AI, #ProjectMe and Twitter

How It All Began 

Back in January I took a big leap from one social media platform to another, stepping off of Facebook for a period of time and venturing into the world of Twitter.  This was with the intent to spark my curiosity again and explore something new.

For what ever reason Facebook just wasn't doing it for me.  I needed a change and had somewhat lost that sense of 'what's next' that fuels a big part of who I am.

Also wanted a fresh start and to create a new possibilities but without doing something as drastic as picking up and moving to a new city (though I almost did).

At the time I had been reading about Appreciative Inquiry and the 4D Phase for creating possibilities as a model for innovation.  The parallels between much of my prior personal and professional achievements and the AI framework were extraordinary and the freedom within AI to create without heavily prescriptive parameters was right up my alley.

It is looking back in hindsight that I'm realizing so much of my struggle with Facebook had to do with being a possibility pursuer within a social network that seemed to be forming a certain type of consensus behavior.  People's lives and the ways they were being presented there began to feel like a 'norming' but with significant scale and incredible amounts of validation.  It was starting to feel like a box that I didn't want to be in anymore.

The Experiment 

Being a bit of a tinkerer and with quite the appetite to experiment I opted to apply AI to Twitter to see what might happen.  My objective - to dream a new dream and be compelled to act on it.

In my discovery phase I allowed myself to network extensively, digesting endless amounts of content as part of a daily rhythm, all the while seeking out people and knowledge that felt right for me right now.

My Twitter handle is @CameronInSD and I've created a list there called 'Thankful For You'.  True to it's name, these are the folks I learned the most from or who engaged my content in meaningful ways along my Discovery and Dream phase in the world of Twitter.

Exploring Twitter became a daily routine of reading quotes, blogs, articles and what ever other delicious pieces of content came my way along with engaging people, networking and letting people go if they didn't seem to fit my current space.

The Center for Appreciative Inquiry does a phenomenal job pulling together content from all over the web and publishing it in a daily paper.  I'd say that close to 50% of what I found most meaningful was in that paper and the community of people leveraged to create the daily paper are wonderful and purposeful in their presence on line.

Did a lot of experimenting with the types of emotions I could experience on Twitter and found that a deliberate discipline associated with a few specific activities had a very positive impact on my brain. Twitter was an excellent place to practice gratitude, reciprocity, flow, learning, connection, mindfulness and letting go.

The other thing I really liked about Twitter was how much I could get done in spurts of 5-10 minutes every 2 hours as I engaged with people and their content throughout the day and where ever else I might be in the country.

Becoming purposeful about exploring hashtags and Tweeps with certain words in their bios made my time spent much more efficient for what I wanted to do on Twitter than the Facebook Timeline had been doing prior or by exploring friends of friends.

The Experience 

Found myself experiencing an endless parade of creative strategies to delight and surprise me on Twitter from other Tweeps.  Im not sure if it was my unique intentions for being on Twitter or just the way the Twitter community is but it seemed to be a lot of people striving to add value to a collective consciousness vs. primarily feeding on the value creation of others.

The many different people who came into my world from across the globe was a delightful surprise and the chats and DM's were thought provoking, collaborative and meaningful!

While in the discovery phase I mapped my personal strengths based on prior accomplishments and began to replicate some of my favorite experiences from the past, combining them in new ways in the present and to tweet about them using #combinewhatworks.  Those tweets no longer exist as I deleted them in a demonstration of letting go but you can find many of the pictures I took on Instagram under @CameronInSD.  Had a wonderful time playing with creative pancake recipes and naming them after some of my favorite followers based on their favorite foods.

The Dream 

When moving into the 'Dream' phase I continued to leverage the content of a very diverse set of Tweeps to stretch my imagination, often holding paradoxical perspectives in mind at the same time and finding very interesting ideas emerging.  This history of content I engaged for my Dream phase can be found through my trail of 'favorites' on Twitter.  Discovered one of my gifts is Janusian Thinking, in fact I love it!   Took what I learned and practiced daily journaling and visualizing to cook up a dream.

This phase was as scary as it was fun as I challenged myself to be authentic, honest, simple and limitless in terms of what could be in the future.  What emerged turned out to be very different from where I currently am in life and this was, again, both terrifying and exciting.  It was also a relief.  I had a lot of letting go to do actually and some preparation to get myself lined up for what's to come.

The People 

Twitter makes it easy to connect with people anywhere and sure enough, the right people just seemed to come into the picture to collaborate at the right time.  @Jodenecoza with her #Lifeology work and #ProjectMe and @Gialbarra with her #LettingGoProject and #AmWriting work were invaluable.

Twitter also makes it so easy to just unfollow people if they were not a good fit for what ever I was pursuing at the moment.  Follow vs. Friend - very different feelings associated with those words to me.

The Design 

Sat down towards the end of April and began to 'Design' the creation of this dream.  My design includes a combination of new & old habits, short term milestones, goals and experiences for the next 12 months in particular.  Without the parade of lifestyles on FB it became so easy to settle into what I wanted and what I cared about and what would make me uniquely happy without caring what anybody really thinks about it.

Ultimately I landed on a hand full of key themes for my design.  They are;  Play, Pride, Connection, Purpose, Belonging and Personal Growth and I have elements of my design dedicated to each of these with varying levels of accomplishment and experiences spread across the next 12 months.

Let me tell you - much of this design is very very simple.  In fact, the degree to which my life has become and will continue to become simplified is pretty impressive to me.  The parts of my design connected to Purpose and Personal Growth are the ones in which I see EPIC possibilities ahead.

Deploy 

The next phase of my journey is to 'Deploy' my design.

Recognizing that Twitter really is open to the world, I've opted to keep the over-all design to myself (as it is in many ways personal) but will be moving into creating blog posts about the parts I feel comfortable sharing.

I am beyond grateful for so many of the people I've connected with through Twitter and for all of the incredible possibilities that have already exploded into the picture.

My 'Deploy' phase was to begin last week but I had a chance to support @TreeSleeve and their Kickstarter campaign and could not turn the opportunity to help them out.  Very cool product to get to be part of bringing into existence.

'Deploy' is about, well, - deploy.  It's not about discovering more, dreaming up new or changing the design (though I've left room for modifications).  That being said - welcome to my blog and a different way to be connected to my journey if you are an active follower.

And if you feel what I have learned can help you in any way, and would like support through your own AI/ProjectMe process, my consulting services are available.  Send me a Direct Message through Twitter or you can e-mail me at SagacityGarden@gmail.com.


Warm Regards,

Cameron