Love this recent post from Seth Godin...

Seth Godin - Generosity

If you make a difference, you also make a connection. You interact with people who want to be interacted with and you make change that people respect and yearn for. Seek to make a difference. It's your art, it's what you do. You touch people and change them for the better. The more you give, the more you get.  

There are tens of thousands of businesses making many millions a year in profits that still haven't ever heard of Twitter, blogs, or Facebook. Are they all wrong? Have they missed out, or is the joke really us? They do business through personal relationships by delivering customer service and it's working for them... They are not writing about it, they are doing it.  

Vision is the lifeblood of any organization. It is what keeps us moving forward and provides meaning to the challenges and setback that make up real life. In a down economy, things get very tactical. We are just trying to survive. What worked yesterday does not necessarily work today. What works today may not necessarily work tomorrow.   This is where great leadership makes all of the difference. Leadership is more than influence. It is about reminding people of what it is we are trying to build - and why it matters. It is about painting a picture of a better future. It comes down to pointing the way and saying, "C'mon. We can do this!"   When times are tough, vision is the first casualty. Before conditions can improve, it is the first thing we must recover.  

Commit to a lifetime relationship that spans events, companies, and geographic boundaries. Care for the concerns of others as if they are your own. Aim to connect those who will benefit and enrich each other's lives in equal measure. Communicate candidly. Tell people what they should hear rather than what they want to hear.   If you are truly enriching someone's life, they will typically miss you in their past. They think their lives would have been better if they had met you earlier.  People at events are hungry for authenticity.

We try to live by this creed at NEMOA! Hope to see you at our Sept Conference in Newport, RI, 9/15-9/16/2011.