In Perusing through several new social networking concepts I came across a social networking talent site called Gonnabe (www.gonnabe.com).

They offer talented individuals or parents of talented kids the opportunity to network together at a professional level, develop their skills and build out their portfolios and offerings.  Think of it as a LinkedIn for entertainers or parents of future entertainers.

Now, I like the concept that Gonnabe offers up for a couple of reasons. 

1. They facilitate people to work together and grow together.  Too often creative types are pitted against each other in a zero sum game that does not benefit consumers.
2. They are utilizing web 2.0 concepts of bringing people together to reduce costs and increase speed and efficiency.  Instead of say parents having to cart their kids off to LA, they can conceivably make forward progress without having to relocate or travel.
3. This encourages the masses to improve their skill sets. 

That last point is very important.  In an American Idol type of contest, they essentially weed out creativity and originality as they race to identify a single person that can win a popularity contest, so that a record company can then control a limited resource in a single artist.

Under this methodology, many artists can network together, improve themselves, their skill sets and offer up more very good content without people being subjected to a monopoly on the artist or their performances.  This increases both the quantity and quality of entertainment and media and that is a philosophy that I tack after as well.

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As people around the United States begin to fill up their McMansions, they are starting to learn that there is not a great deal of value in accumulating “stuff”. You can only have so much stuff crammed into your mansion.

More and more people are finding that there is much more value in experiences. After all it is about the people you’re with and the things you do that creates memories worth having. Accumulating stuff can create a memory, but once you’ve accumulated it there’s no action anymore.

This is driving people to change their perspective and their actions fundamentally from where people were 20 or 30 years ago during the ‘greed is good’ 1980’s. Fewer people eat dinner at home opting instead to eat dinner out at restaurants. In part it is for the experience as well as the convenience. More people are doing other things as well from taking trips all over the world to doing volunteer work and much more.

When they do acquire “stuff”, they are buying things that allow them to do more things like exercising or mountain biking or skiing or watching a DVD on their home movie theater system. An entire industry is starting to creep up that serves up the experience that people are looking for.

Off-Broadway and other types of entertainment, live entertainment and online entertainment are flourishing right now. There is an extremely high demand for content both online and off whether you’re going to see a Sting concert or you are searching for the best prices on jersey boys tickets to see a re-creation of Frankie Valley’s own life experiences.

In some regards this seems a little bit selfish but it’s also very much in keeping with the concept of carpe diem, people are seizing the day and doing things as opposed to seizing the gold and sitting on it.

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A little over 10 years ago, I applied for life insurance for the first time. I’m not talking about that life insurance that you automatically get from an employer just for working for them, some simple term package. I’m talking about going to an insurance agent and applying for insurance.

To get the best rates for life insurance a person usually has to undergo a physical medical evaluation. Sometimes it’s as simple as an interview and sometimes you have to go into the doctor and get a full physical. The basic idea is that if you are in poor health, odds are that you will not live as long and therefore the insurance will pay out a claim faster and your rates should be high enough to cover that claim within the time frame of your life expectancy. It sounds a little cold, but it is business and basically when you take out life insurance you are betting on your own life expectancy yourself so its not appropriate to get to bent out of shape with the insurance companies allowing you to place that bet.

Like many things in life insurance companies are working to try and make things a little bit simpler. They are starting to offer no exam life insurance options where people can just apply and receive an approval instantly, typically through an online form entry and have their application process relatively quickly and efficiently and automatically. Now from the insurance companies perspective they are sacrificing a little bit of precise information which means the risk increases. To cover their risk they must offer or charge that is higher prices.

As consumers our demand for instant gratification and instant solutions when we purchase things online from insurance to apply for a home equity loan or a mortgage even or a dozen other things are often times traded off with the cost or value of the item that were looking to get if we take a little bit more time with my kids a better deal of what we wanted instantly we pay a premium.

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The Following is a response that developed into a better question relating to the article, MindMapping with our Time Travelling Brain and moved to a discussion forum in the MindManager yahoo group.

I find this(MindMapping with greater sensory Perception tuning,training and development) very interesting from the perspective that through many years of growing a user base (900,000 MindManager users now) there is a new potential study group out there that is using mindmaps in a way that was not possible with paper based versions.

In the past we could look at how fast a person could pick up information from looking/reading at a mindmap.

But after many years of MM users learning the skills and practicing them on  aregular basis, we now have a new area of potential study.  Something like:

• What is the impact of MindMapping on Composition and the feedback loop of composition?
• On the individual composing?
• On the group composing together?

In creating a mindmap by myself, I can rapidly pull ideas floating in my mind and put them into position on my mindmap and repeat this idea after idea, rapidly moving throughout my thoughts organizing them as I go.

I find that I can pull in a much more comprehensive perspective than I could if I were writing in word (I’m sure many mindmappers would agree).

Similarly this also works in a group.

The question is how big of a difference is this really?  How much better is the quality of the composition?  How much more complete?  Is there more quantity?

Is this spurred on by the real time, almost real time, faster than time aspect of the immediate visual impact of pulling the idea from my mind and turning it into a visual object. 

maybe to put it a different way, as a student of languages in the past, its one thing to be able to think in your language and translate to another.  Once you can think in another language that is an entirely different order of magnitude of capability(not to mention dreaming in a foreign language).

Is there an order of magnitude difference in composition with MM users that have ceased to only think in words but now also think in images?  Artists have been doing this for years, but their application and profession take them down a different path.

MM usres are often words smiths, project managers, managers, programmers and more.  We often come from a word / language driven background and we have learned through MM to think visually.

so after doing this for so many years, where have we ended up?  have we learned something new about ourselves along the way?  About our capabilities?  About our needs and goals to take this journey to a new level?
My thoughts are that there are three areas that will drive the future of this work and we cover them here in this group with a little regularity.

1.  Three dimensional mindmapping combined with a collaborative wiki approach to mindmapping

2.  Adding Audio sensory capabilities to MM

3.  Adding video capabilities (images in vector form if you will) - an image may provide a thousand  words, but a 20 second video at 30 frames per second can provide 600,000 words - if we have the big picture context to absorb it.

To understand where we will go next, we need a slightly more complete understanding of where we are today, physically, mentally and in action.
Then we can review the order of magnitude changes from
1.  Language thinker to
2.  2d MM visual image thinker to
3.  3d MM Audio/Video Collaborative Thinkers

Do you grok?   

For more informatin on this topic see the conversation unfold in the Mindmanager Yahoo Group under the thread MindMapping with our Time Travelling Brain.

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I have found another great translation service.  This one is from Language123 and they specialize in pooling together translators from around the world to create a freelance Translation Services Marketplace.

Translators

Translators can create a profile including their CV or resume and offer up their various translations services, promoting themselves and their companies.

Customers

Customers needing translation services for anything from small to large projects can post the project and await for translators to bid on a job. 

Its a tried and true internet model of bringing together the supply and demand from the marketplace and creating a positive atmosphere to make connections.

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