The Invisible Mentor

Posts Tagged ‘SlideShare’

Having mentors is an excellent way to accelerate your career, but in their absence, invisible mentors are great substitutes. However, you have to know exactly what you are trying to get from mentors, you have to know what you are trying to achieve in life, and then you have to practice reflective self-mentoring to get to where you need to be. Here is a short video I found on YouTube that talks about reflective self-mentoring.

Saundra McGuire on Self-Mentoring

Cannot view this video, click here. Uploaded by DowChemicalCompany on Mar 10, 2011

 I have mentioned several of the following resources before, but this time, think about how they can help you to achieve what you would like to in life. Approach them as self-mentoring resources.

Open Culture: If you have to take a course to get up to speed on a topic, start here to see if you can find what you need. Over 400 courses from top universities are offered for free. If you find a course that’s right for you, pace yourself while learning, whether it is once a week you allocate time to learn, three times a week, or whatever. Learn at a realistic pace that allows you to complete the entire course.

The Great Courses: You can find a variety of courses on DVD to buy that are led by professors who are knowledgeable about the subject matter. The courses often go on sale, so if you find a course that is just what you are looking for, if it’s not on sale wait, and keep on checking the website because it will likely go on sale.

How Stuff Work: Here is another great place to start when you have to master any topic of interest.

Project Gutenberg: If you are looking for an education in the literary classics, download a copy of the book here, which you can use with Open Culture or The Great Courses.

Research Tools: YouTube, Scribd, SlideShare, TED, and Questia are research tools that you might not have considered.

Mentor Yourself With Blogs

There are many great blogs out there where the bloggers take great pains when writing their blog posts. If you want to learn about How to Write Headlines That Work or SEO Copywriting, Copyblogger is the resource for you. If you’re looking for tips about blogging then Problogger is your destination. If you are looking to find the top blogs, Alltop and Technorati are great places to start. To learn about content marketing Web Ink Now is a good source.

With the internet, the world is truly your oyster so use it effectively to self-mentor. In addition, remember to use The Invisible Mentor as another great resource. If you are intentional about reaping the benefits of mentors, even in the absence of having traditional mentors, you can succeed by practicing reflective self-mentoring. Below are six videos that will help to direct your self-mentoring journey.

How to be the Star of Your Life Videos

Best Self, Pt. 1: Take the Lead

Cannot view this video, click here. Published on Apr 7, 2012 by beautyvlogcast

Best Self, Pt. 2: Own it!

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Best Self, Pt. 3: Leave the Comfort Zone

Cannot view this video, click here.

Best Self, Pt. 4: Persistence

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Best Self, Pt. 5: Passion

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Best Self, Pt. 6: Find Yourself

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Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Book links are affiliate links.

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Recently I attended a workshop titled Going Beyond Google offered by SCIP (Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals) led by Sean Campbell of Cascade Insights. We have become so dependent on Google that we seldom look elsewhere to find information. This webinar was a great reminder to me about the hidden web, and I picked up some great tips that I’d like to share.

SlideShare

Have you ever thought of Slideshare as a research tool? I must admit I never did until Campbell mentioned it in his presentation. And it makes perfect sense because there are so many companies that have uploaded presentations to slideshare.net about virtually any topic you can think of. Imagine all the company data that you could mine from companies that you are interested in. This could also be a great job search to discover if you really want to work for a particular company based on the information you pick up from their presentations. Slideshare is a great place to start a search.

Archive.org

This site allows you to view the past history of a company’s web presence. I typed in my company’s URL and discovered that it had been crawled over 100 times since 2000, and I saw some of the designs that I had forgotten about. Imagine all the company data you can mine from a company you are interested in, information they have taken down but you can still access. Companies had information that they longer make public on their websites today.

If you conduct a lot of research and are looking for resources other than Google that are free or inexpensive, Sean Campbell and Scott Swigart have a book, Going Beyond Google: Gathering Internet Intelligence that may be of use to you.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

When was the last time you shook things up? We like comfortable and contentment, which sometimes get us into a rut. I feel like I am in a bit of a rut so I am ready to shake things up, are you on board? Shaking things up does not have to be radical, it can simply mean doing things differently. How can you shake things up at work? What process can you do differently?

James Webb Young in his book A Technique for Producing Great Ideas says that:

An idea is a new combination of old elements

The capacity to combine old elements into something new is dependent on the ability to see relationships

Here is what I am going to do, it may be simple for some folks but right now I do not have a clue how to do it. I am going to convert a slideshow to a YouTube video and then embed it into a PowerPoint Presentation. I will let you know how it turns out. What are two or more old elements that you can combine to get something new? What are you going to do a bit differently? Or what are you going to do that is new to you? Let us keep the conversation going, please leave me a comment.

Related Post

Summary of A Technique for Producing Great Ideas

I created the presentation below for a Slideshare competition, but while I was creating it I had my blog readers in mind because I thought it would be beneficial to you. Please let others know about it if you find it useful. In the presentation there are influential book lists that can help you decide what to read.

There are clickable links within the presentation to make it easy to download the reading lists as well as visit the websites mentioned.

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