First off, I can’t believe the time between posts. That needs to be fixed.

Tim McAlpine stated that William brought up a point about membership being optional. Interesting point in putting membership as an option instead of a given. Maybe the situation needs to be expanded.

We (credit unions) all have members, the law says you have to be a member to transact business with a credit union. Some credit unions have differentiated themselves by calling their members ‘customers’. The perception that seems to be driven here is that membership should have some value, it should be something that points you as being different. Membership implies ownership and with that you have some means of directing the course of the business usually by a voice at the voting booth. (there is another issue!) But membership in anything these days has a different set of values than when these organizations were originally setup. There is a book called ‘Bowling Alone’ which points to the deterioration of organized ways in which people relate to one another and are active in civil life. But that organized way of the past has changed. We can now begin the establishment of a relationship in a virtual world. Creating that type of relationship does not mean that human interaction in the future won’t include face-to-face events. It just means I don’t have to sign up for bowling by going to the bowling alley.

That may be the problem in the transition we are now facing. The membership (meaning) we required in the past is no longer a vital part of our future. Our usage of something is not dependent on us physically being there. We can be part of numerous transactions or events without leaving our home which in the past was not possible. Maybe the biggest issue is to create a new word that signifies this. The capacity to understand membership is difficult in our day and age and it comes with some baggage (we don’t have the time to belong to anything). Our interests don’t need to lie in a specific geographic area in order to see the value of a social networks. We need to view membership not as being optional but as being something different. The pillars are there for the older structures but they have also been expanded into areas we still need to determine.

Yogi Berra commented on the value of social networks by saying, “IF you don’t go to somebody’s funeral, they won’t come to yours.” If we don’t translate membership into something relevant it indeed does become optional.

Made a quick Mind Map of yesterday’s visit to Santa Fe

After these years of blogging the reasons behind it sometimes needs to be revisited.

I choose not to have a blog about business or under the banner of the credit union I work for. It had to be a personal view of whatever topic was to be written about. Being a spokesperson for your employer under the banner of an individual seems somewhat convoluted. Your thoughts would never be 100% yours. Similarily I did want to bring personal aspects of my life into play. The goal was to make it interesting, bring some discussion forward if possible and enjoy writing.

But there is this incredible challenge to somehow hold back at times in what is being written. You really don’t want to offend anyone by being too blunt. One’s pet peeves certainly aren’t everyones. Then there is the political realm. Some have called me a socialist, others a right wing capitalist. People’s politics are not necessarily linear either right or left and certainly not at the extremes. I’ve never met a true socialist or right winger, there is always a hint of the other realm when discussing something. When people really consider the actions of government and what it does to the ordinary citizen and themselves there is a commonality. Discount the challenges of an individuals economic status and means and most people are humanitarians. Maybe we all yearn for good and truthful government. We really are very altruistic.

When I look at the wealth of individuals I know it is apparent that we are doing pretty good these days. But that doesn’t give me reason to neglect those that are on hard times. There is no easy solutions for homelessness, drug addiction, problems with mental health, sickness, or poverty. Most of these issues don’t touch our lives and when we see them in our families or friends there is a silent pain created out of empathy. Those people that are not empathetic are of the greatest concern.

The ancient Greek poet, Pindar, has some wonderful insights that hold as true now as they did 2,500 years ago. Humans haven’t changed that much.

Forge thy tongue on an anvil of truth

And what flies up though it be but a spark

Shall have weight.

Pindar did have something to say about the challenge to sometimes keeping your thoughts to yourself. He did answer the question for me and put some meaning into why one blogs.

That which is not the grace of God is better far in silence.

Finally made it to August and the start of 4 weeks of holidays. Tomorrow and Wednesday will be the errand days to pick up everything that we need before we head south. Luckily the U.S. dollar is cheap right now so it is like your holiday just cost you 20% less. It should be raining by Thursday also so the departure is perfectly timed. 😉

Holidays do tend to go too fast. Before you know it you are back at work looking at an overflowing in-basket. But this year will be the strongest attempt to stay disconnected if only for my sanity. I think you can become too engrossed in your work so your personal life and what you really like doing gets put on the back burner. There is a huge backlog of books to read. I am currently reading The Greek Way by Edith Hamilton. It is a thorough exposition on the contrast of the ancient Greek culture with our modern concepts of life. It does seem much of the way we begin to think about the world around us still is influenced by this culture. The contrasts between then and now are not that great in certain aspects of your life but our modern way at solving problems, discussion and how we think is always changing. The Internet has started to make us realize the extent of individuals opinions and the ability to see this is slowly beginning to have some effect. I don’t think anyone knows where this will take us in the future.

It is a cloudy cool Monday morning and the list of things to do is just growing and well as thoughts around the following.

July and August on the Freeways. Once July rolls around the commuting time around here sometimes doubles. Everyone hits the road for the summer weekends and summer holidays. This morning CUWarrior tweeted “It’s easier than you think, people: stay in the right lane unless you’re passing someone”. He is right. What I love is those people that never use their rear view mirror and are oblivious to the line-up of vehicles behind them. Couple that with an extended cell phone call by the driver and you start thinking about alternate transportation such as bicycles.

Video killed the radio or Tweeting killed the blog. It does seem that conversations keep getting limited by the 140 character limit. Last week someone commented on a blog and before you knew it everyone had attached lengthy diatribes about the matter. It does seem if you have something to say that hits a nerve people will write something. Just typing this blog compared to quick Tweets does present a different challenge. Maybe blogging will become refined with people blogging because they really like to write. Maybe the next killer product will be a hybrid between Twitter/Blogging and Facebook.

The Olympics. I have to admit I am not a big fan of the Olympics. After the 1968 Olympic games in Mexico City with the Tlatelolco Massacre, the Olympic games in Munich, and now the huge pool of tax dollars being spent in Vancouver for next year’s games, it seems it is something of a facade. If its intention is to bring athletes together, something is getting lost in all the money spent and problems surrounding these Games. What I would like to see is a list of all the individuals who attend the opening ceremonies that make up the 47% of tickets that were not available for public purchase. Our provincial housing minister stated that the homeless problem might be solved with $100 million which the government currently doesn’t have. Yet the bobsled run was built for $104 million. Here is your choice, homeless or bobsledders, bobsledders or homeless. We will end up paying for the event but thank God I am not forced to watch any of it.

BC Lions. Friday’s nights game was very entertaining. Sure we lost but it went down to the last minute. It isn’t everyday you get to see the backup quarterback and a receiver kick the punts. A smaller but very noisy crowd.

Beta testing. Got picked to be a beta tester for a wonderful program. It is always fun to really spend some time taking a program apart and thinking about its possibilities. And sometimes you get to uncover the easter eggs.

Father’s Day and the first day of summer! Seems like yesterday it was Christmas. This means the kids are out of school cramming themselves into the malls, that the freeways will have all the holiday warriors with their campers out in the fast lane of the freeway and everybody you try to phone in the next 2 months will be on holidays.

The big event at work starts tomorrow. We begin upgrading various software systems in preparation for the launch of MemberNote3 on Wednesday morning. There is a lot of clean up work and final testing to do. We have notified all the members via email or text messaging that service will be a bit unstable the next few days. By the end of the week we should be up and running which will be a huge benefit to everyone.

I am taking Friday off to volunteer for a national church convention at UBC. Having never been an usher before this should be interesting. Maybe tomorrow I’ll head over to WalMart and get some tips from the greeters.

On Sunday I was googling this, that, and everything and came upon a site which was about German speaking Russians. My grandparents on my mother’s side were German speaking and were born in Russia which I could never figure out. Well this site and wikipedia entry gave me some great information. As I read further there was an entry with my mother’s maiden name (Kelln) and the village where my grandparents were from (Holstein). Some of the information was familiar so I sent off an email.

Today I received an email from Edith Bottsford which detailed some fascinating information. The family has roots back to a Hans Kolln from  Meimersdorf, Germany before immigrating to Holstein. Hans was a merchant in Germany. He was a widower and with his 4 sons arrived in Holstein May 26, 1765. He would have been born in 1718. There is a family chart that I need to get which will bring the family tree forward from that time.

What is also interesting is that my father’s family, which are English,  go back to a census in the 1750’s in London England where it is noted a Blishen lived. I looked this up when in London at the National Archives (also saw the original Doomsday Book there). The middle of the 1700’s is more than enough to find one’s roots.

As Canadians when we are asked where we are from the discussion usually leads to where your family is from. Up to now I was sure about the English side but not the German side. Now the answer can be I am a Canadian from English-German heritage or an English/German Canadian. It really doesn’t mean much as so many others can point much farther back. It just gives you an idea of where your roots are. Our youngest son lives in Copenhagen, Denmark. The circle eventually completes itself.

The night before last (early Monday morning) there was a break-in at the credit union. It has happened before and you know it will happen again but when it does happen it sort of freaks you out. The guy threw a large boulder through the front plate glass door, ran into the branch looking for computers and came away with an old HP scanner. There was a lot of glass and of course it happened at 3:00 a.m. so someone had to attend the branch with the police when the alarm went off.

The real freaky part is the video. You can usually begin to comprehend what has happened after an incident like this occurred but when you actually watch it, well I am not used to that. It is like reality TV where you work. I was thinking of downloading it to YouTube but just our luck this guy will have some rights and sue us. Today’s header shows the guy in action.

I got the Beetle today so had a very nice drive to work. The thing really goes fast and it is a lot of fun to drive. It does seem in this hot weather that every tree imaginable drips some sappy substance. Maybe it is tree sweat. The problem is with all the trees at home and at work it is tough finding a place that you can park without being under some trees. That said it was time to wash the car and get it clean again. 

Besides being nice to drive it is nice to wash. It has half the surface area of the other vehicle and you don’t have to stand on the bumper to get the roof done. There isn’t a square corner of any sort, everything is round. Half the water, half the soap, half the time. Not a bad deal.

It got me to thinking about the various consumables we constantly use. Do we really need all that extra large, super size, jumbo, buy two get one free stuff? Most items didn’t exist 50 years ago or were with us in some other form and we seemed to get by. The General Motors incident seems to show that you should build a model on a sustainable level. Maybe we should rethink what we consume to something along the same lines. There seems to be limits to a lot of things we use and the sooner we realize that this is not a ‘bad’ thing maybe the better off we will all be.

At the staff meeting this morning it was decided to release our new SM (social media) site to the outside world. We have shared the URL with the staff, board, some families and friends but we wanted to make sure we were satisfied with the look and feel of the site before telling everyone.

The whole project started a few months ago with a half day session. All of the staff met with Nala and Tim from Currency to discuss and plan the future of our credit union. We were open to anything and came to the conclusion that if our credit union was going to have social media as part of its culture it had to be done by everyone. Everyone. If all the staff were the face and personality of the credit union then the only authentic method to show that to the Internet world was those exact faces and personalities. We also wanted this to be a community site. We have been part of this neighbourhood for 67 years and wanted everyone to be part of this.  This site is who we are and who the community is that we live in. 

We bought the cameras and software and everyone dove in. There wasn’t and still isn’t a lot of structure as everyone contributes in some fashion. Everyone has as part of their job description now the responsibility of spending 2 hours per week on communicating through the credit union’s social media channel. The key understanding is simple, use your common sense. This is the result – The Mount Lehman Show.

We don’t know where this will take us or how it will end up, but the the journey so far has been unbelievable. Never in years of managing a credit union have I seen such energy and concern for a project. This site shows us and it shows some of our community. We thought we would run out of ideas. Wrong. We have more ideas that we could imagine.

Why is it working? I think a number of reasons. We have had a culture of innovation here so there was little hesitation to take this leap of faith. Technology is not a stumbling block, every staff member has an iPhone which really helps and we are a Mac credit union. But most important is that we all see the value in trying something like this. It adds to what we are by extending our relationships to members and people in the community. It really creates meaning for each of us in what we do and this is just another extension of that. It adds that important human dimension that we all seem to want in some form or fashion.

It is like climbing the first hill of the roller coaster. The ride has started and it is a lot of fun. We are learning more about each other as co-workers and as part of one team. Please sign up and be a friend. We are giving away an iPod shuffle to one person from those that sign up in the month of June. (We will be giving away some more neat stuff as soon as I get the order in). We hope you too can be part of this journey with us.

Yesterday on my way to a meeting in Vancouver I headed down Hastings Street for a change. Hastings and Main is in the downtown eastside and is considered a ‘bad’ area of town. There the poverty is apparent with the unemployed, homeless and addiction in plain view. As I was passing Insite I Twittered and took a picture. No one responded which seemed unusual. After some thought that was probably because most don’t know about Insite.

Insite is the first legal supervised injection site. It is the only geographic area (the building’s large injection room) in Canada where it is legal to inject drugs. The reasons for this are many, the main one being that addiction is a sickness and this is a health issue with a health facility to attempt to assist people in beating their drug addiction. What it has done is save lives, lives of those who have this illness. Sure there are two sides to this story and some that would take a very different view but the fact remains, lives have been saved.

A few years ago I had the opportunity to tour the site when with the Watari organization. It was a life changing event. Hearing the stories of the individuals and seeing what was happening brought to light that we as a community need to come to grips with the drug addiction problems of the poor and homeless. There are some that say this is the addicts choice. Other will call it bad fate. Whatever the reason it doesn’t make sense to neglect the problem and do nothing and let people die. It makes me wonder when I hear about a 31 year old aquarium dolphin that dies in the arms of its 5 handlers and nothing about the individual who dies in the back alley of a downtown street, alone with no human consolation.

It seems no matter how much you ‘prune’ your followers and following list is just tends to grow. So I am beginning to wonder why I am following some credit unions. 

All of them need ask themselves why are you on Twitter? Everyone will answer ‘to share information with our members’ or ‘to give your membership support’ or ‘to talk about events or things we may offer’. I thought Twitter was a means to converse, a way to share insights, send out a neat URL you just found or to stimulate discussion. Most of the CUs I look at are selling me something, or telling me something that will lead to a sale or asking a question that will certainly lead to a sales pitch. The idea of communicating the authentic or genuine seems to have been missed. 

There is this singular beauty of Twiter, those whom I follow I can also unfollow. Before the marketing department types go amuck here they need to realize that. People who follow want to see the thinking person. It is going to be very interesting to watch.

What would be better yet? SMS your member when you have something specific and personal for them to know. But remember only do it if they want you to. Communicating has become an option for the listener.

It has been a hectic few weeks in so many areas. It seems the older you get the busier you get with a smaller amount of time.

I remember as a child the times my father would promise some small treat or time together to do something. It was important to me at the time. Often he would forget and the promise would be broken. It was something you never forget and I still feel sad. Because all of us have experienced that in some way or other most of us make the attempt to deliver on whatever we promise.

Now we are no longer children and the promises we seem to get are more of the commercial nature. Products and services, businesses and agencies, we have numerous encounters where someone promises to deliver something. It seems more the norm though that these promises are broken time after time. Most don’t deliver their promises and those that do tend to be the ones we remember. And depending on how we were brought up most forgive but never forget the incident. Just how hard is it to deliver a promise these days? Probably more difficult than we think because we tend to rely on a chain of people or companies to assist us in keeping the promise. If that fragile chain is broken the promise deliverer is the one that gets it in the neck. 

Last Sunday, on Mother’s Day, my wife and I went to a local VW dealer and bought a new Beetle. This is my wife’s very first car. We had never had more than one car since we were married in 1972. Now with both of the kids gone and our active lives outside the home it was almost impossible for both of us to get to events and meetings with only one car. Marjun picked the car and the colour, I picked the promissory note and car insurance premiums. Tonight we head out to pick it up but 2 hours before we leave the phone rings. It is the dealership. The car is not going to be ready, something about the undercoat. The broken promise. 

I have no idea why but tonight we are still going over there to find out why. To find out why a simple phone call, when it was realized it wouldn’t have been ready, wasn’t made earlier. I’ll keep you posted on the outcome, there is a good chance it may all be sorted out but when you are sitting with a broken promise, an economic broken promise, the brand has been tarnished now and it didn’t have to be.

Post Script – When we got there they explained we would have to wait at least 40 minutes or so. They actually had heat lamps setup to make sure the undercoating was completely dry and ready when we drove away. The treatment we received was more than first class. For this car dealership, Westminster Volkswagen, I would give them a 10 out of 10 for taking it to the next level in customer satisfaction. Thank you Steve and Chris for making this a memorable event. 

Off we went to Stanley Park. Marjun let me drive. After driving the car for less than 40 minutes we were stopped by the police. He just said I was driving way to fast and to slow it down.He must have smelt the ‘new car’ smell and let me go. Thank you officer, I’ll give you a 10 out of 10 too!

It seems that trends in whatever the situation sometimes get too strong not to notice them. Yesterday Twitter showed Susan Boyle as a popular trend. The Twitter search showed some interesting comments so once again a quick click begins the journey.

A very interesting and emotional video presents a woman with a beautiful singing voice. Then you notice the number of views. As of this writing it is at 32.7 million. Yesterday when viewed it was at 29.7 million. 3 million views in one day. Even if you count everyone seeing it twice, the numbers are phenomenal for something learnt through this ‘word of mouth’ Internet process. 

Now the comments and blog posts abound with various scenarios of reason and expertise. I just seem to have questions about how did this all come about? There isn’t a PR or ad agency in the world that could get that number of views for anything. It seems there is nothing to sell here. It is just a very transparent view of human nature. We see and hear a story and for a brief moment relate to it by whatever fashion. I wonder if just an audio of the event would have that garnered that sort of impact. There are so many components working in that clip you have to view it more than once to be able to realize what is taking place. 

The outcome will be different for each person. For me it once again spoke to people are just people. We are social creatures. Our emotions for a lot of the time are just unexplainable and when we try to explain them they loose their magic. 

Twitter plays a part here that is unique. Individuals, unedited individuals, are offering their views in small readable sentences, about things that matter to them. It isn’t necessarily a matter of what are you doing but more what are you thinking, what is having an impact on you right now. The experts are out detailing the top-10-whatevers you need to follow with Twitter for sure but the key thoughts and ideas of each person keep ringing true. It is amazing to watch but also be a part of times like these. We never really know the impact of anything until it is viewed in the rear-view mirror. It does seem the earth’s axis did tend to shift a little this last week.

Take a look at this post at TwiTip as Chris Allison explains some of the features of the newly released Twitter search function. 

I have been using the search function on the iPhone application Tweetie for over a month now and have found it an extremely useful function. Twitter has expanded that functionality by a huge factor. You really need to just dive into this and try a few of the searches out. I tried the near:abbotsford function and quickly saw a huge list of people getting over last nights hangover. That gives a new perspective of Abbotsford for sure. Chris points to a phrase the hive mind which seems very applicable in trying to grasp what is happening here. (and of course there is a definition on Wikipedia!) 

Something came through loud and clear at the recent NorthernVoice conference. The strict borders that were voiced 5 years ago that people and businesses don’t mix that well in blogging and social media have passed. Mainstream media and valued businesses are accepted in what they present through any social media means. Sure they are filtered but the platform allows them to speak. The rigid pendulum has moved. Twitter seems to be the rage and not just a passing fashion. With the search function and this view of the hive mind, you can begin to realize another paradigm shift about to happen or has happened. The ‘wisdom of crowds’ can be viewed as an actual dynamic knowledge pool. 

Once again we can see a wave of change about to occur. Our world gets smaller, bigger, adds a new dimension or garners an attribute that we could only think about a few years ago. Of course there will those were changes are not viewed with any admiration, only suspicion. Those that can attempt to try something different will once again have a unique learning experience. For me, anything that makes meaning is what life is all about. Search on!

Just about every Monday (it is a day off) I head up to Hastings Street to the Ortona Deli to pick up lunchmeat. It never ends up with just lunchmeat. There is always something else to try.

The store isn’t that big. One big aisle down the centre with shelving and dry goods on one side and the meat and cheese window coolers on the other. You have to look pretty carefully to find things but over the years you find some gems.

Barilla pasta. This is pasta that you can boil for 10 minutes and it is still firm. It never gets pasty or soft. I have made a meal of some linguine, added olive oil and then fresh ground pepper and freshly grated Romano cheese (a cheese named after Rome having been made for over 2,00 years). Now I understand why Italians love pasta.

Cambozola. This is a blue veined cheese made up of Gorgonzola and Camembert. Creamy with a tartness that you need to limit yourself from eating it all, at once

Casa Giullia Amarene jam – sour black cherry. Not sweet but pleasant. Filled with actual cherries.I find the jar much too small.

Callipo Tuna in Olive Oil. You will never go back to Tuna in water again. 

Today my find was olives, Sicilian olives. The are large, light green, pitted olives that have a bit of a spicy taste to them. They are very firm with a bit of a crunch to them. Very different from Calamata or Morrocan olives.

It does seem that some of the fondest pleasures are not too far from your door step. I always look forward to Monday mornings.

Finally a small amount of time to be able to write something. I was back east for a meeting in Winnipeg and stopped in to visit my son and daughter-in-law in Saskatoon. It turned cold the day I left, well cold for someone from the west coast. 

These past few weeks I have been hearing this phrase “self fulfilling prophecies” on the radio and TV as well as reading it in the newspapers. Interesting phrase. It is usually mentioned that during these difficult economic times our speaking about it not getting better serves the negative purpose of it being a self fulfilling prophecy. What is also interesting is that there doesn’t seem to be any quick fix. What was to be cleared up in 6 months has turned to be a year which is turning into 2 years and possibly longer. How long did it take to create the mess we are in? I would suggest it may take that long to get us out of it. 

When things were going ‘great guns’ there was nothing but euphoric hype that it would never end. If there was ever a suggestion that it may end or we should maybe turn the tap down a bit, one was usually drowned out by the great economic champions of free enterprise. Now it is only a few months old and the same captains of industry are telling us to stop talking about it because it is a self fulfilling prophecy. Maybe we should talk about it in any fashion we want to. Maybe some are very upset over loosing a big chunk of net worth. Maybe those that are saying to tone it down should be told to shut up. We are still hearing from so many ‘experts’ about what will happen. These in large part are the same ‘experts’ that were telling us nothing would ever come down, everything would always go up. 

Well that sound that you hear you have heard everyday for a while now. That sound is the toilet flushing. Toilets have to flush to get rid of certain objects that you don’t want around anymore. Our system is beginning to notice things that may need flushing. It isn’t a matter of fixing, or throwing more money at it, or saying it will get better. It is a matter of getting rid of toxic loans and bad credit decisions and God knows what else. That takes time. It will be painful and it will not be pleasant but we will pull out of it and sometime in the unknown future it will be better. Right now we are still trying to understand how bad the wounds really are. Besides medication, much of getting better happens over the course of time — a priceless and limited commodity for all of us. Much of how we get better is to give things time to heal. It may take longer than what we originally expected but given the resilience of our communities, neighbours, family and the democracies we all live in,  I have no doubt we will survive. Those economic wounds we suffer are far from the heart that creates the meaning for our lives.