Last night, I had the honor of guest speaking at a class at San Jose State University called New Media and Journalism (JMC 163). I spoke on Introduction to Blogging, and 3 ways blogging can help journalism students in their careers. The teachers Steve Sloan and Cynthia McCune are new friends of mine that I met through the San Jose Bloggers MeetUp which Steve heads up. If you're in the area, please join us. It's fun and a good time to get face time with real humans. We bloggers can spend TOO much time interacting online.
For the full lowdown on the class and what it is about, I wrote an article about it on my Simplr blog, "San Jose State offers cutting edge class on Web 2.0. Robert Scoble to guest speak."
For those of you in tech or are just plain geeky, you will know of the famous Robert Scoble. Those of you who are not, Robert used to work at Microsoft and was their "official, non-official" face in the blogosphere. Microsoft decided not to do an official corporate blog, but instead chose to let their employees blog. Robert also co-authored a book with Shel Israel titled, "Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers" As of today, Scoble's blog, Scobleizer, is #18 in the world according to Technorati. The students in JMC 163 are very lucky to get face time with Scoble.
Being the very first guest speaker of the class, I am also honored to be grouped as professional speaker in this class with the likes of Scoble.
The point I want to share with this story is that when you are passionate about something opportunities you never thought about will come your way. In the back of my mind, I thought about creating a class to teach at The Learning Annex called "How to blog and make money through blogs for beginners." The universe gave me a chance to "try out" teaching, on a small scale. It was dee-lish!
One of my talents is translating Geek speak into Oprah speak to show people how technology can help them live their best lives. To me technology is power and freedom, but there is a big gap between the techies and everyday people, that most of us don't get or realize what is available simply because there is a "language" barrier. Most people don't really care about gigabytes, front side buses, or code? They want to know stuff like how to start a business online, become financially independent, or find a husband/wife. How will technology help you do that???
I love blogging, not only for the freedom it is giving me, but for all the really cool people I have met. It's incredible! Whether it's blogging, food, politics, or whatever, if you have a passion, dive straight into it, and watch what amazing opportunities come your way. Most of it will be things that you never imagined.
Spok
