Stuff I Learned Yesterday

I met Chris Brogan over the weekend. Who is Chris Brogan? Chris is a New York Times bestselling author of 6 books about social media, achieving goals, building influence, entrepreneurship, and other similar topics. He’s a frequent keynote speaker at conferences about those topics and he’s consulted for companies like Microsoft, Disney, Coke, Google, and a bunch of others. To folks like you and me, he’s kind of a big deal. He at least has a pretty impressive resume.

Chris was invited to be the opening keynote speaker at Podcast Movement. He gave a very interesting and humorous presentation about the way podcasters should treat listeners. After his keynote was over, he hung out the rest of the day. He was part of another panel later in the day, but other than the time he was on that panel, Chris was out mingling with all of us with less impressive resumes.

He didn’t go back to his hotel room and hide. He didn’t have a group of people around him to keep people away. No, it was just the opposite. He took time to meet every person, sign every book, hear every story, accept every business card, and shake every hand that was offered to him.

I’m not the type of person who typically gets enamored with celebrity. That’s not to say that I don’t get nervous when I get the opportunity to interview a celebrity. I do. But that has more to do with the anticipation of the interview. I get nervous no matter who the person is in those situations. I even get nervous when I’m the one being interviewed.

Since I don’t get enamored with celebrity, I don’t go out of my way to speak to them unless I have a legitimate reason to. In Chris’ case, I had a legitimate reason. Read More...

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I just returned from a fantastic weekend at Podcast Movement 2014. The experience exceeded my expectations and I can not wait to return next year. I’ll be sharing a different story about Podcast Movement 2014 every day this week.

You may recall that we had a Golden Spiral Media community meetup last friday night while we were in Dallas for Podcast Movement. Dallas traffic is normally bad, but the traffic on Friday was among the worst that I’ve ever experienced there. It took us over an hour longer than expected to drive down from Oklahoma City.

While we were sitting in Dallas traffic I got a text from another podcasting friend of mine, Jason Cabassi from The Walking Dead Cast. Jason asked if a friend of his named Michael could join us.

Jason and I last saw each other at New Media Expo in January of this year. At that conference Jason also introduced me to Michael. I spent a lot of time at New Media Expo hanging out with Jason and Michael. We had dinner together one night and went over to the Venetian for gelato one day. Of course, Michael was more than welcome to come to the meet up.

When we finally arrived at the hotel, we checked in and headed for our room to drop off our luggage. We didn’t have a lot of time to relax before it was time for the meet up. The time soon arrived for us to head down to the lobby to meet up with those who were attending Podcast Movement before heading over to the restaurant. We got on the elevator and I was excited to immediately recognize a face of a familiar podcaster standing right at the front. I enthusiastically greeted him by yelling out his first name, “Caesar!” The friend smiled, said hello, and asked me how things were going. Read More...

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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, my favorite coffee mug, besides my Golden Spiral Media coffee mug, is the one I bought at the original Starbucks in Seattle, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I’m pleased to bring you another installment of the Friday Forum.

Friday Forum

The post 110- Friday Forum appeared first on Golden Spiral Media- Entertainment Podcasts, Technology Podcasts & More.

I loved driver’s ed. What’s not to love, right? Every kid dreams of one day getting behind the wheel and experiencing 4 wheels of freedom. I took drivers ed my sophomore year of high school and I was paired with a guy named Wayne. Wayne was a senior.

While I was taking the class so that I could learn how to drive, Wayne was taking the class so that he could get a reduced rate on his insurance. He’d already been driving for a couple of years and didn’t need near the instruction of myself, or anyone else in the class really. This worked out in my favor.

On some days in drivers ed we studied state laws, sat through lectures, watched odd and slightly gruesome safety videos, or took tests. On other days we got behind the wheel and drove around town.

Of course, my favorite days were the ones when I got to drive, but I really liked the entire class. I did really well on the tests. As far as I can recall, I only ever missed one test question the entire duration of the class. I still remember the question because I felt silly for missing it.

The question was, what do you do when you come to a blinking red light. It was a multiple choice question and I circled the answer that said that you should wait for the light to turn green, and then proceed. Of course, the light will never turn green in that situation and the correct answer is to treat it like a stop sign. It was a simple case of me overlooking the word “blinking.”

When I was 15 ½ I took the written test to get my permit. I did great, although I did miss a question. This time the question had to do with bicyclists. I didn’t know that they were supposed to ride in the same direction of traffic. Read More...

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A couple of years ago I found myself overwhelmed by my schedule. Between work, family, church, my social life, and everything else I found it hard to keep up. I got stressed out and started becoming irritable. I was exhausted.

I was talking with a friend about how my schedule was too crowded and I was having a hard time cutting things out so that it could be more manageable.

This friend used the phrase plate size to describe a person’s schedule. He also talked about how everyone has their own plate size, some people can handle a lot and some people can’t handle as much. Listen to this episode or read more...

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