Personal Mission Statement - Follow up

The Outstanding Club’s writing contest has ended and the entries have been posted to their site. As follow up to the contest those who have entered including myself have been asked to vote for their favorite two.

After reading the posts, my two votes go to:

• Jake Dahn’s Personal Mission Statement published at jakedahn.com by Jake Dahn
• Rob Jensen’s Personal Mission Statement published at jensenrf.wordpress.com by Rob Jensen

Jake’s post is my favorite and I feel is most deserving of the $25 Amazon gift card. In fact, my post was modeled/inspired by his format and I am sure if you compared the two you can see the similarities in how the post was broken out. I appreciate how he outlined his conclusions and let that shape his mission statement. I sense the self discovery that must have been involved to come to statement and greatly appreciate him sharing this with the internets.

I do want to give credit to Chris Brown. The mission statement is perfect in simplicity and it is key to note all of the words are actions which I believe is truly important because your mission statement should resonate through your actions, and I am sure Chris walks the talk. The only reason I wasn’t able to throw a vote to this post is because I felt it lacked the sharing of the personal discovery of Jake’s post. Once again I can identify with Jake but I don’t have enough meat in the post to know Chris and what drives the mission statement.

Personal mission statement

I have been reading some of the follow up posts on the Outstanding Club and have decided it was time to take a crack at my own personal mission statement. I am hoping by doing so it will help reshape my own blog and get me back on track with my career development.

I started creating my personal mission statement by looking at the activities in my life the gave me joy and energy in my life. Not the short term burst of happiness but the true fulfilling moments in my life that still make me smile when I look back at them. The events that stick out are:

• The day I said “I do” to my wife
• The day my first child was born and I became a father for the first time
• The day I became a father for a second time
• Meeting with other innovators at work to discuss new ideas
• Working in a close team and learning through sharing experiences with each other
• Reflecting with friends and having discussing where we are and where we are going

I also started to look at what I am passionate about. Those things that I can talk about for hours with friends, family or someone I just met. Some of my favorite topics include

• Use and need of technology
• Social media and currently twitter
• Process tools and methodologies
• Setting goals and continuous self-improvement

After some reflection I have decided that what drives me really boils down to:

Working with people to create trusting relationship to understand their needs and help discover and apply the right tools to help them be successful on their own goals.  

I would say that is me in a nutshell. I love working with people and listening to their stories. There is so much self-discovery in just talking to someone else openly and when you create that relationship I just can’t help but want to work with them and help them be successful. 

Chris Pirillo speaks about technology in Iowa

Last weekend Chris Pirillo was back in Des Moines, IA visiting family. A couple days before his flight from Seattle he organized a meet up over twitter. The dmtweetup crew was quick to respond to the call and the meetup was held on Sunday at East Village Books.

I, unfortunately, had to miss this outing, or more fittingly I should say I had chosen to skip this one at the last minute to have a day of family time, however being the tech savvy group they are the event was well documented.

Nathan Wright has a video clip on his site from his interview with Chris. Chris’s response to retaining a creative class in Iowa strikes the closest for me but overall I have mix emotions about his comments. I agree that Des Moines is still not a technology hipster town however I can without a doubt state that Des Moines is making improvements to that cultural change. Through Twitter I have found a strong network of like-minded technology and social media followers which has expanded my network to a collection of bloggers open to supporting each other and most recently a budding group entrepreneurs.

In today’s environment the city you live can no longer be an excuse for not launching your own project nor finding others to have a dialogue with. There are a wide variety of tools to find the network and the support. It takes a little digging to find but this is true for any city and I for one applaud Des Moines for its progress and the network it has created to support its developers, bloggers and other freelancers.

Good People Day 2008

Out of the blue yesterday Gary Vaynerchuk announced today to be officially known as “Good People Day“, a day to recognize all of the good people in your life. On his video blog, he openly charged the internet community to spend their time talking, twittering, blogging about good people. Before the night was over Gary had others spreading his video on digg, delicious, twitter and many other sites. He even posted his plans not to sleep so he could continue to promote the event.

Today monitoring twitter and a couple others sites it shows that several folks took the idea and ran with it. Hashtag #GPD08 came out even though Gary was not the first to use it and recently I had a twitter account GPD08 start to follow me and directed me to the site http://www.goodpeopleday.net, which seems to be aggregating all blog posts and tweets tagged with GPD08.

So who are my good people? Wow, there are literally too many to list. I haven’t blogged about it yet but my success at work and in life can all be accredited to the network I keep around me. My network is my greatest asset, they are my balcony audience, the people cheering for me through everything and I thank them for that!

My friends and family, you are the best. Thank you for all of your support and being good people in my life. You give me the strength and energy to keep on moving and growing. Thank you again!

Support Arizona Foundation for Women

I am doing what I can to forward a note from a good friend of mine living the Phoenix area. If you are able to assist please do so. If not, well I’m not tracking anyways.

Thanks!

Rob

https://www.active.com/donate/2008walktoendDV/KEllis21
Each year I choose an organization to raise money for during the spring. This year I have chosen to raise money for Arizona Foundation for Women. Please help me to reach my goal of $555 by using the link above and donating. I hope to raise enough money to provide 10 nights of safety in a shelter for victims of domestic violence. The website is secure, fast and easy to use. At the website you will be able to choose an amount to donate and receive email confirmation of your donation. Please forward this communication on to others that would be interested in contributing or joining me on race day April 26th. Thanks in advance for your help.