I am trying out ping.fm Does anyone use it? Here is a link to latest operation embed Toby Turning Point: http://ping.fm/41hgy
About
Each week I will introduce a piece of music. My hope is that you will find the time to listen to that piece of music throughout the week, and that you will enter into a conversation about it.
You may have heard these compositions before, but have you really LISTENED to them? Have you listened to it several times in the same week? Have you heard different interpretations of it? Have you put it into context?
listen2this is the place to do just that!
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TobinPublic Speaking
I have been asked to, and been hired to speak to many groups regarding marketing, online marketing and social media. These are things I am very passionate about and enjoy sharing, brainstorming with and educating people about. These speaking gigs have all grown out of my customers either asking me to come speak to a group they are involved with, or via word of mouth from a customer.
Nation Ranch: I was hired to speak at two conferences regarding online marketing principles + using social media to promote your business, organization, or town. These conferences were for a Nation Ranch customer, The State of Missouri, Tourism Commission.
The Center for Spirit at Work: I spoke at a meeting of their “Career Transition Group” about using social media to market themselves. I was then asked back to speek again to people 45 years and older about using these tools.
Kansas City Online Community: Chris Gould has set up the KCOnline community. He asked me to speak about, “Why Would Anyone Read My Blog?” This was a talk for about 75 to 100 folks who gathered because they use LinkedIn and the Ning.com community that Chris set up to connect.
Brain Bucket Workshops: I have organized, written, marketed, online marketing workshops related to HOW to Blog, Basic Planning for Online Marketing, and Training sessions to use Content management systems - (wordpress and terapad). I put these on from time to time for customers and potential customers who have expressed an interest in HOW to do things like blog, market themselves online, etc.
A Day at TechStars
On Friday I spent the day in Boulder, Colorado on my first day as a TechStars Mentor. I had the chance to meet with some great Boulder-based startups to talk shop, brainstorm product strategy, and help them think big about their businesses.
In the evening, we hosted a Facebook Developer Garage Boulder, and had a chance to hear about some great Facebook Platform and Connect applications being built in and around the Boulder/Denver community.
The most interesting thing I took from this first session in Boulder is that the startup energy there is electric. The entreprenuers are passionate, and the community is overwhelmingly collaborative and supportive of each other.
Here’s a look at a few of the startups I had a chance to meet with on Friday. For the most part, when mentoring startups, you talk about the future. Here you will find a quick overview of the present. I’ll leave the future to be seen in each of their products.
Suffice to say, there are some really cool things going on in Boulder:
Lussumo is a free, open source, platform for doing cool things. Right now, they’re shipping an awesome discussion forum application called Vanilla, which over a million users love. Expect big things in the forum space from Lussumo in the future.
The Next Big Sound is pushing the music envelope on the internet. Today they’re a platform for discovery of unsigned bands. Tomorrow they’re looking to change the way music business is done. With all of the innovation needed in how artists and management interact with the internet, these guys are thinking about things in exactly the right ways.
Everlater seeks to make telling travel stories fun and easy. In traveling around the world, and looking around the web, they realized that putting together a simple travel story is actually quite hard. If you are a traveler who also loves to share and create, keep an eye on Everlater.
Mailana is frustrated with how hard it is to make meaning out of the increasingly massive amount of user generated content inside the email stream. They’ve been expermimenting with new ways to visualize email inside the firewall, and have released some of these tools for consumers on top of Twitter. With all of us fighting our inboxes every day, lets hope Pete and the team at Mailana bring some innovation to the craziness of email.
EventVue seeks to connect you to the people who matter most every time you attend your favorite conferences. With recent Facebook Connect integration and a slew of upcoming features, attending conferences will never be the same. If you run a conference series, or are looking to get one off the ground, I highly recommend you take a look at the work this team is doing. They’re making connecting, in person, easier for all of us.
TimZon makes communicating concepts and ideas to remote teams easy with video, white boarding, and a slough of asynchronous private video communications tools. What they are doing is really cool, and has a shot at helping people communicate an be productive with video in a way that no one else has tried.
Lijit gives blog publishers powerful tools for search by extending the idea of search to include the social network surrounding the publisher. The social graph is a powerful thing, when combined with search and put into the hands of publishers.
Ignighter takes a more social approach to dating. Rather than signing up for the site by yourself, you invite your friends to become a “dating group.” Then, you can find other dating groups to go out with on a group date, increasing your odds for finding a compatible mate in the social graph. These guys are adding more features soon which will help get more people involved and hope to create a movement around group dating. I think they’ve got a shot. If you’re single, stay tuned, this could be really cool.
Starting at a Beginning: Handel’s Water Music
THIS WEEK’S MUSIC: George Friedrich Handel’s Water Music.
I am starting with this piece of music because of a record (YES…a record) from 1978. A recording by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Concentus Musicus Wien. This is the first classical music record I really listened to. I think I picked it up and decided to like it because of the nice painting of London before I ever put it on the turntable. I still have the record, (I like how they list not only the performers, but also the instruments)
Here’s the thing about this composition after about 30 years of hearing it, I really like it every time I come back to it. I will go months without listening to it, casually skipping by it on the ipod. Then one day I will stop on Handel and click on “Wassermusik” and then ask myself, “Why haven’t I listened to this in so long?”
The Story:
This is a piece of music with a great story. Handel (who was German) had moved to London in 1710. The plan was to come to London to find even greater fame and fortune than he already had at age 25. Handel was determined to be known for his operas. Today he is not.
He had been employed by a Prince in Germany and then took a leave of absence to go to London for a year. Several years later, while he was still in London, the German Prince became the King of England…George I was crowned in 1714.
Several years and popular Operas later, it is 1717 and King George I arranged for a great party to take place on barges on the Thames. Several pieces of music from Handel were created for this unreal and lavish gathering.
Handel’s Water Music is really a collection of 20 “dances” that vary in length, separated into three “suites” - sort of. 50 Musicians were on their own barge while the King’s barges and attending boats covered the river. The music was a huge hit, as the King caused it to be played three times in a row.
Other Thoughts: Try to Get past the Hair!
This is music that sounds like it was written a long time ago. And yet, it is so alive sharp. I feel like there are times when the music is just bristling with energy that is barely contained. Like if they aren’t careful, the music will just keeping picking up speed. And then the composer brings it back down again with layers of soft, almost calm sound.
An interesting note, the Rough Guide to Classical Music, (a book I am literally wearing out!), claims that this is the first use of baroque horns in English music.
I hope you go find a recording of this fine piece of music. There are literally hundreds of them, (here are the Amazon results). Don’t worry about which one you get, just find a cd, download it, borrow it and listen to it.
My suggestion is to find a little time to listen to the piece all the way through one time without other distractions. Even if you are familiar with this music, give yourself a little time to become re-acquainted.
Then, create the ability to have the music with you in the car, while you are cooking, as you go to sleep, or other places throughout your day.
We’ll talk more about this piece as we listen to it throughout the week.
Enjoy!
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