Doing something just for the hell of it is a wonderful antidote to all the chores and "must-dos" of daily life. Writing a novel in a month is both exhilarating and stupid, and we would all do well to invite a little more spontaneous stupidity into our lives.

And I'm giving it a try -- just for the spontaneous stupidity. Behind on my wordcount, though!

Star Wars powers helped us carve the pumpkin last weekend.

Camera: Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1
Lens: Voigtlander Nokton 50mm f1.5 (Leica thread mount)
Adapter: John Milich LTM-G1

How does 100% authorship change your business?

• In philanthropy, might it reduce the cult of the expert? Contests and competitions give rise to their own results-based expertise. Scaling, as always, becomes an issue, and people with scaling expertise even more valuable.

• Fundraising comes to look like what Kiva’s Matt Flannery calls “the larger trend toward more connected experiences.” At home, we are all walkathoning (or growing mustaches) and asking our friends to help.

• In journalism and publishing, it looks like the rise of the individual reputation and the individual voice. Blogs over mainstream publications. Aggregators will still be important, be they search engines, social networks, or perhaps mainstream web properties.

• The shift to short, quick, forms like Twitter reduces the influence of professional copywriters. Amateurs have the time to write influential micro posts. Sharing among friends becomes the measure of influence.

• This changes the search engines’ power as the reference source. Right now Google is struggling to keep up with real time publishing. Here’s Jeremiah Owyang on what the search engines’ shift to realtime means for reaching people:

  Search marketers must understand that blasting marketing information through Facebook or Twitter won’t be effective, as search engines will filter out irrelevant messages that nobody listens to.

It comes down to content that’s useful, that other people can share. In a future where everybody writes, will anybody notice if your organization doesn’t?

My post for the Case Foundation blog this week looks the explosion of authorship (with blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) -- and what that means for nonprofits. Click through to the original post on casefoundation.org, or listen to the audio above ipodding pleasure.

But the genie is out of the bottle. Start managing your reputation in a way that’s authentic and ethical and stay on top of this. And be prepared for what I’m calling the “curatorial economy.” (You heard it here first.)

With Twitter lists, Dave Troy says, collections become the indicators of reputation. Searchable, personal, and indexed by the search engines. Twitter has just hit the social networking ball out of the park.

1. “Empathy increases generosity. The pictures and stories on the Kiva site increase understanding between various parties that would otherwise operate in completely different universes.” That’s Matt Flannery, Kiva’s CEO and co-founder replying in his guest post on David Roodman’s blog.

2. “If you’re going to advertise yourself as giving choice to the donor, you’d better do it.” That’s Mike Everett-Lane, formerly of Donor’s Choose, commenting on tacticalphilanthropy.com.

3. Openness buys an organization benefit of the doubt. Even in his initial post, David Roodman acknowledged that statistics in plain view on Kiva’s own website caused him to question Kiva’s message. There was clearly no skulduggery involved.

4. Listening pays. Kiva responded to the criticism with action. It altered those marketing materials, and Matt Flannery responded quite graciously in a guest blog post. But before any of that, Kiva’s staff listened.

   That listening, and that response, ultimately drew praise from the critics. David Roodman summed it up:

   I think Flannery’s response to my criticism blended grace, humility, and quiet confidence. The world would be a much better place if all charities, all organizations for that matter, were as open and responsive to criticism as Kiva has been. I trust the Kiva folks will keep refining. I will visit them today.

For more Kiva conversations – a post on my blog, Code, Camera, Action, outlines the story. The comments in particular, summarize how Kiva resolved the issue. For more detail, see this list of excerpts from the Kiva debate or Tim Ogden’s post linking to the major blog debate.

 

My post on the Case Foundation blog this week sums up the debate over Kiva and person-to-person fundraising. Plus audio, for your pod-listening pleasure.

Brian O'Leary --

But if we care about readers paying more for content, we have to recognize that DRM restricts use and lowers the value of the content inside.  Teaching our best customers to pay less for things does not seem like a good idea.

 

Bring every email closer to DONE

via chrisbrogan.com

The Lightroom team is proud to introduce the third public beta program of our application designed by and for digital photographers.... For this latest release we went back to the drawing board and revisited what we believe are the fundamental priorities of our customers: Performance and Image Quality. Lightroom has been stripped down to the "engine block" in order to rebuild a performance architecture that meets the needs of photographers with growing image collections and increasing megapixels. The raw processing engine has also received an overhaul right down to the fundamental demosaic algorithms that now allows unprecedented sharpening and noise reduction results.

Lightroom 3 beta is available to anyone -- whether or not you own a previous version of the software. The beta expires April 30, 2010.

This is a very competitive move on Adobe's part. Aperture users like me will now have even less reason to wait for the fabled Aperture 3 -- without at least trying Lightroom.

Lightroom 3 does support RW2 raw files from Panasonic Lumix G1 and other micro four-thirds cameras. Apple and Aperture require tedious conversion to DNG, and even then only work with certain lenses http://elstudio.us/how-to-my-raw-workflow-for-the-lumix-g1-on-th.

Lightroom 3 could be very compelling. Downloading now. I'll report back on the beta once I've had time to try it.

We found that the number of published authors per year increased nearly tenfold every century for six centuries. By 2000, there were 1 million book authors per year. One million authors is a lot, but they are only a tiny fraction, 0.01 percent, of the nearly 7 billion people on Earth. Since 1400, book authorship has grown nearly tenfold in each century. Currently, authorship, including books and new media, is growing nearly tenfold each year. That’s 100 times faster. Authors, once a select minority, will soon be a majority.

"But let's face it: If you're trying to borrow $9 trillion to save your financial system...and already half your public debt held by foreigners, it's not really the conduct of rising empires, is it?"

via finance.yahoo.com

Pages = Get up-to-date info on a non-profit (latest news, links, events). Groups = Connect with others around a cause (not necessarily an org).