In northeastern Waukesha County, there are many opportunities that can be cultivated. It is my contention that in any county, it becomes a dynamic to equally distribute resources from the county seat. The communities in the far corners of the county logistically have the most assertive role for pulling activity and attention to their backyard. Mathematicians would
want me to say that the strength of connectivity to county resources is inversely proportional to the distance from the county seat. My observation is a community like Menomonee Falls has an assertive call for making sure that meetings in Waukesha encompass their geographic area. Just like the 80/20 rule, it is not a perfect measure, but it portrays the
point.

The interest for my blogging is to share resources on how I try my darnedest to stay in the proverbial loop with the goings on within the distribution area of Lake Country Publications. In doing that, I hope to find out things that I am personally missing in connecting with the leadership across Waukesha County.

Volunteerism is in a very funky state right now.   Many believe that short term projects are a trend to matching to volunteers willingness to help.   This is in response to why membership groups are declining.  

My concern is what is happening at that moment of truth when an individual can turn to selfishness and not help the community versus considering the true importance of their participation.   Some are saying that we need to return to the cliches of "it takes a village to raise a child".   The fact is that in these tough economic times, it is so easy to justify why those we know don't participate.    I question the morals and the mores that we are cultivating in our legacy.  

I think of the the Three Musketeers when they said "all for one and one for all"   There is that dicotomy that is depleting across our volunteer base.   Our lifestyle lends to so many distractions and personal diversions that volunteerism is obsolete these days.   Many more people can take or leave the community calendar and functions.  

At the present day, we are writing the future of giving back to the community that made what we have possible.    The prestige of holding an office in a volunteer group is less significant.   These positions are more accessible today than ever before, yet the ease of filling them is gone.  

What are we going to do to develop our lifestyle as well as those to come?    To me, without the highest regard to the 501c3 community, this will be a rollback phenomenon.   Collaboration across the 501c3 groups is crucial.   My call is to remove the territorial bounds and the ecochamber of thinking and spark formation of alliances like never before.    Many can say this is going on and is going well.   Yes, I know!    That is the point.   I just want to premier those success stories congruent to the ease of access to other "garbage" that individuals tend to see exponentially more readily.   

My hope by this posting is to take it as a survey to see how I am doing to my commentary versus the interest to those that it is reaching.   Any comments changing the direction in my contentions and so forth is largely encouraged.    Once I see folks like you post back to me, the magic of really addressing the issues of Waukesha County and beyond will unfold.

My observation in trends over the last few decades is one for getting in balance with technology.   Our society has gobbled up the entertainment systems and computer systems empowering families to become more self-sufficient at home.   I promote re-energizing in-person community gathering.    Depending on the purpose, I see room for more synergy collecting people in a venue for 8, 15, 25, 35, and more corresponding to the outcome set for that meeting.   Meetup.com is a great example of how online connecting can bring rise to in-person meetings.

As the masses in the population have been clinging to comforts of home taking away motivation for getting out on the town, it really has put event organizers in a great challenge.    The WIIFM or what's in it for me notion prevails to an all time high.   It now is an opportunity to utilize the internet to exhibit and portray like never before what is in it for the audience to go out and enjoy the benefits of group interaction.    With this heightened ability to clarify and organize messages to match the interests and background of the receivers in those campaigns, we can answer even logistics like never before.

The search capabilities available to knowledgeable users gives the marketer the ability to deploy pull campaigns with a better success rate than effort before.   The flooding of environmental messages to the browser or passer-by or viewer  seem to be there as always, but the navigator has the ability to forge beyond that to cultivate the information most of interest to them  

 With social networking being the mega-trend of today, location is insignificant for being able to connect with folks of common interest unless that is a component of that geographical setting.   Psychologically, we all crave the opportunity to experience the person face-to-face.    Depending on the perceived benefit to arranging the in-person visit, that outcome is becoming fewer and further between.   Selectivity is prevalent like never before.

A trend that I like is utilizing online communities to help build local communities.    LinkedIn is an example.   Elm Grove is the first location that I learned of where the genealogy-type functionality for working networks and the proverbial six degrees of separation is married with a social gathering to help the cultivation process.   Basically, one can go enjoy themselves and meet new people and continue mutually beneficial exchanges and at the same time have a great management tool to make sure recalling the background and other details for those individuals is comprehensively retained.   The gathering is called LinkedIn LIVE.

In a technical realm, Joomla! is fast growing and already popular content management platform.   The beginning thought process is starting for a Joomla! LIVE. 

Basically what is the growing concept is that individuals use these websites to become more proficient and increase their gains, and now in-person group settings are being cultivated to support each other in collapsing the time frame of the learning curve and establish the path of least resistance to the end result in sharing best practices.   The concept of a book club works quite well with this.        Folks getting together to enhance their experience from the book invokes the same dynamic as this premise of gathering to get more out of website or other affinities able to be channeled through a website.

High touch needs to go with the high tech.

Proving my point on this is the roster of bloggers with me have already stirred it around for all of us to have our own gathering to make this venture of crafting reading and exchanges with all of you as much fun as possible along with being even that much more rewarding.

What type of a group can you start?     We guarantee you that once the "club" is organized fully and morphed to the collective interest of those involved, the results are magical.

Keep enjoying the people side of the internet.

It is exciting to see how varied use of the internet is being used to have fun and further professional aspirations.   We see im'ing, photos, videos, VOIP, webcam, and audio all connecting us over the web.   This is very empowering to an office anywhere and mobile office scenario.

Check out heywhateverconcept.com .   You will see an emergence from the subculture of the world.   With the Lake Country Area tapping into this, a backdrop for my blogs will reveal itself.

My wife Sue and I road the wave of Jerry Seinfeld to give our interests of an annual gathering a theme.   The story is that back when I was at Madison, I approached my dad to have a few of my my friends from High School days and football with that together for visiting.   He asked me how many were going to come over to his place I lived at during winter break.   I told him I was contacting about 10 people so maybe 7 would come.    The exact opposite happened.    They shared it with folks they were in touch with resulting in over 20 coming over.     My dad made pizzas and my buddies helped me out getting more beverages.   It ended up being quite a phenomenon that was reminisced on a handful of time with enjoyable whim.    

After I got married, I told Sue that I wanted to have a giving back event for all the folks that contribute to our quality of life and develop our lifestyle.    It was in the accommodation for folks saying yes we should get together but it never happens.    We decided we would carve our spot into the calendar and let folks decide whether they truly wanted to make sure to revisit with us.   Wanting to give it some zeal, we decided to incorporate the sitcom Seinfeld as we enjoyed it a lot with LaFollette house with other residence there.   The Festivus episode worked perfect for us as we wanted a universal scope to it.   The whimsy of the Costanza's gave us the right tone we wanted to start with.    We bring in Sumo Wresting as Feats of Strength.    Wagner Companies produces Festivus poles with is perfect for that amenity to be included.   

 We also do a live everygreen tree and otherwise pine burn in that we chose the First Friday in February to have the event making it the aftermath of the otherwise Holiday and Holly Day season.  

A few years ago, Sue put together a Scavenger Hunt which has become a signature piece of our Weekend Winter Blowout Extravaganza.    A couple years we had it on Saturday instead of Friday then going to Friday and Saturday involving hospitality and accommodations through the Friday night right through bridging the guests right through to Saturday as well.   Now it has been all three days of weekend for many years.

Please check out http://festivus.bradyst.com, http://festivuspro.wordpress.com, http://www.freewebs.com/festivus, and http://www.heywhateverconcept.com for more details and participating.

Thank you.