Pardon The Disruption

Sorry to interrupt your conversations.....but..........

I'm so tired of hearing about the reinvention of advertising.

I'm bored of listening to you talk about your new business model, way of thinking, and the revolutionary new stuff that you are ...going... to create - you swear - one day really really soon.

I don't care you fired half your staff and filled a room with UX designers and social media strategists.

And I don't understand why so many people seem to be missing the point about the dramatic impact technologies have had on the way we now communicate.

Stop talking about it. Stop talking about YOURSELVES. No one cares. Stop with all the mass media and PR promises and start demonstrating that you are doing something different.

Change your process. Change your product. Change your results. And the rest will come.

Ok, now back to your previously scheduled programming.

Failure 101

Great quote I had to share from this article over at the99percent

The creative process for James Dyson was filled with an exceptional number of failures. His quote:

"I made 5,127 prototypes of my vacuum before I got it right. There were 5,126 failures. But I learned from each one. That's how I came up with a solution. So I don't mind failure. I've always thought that schoolchildren should be marked by the number of failures they've had. The child who tries strange things and experiences lots of failures to get there is probably more creative."

What an incredible concept. Grading kids by their number of failures. This reminds me of a recent meeting where I met with a 20 something year old about his start up. He said he wanted to meet with me because of my super successful career in marketing i just laughed.

You don't want to meet with me because of that, I told him. You want to meet with me because of my completely unsuccessful start-up. It's my failures and the decisions I wish I could change looking back you are going to learn the most from - not the things that I did right.

The lesson here?

Failure 101- it's by far one of the most important courses you'll ever take.


note: Nicole noted on FB that she loved the concept of grading kids on their creativity (note she said creativity and not failures). Couldn't agree more.

Time To Evolve The Mommy Blogger

A couple people in my FB or Twitter stream have launched Blogs recently and have almost instantly become "Mommy Bloggers". They get linked to on Yummy Mommy, they get invited to speak at conferences, they get shout outs on Twitter. New Mommy Blogger! Welcome!

Got me thinking. Why aren't I considered a Mommy blogger? I blog. I'm a Mommy of two kids who I occasionally mention. But the truth is, similar to why i never bonded with the Mommy's who played in the park where I used to take Cee that was right across the street from my house, I don't really relate the a lot of the content i see on their blogs.

Some will say that there are a bunch of misconceptions about Mommy Bloggers and maybe there are and maybe I'm just contributing to them by writing this post. People will say Mommy Bloggers are lawyers, writers, engineers but all i can see from most of the blogs that self-describe as MB's is cute brand promotions, pictures of babies, puppies, healthy eating articles and of course, articles about being a Mommy. (come to think of it, this is why i don't buy women's magazines like Cosmo either).....

And there may be some great Mommy bloggers that I'm just don't know about. But i think there are huge amount of women out there who blog and are Moms discussing and speaking on a wide range of topics and issues affecting the world. I would love to have a list that I can add at the end of this post because I think it's time to evolve (at least the perception of) the Mommy Blogger so people like me (mom's who blog) can be added to the list.

:) leigh
mom. writer. worker

photocredit: Wifemomblogger

If Facebook Was Designed By A Woman.....

Gotta love this post by If We Ran The World's Oonie.

A micro-action from one woman to another.

Not to shout for Ovarian Cancer (although we know we need to do that ;)
Not a note to reblog this Mom's story about her son (even though we applaud her)
Not even to join Organic Girl Giveaways (and we know all women love 'free' stuff ;)

This micro-action simply asks you to be confident in who you are. For one day.

Oonie brings up a point that has really gotten me thinking. She says:

"it occurred to me that if more women were involved in the designing of facebook, a poke might be more like what kaisha sent to me."

If more women had successful start-ups and were able to be key decision makers in the design process that shape technologies that change our world, would things like pokes be different? What else would be different? What other changes might this lead to?

I feel like now more than ever before we are finally at the precipice of that change. Initiatives like Rachel Sklar's #changetheratio are getting people talking whether or not people are uncomfortable with that conversation.

It's a subject that is close to my heart and that I've written about a number of times. We (all) need to support more women in technology and give them greater visibility with an acknowledgment that the ratio needs to change regardless of the debate of the reasons to why it's there in the first place.

So if you are woman today, I say go here right now - sign up for If We Ran The World and share the link love. Let's all be more confident in who we are and comfortable with saying what we believe, whether people like it or not.


Photo credit: my bad powerpoint inclusion of 4 designing women - from L to R - Leila Boujanan of Idee, Dina Kaplan of Blip.tv, Cindy Gallop of If We Ran The World, and Make Love Not Porn, and Caterina Fake of Hunch