A Fresh Year, New Chances, New Choices...

Yes, we're posting another welcome to the new year!

Why?  Because the last few days runneth over with an abundance of joys, some minute, some majestic, and all magnificent:   a chilly but serene walk around the lake as the sun slipped into a gold horizon; new-found old friends; an authentic Ethiopian jebena for making spicy, molten coffee; a brother-in-law who will soon leave the hospital to greet a new year with his wife and children; the generous neighbours who haven't yet taken down their Christmas lights; the jingling harnesses of the coach-&-horses as holiday-makers make one more chance to revel; the friend who invited me to share her Christmas celebrations.  Life is good.

However you welcome your new year -- sleeping through the toll of midnight, dancing in the streets, toasting champagne, or in quiet candlelight -- here is our New Year's toast to java-pals & Twitterverse compadres.  May yours be a safe & glittering 2014!

See you on the patio in 2014! ;-)

Caveat Venditor, Starbucks...

This cartoon is by the ever-brilliant Mick Stevens, New Yorker magazine
Buy the framed print at http://www.condenaststore.com/-sp/Braithwaite-Starbucks-How-may-we-help-you-New-Yorker-Cartoon-Prints_i8543850_.htm

"What Starbucks has created around coffee is

an extension of the front porch.

If you look at the UK, the English pub is an extension of

people's homes but for a different beverage.

Our stores have become a gathering and meeting place

in addition to the coffee."

~Howard Schultz, Chairman/CEO Starbucks

After several weeks of finding local store and office personnel unresponsive to issues regarding faulty Wi-Fi and an approaching remodel of the store, a group of us who are regulars at Starbucks Location X decided to "bump the thread".  We met, listed our specific concerns, and Gitanajava Productions drafted the following letter, written to Starbucks via their website.  We posted our letter the evening of Friday, 6th April 2012.  Now, we're waiting to see what, if any, response we'll get from Starbucks.

Buckle your seatbelts, here we go...

Your Nonprofit: Ready for Take-Off or About to Crash & Burn?

Photo Courtesy of NASA.gov

Fiscal Sponsorship for

Wannabe & Transitioning Nonprofits

Are you the founder or idea person behind a wannabe nonprofit organisation?  Is your fledgling nonprofit poised and ready to raise funds, but lacking legal nonprofit status?  Are you the designated hitter for the turnaround of an existing nonproft that's drowning in a quicksand of legal, financial, and operational troubles?  Fiscal Sponsorship may be the solution you need.

The Coffeehouse Blues

Gitanajava = Gypsy Loves Coffee

(The original Rajah Coffee label was designed by Henri Meunier, 1897,

find it at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rajah-coffee-ad-1897-henri-meunier.jpg)

(This post was originally written, published, and distributed under the title The Coffee Canticle in December 2008.  Although the coffeehouse in question has long since passed on to the celestial heights, the thoughts and sentiments about what remain the same.)


Starbucks #6262, alias Lower Greenville Starbucks, officially closed 2 PM, Friday 19th December 2008.  Even before the farewell party ended at 6 PM, the guerrillas from Starbucks HQ arrived.  While the corpus delicti was still warm, they began taping sheets of brown butcher paper across the windows:  pulling the shroud tight.


When is a cup of coffee more than a cup of coffee?  What recombinant DNA transforms a mere java joint into a legend?

Buried Treasure, Part 2

5 Steps to Creating a LinkedIn Recommendation
To view full sized, go to http://tiny.cc/Endorse

In the original Buried Treasure article, we discussed the professionals' methods for requesting, shaping, and leveraging effective recommendations from colleagues and clients.  However, in my perfect world, I would have preceded that instruction with tonight's post and asked this crucial question --

Forgotten Heroes, Abandoned Children, Devalued Seniors

1 of 5 prototypes for Stony Mountain Ranch logo & bizcards.
See them all at http://tiny.cc/STONY

The Challenge

What do the following people have in common?

• Aged-out foster children
• Military veterans returning to civilian life
• Devalued seniors

Buried Treasure

Not long ago, I wrote a colleague, the former chief exec of a client organisation, asking for his recommendation.  We have a sound, genial professional and personal relationship, and we have communicated regularly by phone and email since parting ways a few months ago.  Although we didn't get the happy ending we strove for throughout our last adventure, I was proud of the exceptional effort and dedication we had given.

I'd spent four years nurturing the growth of his organisation, first on a pro bono basis, and when the small but feisty nonprofit hit a sizable financial and regulatory speed bump in late 2009 and the crisis took on life-or-death dimensions in early 2010, I stepped in as full-time formal consultant to him and the wounded organisation.  I liked these people, I liked their organisation, and I wanted success for them.

Bring Down Your Wall!

Building the Berlin Wall, August 1961

Don't you hate it when you read an article, blogpost, or book you know you shoulda-coulda written (but didn't)?  Yeh, this is one of those times for me.  I hope you'll permit me a short ramble, fellow entrepreneurs.

Today, I came across a nifty CNET article by Dennis O'Reilly, How to Use Powerpoint Effectively.  I started kicking myself.

Lotsa Communicating, But Less Connecting?

This image courtesy of Steve Kryger, CommunicateJesus.com

During the Get Javanated! workshops I conduct for entrepreneurs' groups, I use a chart not dissimilar from this one discussed a year or so ago at Steve Kryger's church marketing blog, Communicate Jesus.  Customised to the special needs and challenges of each audience, I also include an additional building block:  blogs.


The best blogs can be superior  communication tools, with a level of intimacy and authenticity varying by how well the blogger at the hub performs his/her role as presenter and moderator.  Readers' comments and interchanges with the blog author and one another act as the sine qua non of how successfully this momentary intimacy is consummated.

To extend your thoughts re people feeling more lonely than ever despite today's Social Media Wonder Tools, consider what Wayne Cordeiro, senior pastor of New Hope Church, Oahu says in a talk entitled "People Hiding in Plain Sight" (the vidcast version at  http://www.enewhope.org/videob... shows the title as "Hidden in Plain Sight").

In a pair of sermons on Social Networking delivered 11th April 2010 (BFF - Best Friends Forever, Pastor Elwin Ahu) and 18th April (Hidden..., Cordeiro), Cordeiro and Ahu re-define and most importantly, re-direct, listeners' attention to the fact that digital communications -- Facebook, Twitter, texting, et al. -- are most successful when --

• (A) we remember the tools are meant to serve us and our needs for friendship and community (fellowship), and
• (B) we use these tools with forethought and intentionality.

"In this socially connected world, *people* are still not connected....In this world of social connectedness, it [social media] can never become a substitute for F2F, face to face....I want to challenge you today, when you see this social networking increase...use it to motivate yourself to go face-to-face with people."

New Hope's well-designed website contains a wide array of digital media -- livecasts with a chat room enabling viewers to ask questions and offer comments; downloadable vidcasts, podcasts, sermon notes, and newsletter; a journalling process for personal faith-building and to share as devotionals through "Doing Life Together"; a "prayer wall"; and "iNeed", their own online classified ads (imagine a scrupulously cleaned-up Craigslist!) -- plus, thoughtfully deployed social networking, New Hope Oahu could be held up as a model for the faith community of a church who have adapted well to modern realities. But, as Cordeiro and the pastoral staff consistently point out, the tools and toys would be hollow and meaningless without "'ohana".

In Hawaiʻi, 'ohana is family - extended, adopted, blood relatives, or anyone sharing fellowship in Christ with one another for an hour, a day, or a lifetime.  And when you have 'ohana, there are connections, face-to-face and heart-to-heart.  The Social Media Wonder Tools are there to serve the spirit of 'ohana by building and connecting the New Hope family.


When you and I review our own whiz-bang technomarvelous tools, let's do a reality check:  what spirit are we building?  Are we deepening and strengthening our connections or are we just beating our drums louder and longer?


Just asking....

See you on the patio!