I love books. I always have. In fact, one of my ultimate dreams is to either build a library, or have one named after me at some point. I love libraries, too.

I was an English major in college, so I’ve read a lot of literature, and now I read a lot of non-fiction and business books. I always try to have a good book around to read. That is one of the reasons that I love the Kindle app for the iPhone. It means that I always have a little library in my pocket. I’ve read a lot of good books lately, most of them on the Kindle app.

There is one major drawback to the Kindle app, though. I discovered it when I mentioned to my Facebook friends that I was reading “Trust Agents,” by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. Someone asked me, “can I borrow the book when you are finished with it?” Well, of course I wanted to share the book with my friends. Problem is, I can’t share books on the Kindle. Well, I guess I could, but it would mean loaning my iPhone to someone until they were done with it, and that won’t work.

So, I went out a bought a physical copy of the book, so that I could share it with friends. Then I thought, “how could I share the book with even more people, people who might want to read it, but who wouldn’t know to ask me for it?” That’s when it hit me– donate the book to the library. Duh.

By donating the book to the library, anyone can find it and read it, return it, and then anyone else can do the same thing; and the local library gets a current book without having to dip into their very limited acquisition budget– everybody wins.

So, that’s exactly what I did. I took “Trust Agents” to the Fluvanna County Library, and made a donation. Oh, and I made a video about my experience, too:

I can guarantee that I’ll be doing this with more books. My wife, Kari, will tell you all about the giant tubs of books taking up space in our shed because there is limited shelf space in our house. I would encourage anyone reading this to consider taking a trip to your local library and donating the great books that you have already read. The library will appreciate it, and so will the community of folks who visit the library.

ps-  ”Trust Agents” is a fabulous book.  In the future, I’ll be discussing some of the lessons I have learned from the book.  In the meantime, you can buy it on Amazon, if you want.  Or, you could always see if they have it at your local library; if not, I know a library that does.

I’ve lived in the Charlottesville area for 20 years now.  During that entire 20 years, NBC29 has always been my go-to source for local news.  This is due in large part to the fact that NBC29 was the ONLY choice for local news until fairly recently.  With the addition of stations at the Newsplex, things changed.

I still watched NBC29, though.  Hey, habits are tough to break.  Especially those built over a decades.

The mere addition of three new stations wasn’t really enough to change the way I got my local television news.  On top of that, now that I have DishNetwork, I really don’t watch the local channels that much at all. Add to that the fact that network television is pretty much horrendous, with the exception of sports broadcasts, and you have the perfect recipe for me to completely ignore the local news outlets.

What has changed, however, is the way in which I get news and information, generally.  It’s not that I don’t want the local news and information, it’s just that I get all my news and information differently than I did five or even three years ago.  I don’t read a hard copy of any newspaper, but I read a heck of a lot of news through the various iPhone apps I have, or on the Internet when I am at the computer.  I use twitter a lot more to see what local folks are up to, and they tend to break a lot of stories for me.  I also follow a lot of local people of Facebook, and the same holds true there, too.

That is why when I discovered that CBS19 had a Facebook page, I was interested enough to become a fan.  Boy, am I glad that I did.  CBS19 does a wonderful job of posting not only the stories that they have during their broadcasts, but also additional information, polls, and more feature/behind the scenes type stuff that is interesting.

The best part about it is that I don’t have to be home at 6:00 and 11:00 to get the news, and I can find it while I am catching up with what my friends are doing on Facebook.  The fan page allows me to discover and connect with other people in the Charlottesville Area.  All of this means that the CBS19 Facebook page is not only convenient, easy to use, and informative, but it also helps me meet new people and expand my network.  Very cool.

If you want to become a fan of the CBS19 Facebook page, just go to http://facebook.com/Newsplex.  You can also find CBS19 on Twitter, and even on YouTube.

Kudos to CBS19 for being willing to take on the challenges that traditional media outlets face in this new media world.  I hope they continue.

And who knows, they may even get me to change the channel. . .

Despite the fact that there seems to be little positive news circulating about the economy lately, people aren’t dismayed.  In fact, even in this down economy, people are giving more of their time to others, not less.

This is a good thing.

There were two statistics, in particular, that really jumped out at me:

Two forms of volunteerism jumped sharply: the number of people who worked with neighbors to solve a local problem rose 31% from 2007 to 2008, and the number of people who attended community meetings rose 17% last year.

What is really cool about this is that it means that people are giving back not just generally, but with the people in their local community, the people who are closest to them, the place where they can have the largest and most immediate impact.

I think that some people are overwhelmed by the thought of volunteering or donating their time or resources.  Sometimes, people just dont’t think that they can make a difference.  Sometimes, people think that the issues are too big, and they are too small.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Nothing has ever changed in the world without at least one person.  Sure, sometimes it take s a lot of people.  Most of the time, however, it just takes one person.  Just one person who is willing to try to make a difference, no matter how small.

See, the funny thing is this, once one person says, “how can I help?” and goes out and does something about it, it becomes contagious, and viral.  People like to help others, it is in our nature as humans.  It catches on pretty quick, too.  If you just do whatever you can do to make a small, positive difference in your community or the life of someone you know, and share that with others, you’ll notice that they will want to help, too.

According to this article, there are a whole lot of people out there helping others, and improving their own lives, too.  So the only question left for you to answer is. . .

What can I do to help?

Social media works in strange ways, even locally. Here’s a very recent example. . .

My wife, Kari and I, are both on Twitter (@STRduo and @RealEstateZebra). Yesterday, she came across a tweet from fellow Charlottesville area resident and blogger, Marijean Jaggers.  Kari sent me the link in the tweet, which took me to a post on Marijean’s blog, STLWorkingMom.  The post is about Marijean’s new feature series on the local television station, CBS-19.

Marijean is going to be on CBS-19 every Tuesday during the 6:30 newscast, where she will feature an area “Blog of the Week.”  How freakin’ cool is that?!  Local bloggers will be featured every week on TV!  The Charlottesville area has a very vibrant blogging community, and it is good to see it getting some recognition.

The first “Blog of the Week” is from right here in Fluvanna

The first installment of the “Blog of the Week” was yesterday.  For their first featured blogger, CBS-19 chose a Fluvanna County Resident, Dana Adams, and her blog– Frugal in Virginia.  You can read the CBS-19 story, or even watch the video.  Marijean did her own feature on Dana, as well.

Dana writes a very important blog, helping folks find deals on the things they buy every day here in the Charlottesville area.  CBS-19 and Marijean did a great job sharing and promoting her blog to the community.  I can’t tell you how excited I am to see folks like Marijean out there promoting great area bloggers like Dana.

There is more to come. . .

So, if you’d like to learn more about area bloggers, make sure you watch CBS-19 every Tuesday at 6:30, where you will find Marijean featuring another blog; and if you are looking to save some money (aren’t we all?), make sure you visit Frugal in Virginia.  You can even follow Dana on Twitter.

Congrats to Marijean and Dana, and I can’t wait for the next installment of “Blog of the Week.”

Ok, this may not seem like big news to you, but for someone like me, the fact that @fluco showed up in my Twitter followers is HUGE!

After a little investigating, I discovered that the account belongs to Barbara Gibson, who is a member of the Fluvanna County School Board.  She represents the Rivanna District.

I’ve sent an email to Barabra, and I hope that I can perhaps conduct an interview with her to find out her thoughts on Twitter, and how she might be able to use it in her capacity as a member of the board.

Stay tuned. . .

Some people are probably wondering what I plan on talking about during my social media presentation next week. One of the things that I mentioned in my first post was how social media could be very beneficial to school officials, even right here in little ol’ Fluvanna. One of the examples I will talk about happened just a few weeks ago. . .

The Fluvanna County Schools power outage generates discussion

Back on January 22nd, Fluvanna County Schools had to close due to a power outage. Had this happened a few years ago, the local news outlets might have reported the story (news is notoriously slow around here), and then pretty much nothing would have happened. That is not, however, how things happened on January 22nd. . .

The same day that the schools closed, local news station NBC29 reported on the outage. The story they posted on their site is exactly 6 sentences long. That’s it. It was a 30-second story. But it didn’t end there. . .

You see, NBC29 has what has now become a very common feature on their website– the ability for readers to comment on the stories. If you notice, at the end of every NBC29 story is the ability to leave a comment. Well, that is exactly what people did when then read the Fluvanna power outage story. In fact, by Midnight on January 22nd, there were 78 comments on the story. 78! As I am writing this right now, there are 214 comments on the story.

Who says that folks in Fluvanna don’t use social media?

Conversation requires participation

The comments on the story came from parents, residents, even students. It is possible that some of them came from teachers, but since most people who commented were anonymous or used a pseudonym, it is tough to tell. Some of the comments were positive, some of them were negative, some of them were, honestly, pretty ignorant. That really doesn’t matter, though. What matters is that the Fluvanna County schools were talked about 78 times on January 22nd, and NOT ONE of those comments was left by anyone who identified themselves as officials of the school district (not that I could tell, anyway).

The school district missed out on a golden opportunity to be involved in a discussion about an even that was obviously important to residents as it was happening. That’s too bad, because it doesn’t have to be that way.

I’m not saying that the school district chose to ignore the story, or the comments. I doubt that any of the district officials were aware of the discussion. My point is that I was aware of the discussion, and I don’t even have children in the school district. I found out about the discussion because I track “Fluvanna” in my Google alerts. So, if I can find out about a discussion about the school district, then so can the school district; and if I can participate in the discussion, so can the school district.

What you can learn from this example

How and why the school district, residents, and any member of the community can participate in online conversations for their own benefit is exactly what I plan to talk about on the 25th. There are all kinds of discussions going on right now about the issues important to you (or even about you). It is important that you are listening and participating. Come see me on the 25th, and I’ll show you how you can do just that.

UPDATE:  If you are wondering, “What is social media, anyway?”  I can answer that question for you.

When started to get involved in social media, I did it mainly as a way of enriching my real estate business.  The more involved I got, the more I learned that social media has all sorts of valuable benefits for every industry and every group of people.  The more I got involved with social media, I was convinced that community organizations right here in Fluvanna can take advantage of the benefits.  I’ve met all sorts of local people through social media that I might never have encountered otherwise. I’ve seen wonderful people work really hard to increase the membership and involvement in their community organizations, and I’ve thought to myself, “boy if these folks took advantage of social media, they could make an even bigger difference.”

I’ve decided its time for me to do something about that.  It’s time that my community learned about the power of social media to bring people together and help them achieve their goals.  I want to share the things I’ve learned with the community that matters most to me.

Here’s how I’m going to start– I am going to be giving a presentation on social media on February 25th, from 6:30-8:00pm at the Crossroads Best Western at Zion X Roads. The focus of the presentation is going to be on how local community organizations can harness the power of social media to connect their members, and get their message out.

The information I’ll be sharing will be valuable from everyone from the Board of Superivsors to the Lake Monticello Swim Team, to local churches, and everyone in between.  If you are part of any community organization, I would love it if you would attend and find out how social media has the power to transform your organization.  This invitation is open to anyone, anywhere, so don’t be shy!

The process is simple– if you are interested in attending, all you have to do is fill out the RSVP form below (or bookmark this link).  Registration is easy, but it is required.  The space I have for this presentaion is very limited, and I want to be able to include as many people as possible, so please RSVP.

Between now and the 25th, keep checking out DanielRothamel.com, where I’ll be giving you a taste of the information you can expect to learn on the 25th.  If you have any questions at all, don’t hesitate to contact me.  And don’t worry, there will be plenty of time for Q&A on the 25th, too. 

If you are reading this and can’t attend, please share it with anyone who you think will find it valuable.  I want the message to reach as many people as possible, and I need your help to make it happen.

I look forward to sharing my insights and opinions here at DanielRothamel.com, and I hope that I will see many of you on the 25th!

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