

image credit: victor nuno

Today is the final day of the year 2008. Our society’s numbering of years always bothered me and makes little sense from a logic perspective – it is a system based on culture, not science. This isn’t the 2008th year the planet has been around. Alas, this is what society has decided to use, so we’ll go with it for now.

Also, yesterday was the final day of my 25th year on this by-chance, life-supporting planet we call Earth. Always a retrospective time of year for me, and probably for you as well.

Most bloggers make lists of their most popular posts of the year, but instead of doing that (you can browse the archives here if you’d like) I thought I’d do something different and piece together a few smart/inspirational quotes from several bloggers I’ve been reading this year.

Chris Brogan

From The Way Today’s Web Changes Things

“You CAN do things a lot more streamlined than before. You don’t need an IT team. You need a nerd. You don’t need millions of dollars. You need day jobs. You don’t need a million customers. You need the right 10,000.”

Seth Godin

From Be Careful Of Who You Work For

“If you want to become the kind of person that any company would kill to have as an employee, you need to be the kind of employee that’s really picky about who you align with.”

Eric Friedman

From Where Do You Live?:

“I recognized early on in my own career that some people want to feel safe and get a paycheck every 2 weeks without challenging the status quo. I also recognized that these people had convictions about things that made them seem to come alive when they talked about them. Why not take that passion and conviction and try to spend more time on it?”

Tim Jahn

From Make Friends With Your Weaknesses

“What separates the successful from the unsuccessful is the acknowledgement of weakness. Bring your weaknesses to the front of the line, acknowledge them, and learn from them. Think of them as a valuable tool rather than trash to take out.”

Brian Solis

From The Social Revolution is Our Industrial Revolution

“Evolution is evolution – and it’s happened before us and will continue after we’re gone. But, what’s taking place now is much more than change for the sake of change. The socialization of content creation, consumption and participation, is hastening the metamorphosis that transforms everyday people into participants of a powerful and valuable media literate society.”

Chris Anderson

From Why Technology Hasn’t Saved Us From Inflation (But Still Can)

“In a world where seemingly everything is getting more expensive, the price of digital technology continues to fall and the differences between those two economies are growing. If getting rich was the incentive to go digital a decade ago, saving money may be an even stronger motivation this time.”

Peter Kim

From How To Set An Ego Trap

“The old saying tells us, “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.” Let’s update that for today’s world and recognize that the way to a blogger’s keyboard is through their ego.”

Matt Dickman

From Don’t Forget The Rest Of The Digital Puzzle

“Social media isn’t the end-all-be-all, but it offers marketers unparalleled opportunity to participate in relevant ways. It also provides a launchpad for other marketing tactics. Social media is not an island, it’s a high-power engine on the larger marketing ship.”

Steve Hodson

From WOOHOO! Someone finally gets it

“Just because we slap a new term and some soothing pastel web pages together it doesn’t invalidate what came before it. It doesn’t change the fact that we have been socializing on the web long before someone invented the marketing term of social media. It sometimes seems though that the tech world has this inbreed need to proclaim something as new and totally different than what came before when in fact this isn’t the case.”

Robert Scoble

From Disruptive Factories

“Americans are being fed only the negative stories about China and that is lulling them into complacency. The largest book store in the world is in Shenzhen. The largest city hall I’ve ever seen is here. The largest library I’ve ever been in is here. This is an increasingly educated workforce that’s just starting to get going. Americans need to come to China and see what’s going on because it is absolutely stunning in its scale.”

Mitch Joel

From The Real Work Has Yet To Begin

“Blogging, Podcasting and staying up to date on Twitter, Facebook and more is real work. It’s this kind of real work that affords me the luxury to acquire new clients, build interesting Digital Marketing and Communications initiatives, speak all over the world and think ever-more deeply about this space.”

Skellie

From How Not To Sell-Out

“If you think about the bloggers and thought-leaders currently making waves at the moment–the people everyone is currently talking about–you’ll notice that they are unashamedly individual and unashamedly confident. You have to be. Believing that people will listen to and find value in what you really want to say requires that.”

David Armano

From Passion vs. Productive

“There are actually few organizations that can support passionate employees—even if they say they want them. That’s because the original industrial revolution was designed to support productivity.”

François Rocaboy

From Take It Easy, More Human Times Are Coming

“It is the end of privacy? Who cares… that will reveal what real life is. Moment of glory, of doubt, of pain, with all the situation that goes along. Indeed, we will learn that people are more complex than we knew before… It is not the end privacy, it is the end of clichés, of stories, that’s all. May be that is good to see that humans are humans.”

Mark Stevens

From Is It A Depression Or Is It Malthus

“The formula for success is really quite simple. Unleash the entrepreneurs. Get out of their way. Give them dollar for dollar tax credits for every unemployed person they hire. Let them dream and risk and build.”

Mark Dykeman

From Dare To Create Unique And Unoriginal Work

“Don’t worry about retracing the path of ten thousand other creators. Make the journey your own with your honest, authentic thoughts and feelings. No one can accurately duplicate that.”

Kevin Kelly

From 1,000 True Fans

“Young artists starting out in this digitally mediated world have another path other than stardom, a path made possible by the very technology that creates the long tail. Instead of trying to reach the narrow and unlikely peaks of platinum hits, bestseller blockbusters, and celebrity status, they can aim for direct connection with 1,000 True Fans.”

Maki

From The Key To Effective Viral Marketing Is Emotional Engagement

“Human beings are far more likely to communicate ideas and information with others when they are emotionally engaged. Find the key issues that concern your audience and then inculcate them within your marketing plan to get an emotional response.”

Leo Babauta

From 10 Steps to Take Action and Eliminate Bureaucracy

“A better answer than adding extra steps and meetings to a workday is to focus on action. Create a culture of action and hire people who get things done. Eliminate as much bureaucracy as possible and get things moving.”

Jamis Buck

From Embrace Real Constrtaints, Not Artifical Ones

“Now, constraints are good, and you should certainly seek to embrace yours. But creating artificial constraints because you’ve painted yourself into a corner is code smell, and the solution is not to accept your corner and wait for the paint to dry, it is to unpaint yourself out of that corner. ”

Jeremiah Owyang

From Build Your Network Before You Need Them

“Those who ignore the party/conversation/network when they are content and decide to drop in when they need the network may not succeed. It’s pretty easy to spot those that are just joining the network purely to take –not to give. Therefore, be part of the party/conversation/network before you need anything from anyone.”

Sarah Lacy

From I Only Need 8 Jillion More Page Views to Make Rent. Call Your Friends!

“Stop looking at the Web as merely a display opportunity and not a way to interact. That does not create a new business model, it just shifts one that isn’t growing and is outdated. The reason sites like Google are stealing advertisers from daily newspapers is not because Google has more eyeballs. It’s because Google used the interactivity of the Web to deliver a new, better way to advertise. ”

Update: click here for a visualization of these quotes

Related posts from The Future Buzz

Old Vs. New

Active Vs. Passive

My 10 Most Inspirational Articles

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