MeshugAvi Blog

Remember when you were little and your parents told you not to talk to strangers?

Well recently I have been going out of my way to forget all of that and it has paid off in interesting ways.

What prompted this?

Part of the reason I’ve been having more random conversations is that I have been taking the advice of Lindsey Pollack whose career search book I’m reading. Lindsey suggests getting speaking about your search with whoever you meet and also getting in the habit of introducing yourself more. I also had a great conversation yesterday with Jocelyn Harmon and we reflected that we are trying to have more faith in strangers. We observed that the web savvy crowd is generally less suspicious of the intentions of strangers and willing to learn and accept resources from them.

Things better and funnier than candy that I’ve gotten from talking to strangers

I had a nice conversation with a woman on the subway who is in business school. She had some good advice for me and when we got off together she gave me her card and wished me luck.

On the street in Manhattan a man dressed in a full batman costume walked by me on the street and gave me a full pat on the back as he passed by saying “Laila tov” (goodnight in Hebrew). Not something I was expecting! (ok this one’s just funny)

Meeting with Jocelyn Harmon yesterday. Jocelyn isn’t really a stranger since I have been reading her blog for a while and I read about her work on Beth Kanter’s blog, but I did call her out of the blue. I found her cell phone number posted on one of her online outposts and decided to connect. A less web oriented person might have been thrown by someone reaching out on the spur of the moment like that. Meanwhile, we had a great discussion and I really enjoyed talking with her.

Sitting in Starbucks the other evening I joined a conversation that three guys were having at a neighboring table about class and race. Turns out they are participating in a summer service internship program I had never heard of. Joel gave me his card and has since connected me with someone at a prominent DC nonprofit focused PR agency.

Traipsing around DC with a friend looking for a restaurant yesterday we were about to use google text to get directions, but then I though better of it and asked a person passing on the street if they knew the area well. DC Stranger beats Google text FTW!

Anyone else have great stories of people you’ve just up and introduced yourself to or struck up a conversation with? Have you found it as worthwhile as I have?

photo by dariuszka

If you haven’t seen Randy Pausch’s last lecture on achieving your childhood dreams that has been floating around the Internet yet, watch it now. I’ll wait.

What an awesome and insightful human being. Seriously if you haven’t seen it it is worth the hour long investment if only to see hear his wry jokes and see him pull off those one-handed push ups.

One of the most insightful things I learned from Randy is the role of brick walls.

“Brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.”

What a great attitude. I talked about something similar in my first MeshugAvi Blog post ever. There is no doubt in my mind that Tal Ben-Shahar would have shown a clip of Randy talking about this idea in class for that session. He’s just nailed the right attitude to achieving your dreams on the head and for me it ties in nicely to my earlier thoughts on massive action.

Another quote of Randy’s that gets at the idea of embracing the suck during those times when the needed work isn’t to your liking:

“Don’t bail; the best gold is at the bottom of barrels of crap.”

So what are the brick walls in your life? How are you going to throw yourself over them or tear them down? What helps aside from massive action?

photo by viZZZual.com

Recently, while visiting with friends in New York and DC over intercession vacation, I started a round of informational interviewing in an attempt to learn from friends and some other nice folks. Now that classes are back in gear I thought I’d reflect on some of what I’d learned and also thank the people for sharing their time and experience with me. Hopefully this series will grow as I pick the brains of more interesting people.

The meeting I was most anticipating on this trip was with my friend Tamar Weinberg. Tamar and I go back to high school in South Florida, though when I got in touch with her recently I admit she remembered me a lot better than I did her- which was embarrassing and super flattering. She’s been terribly encouraging and generous through my exploration in the web space so far.

Tamar blogs at her own blog techipedia and also at a number of other blogs including SEroundtable, Life Hacker - where she’s the weekend editor, and sometimes over at her old gig 10e20. She also facilitated some awesome student activism at my high school last year, setting up a blog for people to voice concerns and raising the ire of the administration. When I met her in Riverdale she had just come from a meeting and was freshly groggy from 4am exploits the night before after the new Digg algorithm was released (Not that things seem to have improved much at Digg since then.)

Tamar has a mixed attitude towards her new found fame in the blogosphere. The notoriety she has found in the online social space seems almost to have caught her by surprise. Despite her rockstardom, she impressed on me the level nature of the playing field and insisted that the pieces fell together for her through luck, persistence, and the help of a few key people along the way. I’m beginning to get a welcome taste of the kind of openness she’s encountered across the social space from people with genuine interest in what she had to say in my own limited networking experience. Meeting with Tamar, the need to take risks and put yourself out there really stood out. Most people are willing to listen and share their experience, but with that comes the expectation that you be forthcoming with your own take on things as well.

Tamar certainly has dedication and experience in the social space and the humility to match it. Her narrative is really interesting and there’s little doubt we’ll all continue to benefit from her advocacy on behalf of the online community in the future and get to see her rise to still brighter achievements. Thanks for the advice and yummy lunch Tamar!