Okay this is my new favorite thing ever,for today. Have you ever been up in a front of a crowd and wished you knew what they were thinking?  Well do I have a solution for you. 

You can create a free interactive poll and get your audience members to respond using just their cell phones.  No need to buy those goofy handheld devices, now everyone in your audience, including that guy who forgot to turn off the ringer on his cellphone, can vote on a poll and you can share the results live on screen. 

Checkout www.polleverywhere.com for all of the cool details.  Basically you create a question - either multiple choice or requiring a text answer and they publish it on the web. Then they provide either a text message code that your audience uses to vote, or a number for them to use share their text answer.  They offer a free service and more advanced paid options. You can embed the polls into your website and what's even better -you can download the poll as a PowerPoint slide and it will update with polling results. See my examples below.

Don't just guess what your audience is thinking!  Go ahead and ask. 

Sample poll created for text messaging.

Same poll using HTML code they provide.

Today I had the most amazing day.  I spent it among the most interesting, inspiring, talented creative women.  They were attendees at an event right here in Pleasanton called Convenzione, which is a gathering for mixed media artists.  And what is a CPA doing in the midst of such a clearly creative gathering, you might be asking?  Hoping that some of that creative coolness might splash off onto me, that's what. 

Growing up a numbers person who shared a room with a very talented watercolor artist was not easy.  I longed to be able to see things in vivid colors, like the kinds that flew off my sister's paintbrush. I wanted to know why she kept erasing lines that looked perfectly good to me and marvelled when her finished painting reflected nuances that I had missed in the live subject of her work.  My Mom shares the vision and can rearrange a room to make it feel special, can create decorations for any event, can pull fabric into shapes, while I can only appreciate the visionary language they both speak.  But I am an avid appreciator. 

At today's event, I had the pleasure of hearing SARK speak and inspire these women to even greater heights.  They shared, they laughed, they grew. 

I dressed as I imagined an artist would and hoped that I might blend into the crowd.  Maybe if I got the look just right, they might think I belonged in their midst.  I should probably read up on something cool and interesting before I go. I pulled out my Thinking Visually book for a quick update.

But what I discovered is that artists are not artists without an audience.  Every artist needs someone to marvel at their works.  To oooh and ahh at the miracles they create from broken china, or pieces of wood, and that we are not so different after all.  That we each long to express ourselves in some form and that we are all creating something - whether it is children, or stories, or even dinner, we are all creators and we are more alike than we are different. 

Once you start looking, they pop up everywhere.  There are a ton of nerd sites. There are also a number of geek sites but they can do their own PR. 

So here are some of the ones I've visited lately and their area of expertise:

Nerd's Eye View   - an amazing site containing lots of travel information and great writing. Also great photos.  I follow her on Twitter. 

 Nerd Girls - a website devoted to girls who like Math and Science.  Created by a team of girls at Tufts University, it's changing the world one nerd at a time.  And btw the girls pictured are also quite attractive. Apparently "Nerd" is the new "Hot".

N-e-r-d - a new band with a guerilla on their home page and disturbing guerilla noises when you enter. They are apparently quite popular as I read about them regularly.

Nerd Approved - regular write ups of a ton of cool gadgets.  It will keep your inner nerd entertained for days.  

And if you are looking to be an actor, you need to check out auditions for this play The Nerd - which about an unfortunate hero who seems to be related to my favorite leading man, Mr. Bean. 

While not really a domain, this article caught me by surprise. From the Nisqually Valley News:

On March 30, Rainier resident Lori Kellogg took her two dogs for an afternoon walk. Bryars allegedly shot Nerd, a chocolate lab, in the leg after he ducked under a fence to smell something.Nerd’s entire left hind leg had to be amputated as a result of the shooting. Bryars was one of two people staying in a fifth-wheel trailer, where Kellogg originally believed the shots came from. “All I want out of anything is that this doesn’t happen again,” Kellogg said. “You can’t randomly shoot things.” Since his accident, Nerd has been doing better.He’s resumed swimming.“Nerd can swim as good as he ever did,” Kellogg said.

Poor dog! People are always picking on us nerds. Who wouldn't be tempted to "duck under a fence to smell something?"  Makes you wonder what she named her other dog, doesn't it?

What's your favorite nerd domain?

Once you start doing the "social media" thing you just keep on going.  I have been on Twitter a while now and am still waiting for the ahah! moment. But I am really enjoying following some smart and apparently, way more interesting, people who have lots of cool stuff to talk about.

The problem with having a blog and Twitter and all of those other places where you go to be connected is that they impose this pressure to be interesting.  I mean, who wants to hear about my trip to the dry cleaners, the fiddling with Peachtree Software installs (conflicts with other programs), my attempts at making marketing calls for multiple clients, my search for that @#$%^ missing video CD, the constant trips to the fridge for iced tea ( note my TWIT entry below- today is day 3 of Diet Coke withdrawals - hoping to kick my 2 pack a day habit), the constant bio breaks resulting from previous iced tea overload, reading about writing, writing about writing, looking for inspiration, working on surveys in Survey Monkey (what a great product!), seeking "victims" who are willing to take said survey, working on proposals for new clients.

Okay so that proves that I haven't done anything blog- or Twitter- worthy.  Sorry to put you through that.  But there is a point here somewhere. 

I have talked to clients about writing blogs and they always say the same thing - I don't have anything to write about. But they do. And people want to learn about their human-ness. Their trials and tribulations. Not the marketing drivel.  I want to read about other Diet Coke addicts. The point is, once you start writing, you see things differently. Your eyes are opened to new experiences. Things just start to appear.  And the act of Twitting (or whatever you call it) is similar.  It causes you to be more observant somehow.  And that my friends, is where those keen insights come from.  

Good grief.  I need a Diet Coke. 

No matter how hard you try to force inspiration, like a poorly trained dog, it just doesn't always obey. 

I find that creating ideas is like making a stew.  You throw in a whole bunch of new experiences, sprinkle in a few carrots and let it sit long enough and eventually you'll end up with something palatable.  I read 4 or 5 books at a time - not literally at the same time, I just read parts of different books at different times of the day. I rarely read all the way through a single book, unless it's really good fiction. 

It is amazing how the books all begin to overlap at some point. I am reading a book about Improvisation, just finished one about the brain, and two or three books on customer loyalty.  Believe it or not there are common threads.  I like to mix up the perspectives too to make it interesting. 

And it is also amazing how something you read in a book will suddenly work it's way out of your mind in the middle of some critical project.  I am bad at remembering the authors and titles, so I can't always get back to the source, but the impact of the words lingers. 

I think the secret is to get exposed to everything imaginable and the further removed the information is from your normal every day view of the world, the better.  Hence the book on Comic Books that I just finished.  It was an amazingly intellectual look at the process of communicating through pictures, which is a struggle for me. 

People have been saying that the Internet and electronic media will eliminate books but if that is the case, why is everyone I know currently in the process of writing a book?  Is anyone going to read what we write? 

I love reading about the brain. I'm sure that is a nerdy thing to do but I can't help it.  My latest favorite brain book is called "The Brain that Changes Itself" by Norman Doidge, MD.  Part of my fascination is really fear. 

You see, I have always had a terrible memory.  As I get older, I think my kids are going to forget that I have always had a bad memory and start blaming my memory loss on Alzheimer's.  You see if I passed down my bad memory in their genes, they are going to forget how forgetful I am.  See my dilemma? 

This book takes a fascinating look at the brain and offers great encouragement that you can constantly improve brain function and grow new connections, so there is hope.  It combines scientific experiments with interesting stories of real people and scientists. I really enjoyed learning about all the missed opportunities to make my kids smarter when they were little - apparently I should have been teaching them 3 or 4 languages when they were little. Their brains were far more maleable when they were young and additional languages leave a lasting impact.  If "southern" counts as a second language we might be OK.

I have to get back to reading if I can remember where I left that book.

I am working with a client who asked me to create a title for a presentation  so I came up with something along the lines of  "7 Things Your Clients Want you to Know ."  I wanted to use a number in the title because people like this system of organizing information.  

 So which number should you use? 

Here’s why I chose "7":

#1. I was trying to be different (or "Zag") as one of my recent favorite books call it.  

Think about a number that has significance for your topic or seems the funniest if you’re going for humor.  7 is funnier than 6.  (Trust me on this.  “Gerbil” is also funnier than “Hamster” and “Kalamazoo” is much funnier than “Detroit.”)

#2.  I wanted to use an odd rather than an even number.  I could have used 5 or 9 as they are also odd numbers, but I chose 7.  

Odd numbers are asymmetrical.  I can’t explain it.  If you are a symmetry freak, ignore this rule and do whatever you want.  

#3. It is decidedly different from “10” which I think has been overdone.  That makes it uninteresting IMHO.  

Top 10 lists are everywhere.   "10" is trite.  We need to boycott all 10’s starting now.  In fact, let’s change from a base 10 system of numbering to a base 7.   

Use a number with impact if you want to stand out - or not if you want to blend in.

#4. “3.1416” things would have been too hard to come up with.   And my slide rule is in the safety deposit box.  

Sometimes the content will dictate the right number to use.

#5.  “7” is substantial enough to promise enough content for an hour presentation but not big enough to be overwhelming.  

You might call it the Goldilocks number. ( Right-sized with just the right amount of information promised. ) 

#6.   It worked for the deadly sins – right?  They’re memorable. 

Memorable is important.  People will remember the title and tell other people about your presentation. 

#7.    The word “Seven” is symmetrical when written out.  Hopefully this gets me extra credit with the people I lost on point # 2.  And the numeral has a nice clear shape, and “7” has a high likelihood of being rolled in a game of dice.   (Maybe I should have gone with "6".)

Look for a title that makes efficient use of the space you have to fill and also has good visual appeal.  You might be more of a “3” fan, but I am happy with the “7” .

So what happened with my client?  He asked me to change the "7"  to "10".  Let's just say I'm getting "Ziggy" with it.