ScannerLinks
Useful stuff from Barbara Sher - author of the book on Scanners
Buy Barbara Sher’s book on Scanners “What Do I Do When I Want to Do Everything?: A Revolutionary Programme for Doing Everything that you Love”. If you think you might be a Scanner, this is your starting point for acknowledging it, celebrating it and using it.
Barbara has a huge bulletin board which includes a forum for Scanners and she also has a dedicated bulletin board just for scanners. Definitely have a stroll ’round these.
Barbara’s main website has details of her Scanner Retreats and her course for Writers and Speakers amongst other stuff. She also has a Scanners shop on CafePress selling stuff saying “Leonardo was a Scanner and so am I”.
Feed Your Scanner Brain
TED Talks are “Inspired talks by the world’s greatest thinkers and doers”. If you have 20 minutes spare, go play some audio or even a video of some of the most incredible artists, scientists and thinkers alive.
Sign up for the newsletter at SpringWise.com to read about innovations in business every week. Wait, that sounds really dull. It’s not. It’s full of stories about quirky new businesses that make you say “that’s so cool!”. “Required brain food for entrepreneurial minds” as they say. The site is driven by a worldwide network of 8000 spotters. Why not become one?
StumbleUpon. Dangerous one, this. Install the StumbleUpon button in your browser in a jiffy then press it to go to a random interesting site. Press again to go to another. Suddenly it’s 3am. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. You can also train it on the kind of sites you like. Makes it even worse.
Other Cool Stuff for Scanners
Scanners Facebook Group. Well someone had to do it! If you’re on Facebook, go here to join the Scanners & Renaissance Souls group. Barbara Sher is a member and I’ve uploaded a piece of video of her talking about “Success Teams”. There are also a couple of links and photos and other bits and bobs. At the time of writing we have 27 members. Pathetic, I know. Please join and make me feel popular.
TumbleLogs. Still writing a Blog? That’s so last year dude! Get a TumbleLog instead - they’re pretty similar really but tuned to posting really short posts quickly - just a link, a photo, a bit of video. See my TumbleLog DesignPorn (nothing filthy, just instant gratification for contemporary design addicts). Let’s face it, as scanners any Blog we start is likely to be abandoned within a month (see my TechnologyTurkey.com on bad gadgets). They’re too high maintenance. With a TumbleLog it’s OK to post any random thing with no more than 1 line of text. Use Tumblr or Soup.
2 minute guides to blogging. My friend (and Scanner) Linda in New Zealand interviewed me over Skype to create three 2 minute guides to Blogs (What’s a blog? / How to make money from your blog / How to get traffic to your blog). Listen to them at: scannerinterviews.blogspot.com
Scanners love to learn new stuff and then share it with others. Interviewing experts is a great way to do this. Skype makes it possible to do this internationally at no cost. Plus you can actually see the other person if you have webcams. While I was being interviewed by Linda (above) over Skype, I found a way to record our video call which is really cool. You get a split screen à la Stephen King’s “Carrie” (but without the pig’s blood). See our video on youtube.com. We used CallRecorder on the Mac.