Lessons from Cory Doctorow and more.

Posted on | June 10, 2010 | No Comments

I think we need to spend a lot more time making lists and reflecting on what and who inspires us.

But a list in and of itself is a pretty useless thing.

The value of your inspiration list is it might open the door to a whole new set of ideas for others.

So don’t just make a list SHARE it!

And please share it with me!

My list of 2 great resources for the month is as follows.

Cory Doctorow, one of the co-editors of BoingBoing, and a fantastic author has a content rich website where he has also resumed his podcast! I like Doctorow because he is the perfect example of what I tell my students!

1. trust yourself

2. be amazing at what you do

3. share

4. make it worth while

5. dare

Changethis is one of my favorite idea sites.  What I love about CT is the contents are brief and they come in the form of a manifesto. Here is what it is about.

Are you an optimist?

Sometimes it seems as though our disagreements—over everything from politics to business to the designated hitter rule—are more serious and more divisive than ever before.

People are making emotional, knee-jerk decisions, then standing by them, sometimes fighting to the death to defend their position.

And yet, we’re optimists.

People call the team at Change This optimists because we don’t believe it has to be this way. We don’t believe humans evolved to be so bad at making decisions, so poor at changing our minds, so violent in arguing our point of view. We’re well aware of how split our country and our world have become, but we don’t think the current state of affairs is built into our very nature.

The problem lies in the media.

In the old days, we had the time and inclination to consider the implications of a decision. Everyone wasn’t in quite so much of a hurry. At the same time, most conversations (and most arguments) were local ones, conducted between people who knew each other.

Today, it’s very different. Television demands a sound bite. A one hundred word letter to the editor is a long one. Radio has become a jingoistic wasteland, a series of thoughtless mantras, repeated over and over and designed to fit into a typical commute.

What I also love about the site is it shines a light on ways to use technology or WEB2.0 tools to communicate better!

For instance how do we manage comments in a more public manner? What about disqus.com and I learned about this on the Changethis site!

OK your turn!

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