Last week the DeVries PR team headed out to the Kodak Theater in LA for the 140 Conference. We were one of the main sponsors of the event and we brought with us five  things that every emerging conference needs. Power Outlets, Ethernet Connections, Caffeine, a Civilized Place to Drink It, and a Social Media PR Machine.  Working with Jeff Pulver (pictured above), we managed to build an offline meeting place for the online connections that many of the twitter community had already established. Instead of writing a long summary post about my adventures, I have decided to let you enjoy that through taking a look at my tweets during the event and please watch the videos we created on site, in their entirety here or just sit back, press play on the final recap video posted below!

If you call my father's phone and he doesn't pick up, at the end of his voicemail message he says his famous line  "and remember...... keep smiling". I always thought it was a little corney as a kid, but I think that message is extremely important today - especially as we push through these difficult times. I wanted to share with you all this great article excerpt from Erika Perry about the power of positive energy. Enjoy!

Imagine a world void of caffeine and nicotine, a world where people are energized—dare we say—naturally. There’s more to it than food, water and rest. There’s the energy we receive from a stranger’s smile, a friend’s laugh, or a family member’s hug. This is the positive energy that charges us up and gives us the boost we need to, in exchange, exude positive energy ourselves. Of course, there is the flip side to every energy equation.

According to the famous psychological Swedish study “Unconscious Facial Reactions To Emotional Facial Expressions,” both positive and negative emotions are contagious. The researchers exposed participants to images of faces while they monitored their facial muscles through electromyographs (EMGs). When exposed to happy faces, participants moved their zygomatic major muscle (used in smiling); when exposed to sad faces, participants moved their corrugator supercilii muscle (used in frowning).

So, both smiling and frowning are contagious but is there an advantage to smiling versus frowning? According to Dr. Mark Stibich there is. The Duchenne smile specifically has the best results. Duchenne smiles are the ones that are real and authentic. The smiles where your eyes light up, and your face wrinkles. These smiles are proven to:

– Boost the immune system
– Increase positive affect
– Reduce stress
– Lower blood pressure
– Enhance other people’s perception of you

Laughter has many of the same health effects as smiling, just intensified. This would explain the rising boom in laughter yoga, and an emerging therapeutic field known as humor therapy.

For argument’s sake, lets suppose everyone started off their day with a full tank of positive energy. Is it possible to sustain that level by giving and taking only positive energy? Maybe. There must be a reason the concept of “what goes around comes around” is pervasive in so many cultures around the world. Kindness is one form of positive energy and has been the guiding force for some of our most influential leaders. The Dalai Lama has said, “My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.” Verena von Pfetten of the Huffington Post believes,

“Once you start thinking kind thoughts and forcing unkind ones out of your head, you’ll find that you start attracting the type of people who are energizing to be around. These are the type of people you want as customers because they will continue to feed your business with positive energy and spread the word to people they know. There is absolutely no downside to kindness. The more you give it, the more you get back and the happier and less stressed out you become—that’s power.”

Full article

image James Swain

Thanks to Roku and Netflix, I finally was able to watch the documentary film "The Garden". If you haven't seen it yet, I suggest you add it to your Netflix Queue tonight. The film was nominated for an Acedemy Award and does an excellent job of following the ups and downs of the lagest community garden in the US in South Central LA. The South Central Farmers are inspirational to us all, especially now as we look to ways to increase our connection to The Earth, The Communnity and food.

Movie synopsis:

The fourteen-acre community garden at 41st and Alameda in South Central Los Angeles is the largest of its kind in the United States. Started as a form of healing after the devastating L.A. riots in 1992, the South Central Farmers have since created a miracle in one of the country’s most blighted neighborhoods. Growing their own food. Feeding their families. Creating a community.

But now, bulldozers are poised to level their 14-acre oasis.

The Garden follows the plight of the farmers, from the tilled soil of this urban farm to the polished marble of City Hall. Mostly immigrants from Latin America, from countries where they feared for their lives if they were to speak out, we watch them organize, fight back, and demand answers:

Jimmie Stone from g-think brings us an interesting post (quoted below) about the relationship between god and energy.

God. The vital force that has inspired and haunted even the most intellectual of our race—thinkers, philosophers, artists, politicians and the homeless.

A force that is almost impossible to define, it mutates from culture to culture, from time to time, and from one organized religion to another. It is an omnipresent force that can take us out of the deepest hole and, for a reason that I still don’t fully grasp, can cause us to fight among ourselves all the way to the point of death, as evidence of how extreme our commitment to it is.

Like defining the illusive concept of God, or art, or beauty, defining energy is a challenge. I often ask myself: is art or energy bigger or smaller than God? Or is God what defines our ability to see, understand and use art or energy?

But then again, let’s not submit to the inevitable human instinct to spend our life trying to answer such a conundrum…

It takes energy to fulfill our basic human needs (or rights for that matter): health, food, shelter and love. Only when these needs are fulfilled can we turn on the switch or light a candle and study, effectively breaking the cycle of poverty—and this is where life actually begins.

Energy moves civilization forward (even though what seems to be progress can prove to be regression). Whether it takes the form of transportation, food, heat, human affection or war, one thing seems obvious: The concept of energy is inevitably connected with the concept of God.

We can store the entire history of our civilization in a miniature nanochip, but we don’t have the ability store energy in a battery that lasts for more than eight hours. “We will!” some say. Or we will at least spend our whole life trying. After all, we are humans, and that’s our instinct.

image credit MandaBee2923

Image credit: Getty Images, Appleping/Flickr

The internet is a rather polarizing force, drawing us in with its promise of vast pools of knowledge and greater efficiencies, at the same time it overwhelms us with superfluous information and whittles away our attention spans. It is the driver of behavioral shifts that have happened so gradually, that it’s difficult to say whether the web evolved alongside of us or we along with it.

And now that we’ve welcomed this convenient, pervasive technology into our lives and are finally beginning to understand its impacts - both good and bad - how do we step back and achieve a balance? If you’re reading this, chances are you’re not some modern day Luddite with a rotary phone or a hardcore second-lifer in need of a 12-step intervention, but the question is still a valid one.

In an effort to dial back this online noise, John Freeman has penned his personal manifesto for what he calls “Slow Communication,” in a piece for the Wall Street Journal that has been adapted from his forthcoming book, “The Tyranny of Email“. In it, he argues for the considered and the physical as a necessary antidote to the pace and lack of context provided, where speed is too often confused with progress and efficiency.

We were particularly struck by Freeman’s provocative query that asks, “How many of our most joyful memories have been created in front of a screen?” While we might not have collectively reached this point yet, it certainly raises interesting ideas about what our future constructions of meaning might come to resemble if we continue on our current trajectory.

Freeman concludes with an appeal to the fleeting, the personal and the unhurried as a way to preserve our happiness and sanity without completely halting the way forward:

We are here for a short time on this planet, and reacting to demands on our time by simply speeding up has canceled out many of the benefits of the Internet, which is one of the most fabulous technological inventions ever conceived. We are connected, yes, but we were before, only by gossamer threads that worked more slowly. Slow communication will preserve these threads and our ability to sensibly choose to use faster modes when necessary.

The Wall Street Journal: Not So Fast

article from PSFK

With the internet taking a significant amount of its readership and the recession impacting physical sales, running a profitable print publication these days is becoming even more of a daunting proposition. But despite these struggles, many magazines are finding new opportunities outside of the printed page, diversifying their business model with alternative revenue streams. Advertising Age recently surveyed five such publications, representing diverse cross-section of the entire industry  - Men’s Health, Make, The Atlantic, Complex and Fader - to find out what their outlook is going forward.

While advertising, both print and digital, remains an integral component of the revenue mix, these magazines are building on their brand’s appeal and by extension reaching out to their audiences with other opportunities to engage with the publication’s unique point of view. This can take the form of events, books, retail and other media, but the key appears to be thoughtful curation and relevancy, justifying the shift in attention by creating a more meaningful experience. This in turn reinforces the culture of the magazine, while allowing readers to identify with a larger community.

[via Ad Age / ]

[image via Dan Zen on Flickr]

Posted from Jon Cronin's Stream Of Consciousness

via: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/