One of These Days

Linchpin Meetup Day 15 Jun 2010
¶ June 14th was (and still is, for most of the world at the time of writing) World Linchpin Day. This was an event started by Seth Godin on meetup.com for people who are interested in his latest book, Linchpin. It’s a book that asks the question “are you indispensable?”. It challenges you to think about what you do each day, and see how it adds value or meaning to your life. Manual labour can be difficult, but ‘emotional labour’ is even harder. Godin talks about how it is essential to put emotional labour into the work we do, to create art and give it away, and to give with no expectation of reciprocation. The meetup page for Auckland, New Zealand, showed 57 people who were interested. As we could link our Facebook accounts, people were able to read about (stalk) each other before hand. This meant that when I arrived, not only did I not have to give my name, but even my job and background were common knowledge! This really shows the power of social networking, and also how careful you have to be with what you share. I digress, however. I had come with expectations about discussing the book itself, and ideas related to it, but it turns out the many people hadn’t read it and were there for the networking, meeting people. That turned out to be pretty amazing. All of the people there were operating on a similar page. Entrepreneurship, social ventures, making connections, all things to do with people. This made for lot of interesting and stimulating conversation, sharing our ideas and backgrounds, and getting to know people. After the swapping of many business cards, it was eventually time to leave however. Fortunately, being a meetup for Linchpins, the initiative had been taken to put together some resources to keep and grow the connections made. Thanks Alan! Being a global event, there were many meetups happening simultaneously. One was a meetup in Japan that was running on Junto. It was great to jump in there and meet some great people, and share my experience from the meetup here. There are many Linchpins in the world, and many who are but just don’t know it yet. I think, if anything, this event has highlighted just how prolific the desire to do meaningful work is. It also shows that sometimes all people need is a word to describe something, and then everything moves forward from there.

Linchpin Meetup Day

15 Jun 2010

Linchpin, by Seth Godin

June 14th was (and still is, for most of the world at the time of writing) World Linchpin Day.

This was an event started by Seth Godin on meetup.com for people who are interested in his latest book, Linchpin. It’s a book that asks the question “are you indispensable?”. It challenges you to think about what you do each day, and see how it adds value or meaning to your life. Manual labour can be difficult, but ‘emotional labour’ is even harder. Godin talks about how it is essential to put emotional labour into the work we do, to create art and give it away, and to give with no expectation of reciprocation.

The meetup page for Auckland, New Zealand, showed 57 people who were interested. As we could link our Facebook accounts, people were able to read about (stalk) each other before hand. This meant that when I arrived, not only did I not have to give my name, but even my job and background were common knowledge! This really shows the power of social networking, and also how careful you have to be with what you share. I digress, however.

I had come with expectations about discussing the book itself, and ideas related to it, but it turns out the many people hadn’t read it and were there for the networking, meeting people. That turned out to be pretty amazing. All of the people there were operating on a similar page. Entrepreneurship, social ventures, making connections, all things to do with people. This made for lot of interesting and stimulating conversation, sharing our ideas and backgrounds, and getting to know people.

After the swapping of many business cards, it was eventually time to leave however. Fortunately, being a meetup for Linchpins, the initiative had been taken to put together some resources to keep and grow the connections made. Thanks Alan!

Being a global event, there were many meetups happening simultaneously. One was a meetup in Japan that was running on Junto. It was great to jump in there and meet some great people, and share my experience from the meetup here.

There are many Linchpins in the world, and many who are but just don’t know it yet. I think, if anything, this event has highlighted just how prolific the desire to do meaningful work is. It also shows that sometimes all people need is a word to describe something, and then everything moves forward from there.