Tag: network

A ‘New’ Kind of Search Engine

By Brendan O’Meara

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These days, the beauty of the Internet is the ability to ask a question and to have it answered as fast as you can type. There’s value and utility in this. Not to mention speed, something we’re all addicted to.

The search engine of the past was the elders or a network. And I’d challenge you to make a phone call to your dad before you look something up on YouTube.

There are myriad things that I could ask YouTube or Google (they’re the same, right?), but when it comes to handy matters, I text or call my father in law. I call it “Googling Doug,” but, more accurately, Doug is a search engine for a particular kind of expertise. Sure, I could type something into Google, but why not use the people you know as a kind of search engine? It’ll help your relationships and it’ll make the people you know feel useful, or of use. 

Who in your family, or friend circle, or network might have the answer to a question or the counsel you seek? Maybe before you ask Google a question, maybe Mom or Dad or Sibling or Colleague has the answer.

And if you’re lucky, you’ll be their search engine, too. 

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Today is the First Day of the Rest of the Blog!

Written by Brendan O’Meara (email sign up form ====>)

I read the great Show Your Work by Austin Kleon on my Kindle on Wednesday. It’s a short book, but I highlighted a huge number of passages (I’ll share more as I go, but I’ll practically copy and paste the whole book here if I copy them all now). The premise of the book is that by sharing your work, giving away insights, and process for free, it actually helps build your army. It’s simply a look behind the curtain.

It makes a lot of sense. People have been doing this for years now. By being consistent and giving away personality and access into the work, it’s a positive feedback loop that feeds the artist as well as the consumer. Kleon writes:

Instead of wasting their time “networking,” they’re taking advantage of the network. By generously sharing their ideas and their knowledge, they often gain an audience that they can then leverage when they need it—for fellowship, feedback, or patronage.

I’ve tried just about everything to build a following (and failed). The one thing I haven’t done is share a little every day. That’s my goal for a month, to share a little every day. I’ll scale back after that (maybe). I’ll use it as a warmup for my day’s work. I’ll share some of the mechanics behind what I’m working on. But, like Kleon writes:

Become a documentarian of what you do. Start a work journal: Write your thoughts down in a notebook, or speak them into an audio recorder. Keep a scrapbook. Take a lot of photographs of your work at different stages in your process. Shoot video of you working. This isn’t about making art, it’s about simply keeping track of what’s going on around you. Take advantage of all the cheap, easy tools at your disposal—these days, most of us carry a fully functional multimedia studio around in our smartphones.

That’s the dilly. I’m working on a ton of junk, but I hope that junk turns into something great, something worth buying, something worth re-reading. So, like the Chips Ahoy! cookie, “Today! Is the first day of the rest of my ….”