The Social Media Cycle: A Religious Experience?

When having a conversation about social media, it's almost impossible to do so without touching upon the concept of community. It's no secret that the internet has forced us to re-evaluate and even, in some ways, redefine how we view community, adjust for the extent to which digital gatherings are becoming the norm.

This topic came up yesterday in a conversation with some Methodist ministers who were looking for ways to use social media for the growth and enrichment of their communities. The overwhelming concern I was hearing from them was that social media would cause people to forgo having, as one minister called it, "skin in the game." In other words, many of them were reluctant to use social media because they felt it would actually break down their communities and lead to isolation.

Aside from the fact that it is my personal belief humans have a natural, innate need for physical contact, and that social media will relieve us of that need no more than the telegraph or telephone have over the last couple of centuries (did AT&T connect or disconnect us when they told us to "Reach Out and Touch Someone?"), there are some uses of social media that are more conducive to this than others.

If your community likes to chat online, the first thing you have to do is recognize that as a good thing, not a bad thing. When they're on your Facebook page, message boards, twitter feed, etc., it means they're engaged with your message and they want to share their thoughts, feelings, and questions with others.

To bring those conversations from the message board to the meeting place, a savvy community leader can listen to what their community is saying and build physical events, such as focused study groups, classes, and outings, around those topics of interest. So if your online communities are buzzing this week about, say, Paul's Letters, how do you turn that topic into an opportunity for a face-to-face conversation? If you're a minister, plan a sermon to address your community's questions. Looking for a less formal option? Suggest a meet-up or Bible study (perhaps at a restaurant, coffee shop, or other inviting location) specifically to talk about this topic. Perhaps after studying Paul's letters, your community expresses an interest in finding ways to serve. If so, organize a volunteer day where they can combine their strengths for the greater good.

Then, once you've found the topics that engage your community using social media, you can promote these events using social media. Get on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, message boards, Eventbrite, Meetup.com -- the list continues. The more channels you use, the broader your reach will be.

You can even take things one step further and document your meetings to share online. Whether you choose to share your content via video (YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Metacafe), audio (podcasts, MySpace), or blog post (Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad), you can start to build a conversation archive for the future. Then, next time someone has an interest in one of your past topics and does a web search, they'll find your community and, it follows, a place to talk about it. And from here, the social cycle continues.

For those companies and organizations who still doubt social media's ability to bring people together meaningfully, just remember: the more you listen to your communities online, the more opportunities you'll find to get creative and engage their interests in constructive ways. People gravitate toward social media because they perceive the technology's ability to bring them closer together. It simply takes a leader to sort through the clutter and find the channels that will lead to deep and meaningful social engagement.

From Oak Park to Pixar - How One "Star Wars Kid" Fulfilled His Dream

In today's economy, it stands to reason that there's a scarcity of people who are truly satisfied in their work. With national job satisfaction at 20 year lows and unemployment at all-time highs, it's a rare thing indeed to encounter someone whose career continues to be fun, challenging, and rewarding -- even through some of the hardest economic times in our nation's history.

But for animator Warren Trezevant, the time and hard work he invested in his career have truly paid off. Now, after 15 years with Pixar Animation Studios, this self-described "Star Wars kid" from Oak Park reflects on a career that has allowed him to explore the various facets of his many interests, and bring characters to life both on the screen and in the physical world.

I had the pleasure of meeting Warren at last week's Break the Box lecture series at Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple, and again at Flashpoint Academy where he spoke to students the following day. An Oak Park, IL native, Warren told two very different, yet equally captivated audiences about his personal journey from Oak Park River Forest High School to Oakland, California where he helped to animate such popular and critically-acclaimed modern classics as A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Ratatouille.

As a career, animation married Warren's two loves: art and computers. It was a path he arrived at sideways, following an industrial design degree from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, a short time in Europe, a Westward leap of faith, and his fortuitous enrollment in an animation course that was, as luck would have it, taught by some of the founding Pixar animators. And the rest, as they say, is history.

As he shared his story with his audiences, what shined through Warren's words -- more than hard work, smart job choices, and chance encounters -- was his palpable appetite for improvement. At Pixar, they call the incremental and collaborative betterment of their work "plussing:" and during his time there, Warren has plussed not only his own shots and the shots of his fellow animators, but has also plussed Pixar by joining Disney's Animatronics team to create such imaginative and truly awe-inspiring projects as the Pixar Zoetrope and a life sized Wall-E. (Check the end of this post for videos.) Still, 15 years into his career, Warren continues to build upon his considerable talent by drawing upon his passions and never settling for the status quo.

When I think about what I learned from Warren Trezevant, it is this: that, no matter how far they go and how many hurdles they clear, true innovators always go looking for more. It's not an assignment, nor really a choice for them to do so. Innovators innovate because that's what they're driven to do, and it's unsatisfying for them to do anything less. And that, to me, is what is truly inspirational about his story -- that some people do succeed, and that when they do, they continue to chart a path for future artists to follow in their footsteps and form into reality the stuff of their wildest imaginations.

As I look back on Warren's visit to Chicago, I can't help but hope that, at least in some small way, the dissatisfaction held by many working Americans will be a building force, growing and invigorating the next generation of imagination, invention, innovation.


Feeling inspired? For more about Flashpoint's 2-year, Associate of Applied Science degree programs in Animation & Visual Effects, Film & Broadcast, Recording Arts, or Game Development, visit flashpointacademy.com.


The Pixar Zoetrope:



Wall-E Comes to Life: