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Warning: The Relationsheep Are Hosting Open Comment Night, Tuesday November 6th!!

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Will They Break the Internet?!!

The interview that RelationSheep Lisa Gates did with Phil Gerbyshak in celebration of Successful Blog’s 2nd Birthday was such a hit that when I realized I would be gone November 6th, they were the natural choice to host Open Comments that night. I asked them before a thought even breezed through my mind. That’s right.

RelationSheep: Lisa Gates and Phil Gerbyshak

RelationSheep, Lisa and Phil, Are Hosting Open Comments,
Tuesday, November 6th, 7pm Chicago Time

Then we started discussing topics . . . oh my! It’s going to be a free for all. Kids in the backyard. You know Phil’s imagination and Lisa’s sense of humor . . . add in some of the usual Tuesday night group and you can imagine what they’ll come up with.

The Topic Is

Liz Is Away — Time to Play

You know that they’re going to encourage

  • misbehavior and rowdiness
  • tree climbing and jumping on the beds
  • eating Klondike Bars instead of healthy food — Oh wait, we do that anyway . . .
  • and flamenco dancing with a code-writing donkey and a drunken moose .

I’m really sorry, I’m going to miss it. Then, you never know, I just might find a chance to check in.

So start saving your links, or better yet, why not write a post that you can bring a link to?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related article
What is Tuesday Open Comment Night?

The Relationsheep Factor: A Successful Blog Birthday Bash Interview with the Phil Gerbyshak and Lisa Gates!

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Phil Gerbyshak, sheep, Liz Strauss, Lisa Gates = Relationship Geeks

In honor of Liz Strauss, the fabulously sticky writer and queen of relationship blogging, Lisa Gates of Design Your Writing Life and Phil Gerbyshak of Make it Great team up to offer this first-time-ever interview to talk about Liz’s impact on the Relationsheep factor and what it’s like to have Liz inside your computer.

Change the World: The Power of Conversation

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Hey Lisa and Doc, How Can We Change the World?

Change the World!

In the last two days, two people I respect, Doc Searls and Lisa Gates, have written about a subject we all care about — People talking to people. — conversations and relationships.

Can you have a meaningful conversation when only one person is talking?

Isn’t every conversation a relationship?

Conversations and Relationships

Words by Doc Searls and Lisa Gates

These were the kinds of conversations people have been having since they started to talk. Social. Based on intersecting interests. Open to many resolutions. Essentially unpredictable. Spoken from the center of the self. “Markets were conversations” doesn¹t mean “markets were noisy.” It means markets were places where people met to see and talk about each other¹s work.

Conversation is a profound act of humanity. So once were markets.

For businesses that require no live communication with customers in the course of everyday work, markets are conversations means simply that the company still shouldn’t isolate itself either from talk within their marketplace or from talk with customers when the need arises. In other words, it should still be ready to Get Real when the time comes for real conversation. —Doc Searls

Doc Searls and Robert Scoble and Shel Israel told us that markets are conversations. So we all started blogging. Then, Seth Godin told us to be remarkable. So we all started showing up with a unique, inspired footprint. Along came Liz Strauss who told us that it’s all about relationships and relationship blogging. So we all started talking, showing up for each other, and supporting each other’s remarkable, outstanding work.

Remarkable, outstanding, conversations happen inside [TADAAA] RELATIONSHIPS! . . . . What you get from going, participating is–like life–entirely up to you and what you put into it. —Lisa Gates

Conversation IS profoundly human. Boy, Doc, do I agree.

It’s that profoundly human conversation that starts a relationship.

A conversation is potential energy — if I talk to you, you might listen and talk back to me.

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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If you’re ready to change the world, send me your thoughts in a guest post. Feel free to take the gorgeous Change the World image up there that Sandy designed back to your blog. Or help yourself to this one.

Change the World!.

Email me about what you’re doing or what we might do. Let’s change the world one bit at a time together. Together it can’t take forever.

Why DO I Blog . . . ? Uh-oh! The Deep, Meaningful Answer

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I've been thinking . . .

When a close friend, Chris Cree, asks me a question, like the one at the end of this post, “Why do you blog?” I have to figure out whether to respond with my default response –a deep meaningful answer.

Some questions — “What are you doing?” — don’t ask for philosophy. I find I keep more friends, and they are happier, if I sort which questions want a deep, meaningful answer and which call for information. (Hey, in the end, you can walk away, but I’m stuck listening to me rattle like an old three-wheel bicycle.)

Gosh, . . . I might have already said more than you needed to know.

[Sorry]

Why do I blog? was the question.

I have three blogs of my own and two others that I blog on regularly. I did two interviews this weekend. Why do I blog? The answer to that has grown, but the reasons haven’t changed.

Chris, you asked for five reasons. When I look out at my blogs these are the ones I see.

  1. I blog because I said I would. When I wrote my first blog post, I made a commitment to myself to write every day. With the next blog, and the blog after, I made more commitments to myself and to anyone who reads what I write. Keeping my word is important to me.
  2. I blog because people need a friend. For years I gave away copies of two journal-like books by one writer. I gave them to folks I knew who needed to know they had a friend. Then those books went out of print. I wanted to make a blog that would offer a place where anyone could go to find a best friend at any hour of the day. I think people deserve a safe place.
  3. I blog because I am an entrepreneur in the 21st century. Blogging is one strategy of my business. Blogging gives my service business substance and a voice. I know that any business supported solely by print and word-of-mouth relationships is isolated and insecure. Blogging directly and indirectly supports my family. It is my credibilitiy across more than 2000 blog posts.
  4. I blog because I value the wealth of the blogosphere. The people, the relationships, the generosity of spirit, the joy of discovery, the learning and laughter, the humanity I experience are what bring me back day after day. Who with curiosity could be bored? We’ve set the bar with words I strive to live — authenticity, transparency, trust, respect, acceptance.
  5. I blog because I believe words can change the world. How could I walk away? Blogging is not an addiction. It’s a heady way of communicating, a meeting place for ideas where they become visible — more visible than the people who have them. I cannot turn my back on the possibility of being useful.

Nothing in my life could have prepared me to be a blogger, except everything in my life.

Now I wonder, you are each unique, Lisa, Brian, David, Tony, Chris . . . Why do you blog?

Liz's Signature

Change the World: That One Person Is Better

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A Writing Contract

Change the World!

People are inspiring, teaching, and reaching each other in positive ways every day. Phil Gerbyshak is smiling, sharing, serving, asking questions, learning and hugging.

Lisa at Design Your Writing Life took a virtual page Content Done Better by Carson Brackney and another from The Write Path by Diane Penna to forge a contract with herself. Lisa’s contract, like the others, is a commitment to “doing the work you love in service to those who love what you do,” as Steve Farber says.

Of course then, Lisa left a message that it was my turn.

Lisa, this is my answer and my contract.

When I was almost 18 years old, at sunrise in the Grand Teton Mountains, a young man asked me an important question about life that I had never been asked before. Somehow I knew the answer. That answer is the basis for my writing contract with myself and the world.

I will be the kind of writer that strives to keep alive the music of the language, to hold head and heart together in the words, and to write with hope and passion that one person is better because he or she read what I wrote.

I told that boy, “I’ll never know for sure. So I’ll always be trying.”

Thank you, Lisa, for asking the question.

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

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If you’re ready to change the world, send me your thoughts in a guest post. Feel free to take the gorgeous Change the World image up there that Sandy designed back to your blog. Or help yourself to this one.

Change the World!

Email me about what you’re doing or what we might do. Let’s change the world one bit at a time together. Together it can’t take forever.