Worknow_Aotearoa_NZ

Aspiring Social Entrepreneur | Proactive Volunteer

I’d like to think of  the 60+ hours a week I volunteer as the work of an aspiring social entrepreneur, having labeled myself as such is rather vain of me when really I’m just a very proactive volunteer.

Volunteer or social entrepreneur ~ either way, it works for me.  I get to do what I love in my own way, on my own time, in hopes that the work I do now, will eventually pay off in terms of actually helping other people.

For me, volunteering is as much a part of my life/work landscape as my friends and family. I am immensely grateful to be surrounded by talented, passionate people that encourage and inspire the journey.  That said, I would not suggest I have a traditional outlook on volunteer work.

While I do collect for the Red Puppy Appeal, attend charity music events for the likes of Sea Shepherd and volunteer my social media skills for 350Aotearoa ~ volunteering is about the 60 hours+ a week that I invest as work experience in order to create my own future work/life path.

my talent and time | pursuing the dream

It is as true for me as anyone else on this planet that our most valuable personal resources are our own talent and time.  Importantly, you get to decide how you value yourself and how you apply your time and talent. What we have to give and gain from this life is up to us to decide.

On that basis,  I’m going with a “priceless” valuation on my time and talent:) I work because I hope that what I do is of much greater value to me than a monetary value might prescribe.  From Worknow to Augmented Reality to Social Development Banking & Funding models to communities like the Distiller and the Social Innovation Hub as well as work on the board of trustees with KUMA ~ the Southern Maori Business Network and The Malcam Charitable Trust Foundation. It may seem eclectic, but all this unpaid work caters to my aspirations to help people using technology to connect and harness our collective potential

the highs and lows of being “unemployable”

One could point out that I am unemployable ~ which in the traditional sense of a 40hour work week would be an understatement.  No “employer” would pay me to do what I do, there is no job description that would comprehensively cover what I set out to achieve or my methods for doing so.

The stigma attached to the label of being  “unemployed” is sometimes a challenge. It’s difficult to explain what I do in any quick way except to say that I volunteer, a lot. To quickly  summaries my work life often strips from my description all the passion and well being I enjoy. To explain in even basic detail often means a five minute spiel all about me and the amazing talented people I know.

I sometimes struggle to share with the fact that I love my job, that I don’t get paid and actually could achieve nothing without the many many people that I work alongside. Some days I feel like a fake and it’s easy to see why no one pays me.  Other days it all just comes together, it makes sense and I absolutely trust that I’m on the right path.  If it is about the journey vs the destination, then I’m loving the ride.

Project based work life

Although only one of my current projects Worknow, is all  about supporting my project based work life. Perhaps through determined belief and in living the lifestyle we promote I can show that volunteer work experience ~ choosing what you love and applying your talent to achieving your dreams ~ does pay. Perhaps not immediately, perhaps never in terms of cold hard cash but in so many other ways, that money could not buy.

If you aspire to entrepreneurship and work life freedom, if you seek to discover and live your talents and life with passion and joy then potentially, we can help.  Your talent profile here will help you connect with the growing number of people that share our work life outlook . Tell us about your talents and skill your interests and values, and we’ll match you with work opportunities. What do you have to gain? that is up to you to define.

“The deepest secret is that life is not a process of discovery, but a process of creation.  You are not discovering yourself, but creating yourself anew.  Seek, therefore not to find out who you are, seek to determine who you want to be.” ~ Conversations With God

Absolutely! I believe we create our own futures and I live the belief that one of the best ways to determine who we want to be is by focusing on our talents, interests and passion. At the same time though I cherish the fact that life is a process of discovery, discovering truths and purpose, talents and passion, discovering the joy of other people.

Augmented Reality

Over the last couple of weeks I have begun work on a project involving the deployment of an Augmented Reality showcase of Dunedin’s heritage, arts and culture.  Our project is inspired by immersive heritage experiences like  Museum of London | Street Museum with so much potential for the platform we propose, I feel amazingly blessed to have discovered collaborators to help create and share this vision for our City.

In order to create my own future,  I’ve committed to this project the most valuable resources I own, my talent and time, passion and energy. I wholeheartedly believe that this project will serve our City for years to come, providing not only a fun and engaging, compelling and immersive user experience but also establishing an open access platform that many members of our community can contribute to and potentially monetise.

Collaboration & Gratitude

I am inspired and encouraged by the range of support I have discovered in bringing together this collaborative. I see this project as a catalyst for on-going and future collaboration, spanning many of Dunedin’s most talented and creative industry sectors.

Most importantly, Thanks to my Great Omnipotent Deity for blessing me with talented people to work with. Thanks & massive respect to my talented collaborators Stu Fleming Tim Calder Pierre-Emmanuel de La Bussière and community support from:-

• Tourism Dunedin
• The Southern Heritage Trust
• Samuel Mann at Otago Polytech
• Applied Design Research Centre
• Otago Settlers Museum
• Taieri George Railway
• NZ Sports Hall of Fame
• many folk within the DCC &
• As always, my crew at The Distiller

Arohanui xo Renee Lee

Pursue your talent | live your dreams.

July 2010: Another year older, wiser and closer to living out some childhood dreams

Ever since the Jetson’s introduced me to holograms I’ve looked forward to the day that a similar type of technology would be within my reach. Over the last month several things happened that bring me closer living this dream. It’s exciting times.

Instead of going into the detail about how my life rocks what I would like to say is that the freedom I have gained ~ as an aspiring social entrepreneur ~ to choose how I apply my talent and time to this life, is my pursuit of happiness. I am blessed to have in my life many talented, beautiful people that inspire, challenge, support and love me.

Life is beautiful | live your talent | pursue you dream

I’m not saying that applying your talent to pursue you dreams is  easy, where would the fun in that be? And  although I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t envy my income at the moment, as cliche as this is, happiness is not something money can buy.

You can choose the work that you want. By creating an online talent profile with us and sharing your talents, your values and your passion with the world you too can begin to discover the beauty of living your dreams.

It had been a while since the game of generation bashing has had a look in but the floor is open again to generational commentary, stereotyping and general whinging following a research report on the values, attitudes, behaviors and demographic characteristics of American Gen Y | Millennials: A Portrait of Generation Next

Born 1979 outside or upper end of the generational “age bracket” does nothing to change the fact that I identify most strongly with the Y Generation. While I can see in many friends my age, a stronger tendency to Gen X some of us never had the new generational “stereotypes” to qualify our actions.

Generation Y on Careers

I had to live my “traits” before they became widely touted indicators of our generation. My work career for instance in which I’ve had more than 10 jobs in the last 10 years. Inevitably, there were interviews in which I was asked to justify my job “hopping” to which my response involved learning, challenge, personal circumstance.

Now, in retrospect I can claim this as normal for an entire generation of people. No longer such an outlier, there is some reassurance to the fact that the following opinion is as true to me, as it is Amanda and probably millions more like us.

I don’t think that staying at one company for 20+ years necessarily correlates with building a career. Gen Y’s are more adaptive and willing to jump companies if it means advancing their career and lifestyle goals. I believe that this is a strength of our generation, not a weakness. I would rather change jobs many times to advance my career than allow my career to stagnate due to “corporate loyalty.” ~ Amanda, Tustin, CA : July 8, 2010 4:24 pm

Gen Y on Opportunities

Granted, I can understand that a CV of contract research and 6 – 12 month “career” efforts probably looked disconcerting to potential employers. And probably well it should because each job was for me about discovering something new about what I wanted to do with my life.

In some cases I learnt lessons about what I would do and what I could achieve but in most I learnt more about what I didn’t want. It was a process of discovery that has lead me to the clear realisation that as an employee other people were never going to allow me to challenge the status quo, learn and grow by testing limits.  I was not made to fit the “employee” mold, a fact which I believe will prove true of many of our generation.

Catch22: Work Experience Required

You’ve got a great education, you’re keen to learn, you want to work and contribute to society yet it seems that to get the job that you want you need work experience, which first means you need to get a job

The transition from study to the workforce can be difficult even when you know exactly what is is you want and how you plan to get there.

Yet it is the minority of students that emerge from study that well prepared. More often than not, our work prospects and aspirations are about as clear as mud.

Talent vs Degree

I worry that our education system does not adequately prepare people for the realities of the workforce and that the career guidance taken up does little to inspire in young people the pursuit of the dream.

In fact in some cases, being sent off to talk to the local branch of some national or multinational company that has a internship programme that matches your degree, might be the completely wrong direction in terms of matching one’s talents and values.

As was indicated during a conversation I recently had with a final year commerce student (FYCS) – Majoring in Economics

Renee: So you’re final year right?, what do you wanna do next year? Work?
FYCS : Not really sure yet,
Renee: You can do anything you want, you know
FYCS:  I’m kinda interested in writing…
Renee: Yeah cool, I majored in journalism. What do you think is you greatest talent?
FYCS:  I’m not really sure…
Renee: Everyone’s got talents [usual expectant pause] ok then …how about looking at it like this. If you could have any job in the world what would you do?
FYCS: Writing, or design, maybe advertising?
Renee: So I’m hearing, something creative right?
FYCS: Yeah, but its not really my major”
Renee: Your major doesn’t really matter, it shows that you have discipline and you’ve already learnt the most important lesson, how to learn. Being able to learn, being able to solve problems you can take those skills anywhere. You can choose to do a job you will love.”
FYCS: But I worry about my grades”
Renee: Your grades won’t matter what matters is work experience. Find a company that you want to work with and offer to volunteer. It’s a foot in the door and I reckon volunteer work experience will trump your grades
FYCS: Thinks about this for a nanosecond and smiles
FYCS: You’ve just made me shift my idea of what I could do from here to here (indicating with hands an expanded vision)

While the above tale is unlikely to be a completely accurate replay – there were umms & ahhhh’s, frequent head nodding and gestures -  it’s the outcome that mattered.

It’s amazingly encouraging to have seen and heard someone gain even just an ounce more hope for the future. Score 1 to me! in favour of the pursuit of talent vs degree based career paths.

Volunteer Work Experience

We see volunteering as a highly effective means for young people to gain work experience, develop work ethic and build work skills.

Some of the skills volunteers can develop include:-

* Leadership & team building skills
* Relationship building skills
* Communication skills
* Negotiation skills
* Creative thinking skills
* Organisation & time management skills

Most importantly it is a testament to one’s willingness to work which, in my work experience, counts for a whole lot more than grades ever will. Welcome to the workforce people.

Four Simple Steps Towards Your Dream Job

It may seem too simple and idealistic but it’s worked for me. I love my job and would like to see more people living the work life balance that we enjoy

1. Identify you talents, your passion, your interest and values as it is these qualities when combined with work that will put you on the path to a job that you love!
2. Create you talent profile and list your talents, passion, interests and value and using the magik of the interweb we will match your talent profile with volunteer work opportunities
3. Put yourself out there to work and learn more about what motivates and inspires you
4. Gather  references that testify to your work experience so you can expand your options & pursue the dream then repeat

Pretty simple really. It’s about mindset and taking action don’t let others define your future for you. Start working towards you dream job, begin now.

Free will & the freedom to choose

Free will, the freedom to choose and therein create our own future, is from my perspective the defining factor of what makes us human in this universe.

I was moved this week by the film “A Soundtrack for a Revolution” a documentary of the music that inspired and supported the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement in the United States of America.

It made me realise that I have the luxury of freedom. A luxury too often taken for granted considering that freedom has and continues to be for so many people a long and hard won battle.

I wonder, do we not then owe it to ourselves, our families and our communities to recognise and claim our right to choose and create our own futures? Yet, in a society where we have the luxury to choose any number of things we often fail to choose that which would make us most happy. So I am asking,

Why not choose to do what we love for a living?

Workplace Freedom: establishing the optimal work life balance

I for instance chose to leave a job in a recession to found a company despite a complete lack of funding or the income to cover my outgoings.

By all accounts it was a risky decision, but one that I chose to take in order to pursue my dream of building a company through which I could help other people.  It was one of the best decisions of my life.

Granted I am young and single so I was in the position to make this choice. Understandably, many people would say that they do not have the freedom to choose, when or where they work.

It may seem at times that the need to survive, to care for ourselves and others means we do not have the option to leave a job that makes us unhappy, unfulfilled or simply ambivalent. Yet at any time at least two options exist.

1. You can choose to do nothing and retain the status quo or;
2. You can choose to try something different, plant a seed see if it grows

The difference between one and two;  willingness to change and adapt.

Towards Work Place Freedom

Choosing what, when, even why you work can eventually transform the way you live.

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to Work a day in your life.” Confucius

Here’s a couple of things you can do today to begin the move towards greater workplace freedom

Step 1 write down you answers to the following questions:

1. What are your greatest strengths or talents or to rephrase: what do you love to do?
2. What three things do you think you do best in life?
3. Are there any talents or skills you’d like to teach?
4. If you could do your dream job what would you do?
5. What could you volunteer to do or learn that would put you one step closer to that dream job?

Step 2 is to take your answers from step 1 and create an online talent profile so that we can match your talents, skills and interests to work opportunities.

I completely believe that we can all work at and be rewarded for doing what we love, I’m not saying that it will be easy, just that you’ll probably enjoy it.

However, work place freedom – like so many freedoms won before – can only be achieved through connected, collaborative community effort.

We need people like you to build this talent community in which each individual is willing to help others achieve the same freedom through active participation.

A recent study by researchers from the University of Konstanz (Germany) has found that volunteering can offer mental health benefits and may even help people to perform better in their paid work role.

Research was conducted via a 2-week diary study, with 105 employees to provide data for a total of 476 days. Research then examined relationships between the amount of time spent on volunteer work activities during leisure time, psychological non-work experiences in the evening, and work outcomes during the following working day.

Results confirmed the hypothesized positive relationships between the amount of time spent on volunteer work activities and psychological detachment from work, mastery experiences, and need satisfaction in the evening.

Positive relationships between the amount of time spent on volunteer work activities and psychological detachment from work and mastery experiences in the evening suggest volunteer work’s potential to provide a break from paid work and to offer opportunities for recovery experiences.

The study “Volunteer Work as a Valuable Leisure-Time Activity” was published online in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology

I read an interesting post by Lance Wiggs yesterday called the Grandmother effect is starting for facebook. For which, as I understood it, the basic premise was in reference to an earlier prediction of his:-

It’s very hard to predict what and when social networks will succeed and fail, but there is probably a simple test to determine the point of failure—and it’s almost certainly related to the date that your mother joins the network.

This lead to some interesting comments and conversations and attempts to stereotype to which I responded:-

However you label us, those of us that have been on FB more than three years are pretty much “over it”.

My mum joined early 2010, in fact I signed her up & while I won’t be leaving, I now use FB primarily for social marketing purposes (work) rather than social (play).

“…more and more young people will begin to leave because the choice has become between having your information on Facebook or getting hired for a job…”

Integrity. [This is the point I shall return to]

While I understand the sentiment, that its either one or the other, I think it fails to recognise that FB has set the standard for a future in which (I predict) [online] networking will increasingly support Gen Y in their search for meaningful work – be it paid and/or unpaid.

Gazing into my crystal ball I see [online] networking will become more “we” less “me”. The future is one for connecting, sharing & collaborating for greater collective and social purpose.

Now apparently my lack of clarity about networking, from my very “online” perspective required  a lengthy response about: what networking is and what tools are available online and raised several points to which I have agreed to disagree.  That said,  I wanted to return to the issue of integrity.

Integrity, Credibility & Talent Profiles

Integrity is a founding personal and company value. In efforts to keep it simple we state that we value  INTEGRITY: “We keep our promises, treat people fairly and value open and honest communication.”

The only real danger we face in being on Facebook while looking for work is that it allows us to be judged in the act of being less than “professional”  which can impact our personal and professional credibility.

Being human, we have multiple sides to our personality.  Sometimes the personality caught on camera and shared online can be generally unflattering, misconstrued or taken out of context.  Unfortunately, the truth remains that first impressions or the wrong impressions can be difficult to overcome.

Here at Worknow, we provide tools to allow people to create online networking profiles on the basis of their talents, skills and work experience.  A testament to who you are,  in the work sense.

Without say, that unflattering photo -  me “on it” in the playground across the road to celebrate the arrival of a good friend from London – messing with our professional credibility.

EMPLOYERS are refusing to hire Generation Y workers because they lack a work ethic and spend too much time talking to friends in work hours. Source

In my early twenties, I adopted a twin philosophy from a very good friend of mine “…it costs nothing to be nice…”  and that “…if you can’t say anything nice, best say nothing at all…”

I have lived to discover the wisdom of this advice and in my personal experience I have seen and heard that the negative characteristics that people  would attribute to others are most often a reflection of  the person speaking. Quite simply; what you say about others says more about who you are, than who they are.

Hence the assertion of this blog is that those that bemoan Gen Y, probably just wish they were more like us. It’s opinionated and at times bias but it is an attempt to develop conversation around opposing thoughts; drawn from three of the many hundreds of comments that the Article Gen Y too lazy and unfocused to hire generated.

Work Life Balance

Pretty sick and tired of “he/she who is the centre of the universe” and “work” being “somewhere you go during the day”.

Just a little jealous? I reiterate my stance on work life balance fairly often. The reality for us is that, unlike earlier generations, work is NOT our life. Work is important to us but we’ve been taught that it is better, for our health, to work to live, rather than live to work.

In addition to work we may also be juggling study, friends, family, sport, other paid and unpaid work commitments. Hence the need for flexibility.  There are people in every generation that would benefit from a more balanced approach to work and life.

Respect My Authoritah!

These brats have no respect for experienced people. You treat them well and they crap on you.

Experience alone does not qualify one for respect, being respectful toward others does. Respect, like Love,  is something you give not get.  May I suggest leadership:-

• Our concept of leadership 2.0 involves asking questions, connecting and collaborating.
• We seek leaders that inspire, support and encourage our personal growth and development.
• We want to feel that we work to contribute to something meaningful.
• We will find new and improved ways to increase effectiveness, efficiency and productivity in business.

Gen Y’s Great Expectations

The main issue with Gen Y’s (but not all) is their expectations are ridiculous. They come into the workplace and after one year they want a promotion and if they don’t get it, they throw a hissy fit…I think there is some resentment in some of our older people as we had to work our way up and earn respect in the workplace and pay would come later. These days they think and expect to be CEOs at 24.

We are entering the workforce the most highly educated generation, yet I can see that to those that did not have to pay for an education our pay expectations may seem disproportionate.  Still, education has burdened our generation with billions of dollars worth of student debt. Is it unrealistic of us to seek an income that may see us debt free within the next 15 years?

And aspire to leadership, we shall because our entrepreneurial spirit makes us increasingly willing and able to take risks,  our education has armed us with knowledge and insight and today’s technology allows us to connect, share and collaborate in new, more effective ways.

Gen Y Collaborators

Love us or hate us 10 years from now we will represent almost 40% of the New Zealand workforce. Maybe it’s time to accept that aspects of our work ethic and the workplace freedom that we aspire to are  useful, perhaps even necessary, for the growth of a knowledge economy.

“…Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go…”T S Eliot

“…Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing…” Helen Keller