A little about Kevin Na. At age 8, Na’s family moved from South Korea to the United States. Took up the game a year later and by the time he left the junior golf program had become the top junior player in the U.S. Na has played professional golf for five years and earned over $2 million dollars in 2009 and 2010 making him a top 50 golfer in earnings during that time. In other words, Kevin is not like me, he is not  a duffer but a real pro golfer.

It is amazing the world wide interest this one hole failure and has created and the media coverage of the event. It seems we marvel in the failure of others. Maybe we can relate to the struggles on the golf course (who has not carded the double digit hole?). Maybe we empathize with the moment of failure we have all experienced. In any case, it seems allot of attention has been given to one hole of golf.

I am not surprised by the interest nor the reasons the interest exists. What amazes me is the character that Na shows while going through this adversity. Think about it. Nary a display of emotion and just a light hearted approach to the moment.  How many times do we see athletes use foul language, mouth slurs (caught on camera), throw towels, swing a bat at the water coolers, get in the face of an official and generally just have a temper tantrum each time things do not go there way? It happens all the time. It is the norm. What is not the norm is someone showing some character in the face of adversity and keeping a smile on his face even though he just carded one of the worst par 4 scores in PGA history. Now, that is a lesson for all of us on handling adversity.

It just wouldn’t be a picnic without the ants.  ~Author Unknown

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Of the entire book, the portion about creating enchanted employees was my favorite. We all depend on people to assist us and this book cut right to the heart of motivation and creating an environment where everyone can grow and succeed. The book goes on sale to today, to this point in time I have never endorsed a book but I gladly endorse Guy’s new book “Enchantment.” *Nope, I am not being paid a cent and doing this only because I love the book!

The book is a can’t miss pick and you will simply be enchanted by it.

Below is a video that summarized the book and a link where to pick up your copy.

Click here to pick up a copy >>> Guy Kawasaki’s “Enchantment”

Since the launch of the #140conf events, conferences have taken place in a number of BIG cities including: Los Angeles, London , Barcelona, SXSW (Austin), New York City, Washington D.C., Tel Aviv and San Francisco.

At these events we have explored the effects of twitter on a wide range of topics including: Celebrity, “The Media”, Advertising, Politics, Fashion, Real Estate, Music, Education, Public Safety, Public Diplomacy and quite a few other topics. #140conf is a ground breaking opportunity to look at the effects of the real-time web on the people and the businesses inside of and around the world.

We are planning our part of the presentation to discuss the impact of using “the technology of now” to reach goals in social good and making an impact in the world we live in.

For more information on the event, go to http://140conf.com.

• Custom importance filters,
• Label categorization,
• “Important” and “Everything Else” settings, and
• Ease of email “catch-up” after long absences such as vacations.

To learn more about the upcoming features, watch the video below and click here to go to Google’s info page on Priority Inbox.

Google: “Email is great, except when there’s too much of it. Priority Inbox automatically identifies your important email and separates it out from everything else, so you can focus on what really matters.”

This year we (Lloyd Zeigler and myself) have submitted a very special panel proposal to South by Southwest 2011 (SXSW 2011)  for consideration to present at the Interaction portion of the conference. In this panel we will tell the story a group of college age kids from around the US that have joined together with one of  the world’s most respected humanitarian organizations, Food for the Hungry, to make a real difference. For a more detailed description of the presentation, please see below.

Your vote to have this panel at one of the world’s largest conferences is critical. Voting from the public accounts for 30% of the decision-making process for SXSW panel programming. Also important in this process is the SXSW Advisory Board (40%) and the input of the SXSW staff (30%). We encourage you to go to the Panel Picker page for the presentation and vote. If you have never voted at SXSW before you will need to fill out a 30 second secure, no spam registration to vote.

This presentation will be unique to a venue like SXSW. It is a faith based effort to mobilize people behind a common cause to make an extraordinary difference. The story deserves to be told and the only way it can be is with your help.

Below is a detailed description of the proposed panel.

Please choose our panel at SXSW 2011

We interviewed House of Heroes a while back on Build the Church, you can find that interview by clicking here >>> “Build the Church Interview with House of Heroes”

Dallas area based woot! has been acquired by Amazon. And it seems to me, woot! is determined to stay true to it’s course of a great deal(s) everyday that attracts lots and lots of traffic. It also seems with this “announcement video” woot! is determined to keep its fun and quirky personality.

The lesson is this…

Being different, fun and a value is what made woot! a great site. As long as they continue to do so, they will continue to be a great site. And guess what, Amazon will get great value from the purchase.   Don’t lose the personality that made your corporation great and miss out on the huge returns coming from that big payday.

According to Wikipedia “Boxee is a cross-platform freeware home theater PC (HTPC) program with a 10-foot user interface and social networking features designed for the living-room TV. Boxee is initially a fork of the free and open source XBMC media center software which Boxee uses as an application framework for its GUI and media player core platform, together with some custom and proprietary additions.”

Ok…now rub your glazed over eyes and watch the short video below

Starting right now, three of our podcasts; Bedtime Stories My Kids Love, Bible Stories My Kids Love and Build the Church can all be found on Boxee! So if you have Boxee, just do a search for the podcast and enjoy!