Do you go to church on Sunday?

I discovered the Unitarian church a few month ago and have been attending the service whenever I can. Ironically, what drew me to church was not because of any religious reasons; rather, it was seeking a community outside of my circle of friends. Don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of friends to hang out with and my calendar is typically 95% full, I was looking for something more, something je ne sais qroi..

 

So one day my hubby and I decided to give Unitarian church a try. We joke about going to a Unitarian church because it believes in everything and it believes in nothing. The ‘believe in everything’ part interest me. I grew up as a Buddhist while my hubby grew up as a catholic. Neither one of us are super religious but we both believe there is a higher power and would like to seek something spiritual.

 

We entered the church with people greeting us with a genuine smile. The church was beautiful! The light yellow coloring with columns connected to 2-sided balconies reminds me of across between Caribbean style mixed with French country. What I love about the service is the music. Every week, a rich and diverse range of music is introduced. I wish I have prettier words to describe it. From drums to saxophone, piano, guitar, choir, or the whole ensemble. Without a doubt every time the music wows me!

 

The preachers always tells personal stories everyone can relay and it’s mostly funny. But through the laughs you somehow walk away learning something new. I always ended up taking notes because someone will either say something wise that speaks to my heart, or something funny that I think it’s worth repeating.

 

As for today, the quote I noted was:

‘I’ve never been so cold and so happy at the same time! ‘

~ About attending Obama’s Inauguration

 

As for signing up to volunteer at the church to be more involved with the community? I have not decided yet. For now, we are simply happy Unitarian church goers.

Kadidid thoughts

Whenever I come across something interesting, I’d say to myself: ‘I need to blog about this’. But then the day goes on and I find myself getting trapped in my bottomless list-to-dos. So I am taking matters into my own hands and going just blog about the random things that I want to share. Let’s call it Kadidid thoughts. Warning: These thoughts have no common relationship. For those who knows me, my thoughts are typically random as my mind goes a million miles a minute.

 

1. Wordle is such a cool tool. I use it to make the word pic above.  

 

2. I don’t like the new Facebook look and feel. I am happy to know that I am not the only one .

 

3. Watch out for Google’s Beta Knol - part wiki, part blog, and part social computing platform though it is most often being compared with Wikipedia. Read more?

48 hours of Networking

Information Overload

 

The last 48 hours I feel like I’ve been part of some speed networking reality show. It was exhausting but productive. I met some great people all doing extraordinary things, hoping make this world a better place to live, a tweet at a time. This morning I started the day attending Breakfast with Jeff Pulver at a great café downtown DC called BusBoyandPoets. Coincidentally it is the same place my partner Paul Worsham and I (from 1Piazza) will be hosting a Social Rockstar workshop on May 16^th. We are currently working on the workshop content. It will be a very cool event for sure! For starters, our feature speaker is Justine Lam, who happens to be the eCampaign director for Ron Paul’s 2008 Presidential Campaign Committee. I met Justine at the 1Piazza Happy Hour last night.  Justine Lam will share her story on how she helped raised more than $18 million mostly using Web 2.0 tools. Did I mention Justine was written in the January edition of Fortune magazine? I am looking forward to working with Justine to create the presentation.

 

I want to share with you my take-aways from the last 2 days:

 

1. The art of networking: Be a better listener than a talker. The more you listen, the more you are liked. Most people’s favorite and most knowledgeable subject is – themselves!

                   by -   Todd Holsembeeck, a very wise sales person

 

2. Twitter is becoming a hot topic, and definitely a cool thing to be part of in the web 2.0 community. I was recently told, ‘if you want to be pioneer of social media, get on Twitter.”  So I did. My account is www.twitter.com/kadidid. Kind of fun. From Twitter, I found out about the Free Ben & Jerry Ice Cream 2 days ago. 2 days of Twitter, 1 free scoop of ice cream, not bad!

 

3. Sphinn.com is a cool site with great posts about social media.

 

4. Some tips to drive traffic to your blog: have the URL in your email signature, create tags from the blog, and make comments from other related / popular blogs.

 

That’s all for now. To all a good night! I am going to catch some well needed Zzzs.

 

Stuff on my mind

Last Wednesday I received an email that out department may be ‘eliminated’. Needless to say lots of things went through my mind since then. I went from shock to scared, to angry, to calm, and … believe it or not now I am very happy.  So lots of goodness came out of that Wednesday email. I feel like opportunities are coming my way. I started to really think about what I like to do, and what kind of jobs make me happy. I went to networking functions and met new people in my professional social network. For the first time in a long time, I am excited about the possibilities lie ahead.  A friend suggest that I watch the secret (www.thesecret.tv), and I did at 3am this morning. I feel great! I don’t have a crystal ball but I am just excited. That’s all for today. Happy Easter!