Apparently when Oprah joined Twitter on her show, the number of accounts grew by 43%. So to sort out the wanna-bes from the hard-core Twitter users, a new application was developed (which I learned about from TechCrunch) called HereBeforeOprah.

Type in your twitter handle in to the website and you can find out if you are a poser or not. Good to know that @jenniferdavis and @remarkabletweet were both here before Oprah.

Whew!

I really enjoy the articles about HowStuffWorks. Everyday they take some complex idea or product and walk you through it step-by-step. Although the articles won't make you a genetic physicist or an economist, you will walk away with a much better understanding of cloning or capitalism.

So, it is in this style and spirit that I present some details about how our praise team came to publish and market a CD of praise and worship music. You can learn more about the CD and our group at http://www.WestsidePraise.org.

This information accompanies a talk that will be given at the Pepperdine Lectureship by my friend and worship leader, Josh Stump. He'll be focused on the music itself, including the composition and arrangement process. He'll brag on our excellent producer, Kris Strobeck, and all the talent that went into arranging the music. He will talk about the impact the music is having. What people are saying about it and will share some stories, like this one about his son (warning: get Kleenex box handy).

In this post, I'll be focusing more on what we did with the music after it was recorded and we were ready to share it. This is the "playbook" he promised folks in the session, which I hope is useful whether or not you attended. For those who are not necessarily interested in music publishing or worship music, I hope you are able to take the concepts of self-publishing and marketing and apply them to your particular field of interest or your business, as most of these ideas are economical and applicable to other projects.

So, with no further "pre-mumble," here are some of the things we did to publish and promote the CD project. For each category of things, I have answered three questions: why did it matter, how did we do it, and how else could we have done it (as a way to provide additional resources).

Let's begin with our website at http://www.WestsidePraise.org.

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If you have questions about any of the above or want to learn more, leave a comment below and we'll find a way to connect.

Looking for a way to diversify yourself during challenging economic times? Looking for a fun business to start? Here are a few ideas that I offer for no charge at all. Enjoy!

• Someone should start a candle company called "Brazilian Wax."
• Or perhaps a surfboard wax company called "Back Wax."
• What about a line of garden pest control products called "Snail Mail"? Your tagline could be "Send snails and slugs a message!"
• Someone should invent a line of retail price or garmet tags that include a website or text number that you can access via your cell phone and call the business "Phone Tag."
• "Sticky Business" would be the fun name of a tape or sticker company.
• Start a real estate brokerage firm focused on selling parking spots and storage units and call it "Garage Sale."
• Open a private investigation business called "Name Tag."
• Create a line of clothing feature Disney characters (like the little bunny in Bambi) and funny phrases that they might have posted on Twitter. You could call the clothing line "Twitterpated."
• You can buy candles that smell like fresh baked cookies or berries, but not bacon, BBQ, or other non-sweet scents. Start a candle company with a name like "Savory" that offers unique scents like "grilled onions" or "rosemary."

Now, I never did say they were good ideas. Maybe you can improve on them!

As many of you know, I live in beautiful, if not soggy, Portland, Oregon. I read a shocking article today that claimed that Portland was the #1 UnHappy City according to Business Week. I know it is cloudy here and the rain gets a bit old, still I just can't believe it is true.



The great photo above was found on Leslie Miles' incredible photo blog.

We've all been in bad meetings. Heck, we have lead them ourselves.

We've also been in great ones where people left with the tools and answers they needed. Where team members are aligned, where tough issues are tackled, and teamwork is demonstrated. These happen periodically so, the myth of the productive meeting persists.

At Intel they give classes on "Effective Meetings" (assuming that isn't an oxymoron) hoping to increase the hit rate of great meetings.

Seth Godin had a recent post about how to "solve your meeting problems." It included some provocative ideas like setting the default meeting length to 5 minutes (instead of one hour), removing chairs from conference rooms, or even creating a public voting system where people rate meetings according to usefulness.

Some companies have banned meetings all together. No meetings - only conversations and decisions. Is it just symantecs or is there something fundamentally different about a company without meetings? How else does the corporate culture, physical office layout, and work itself have to chance to adapt to an environment without meetings?

What has worked for you?

Meetings may be an unavoidable part of our professional lives, but how can they be more productive? It is a better presentation. More preparation. The "pre-meeting" (heaven help us). Is it an egg timer or the insistance on agendas? Or, is it as artist Craig Damrauer suggests above...all about the snacks?

Dan Pink, one of my favorite authors of late, had a blog post about Craig Damrauer, who is a insightful artist who has come out with a line of artwork that boils down complicated concepts into mathmatical formulas. See the collection here, below are a few of my favorites.

Said this way, to be happy all you have to do is identify the "un" in your life, eliminate it, and viola!

I highly recommend you check out his entire slide show and find ways to integrate this creative, and highly-effective, approach to communication in your next presentation!

"With a stop light, green means 'go' and yellow means 'slow down'. With a banana, however, it is quite the opposite. Yellow means 'go', green means 'whoa, slow down', and red means 'where the heck did you get that banana?' " - Mitch Hedberg