This weekend, a friend of mine invited me to her Halloween party that her and all of her housemates were throwing.   Parties are always a blast.  For me it’s always fun when you get to hang out with cool folks in a relaxed setting but I think there is always a certain slight level of nervousness when you go to a party and you only know one person really well.

At this party, I got to spend time with my friend, which was great, but I also got to spend  some time with her roommates and her roommates friends, which was great too.   They were all super chill and welcomed me into the group like I was a member of the family.

This was a huge blessing for me, partially because of the fact that it had been a long week and it was good to have some time to just relax with cool folks but it was also a reminder to myself that as I walk through life that I don’t walk so fast that I miss out on all the great people who are around me.    There are so many great opportunities to show real unconditional love and be a blessing to the folks that you interact with.

A lot of my day-to-day is interacting with customers or planning how we’re going to do so.   This notion of unconditional love or treating customers like they’re a part of your company… part of your family is an important part of being successful.   As my friend Mike McDerment put it, customer service is an opportunity not just a cost center.  When you approach your customers in this way, that’s when you create the experience that makes them want to come back.  That’s when the customer wants to tell their friends.  That’s when your customers will go out-of-the-way to help you however they can.

I travel a lot for work.  I’ve become very familiar with a lot of hotels and airports across the country.  I’ve already been quite outspoken about how much The Kimpton Hotel chain has gone out of their way to show that as a customer I’m very important to them.

But this isn’t just something that you do in the office and then you give up in every other aspect of your life.  Love should be something that permeates every aspect of your lifestyle.

Speaking of my travel, similar circumstances to the Halloween party story, when I travel I’ll often only know one person where I’m going or not even know anyone.    There’s a certain level of scariness or uncertainty to that.

But I’ve been amazed that as I’ve traveled to places like for example San Francisco, Austin, or Seattle that I’ve been greeted so warmly by people who are total strangers.  The various tech folks in the tech communities have just included me as a part of the gang.  They’ll invite me to hang out, like I’m someone who’s been living in that town for the last 10-15 years.

You can’t help but leave that town with a sense of excitement and happiness.  You leave with a new set of close friends that you didn’t have when you came.

Can you relate to what I’m saying?  When it happens to you, it has a pretty profound impact.  I guess when it doesn’t happen, when you don’t know anyone at the party and everyone’s a jerk that would have a pretty profound impact on you as well.  I’ve definitely had those experiences as well.

What do you think?  Have stories to share?

Mashable’s Pete Cashmore wrote an interesting column for CNN entitled, “Privacy is dead, and social media hold smoking gun.“  He writes…

Those who insert themselves into as many channels as possible look set to capture the most value. They’ll be the richest, the most successful, the most connected, capable and influential among us. We’re all publishers now, and the more we publish, the more valuable connections we’ll make.

Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare, Fitbit and the SenseCam give us a simple choice: participate or fade into a lonely obscurity.

In a lot of ways I agree and am excited by where the world’s going.  In some ways, what he’s saying scares me because it all can be taken too far.

What are your thoughts?

Over the weekend, I attended Public Media Camp and really learned about all the things that public media groups like NPR and PBS offer.  For whatever reason, despite the fact that I have a lot of friends that are die-hard NPR fan,  it’s really never anything that I got into.

I’ve dabbled with “This American Life” but that’s it.

So… what shows would you recommend to a NPR newbie?

My dad is a communicator.  He’s been everything from a speech writer to a journalist and worked in a lot of different situations where he’s had to get a message across.   One of our favorite things to do, usually while drinking many cups of coffee and beer now that I’m older, is talk about the good practices in communicating a message.

One consistent thing that’s always come up, whether it’s been talking about a good article or the sermon we heard on Sunday, is whether they included what we’d call a “so what.”  There needs to be some application.  You need to tell people why what you’re saying or doing is applicable to their lives otherwise they’ll feel really disconnected and not pay attention.

It’s definitely something that I think a lot about and try to do as I communicate the various messages that I’m trying to get across.

Maybe this is a function of the place that I’m at in my life but I’ve also been thinking a lot about my “so what.”  Why am what I doing that is important, applicable, and of interest to the rest of man kind?  How am I making a contribution to our collective well being?  I want to be doing something that matters.

I work in the world of technology, specifically things like online communities and social networks, which seem like they can all too often get pigeon-holed as frivolous or banal.  People have this perception of social networks as this place where people waste time by sharing videos of cats.  Yes, that does happen but there’s so much more to it.

We’re helping people use technology to be more transparent about what’s going on in their lives with the hope that this will help them connect, form relationships, and communities that encourage development and advancement of these ideas and each other.

I know you’re thinking to yourself.  ”Yes Justin. That’s nice but how does that play out in a practical way?”

Let’s take my running as example.  By using to technology to help to start to be more transparent about my struggle with my physical fitness and my running, I’ve been able to connect with all kinds of people who’re at different stages of the process who’ve been a HUGE blessing to me or I’ve been able to be a blessing to.  We’ve been able to form this community.

In America, well maybe just in Washington DC, we’re having this huge dialog about the state of health care.  Preventive care and how you can keep yourself from getting sick is a big part of this.   What would happen if were open about our physical and mental health, looked out for each other, and encouraged each other, like my experiences with running?   Maybe we’d be healthier and not be having the same problems, which cost so much money later in our lives.

Yes you can take it too far but I do feel like there is this great tremendous benefit from the connections  you make by putting yourself and what you’re doing out there.

I feel like a big part of my “so what” is helping to facilitate that.  It’s helping to connect people together so that they can share the enjoyed benefit of living life together.

I’ve been really blessed to find a job where not only the position is about helping to foster community and building relationships but the product is about helping people to share and connect together over the things that they find interesting.

Have you had that “aha” moment about your purpose or your “so what”?  If so, what has it been for you and how are you playing it out?

About a month ago, my really good friend Kat asked if I wanted to join her and some friends in running the Army 10 mile race here in Washington, DC.   I laughed because it feels like the last time that I ran was in middle school when I ran the mile for the President’s Physical Fitness Award challenge.

We talked and agreed that a 5k might be more my speed considering that I am such the running nube.  So… I signed up for a 5k that’s at the end of October.

All of a sudden it hit me.  I actually had to start running.  Hahaha…

After going out a couple of times, I realized that I wanted something that’d help me track my progress.  I had heard about the iPhone app RunKeeper.  There was a free version so I thought I’d give it a try.

RunKeeper uses the iPhone’s GPS to track your route on a map, your speed, minutes per mile, and all kinds of other data goodies. When you’re done with your run, you just hit “Save Trip” and it will upload all of the data to the Web and you can check out all the details on their Web site.  It’s great.

For me, the best feature by far has been that you can share your run with your friends.  They use Facebook Connect and Twitter Connect so that the run can be automatically posted to these sites.  They use AddThis for sharing to  everywhere else.  :-)  (Disclosure:  I work on AddThis.)

By sharing my runs with my friends, I ended up finding myself amidst a number of different communities, all of which were SUPER supportive of what I was doing…

One was existing runners. All of a sudden, all of my friends who actively run came out and were talking with me about techniques, tips, and tricks.  It’s awesome.

Secondly, I’ve met all kinds of folks who like me may not be at their peak of physical fitness and had thought about running but had never had the encouragement to do it.  By sharing my journey with running with the world, I’ve been able to be an encouragement to those who wouldn’t have otherwise run.  It’s pretty cool.

As demonstrated by the movie We Live In Public, putting your life online can go too far and be detrimental.  I think my experiences with putting my running journey online shows the positives of living in public.  It helps us to connect and form community with like minded people.   That community been a source of great encouragement and motivation for me and I’ve been able to help be an encouragement and motivation for others.

I definitely believe that part of being human is that you live in community with others.   How much better would the world be if we were honest with those in our community about where we struggle.  It would show us all the great opportunities we have to lift each other up.

So… we have all these great tools like blogs, Twitter, and Facebook at our disposal.  They allow us to build these large communities around our thoughts and ideas which is amazing.

What’s the best book that shows you how to use these tools to build that community?

We have plenty of books on the phenomenon of social media and what it brings to the table.  We have lots of books on how to use social media.  What are the best books on how to use the books to build community?

I want it to talk about things like…

• being a community manager/should i hire one
• finding your community members or ideal community members
• getting to know your community members
• loving your community
• growing your community
• measuring the effects of your community

Is there a book that covers these topics?

I’ve been having these amazing conversations with all these friends who aren’t in tech.  They are filmmakers, pastors, authors,  and musicians.  They want to use these tools to build community and I want to hand them something which is going to help point them in the right direction.

Part of my brain says, “Justin, you should write this book.”

Feels like I’ve been cruising through a lot of books lately.  I’m reading The Waiter Rant right now.  Prior to that,  I was reading As We Forgive, Ignore Everybody, and The Last Best Hope.

Every time, by the end of the book, I’d leave with the same feeling.  I was pumped.  The book got me feeling passionate about some issue.  Inevitably, I’d ask myself, “now what?”

Media, especially books, have this ability to catalyze people to action.   Every time someone puts down a book, walks out of a movie theater, listens to a CD, or reads a blog post, there is an opportunity.  If people like what they saw, they’ll be like “give me some more of where that came from” or “how do I continue the conversation?”

All too often there’s nothing.

I don’t know where you all stand politicly but I conservatively minded when it comes to politics and have been incredibly frustrated with the current state of the Republican party.  When I read Joe Scarborough’s book The Last Best Hope, I was pumped.   I wanted to find other people who espoused these same values so that we could come together and get something done.  But there was nothing.

I’ve been a long time fan of the band Iron & Wine.  I’ve bought just about every CD they’ve produced.  If they came to the DC area in concert, I’d probably be there front row.  Here’s the kicker.  They did come to the DC area and I didn’t know about.   After the many CDs that I’ve purchased, there has never been a way to tap in for more.

I don’t know about everyone else but when I find media I like, I don’t just want this singular experience.  I want some more.   I wanna connect with people who are just as excited as I am.

Everyone makes it so stinking hard.

“Shake the Dust” is a pretty outstanding poem by Anis Mojgani. Watch it right now…

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about shaking the dust.  Feels too often we just settle.   We get excited by the “shiny objects” and we forget what we’re really here to do.  (This is definitely a topic that I want to write about more.)

How have you been shaking the dust?

So… if you’ve been asking yourself, why I haven’t been blogging here, it’s because I still struggle with what to write about.

This blog has predominantly been about the cross section of technology and people.   Over the last 3 months, I haven’t seen a whole lot that I could say that hasn’t been said by others.  Plus there isn’t a whole lot that new that’s getting my mental neurons working in the way which forces me to run to my computer and write.

I still want to write but just had to find something else to write about.  If you know me, you know that one of my passions is food.  My joke is that “eating is a lifestyle that I take breaks from.”

For me, food has always been something that’s brought parts of my various communities together.   When my family gets together around the dinner table, we will sit around and chat, even hours after all the food has been cleared away.  Some of my favorite times here in DC have been sitting around my dining room table with close friends and a few bottles of wine in the middle of the table.

Food has always been something that I’ve been fascinated by and enjoyed discovering.

I’ve decided that it’d be the subject of my new blog.  The blog is called Justin Loves Food.

This doesn’t mean that I’ll completely stop writing this blog.  I’m sure that I’ll come back to it from time to time.  My day job is still working at a Web startup.  As I run across new things and ideas, I’ll be here to chronicle it for you.

In the mean time, I’m going to chronicle my culinary adventures on Justin Loves Food.  Check it out, I’ve already gotten about 15 posts up.

In some of the posts, I’ll write about very geo-specific things, like a restaurant in a specific part of the country but what I’ll try and do is always impart something that I learned while eating there so that there will always be something for someone.

Send me your feedback – jthorp@gmail.com

Hey guys, a few months ago I had the distinct pleasure of taking an improv class called “In the Moment”, at the Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington DC under a master teacher Oran Sandel.  It was really an amazing experience and it’s something that I highly recommend to anyone.

You come home after class so psyched because you have all this creative energy running through your veins at a level that you probably never have experienced before.   More importantly, you leave the class having a better understanding of how to live “in the moment” as well as more whole understanding of how to communicate with the people you interact with around you.

Well if you live in the DC area, you really need to sign up for his class which is starting June 8th.  Sign up for this Masters Acting Class at the Shakespeare Theater Company RIGHT NOW.

I’m not getting paid by these guys to write this.  I just really really dig the class.

Here’s the summary…

The art of improvisation is one we all practice every day, whether we are doctors, lawyers, artists or businesspeople. This class is offered as a way to add layers of mindfulness and technique to that skill set, thereby increasing confidence and communication skills, as well as enriching the quality of life. Through improvisational theatre experiences for the mind, body and voice, workshop participants will gain a deeper understanding of the role of imagination, playfulness and creativity in daily life. Anyone wishing to pursue improvisation and theatre performance will also find the skills taught in this class invaluable.