Brains on Fire

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  Popsicles, Sparklers and Creative Inspiration

  Posted on February 1st, 2012 by amy and currently 4 commenting.

  Life through the lens of our dear friend Libby Williams

  Last weekend the weather was delightfully warm here in Greenville. The sun was shining, the birds were singing – it felt like spring. On one of several strolls with my dog, I came across three little boys playing with a box in their front yard. As I watched them play, it was obvious the box was not just a box. It was a fort, a playhouse, a tank, an infinite number of possibilities limited only by their imaginations.

  My Saturday stroll was a good reminder of how differently we think as children. When kids look at a box, they don’t just see a box – they see possibilities. They see a box not as it is – but for everything it could be. Childhood is an infinite summer (even when it’s just a winter reprieve in late January.) As time marches on, we begin thinking more concretely. We see a box where we see a box. Our days cease to be defined by quickly melting popsicles and tire swings, bellyflops and neighborhood games of “Kick-the-Can.” We begin to mark our days and months with rituals of responsibility – bills paid, inboxes cleaned out, items marked off our TO DO list. Slowly, in a little boat for one, we allow the splishing and splashing of the tide to draw us out into the sea of adulthood, drifting further and further away from fun, imagination and possibility.

  For the creative adult, we spend most of our lives trying to find a way to return to the eternal summer of childhood. A place where the mind and imagination work in harmony – one challenging the other to be better, do more and dream bigger. A time when mistakes were nothing to be feared, just a spark for improvisation. A moment when night writing with wildly twinkling sparklers made all of us feel like the poet laureate of our front yard.

  Hemingway once said, “The thing is to become a master and in your old age to acquire the courage to do what children did when they knew nothing.” I am inclined to agree.

  Today I’m encouraging all of us to think differently. Tap into our imaginations. Change up the drive home. Stand on our heads. Challenge yourself to see something you’ve seen a thousand times before in a new light. Try to describe the taste of  a strawberry. Pick up a piece of sidewalk chalk and write a love letter to someone in your life. Practice seeing possibility instead of accepting reality. Find your inner child and give him/her a spin on the tire swing.

  It’s Wednesday, after all.

  ps: I stumbled across this video over the weekend. A look at well-known logos through the eyes of a 5-year-old. If you haven’t seen it – take a peek. And enjoy.

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  Roll Call Time, Again.

  Posted on January 20th, 2012 by Robbin and currently 23 commenting.

  
  I have done this before, and I cherished your responses. So let’s do it again. AND the photo above is LIBBY. Thought you might like seeing a face behind the beautiful photos we often use on our blog.

  Remember your childhood days in school, when the teacher called out everyone’s name and you said “Present”.

  I did this once a while back and enjoy hearing from you so much I decided to do it every six months or so. So, will you humor me again today?

  I often look at the numbers of people who read our blog and on top of being amazed, I wonder:

  “Who’s out there? Who is present today? What do you do? And what do you like reading about?” So we can do more of that.

  And since I don’t have YOUR names to call, let’s do a backward version of roll call. Come on. It will be fun. Check in, say hello, tell me a little bit about you. Whatever you are comfortable doing, saying or not saying is fine with me.

  If you are feeling brave and to make it a bit more interesting, give me one sentence to let me know one thing you did this week that made the work you do in the world more meaningful, happy and/or productive. What has made you proud of you lately.

  Me? I taking more time to write real letters. (You know the ink on paper kind?) And it has been making ME feel connected in a way I can’t explain. Try it!

  Happy Friday!

  Now, don’t be shy. Let’s take a moment and just be “present” together.

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  StumbleUpon: The Not-So-Little Discovery Engine that Could

  Posted on December 13th, 2011 by amy and currently 2 commenting.

  StumbleUpon turned 10 in November. I forgot to get it a birthday gift, so I’m getting it this blog post instead.

  Founded in 2001, StumbleUpon has existed longer than the “big three” in social media – Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. In August, StumbleUpon celebrated a milestone: 25 billion clicks. To give you some perspective, if you sat down and starting counting from one to one billion 24 hours a day, 7 days a week nonstop – adding in mathematical adjustments for multisyllabic numbers (like 4,337,646) – it would take you roughly 95 years to finish counting. Counting to 25 billion, on the other hand, would take approximately 2,375 years. So, if the ancient greeks had started counting in 364 B.C., they’d be just finishing up right about now. I’m willing to bet that would be one heck of a game of “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.”

  25 billion is a lot.

  Today, StumbleUpon averages 1 billion clicks per month.

  GET TO KNOW STUMBLEUPON

  Fact: StumbleUpon drives over 50% of social media traffic in the United States, making it the top site for traffic referrals to US websites.

  Growth
  2.2 million webpages are added to StumbleUpon every month. That’s 51 pages per minute. 8 babies are born in the United States every minute, which means the number of pages being referenced and ranked on StumbleUpon exceeds the population growth by more than 6x.

  After 24 hours, a popular shared link will usually get…
  ReTweets on Twitter – 0%
  Likes on Facebook – 5%
  More Stumbles – 83%

  Half Life of a Link
  The half-life of a link is the point in time at which a link has seen half the engagement it will ever get.

  A link shared on Twitter – 2.8 hours
  A link shared on Facebook – 3.2 hours
  A link shared on StumbleUpon – 400 hours

  View Time

  Average webpage – 58 seconds
  Average StumbleUpon page – 72 seconds

  Stumble Session
  The average Stumble Session (during which a user views page after page) is 69 minutes. Nearly 3x the amount of time people spent on a singular Facebook session or watching a sitcom (both 23 minutes.)

  The Brand Benefits of Stumbling

  When you to publish to Facebook or Twitter, you push content to your brand’s followers and fans – i.e. the people who already know and like you. Unlike Facebook and Twitter (which are content delivery tools), StumbleUpon is a discovery tool. Its goal is to reach people who are on the hunt for new, interesting information. So what does this mean for you? StumbleUpon is the social director who brings your brand to the party to attract, meet and connect with all sorts of new people interested in the things you do.