OtherThanThat

Ellen McGirt of Fast Company Magazine rocks.
Period.
For starters, she’s a top notch Journalist with thoughtful and insightful reporting skills and a gift for writing with a graceful command of language. More than that though, I have to say that she is among the most wonderfully supportive and professionally generous people with whom I’ve had the pleasure of crossing paths.
When I left my job at Seesmic at the end of 2008, Ellen was among the first people to contact me. She was going to be in San Francisco and she wanted to meet to chat. What I thought was going to be a purely social hang out turned out to be Ellen turning her sharp mind’s laser focus into a brainstorm on what Cathy 3.0 should, could and would be.
I can say that it is in part due to the great insights and encouragement from Ellen that I figured out my new path and am now well on the way to launching that business (more on that another time).
Several months ago, Ellen told me about a fun new project she was launching for Fast Company. Called “The 30-Second MBA” the idea was to gather an array of industry leaders and provide them with a series of business questions. Their videotaped responses – restricted to :30 sound bites – would be posted to the Fast Company site.
Ellen began naming amazing business leaders that were already in the queue to do this, a list that included: Alan Mulally, CEO of Ford Motor Company; Joe Robles, CEO of USAA; Craig Newmark of CraigsList; Jay Adelson, CEO of Digg; Jeff Swartz, CEO of Timberland.
She wanted to add me to the list.
Far be it for me to say no to such a lovely offer … and so sitting down in my apartment with my trusty Kodak Zi-6, I hammered out a few 30-second ditties … and the first two have been posted!
I’m also proud to say that every one of my videos clocked in just below the :30 time limit – not the case for all the faculty 🙂

Judgement vs. Experience – what’s more important?
When does a meeting need to be face to face?