The blank page is sunny day on my face. 
I like putting ideas on there to sunbathe in its warmth.
It’s possibility.

I like watching it transform to something.
Anything. 
But not just anything,
Something that communicates
And communifies us together

The more muddled the page
The more lumledd the page
The more dumeled the page
The less space there is

And so I start again on a blank page
On a different sunny beach

My friend made this video.  He’s pretty handy with his camera.  I wanted to send him some traffic so I thought I’d post his video here. The content is applicable for this site because  Idonno if I put “copyright steve bleile” in enough places (or at all) but please don’t “clone” the material… It just doesn’t seem right – as the video explains!

I’ve learned something about myself (again) today that may be relevant to all of you self diagnosed A.D.D / border-line schizophrenic types out there.   I am, at least, a three-part person.

This discovery came when I started planning concerts and organizing creative types way back in University (Busking For Smiles) and in the city at large (Better Than TV.)  You see, there is Manager Steve and there is Creative Steve. Oh, and Confused Steve.

Creative Steve thinks up ideas.

Manager Steve thinks of strategy and the framework in which the strategy can unfold.

Creative Steve makes strategy palatable to an audience and even, dare I say, interesting…

Manager Steve relies on the software called “Things” and gantt charts.

Creative Steve prefers mind mapping, white boards, and walking around my neighborhood till an idea pops in my head.

In many ways I always thought the two parts of me didn’t like each other.  Namely because when I listen to them (at the same time) I end up a whimpering Confused Steve.

Now I realize (again) that Confused Steve is really nothing more than Steve who hasn’t learned to listen and work with one Steve at a time.

For example I spent hours putting together a map for a website today.  The more I thought about it the more upset I became.  I couldn’t pull my thoughts together and I started doubting the whole project.  Thankfully Confused Steve had had enough and I walked (in the rain) to Safeway to get some dish soap.  (We were out…)  Anyways, along the way I realized that the real issue was not that in the creative aspect of the project OR in the management of it.  It was that I was doing both AT THE SAME TIME.

With this revelation in mind I resolved to design a simple wireframe of the site, on paper, when I got home.

In a mere 20 minutes I had the map done.  NOW Creative Steve can fill in the gaps while Management Steve takes a break (from THIS project) and Confused Steve will hopefully wonder off because no one is paying him any attention.

SO… my advice for you, should you want it, is that sometimes when you doubt yourself or feel confused it is time to step back and figure out how many parts you are made up of and whether or not you’re listening to one or all of them at the same time.

I have been working on a few really cool projects lately.

1. Hope Street.

Hope Street asked me to help them with their SEO efforts by creating articles that they could post on external databases as well as their site.  I think  I have written about 20 articles for them and the efforts are paying off.  They are now number one or two on Google for the search terms Calgary Property Manager and Calgary Property Management.  Don’t believe me?  Click here.

Then we started expanding a new arm of their company.  This meant generating new content for their site designed to attract new real estate associates to their brokerage.

Now, it’s time to write and film the “welcome to Hope Street” videos.  I will write out the scripts and even “present” them to the camera.  Someone else will do the filming.  I’m sure I could do it, but I just plain ol’ don’t have a green screen.

2. Victory Painting

Victory asked me to design a 3 day training course to help route their staff in their vision will boning up their familiarity with their administration system.  There will also be a large component of “on the tools” training.  (If you didn’t know I painted for years so this will probably be quite fun for me to revisit this part of the course.)

3. Undisclosed

I am helping the owner of a  Calgary based HR company to transition from working “in” her business to working “on” her business.  Believe it or not a big part of this is establishing where her site is hosted and how changes can be made to it.  With any luck we will convert the site to something with a CMS (content management system) so she can make all of her own changes in the future.

I finally thought up how  twitter and say facebook or texting are so different.  Twitter is about finding people based on shared interests or ideas rather than finding existing relationships and discovering their ideas. So if I search twitter for “fly fishing” I’ll find other people who are interested in said topic.  I can then “follow” them and see what else they have to say about that and other topics. I may not know them (and they may not know me) but I may learn a lot about fly fishing and scratch my “i wish it was spring” itch all at the same time.

Likewise other people may query a word that I have “tweeted” about and then decide to follow me.

Facebook approaches the scenario from a different angle.  Facebook is based on pre-existing relationships.  I know john so I become his “friend” and then whatever he writes about comes up in my news feed.  Likewise whatever I write about comes up in his.  The downside here is that John (or the rest of my friends) may not be interested in fly fishing.

To me it would seem odd to search facebook for people interested in fly fishing and then ask them to add me as a friend.  I mean, we don’t know each other.  Twitter on the other hand doesn’t have the presumption of relationship. I can follow people and they can follow me whether we know each other  or not.  No pressure.  And if you don’t like what someone’s tweeting, no problem.  Just stop following them.

Twitter also has some unique features that I find really interesting:

1.  Functionally you can set up your blog, FB, and twitter to interact via twitter.  That is to say, update one and update them all.  This can be a serious time saver for the hard core social media type.

2. Because my audience is no longer limited to just people I know, my potential audience base grows.  In my case, not much – as I know most of the people who follow my tweets, but still it’s, at least theoretically, a bigger audience.

3. I can get to “know” people who aren’t my friends: celebrities for example.  There are many people I follow who I think are really cool, but that I may never meet.  By reading their twitter I get a better idea for who they are.  (I’m assuming their publicists don’t write their twitters.)  Sometimes you discover they’re nerdier than you might have thought or, of course, they may turn out to be pretty neat.

4. This a point from erick (@ecardoza) He says twitter levels the playing field.  You only get 140 words to say something so there’s no room for anyone to really shine with elaborate illustrations.  They have to say what they’re saying in a nice concise way.  This can make it a shallow relationship tool, but as I have already said.  Twitter is more about content than relationship so it works.

So there you have it.

Twitter is pretty cool.  You may want to get an account and see what it’s all about.  www.twitter.com

If you want to follow my “tweets” search twitter for “stevebleile” and you’ll find me.

Cheerio

sb

In my last blog I pointed out how hard it is to say “I Love You.”

Then I came across this online forum on the question:

How often growing up did you hear your parents say “I love you!”

Here’s the list of responses

There is a full range of responses: from “never” to “so often that it meant nothing.”  One person said only while he was being disciplined.  Other people talked about the cultural conditioning they had as members of various ethnic groups.

Then I saw this article on HOW to say I love you…

It goes over a few good tips like looking people in the eyes and not associating it with behavior.  (NOT “I love you because you did such and such.” RATHER “I love you because you are lovable.”)

read it.

What I have concluded is that while it’s the hardest thing to say it may also be the thing we most want to know.  We all want to know we’re loved.  -Not like the people who said they heard “it” and it became a cliche… KNOW.

To really know we are loved is perhaps the most valuable deposit that can be made to the bank of our soul/ spirit.

In the mean time I found a dog that can say it quite well:

Ha ha.  For anyone who’s traveled in Asia you’ll love this!

It looks as though Shanghai in cracking down on “chinglish” or “Chinese-English.”

Of course, this is particularly dear to my heart considering my efforts to help my overseas clients purge themselves of similar writing on their websites!!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/6081366/Shanghai-to-purge-itself-of-Chinglish.html

handicapped washroom?

-s

Here are Four Tips for Editing Excellence.

First, always write “hot” and edit “cold.”  Truly, there is absolutely no point in editing your work right after you just finished writing it. End of story. Ideally you should leave a week or two in-between when you write your piece and when you edit it.  Of course, you may not have that kind of time; in which case, you should give yourself as long as you can with as much “not writing’ in-between so your mind can refresh and refocus. If your communication piece cannot wait you should consider outsourcing the editing to a professional.  See my post on the two essential components of every piece of communication to learn why.

Second, you need a reference book on all of the little rules of punctuation and spelling.  NOBODY remembers all of the little rules.  I personally recommend you purchase The Elements of Style originally by Oliver Strunk and revised by William Strunk and E.B.White. It is an outstanding reference guide.  It has been referenced by many big name writers and now I lend my credence to it as well

Third, If you are editing for technical issues such as punctuation, spelling, and the like try starting with the last sentence and then the second last etc.  This will force your mind to really look at each sentence as a unique entity.  When you read your own piece from start to finish you’ll get caught up in the flow of it and then miss small errors.

Fourth, you should not just edit your piece with the eye to find technical errors but also read to see how it flows from thought to thought and from paragraph to paragraph.  Try reading your piece out loud.  Does it go from broad to very specific?  Does each sentence provoke you to read the next sentence?

There are three things that must be absolutely clear in your mind before you write anything.

First, you must know WHY you are writing.  What’s the point? When people are done reading your work, what should they walk away with? You should be able to write out the main idea you want to communicate on the back of a business card… (That means one or two sentences MAX.) if you can’t, you probably need to think it through some more. (This type of clarity will save you many hours of frustration –I GUARANTEE IT.)

Second, once you know your main idea, you must realize that no one else knows your main point.  It is your job to tell them, not their job to guess. It is your job to make your main point as easy to understand as possible. Walk your audience through the necessary details to arrive at the main point.

Do not expect your audience to patiently study your piece of writing. Do not ask them to wallow through ambiguous thoughts that are thicker than quicksand to arrive at your conclusion.

Third, Make it your goal to gain as much knowledge and wisdom as you can on the topic of writing. You can always improve on this critical skill.  It’s worth your time. The pen is, after all, mightier than the sword.

Lost in an idea...