I feel your pain. There’s too much information out there and it’s changing too fast. But the pressure to sound informed is unrelenting, particularly during the dangerous hours of 5 – 7 p.m., when real time, face time takes place. If you’re okay with social networking but terrified of actually talking about social networks, here are 10 little tips that will see you through any small talk situation.

Scan the list while you’re in line at the cash bar and you’ll be good to go. Just don’t get smug. You don’t want to blow an actual social networking opportunity by sounding too superior about the world of Web 2.0 (or anything else for that matter).

1. Name drop. When hasn’t this worked? If you’re not a thought leader in the new world of social media, talk about someone who is. You can’t go wrong by mentioning any of these:

Chris Brogan has been called the blue-collar guy of social media. Shake your head as if it’s incomprehensible that such a nice guy got so many people worked up because K-Mart gave him a $500 gift card and he wrote about his shopping experience.

Brian Morrisey is the editor of all things digital at Adweek. To sound insiderish, just say the word ‘PigDog’, followed by a pause, then an exclamatory ‘intense’. Pigdog is Morrisey’s personal blog about running and overcoming personal limitations.

Brian Solis looks awfully young to be a social media pioneer, but that’s what he is. You can compare his new venture, MicroPR, with Peter Shankman’s Help a Reporter Out. Be pleasantly vague, saying both services help connect media with pr people.

2. Take a strong stance against blurting, the practice of talking too much about yourself, your company, your client or your anything on Twitter. I’d like to start a trend where blurting is called barking but then you get into troublesome issues like: “He’s such a dog. He just barks about himself.” This is even worse. “She barks incessantly. What a dog.” Hmm. You’d better stick with blurting in all its ugly manifestations.

3. Casually mention some newsy news you’ve seen on The Huffington Post, but be sure and call it HufPo.

4. Don’t worry about stylish prose. Just use the words ‘Ning’ and “The Long Tail’ together in a sentence. Ning is a niche social network platform and The Long Tail is Chris Anderson’s book subtitled: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More.

5. Show disdain for the reliability for web metrics, but be sure to mention the names of three major firms: Nielsen Online (gets data from installed tracking software and panels) comScore (gets data from installed tracking software too); HitWise (gets data directly from ISPs).

6. When the topic of Web 2.0 or social media comes up, toss off one of these phrases. “Content is the new currency, right?” “You can’t be authentic if you don’t have something to say, don’t you think?” “Participation separates genuine listening from eavesdropping for personal gain. Just one girl’s/guy’s opinion.”

7. Sound like a digital historian and bring up Burger King’s successful Subservient Chicken promotion.

8. Build rapport with people by confessing in a conspiratorial whisper that you’re afraid of mommy bloggers.

9. Be ready to name your favorite podcasts. Here are a few personal favorites:

Smart: BBC’s Melvyn Bragg host of In Our Time

Useful: Mignon Fogarty’s Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Guide to English

Emergent: Conversations with Creative Minds (Oh, wait. That’s self-serving since it’s our podcast. It is emergent though.)

10. Ask people which micro-blogging site they prefer, Twitter or Friend Feed. It’s okay if they mention a platform you haven’t heard of. Nobody likes a know-it-all.

That’s it. With these ten little tips you can be social offline and sound really smart about being social online. It’s just like mom said. Be interested and people will find you interesting – no matter where you’re networking. Ultimately, the smartest person in the room is the one who listens more than they talk.

jan

During an interview for our podcast Conversations with Creative Minds, Guy Sanville, actor and artistic director at the Purple Rose Theatre, repeatedly used the I-word. No, he didn’t say idiot, which I mutter frequently in reference to myself. Guy chose the word industrious to describe his work habits and those of people who are successful regardless of their profession.

You just don’t hear the word industrious all that often, unless you’re watching a wildlife show about the nature of beavers. Though there’s nothing bad about it, industrious is not one of the top ten characteristics I’d like someone to use when describing me. Maybe that’s because I associate it with a faint hearted kind of praise, like having a solid attendance record. (Although, Woody Allen did say that 80% of success is just showing up.) Or maybe I simply equate industrious with the machine-like regimen of industry.

And yet, industrious is the word that Guy chose to describe his approach to the craft of acting. Which makes sense because the development of craft, the essential skills and techniques that are fundamental to all endeavors, does take work. A lot of it. But industrious doesn’t happen all willy-nilly. It demands a certain structure, a framework for accomplishment. Creating, whether it’s a character, a play or a new theory of the cosmos is work. But industrious, when applied to work you love, is not at all industrial. It’s rigorous not regimented. It’s structured but never static. It’s practiced repeatedly but is not mind-numbingly repetitious.

Industriousness and creativity are not mutually exclusive. They’re just different sides of the same coin. It’s that dynamic tension thing of apparent opposites coming together to produce work that lives instead of working at making a living.

Industrious people continually refine their craft. They are engaged in such a way that work is something more than working. In our commitment to craft, we catch an occasional glimpse of art; the ephemeral and transcendent feeling of being completely at ease in and one with the universe. It is the pursuit of this that informs and inspires the practice of craft.

As Guy reminded me, acting is about doing. Industrious people get things done without an industrial way of working. Hmm. Industrious is sounding better and better. Maybe I could strike stylish off my preferred characteristics list and replace it with industrious. I’ll always love clothes, but for now I want to get stuff done.

Jan

Guy Sanville on Creating Reality (video)

One of of the best things about interviewing guests on our podcast Conversations with Creative Mind is that my partner Susan Bachman and I come away with fresh insights about the practice and practical application of creativity.

Interviews with Guy Sanville, actor and artistic director at the Purple Rose Theatre (founded by Jeff Daniels) are now available at www.conversationswithcreativeminds.com. Guy has mind-awakening things to say about the craft of acting and the business of constructing an artificial reality that seems, well, real. But one of his statements has a particular resonance with the way Susan and I approach our work and our lives too.

“We don’t always know what we’re doing, but we have our principles and our passions to guide us.” Guy Sanville

I’m completely on board with the concept of not-knowing. In fact, I probably hang out there more than I should. But Guy isn’t talking about not having a clue. Rather, he’s making the point that by having an intention, an idea of what you want to do, you can begin doing without waiting to know everything. It’s the willingness to not-know everything that opens the door to possibilities and possibility-thinking leads to the consideration of unlikely ideas; ideas that an informed or knowing mind would reject.

Susan and I often debate whether we’re not all that smart or if we’re just smart enough because not-knowing doesn’t stop us from getting started. Somehow, it’s in the act of doing that we discover what needs to be done. I suppose that’s what some people would call thinking outside of the box. Guy affirms that the willingness to leave behind the comfy place of knowing is a pre-requisite for the structured practice of craft.

Here’s our interview takeaway. Use not-knowing as a point of origin rather than a barrier to beginning. If you’re willing to start from stupid, really interesting ideas will emerge. The knowledge that follows will create the structure that’s needed to sustain your creative insights.

Jan

A problem is well, a problem; intractable, thorny, distracting, distressing, difficult and a pain in the neck. But, what if a problem was a puzzle instead? That’s the premise of Dr. Eric Rabkin, a professor in the Department of English at the University of Michigan. On the live version of the Conversations show, Professor Rabkin made the point that the difference between a problem and a puzzle is that a solution is built into a puzzle. You may mull over the New York Times’s crossword puzzle, searching for that nine-letter word meaning ‘record or history of’, but you know there’s a solution even if it’s not immediately available.

When a person encounters a problem, it’s time to change the approach, to deliberately shift one’s perspective, and treat the problem like a puzzle. Based on Dr. Rabkin’s observation and my experience, a shift in perspective, even the slightest little bit of a shift, opens the door to creativity. The act of thinking about a problem as a puzzle establishes the premise of a successful outcome. When approached from a puzzle point of view, a problem is relocated from the narrow, anxious realm of “how in the world can we solve this” to the expansive and possibility-filled world of “in what ways can we consider this situation?”

So, if a puzzle is an opportunity to introduce variety and consider multiple viewpoints, what can a person do to shift from a problematic perspective to a more productive point of view? The answer is so obvious it’s practically incomprehensible – simply shake-up your habits (gently) and deliberately do something differently for just a few moments. For example:

If you wear glasses, take them off for a few minutes (no walking into walls or driving)

If you hold a pen between your thumb and index finger, re-position it to the index and middle fingers and write something, anything for a few minutes

If you usually sit at a desk, try sitting on it; or better yet, lie underneath it (if your floor is cleaner than mine)

Sure, it seems a little goofy at first, but here’s the point. Changing habits of behavior will enhance your ability to shift habits of thinking. When you change the way you think, a problem has the potential to become a puzzle and a puzzle can be solved.

Jan