanagement

On the precipice of war, overreaching false cosmopolitanism continues. Plus, parents plan for unsustainable digital abstinence.

The overreaching false cosmopolitanism continues. Read my sadly-still-fresh take here.

Today the Kenneth Cole Twitter account tweeted something thoughtless about "Boots on the ground" or not, don't forget about sandals and loafers.

Nope.

Boots on the ground are soldiers going to war  possibly to be maimed or killed, and to wreak havoc on the lives of others. The precipice of war is not an opportunity to remind people you make loafers.

Feels like deja vu for Cole. Because it is. The brand flopped just like this in 2011.

At that time I made the connection between global mishaps of high profile brands and the false cosmopolitanism we’re all suffering

There was Groupon’s SuperBowl ad fiasco, when the company attempted to mix consumerism with sensitive political, environmental, cultural, economic and social issues, and the Kenneth Cole Twitter debacle which appeared to make light of unrest in Cairo.

In 2010, I wrote about earlier instances of the phenomenon of false cosmopolitanism, inspired by Ethan Zuckerman and Jen Stefanotti's work on the topic.

We've got a culture problem on our hands. Access to the worldwide web makes us imagine we’re global thinkers. But we’re not. Not even close.

In order to truly be global thinkers, we’d have to be xenophiles, actively and constantly bridging cultures, immersed and knowledgeable about multiple worlds.

Most people hang out in “like-minded microcosms” and when we cross a boundary online the new light shed on everyone’s prejudices and assumptions can take us by surprise.

This “xeno-confusion” is happening more often in the virtual realm, with higher and higher stakes.

Today’s other big story of social media mismanagement has been swiftly answered by Alexandra Samuel of Love Your Life Online. It falls into the category of unsustainable digital abstinence to solve problems that may crop up in the future.

"Don't be scared to Facebook your kids," she responds to Amy Webb's piece at Slate "We Post Nothing About Our Daughter Online."

Samuel writes: "Parenthood is such a central experience that there’s no way to cut it out of your online life without profoundly compromising your own ability to have authentic, meaningful connections online."

That’s exactly right. Plus, digital abstinence doesn’t prepare you for the world your child will grow up in.

How are you preparing yourself for a wider world?

If No One In Your Industry Thinks Online Presence Is Important, Could That Be Your Competitive Advantage?

If people in your particular career field or industry don't 'do' meaningful/extensive/basic social media do you think you might make it your competitive advantage?

If no, why not?

I ask because I've been adding to the GlobalNiche homepage the reasons people don't invest in their online presence, and that's one I hear from a lot of people. The people around them aren't doing it.

Something to consider: you might be mistaken about this perception that no one else in your life is doing it. If you're not online in expansive ways you probably aren't in a position to gauge if other people are.

Do any of these reasons sound familiar to you?

• DON'T KNOW WHERE TO START
• NOTHING OF INTEREST OUT THERE FOR ME
• I'M HESITANT TO BECOME VISIBLE
• DON'T WANT TO BE EGOTISTICAL & TALK ABOUT MYSELF
• NO CONNECTION BETWEEN WHAT I DO ONLINE & EFFECTS OFFLINE
• MY OPPORTUNITIES COME FROM CONNECTIONS I ALREADY HAVE
• I'M CONFUSED ABOUT OWNING MY ONLINE PRESENCE
• CAN'T AFFORD TO MAKE MISTAKES ONLINE 
• I'M NOT A CREATIVE/TECHY/SOCIAL PERSON
• DON'T WANT TO BLOG OR JOIN A BUNCH OF SITES
• JUST USE SOCIAL MEDIA FOR ENTERTAINMENT
• MY CONTACTS ALREADY KNOW ALL ABOUT ME
• TOO EARLY OR LATE IN MY CAREER OR LIFE TO GET STARTED
• FEEL THE NEED TO BE ONLINE *LESS* NOT *MORE*
• IT'S JUST ONE MORE THING TO DO
• I'M NOT ACCOMPLISHED ENOUGH TO GO PUBLIC
• WAITING TO BE PUBLISHED/DISCOVERED/HIRED/INVITED
• PLAN TO DO IT RIGHT WHEN I NEED IT
• CAN'T RISK HAVING MY WORK STOLEN
• TAKES AWAY TIME FROM MY WORK/FAMILY/RELAXATION
• MY CUSTOMERS/FRIENDS/COLLEAGUES AREN'T ON WEB
• DON'T KNOW IF I HAVE ASSETS NOR HOW TO USE THEM ONLINE
• UNCLEAR ABOUT MY SERIOUS PURPOSE ONLINE 
• DON'T WANT TO MIX MY WORK & PRIVATE LIFE
• DON'T WANT TO ANNOY MY CONTACTS BY POSTING A LOT
• NO ONE AROUND ME IS DOING IT
• ADVISED TO WAIT UNTIL VALUE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IS FIGURED OUT
• NO ONE IN MY INDUSTRY THINKS IT'S IMPORTANT
• CAN'T MANAGE IT ALL BY MYSELF

Consider getting started anyway.

Learn How To Curate Your Various Social Web Networks To Deliver Value

The entrepreneur-turned-venture capitalist Mark Suster tweeted  Why I Unfollowed You On Twitter, a blog post by Ian Rogers of Topspin. "I want Twitter to be for news and information from trusted sources. My dream is that I open Twitter and can quickly consume 15-20 interesting stories from around the Web, curated for me by people who know how to sort the wheat from the chaff. I want high signal, low noise."

He plans to follow people he actually knows on Facebook, and professional contacts at LinkedIn.

It's exactly what I've been saying for years: curate your various social web networks to deliver value.

Deriving value is a function of what the network and platform does best, and who you know (of) and who you want to know and what you want to know about.

That includes not following friends or other known entities on Twitter unless what they tweet is justifiably interesting to you.

It's been my policy on Twitter for the past five years. In fact, I rarely follow newcomers on Twitter -- even if they're a personality I find extremely intriguing because I recognize there's a learning curve and it can take a VERY long time before a person starts tweeting value.

I'll follow later since a timeline filled with irrelevancies is not what I'm looking for right now, or ever. I also use Twitter lists to store potential accounts to follow in my main feed.

Your Network Is Your Net Worth By Porter Gale

Fun morning at the Social Media Breakfast East Bay Meetup. My GlobalNiche team member Tanya Monsef Bunger and I were at the headquarters of Lithium to meet former Virgin America marketing head Porter Gale talk about her new book Your Network is Your Net Worth: Unlock the Hidden Power of Connections for Wealth, Success, and Happiness.

Porter gave us all free copies of her book because she knows influencers when she sees them.

Takeaways:

Smaller degrees of separation with social tech users (only 2 or 3 degrees separate us from each other now) + larger spheres of influence = accelerated networks.

That's only going to increase with upgrades in the technology, said Porter.

And, I would add -->  upgrades in how we're using the existing and coming technology. We the users are going to make the most difference in how accelerated our networks become. It's about that whole connected divide conundrum.

And, basically, since all good things come through our network (in a tough economy more jobs are landed through internal referrals) and we're now relating to people based on online personas, it's imperative to take online network building seriously --  and our online personal brand as the valuable evolving key that it is.

That's pretty much my mantra too, as you may have guessed. Porter's speaking my language.

I came to it very differently than she did in corporate marketing. I was using online presence, personal branding and global community building as a survival skill during my 14 years as an expatriate, and tapped my entertainment industry & media background to arrive at content marketing as a method. But here we are, on the same page.

Use Social Platforms As Your Web-Wide Contact Book

No more address books. No more contact files. Here's something I've been doing for years. It's a way to organically grow your networks online, increase ambient awareness of people you've run across in person, AND keep entropic clutter to a minimum. Take that inert stack of biz cards on your desk. You're hoarding them to contact those folks when the need arises, or when all your ducks are in a row, or something. You're waiting for the day the cards will work -- but don't wait.

Find and connect on (multiple) social sites with each of them. Toss the cards.

Believe that you will be able to find these people without the physical card. Believe that you don't actually need their phone number or fax or street address -- it's all findable!

(Flipside: make your own contact details findable by the people you want to be found by. That's a settings issue at your profiles.)

Know that by connecting* with these acquaintances ambiently via online networks, you're taking a small action that will help bring them closer for mutual benefit now, and in the future.

You're now starting to use social platforms like a web-wide contact book.

*And if you freak at the thought of requesting a low-pressure connection online at the most appropriate sites, then how were you intending to reach out to this person in the future when you actually have something to ask or propose?

GlobalNiche's Winning Strategy For Building A Global Platform For 5 Million Women

My global community building-tech-women-leadership work of the past four years with GlobalNiche and my partner Tara Agacayak has been recognized as helpful to 5 million women worldwide.

GlobalNiche wins the Global Women's Leadership Alliance InnoCentive Brainstorm Challenge sponsored by  Global Fund for Women, Global Leadership Advancement Center at San Jose State University, Mills College, Monterey Institute of International Studies, Public Health Institute, World Pulse, and Salzburg Global Seminar at San Jose State University.

What we've learned about building and managing global community with social web technology:

"Glob‬al Niche partners Tara and Anastasia have learned several important lessons in their work to build a global community over the last four years. In their opinion, 'people need both synchronous and asynchronous ways to gather, they need prompting and encouragement to do so and they need a common purpose for gathering. An active community doesn’t just need a place to gather, it also needs community leadership and active moderation to stay relevant and vital.'  Tara and Anastasia recommend using Google Plus Communities as the primary platform for establishing the virtual community space and provided many specific examples of how to leverage this platform."

Read the full proposal for GlobalNiche's winning strategy for building a global platform for 5 million women change agents in the next five years.

Ex-Wired Editor Arikia Millikan Launches LadyBits Media Group For Tech-Savvy Women

Glad to attend the San Francisco launch by Arikia Millikan, who's on a global trajectory since leaving Wired magazine. The evening cosponsored by Michael Gold at TechDrinkUp and Christian Perry of SFBeta at Monarch (yes, that's a trapeze above the bar) introduced a new media group founded by Millikan where tech-savvy women create the content they want to consume.

As Millikan describes it, LadyBits is a collective of tech journalists and a media experiment to source, commission and edit writing of interest to tech-savvy women -- a new layer between the writers and the publishing venues (which mostly serve the interests of tech-savvy men).

You can expect a curated collection of "literary musings about technology, science, business, culture, sex, and politics by writers who actively engage in intelligent discourse about how technology is shaping the future of our civilization".

I'll be contributing to LadyBits, which you can see here at Medium: LadyBits On Medium. They'll also be expanding all over the web, including at Refinery 29 and Popular Science.

Becoming Media Literate

Saw someone on Facebook bemoaning how "the entire internet" fell for the claim that the Turkish government was using "agent orange" against its citizens in the Gezi Park uprising.

The spread of mistruths is not a reason to distrust everything you see reported on social media (nor to decry it as a "menace to society"). It's a reason to do better about parsing the information and its sources.

Just like threatening chain letters and Bigfoot hoaxes, we're supposed to grow out of this kind of dupedom.

I see the growth taking place before my eyes in the Turkish use of social media. It helps to have skillful journalistic people covering the news. (Here's a new Twitter list of English language tweeters on Turkish current events by cultural journalist Robyn Eckhardt for a one-click follow of 20+ accounts. Here's my Turkey protests Twitter list with more than 80.)

The first mention of agent orange I saw was associated with the debunking of that claim, on the twitter feed of NPR's Andy Carvin.

Becoming (social) media literate is a process, and especially messy in a crisis.

But many people have already been through major crises while using social media (for instance, Carvin pioneered the crowdsourcing of citizen journalism during the Arab Spring as I, Jillian York of Global Voices and TIME pointed out in April 2011), so to portray us all as rubes -- and social media as "untrustworthy" -- is inaccurate.

Social media is a tool. It's up to us to use it wisely. As web anthropologist Stowe Boyd says, "The single most important decision we make in a connected world is who to follow."

Turkish Unrest Makes My Facebook Timeline A True Interest Graph

My Facebook timeline has in past 8 months become full of irrelevant sponsored posts and ads but before that was not an activated global neighborhood posting on interrelated topics.

What's happening in Istanbul and Turkey and the Turkish diaspora around the world this week has made my Facebook timeline suddenly a relevant, activated global neighborhood.

• I am seeing posts this week from contacts whose posts I have never seen in my TL. (Turks were early and enthusiastic adopters of FB so many connected with me back in 2007 as I told Intel Free Press here.)
• I am seeing posts from people who are saying they never have posted on this topic before.
• I am seeing groups of people I know from different locations, settings and times actively share and comment on a related set of posts.
• I am seeing people from my high school trying to parse a topic that other people in my feed (people I've met over more than 10 years, some I worked with, others I spoke to their class, others I know socially, etc) know about intimately and are reporting first hand.

This week has been what Facebook should and could be to make it a place I want to go in the age of Twitter, but so far never has been.

This phenomenon is due to the severity of the news, and the fact that my network is seeded with a majority of people who care about that type of news.

If Facebook has been making the shift from social graph to the more valuable (commercially, and for readers) interest graph, this week my TL made that shift on its own.

Blueprint For Building Global Community With Free Web Tech

When the Global Women's Leadership Alliance announced a brainstorming challenge* to gather ideas about how to create a platform for five million women change agents, my partner Tara Agacayak & I were excited to share what we’ve learned about using technology to build global community over the past four years. We've experienced that the way to impact change is with an activated global community connected through social web technology.

Our biggest lessons for creating an activated global community are that people need

1. synchronous and asynchronous ways to gather
2. prompting and encouragement to do so
3. a way to get to know one another
4. a common purpose for gathering

See GlobalNiche's blueprint for building global community using free web-based technology (G+! YouTube! Linqto!).

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*This challenge was also sponsored by Global Fund for Women, Global Leadership Advancement Center at San Jose State University, Mills College, Monterey Institute of International Studies, Public Health Institute, World Pulse, and Salzburg Global Seminar at San Jose State University.

Being Small = Going For It Despite The Odds

My startup GlobalNiche equips women to use their online presence to build broader networks, connect to opportunities and be the agent of their own development. Six months ago we launched our product based on 25 years of experience, and we have customers. I submitted it to be featured in a directory of companies empowering women listed by a high profile women's empowerment organization. No dice.

"Come back when you have 1,000 Facebook likes and 1,000 Twitter followers." That was the response. "Oh, and when you have a full-featured website."

Seriously? Didn't see any of those stipulations in the directions to submit. Lot of big companies are listed. Guess they didn't think they needed to specify limits for who's empowering and who's not.

But here's the thing: being a small operation does not mean we are not seriously trying to accomplish our goals. It doesn't mean we will not grow. It doesn't mean the value of our enterprise is suspect. It doesn't mean we aren't empowering women.

Being small and scrappy can mean you're just starting out. Maybe you're seeking funding, incubation, acceleration, and entrepreneurial mentorship. Maybe you're taking the time to apply to be listed in women's empowerment organization directories alongside big name companies. Being small can mean going for it despite the odds.

The organization in question is looking for a baseline of commitment in the space, but they're asking the wrong questions.

Likes and follower counts are known to be gameable metrics. They're called 'empty metrics' by leaders in social media and entrepreneurship with The Lean Startup's Eric Ries shaming them as 'vanity metrics'.

And what is a full-featured site for a bootstrapped startup? What's required beyond a home page, an about page, a blog, an email sign up form, and some pages about products, services, social proof?

Does our site look like we've spent $100k developing it? Nope. We use a handful of industry-decent services and products to produce the site. Even when we institute the fresh look a designer is working on for us right now, we'll still look like a bootstrapped company until we have at least $15k for upgrades we envision.

We need help to take our work to the next level. We're asking for it. We have to start somewhere.

For a women's empowerment organization devoted to inspiring, educating and supporting us to reach our goals, the least it could do is recognize that very fact.

My 40-Over-40 App

The 40-over-40 Women To Watch celebrates women over 40 who are disruptors, role models and makers...creating momentum and changing the world.  It's an initiative by Dare, Dream, Do author Whitney Johnson and 40:20 Vision founder Christina Vuleta. Excerpt from my application.  

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How are you disrupting professionally, whether in business, tech, media, entrepreneurship, social good, science, academics, creative arts, or politics?

Are you creating growth, jobs or new products, ideas or services?

My startup GlobalNiche works to train women to use the social web and mobile technology (what we call digital literacy) in alignment with their vision for the world they want to live in order to make that vision a reality both through their own work and through the connections and collaborations they make with others through their web platform. We show them how to do this.

In showing people how to build an effective online presence to connect with broader networks and opportunities, and build social capital, I help people appreciate and tap their own assets and the potential of online spaces to find or make their own jobs.

Along with my cofounder Tara Agacayak, I created a 6-step multimedia program and training system that shows women how to lay a foundation on the web for the work they want to do and the life they want to live.

In our experience, even with the availability of technology, extremely capable women stumble when it comes to sharing their expertise, knowledge, ideas, cause, or voice on the web because they feel uncomfortable using the technology or they feel vulnerable calling attention to themselves or joining a public conversation or taking credit for their ideas. We address these issues by bringing them together in a virtual environment that allows them to interact with one another, learn digital literacy skills and test them out in a supportive community, and encourage them to take the steps toward realizing their vision.

When offered to individuals, our program works to empower their vision for their own life. When offered in community, our program supports the community’s shared goals.

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What are some of the outcomes of your work?

What would suggest your greatest achievements are ahead of, not behind, you?

The world is just waking up to the future I’ve been living in. The future I’ve been solving for, and have now created distributable, teachable, learnable, actionable steps for.

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How are you a positive role model to younger women: innovating around work/life issues; promoting women for leadership?

Are you innovating around work/life issues; promoting women in leadership, or simply willing to make tough choices?

As a longtime expat and pro in culture, media, I’ve been forced to create my OWN GLOBAL LIFE/WORK SOLUTION …because it didn’t exist yet.

Younger women share that I have validated their instincts, helped them contemplate their own possibilities, and provided them much needed support & structure to operate.

• A young work-at-home mother says “I am getting organized both in the real world and in my mind. For the first time I am making visual representations of my work and my ideas.”
• A 30-something author and educator says my support community “became my think-tank, support group, go-to team, and more.”
• A 30-something global curator tells me “When I hear you talk about identity and multiple cultural personalities and finding your creative outlets no matter where you are, I feel understood.”

I wouldn’t say I’m a positive role model to just younger women. I work with women older than I am and they tell me

• I “Love the personal & pro growth spurt it’s providing!” in the words of a 60 year old women’s life-transition coach.
• A university instrucutor also my senior says “I felt smarter and more empowered to make decisions” after receiving my training.
• While a 50-something global mobility expert and real estate agent says training “generates introspection. It will open your eyes to the potential of online spaces.”

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How have you disrupted yourself personally?

How are you personally reinventing or creating a new path? Are you applying your prior experiences in new ways?

My current town of San Francisco may be a tech-forward location but that’s not why I’ve increasingly been turning to technology to help me be where and who I am today. Since living in 30 homes in 4 countries -- talk about personal disruption, try serial personal disruption as a lifestyle -- I’m a globally mobile individual and rely on social & mobile tech for my total, global operation.

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Why do you think you are about to 'take off'?

Because after a lifetime of existing in the wilderness, I am finally on-trend.

My custom life-work solution seems torn from today’s headlines and bestseller lists on the topics of future work skills and work-life fit solutions.

• “Leaning in” to your own life, your own preferred way of living and working.
• Optimizing your online presence in the age of the personal platform & personal branding, the global microbrand of you, content marketing, the social era.
• Being recruitable (quotable, invited to speak, hired, you name it) based on the appeal and impact of your web activities in the beyond-the-resume Google age.
• Your digital footprint IS your resume.
• Building global community through expression of your interests in the age of resonance and new world order of the interest graph — people who share your interests.
• Taking charge of your life’s trajectory in the age of the Start-up of You & disrupt-yourself and the ‘everyone’s an entrepreneur of their own lives’ times we all now live in.

Why am I about to 'take off'? Because I have turned to entrepreneurialism, education, and online spaces in order to share what I know more widely.

On the GlobalNiche Bookshelf: Global Dexterity. Reinventing You. The Impact Equation.

Building your global niche is a 21st century skill. For work. For life.

International business, human resources, the future of life & work bestsellers and new releases from Harvard Biz Review are stacking up on our bookshelf at Pinterest.

Finding cultural effectiveness. Career reinvention through social media and your own content. Achieving impact via your platform and social networks. Adopting an entrepreneurial mindset.

These are all GlobalNiche mainstays going mainstream. Click here to tweet about this.

What does it mean to be a global worker and a true "citizen of the world" today? asks author Andy Molinsky in Global Dexterity: How to Adapt Your Behavior across Cultures without Losing Yourself in the Process.

It means you're able to adapt your behavior to conform to new cultural contexts without losing your authentic self.

"Not only is this difficult, it's a frightening prospect for most people and something completely outside their comfort zone," writes Molinsky, an associate professor at Brandeis University's International Business School. He straddles the psychology and organizational behavior departments.

"What's needed now," he claims, "is a critical new skill: global dexterity."

Global dexterity? It's what we do here.

This critical 21st century skill is exactly what we've been pioneering at GlobalNiche and expat+HAREM group blog and the Expat Harem book before it, as we have striven to make the limbo state and high cultural stakes of expatriate life a strength instead of a weakness. How to navigate your surroundings in culturally appropriate ways while also honoring the truth of who you are. That's global dexterity. Thanks to Andy Molinsky for the term. Back in 2009 we couldn't find many people talking about it at all, so we came up with our own term: "psychic location independence."

At GlobalNiche we've also come to the conclusion that this approach to a dexterous, global version of yourself  increasingly works for people everywhere, whether you're 'actually global' or not. You might be in your own backyard and need to navigate your surroundings in culturally appropriate ways and have your own, distinct truth to honor. You might not have a passport but can still benefit from becoming a global operative. In fact, being globally aware and globally functional has become an imperative in today's connected world.

"Use social media to build connections" is one of seven steps branding expert Dorrie Clark lays out to reinvent yourself professionally, in  Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future.

"Show what you know" is another of Clark's steps. She suggests you use your content to show the world what you care about.

Again, sound familiar? It should. Using your content online and off to get where you want to go is exactly how you build your global niche. It's why the GlobalNiche program at its heart is about content strategy. Your content and your online presence is the key to creating your place in the world.

Another title that is particularly useful for people building online presences to reach offline goals is The Impact Equation: Are You Making Things Happen or Just Making Noise? by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. Brogan is a favorite of ours here at GlobalNiche.

The impact of our ideas is a function of the quality and similarity-but-distinction of the ideas, our ability to reach people and be understood, trusted, appreciated.

Impact = C x (R + E + A + T + E)

C = Contrast – having ideas similar to existing ideas, yet different enough to stand out

R = Reach – connecting higher numbers of people to your idea

E = Exposure – knowing how frequently you connect people to your ideas

A = Articulation – ensuring that your ideas are easily understood

T = Trust – based on multiple factors, such as credibility and reliability

E = Echo – connecting to your community in a personal way

As Brogan explained in a fun January 2013 Twitter chat I participated in (#BizBookChat a virtual book club for the actionable books community by Alyssa Burkus), "The Impact Equation is about how to turn your goals into ideas, & how to get those ideas absorbed and actions taken."

To build a platform, Brogan says, "you've got to find how you can best tell the story and where you can reach the people you hope to reach."

"Start where you are," Brogan counseled us in the fast-moving Twitter chat. "But look for growth. Move your chips to the next table. Strive to reach who you need to reach."

Start where you are. That's your only option. Oh, and start your evolution today.

Evolution is exactly what Nacie Carson urges in The Finch Effect: The Five Strategies to Adapt and Thrive in Your Working Life. The Portfolio.com blogger and founder of TheLifeUncommon.net says it's your best bet in today's high-pressure economy.

Traditional career strategies spell professional extinction, she writes, but the fluid new gig economy offers tremendous potential for anyone willing to adapt.

Carson's five steps for ensuring professional success are all part of the GlobalNiche mindset and skill set.

• Adopt a gig mindset.
• Identify your value.
• Cultivate your skills.
• Nurture your social network.
• Harness your entrepreneurial energy.

Among many other notable titles on the shelf about navigating the world today is Mitch Joel's Ctrl Alt Delete: Reboot Your Business. Reboot Your Life. Your Future Depends On It. I hope to tackle this sometime soon. In the meantime, tell us which books on your shelf echo these 21st century life and work skills.