Kent Blumberg

Alligator Bayou Composite

This shot is a composite of a sunset scene over Alligator Bayou, and the portrait of an alligator.  I adjusted contrast and brightness on the sunset scene, and then added a second layer, masked and blended using "multiply" in order to deepen sky tones.  I cut the eyes and nose of the alligator out of another picture and pasted them into a third layer.  Finally, I sharpened the whole works.

Praise and recognition at work

Jeffrey Zaslow writes in "The most-praised generation goes to work" about the how much praise 20-somethings need.  In "In praise of less praise," he follows up with a counter view.

In this article, I'll summarize Zaslow's key points and then sort out what I think it means for you, the business leader.

What I learned about business leadership at SOBCon07

As reported earlier I joined 110 other web publishers in Chicago this weekend.  In addition to fun and community, I picked up quite a few great ideas - both on business leadership and web publishing.

110 of my heroes in one room!

I spend Friday and Saturday with the most amazing group of people - 110 web publishers/conversation architects/bloggers.  What a wonder it was to meet some of my writing heroes in person, and to learn from them.

I'll have more on who was there and what I learned, but here are some quick links about the conference.

Quiet island afternoon

Reading and chatting in a small Maine island house.

How to help an "odd duck" fit into your team

A friend of mine had an interesting question this week:  "How does a manager help an 'odd duck' fit in?"  Fun question.  Let's see if I can do anything with it.

First of all, what is an "odd duck?"  I'm going to take it to mean someone who is different from the rest of your team.  Perhaps our duck has a different academic background from most of the team, or came from a different country, or is a youngster among baby boomers (or a boomer among gen-y folks).

Regardless of the details, you want to forge a strong team and you need your odd-duck to become one of the team.  How might you approach the task?  Here are my thoughts, but I might have this completely wrong.  I would sure appreciate your corrective comments!

(Perhaps the friend who brought me this sticky question will weigh in with some ideas?)

Virtual Conferenc May 11 and 12

Carolyn Manning was hoping to attend SOBCon07 this weekend, and had to cancel out at the last minute.  For those of you who are not headed to Chicago for SOBCon, Carolyn has come up with a virtual conference.  The conference runs in two sessions.  Both cover the same material, but are scheduled at different times.  Session one runs from noon to 6 pm US Eastern time on May 11.  The repeat session runs from 10 pm May 11 to 4 am.  See Carolyn's site for more information, including how to figure out what time this is where you are.

Where to learn how to lead

School is only one of many ways to learn leadership skills.  I wrote Monday about the lessons I learned listening to Shawn Levy's director's commentary on a movie DVD.  My wife and I brainstormed the following list of other places to learn leadership. 

Leadership lessons from movie director's comments

I aspire to be just a bit better at leading each day.  To that end, I'm always on the look-out for lessons in leadership.  This weekend we watched Night at the Museum at home, and then watched it with the director's comments enabled.  And discovered seven lessons for excellence.

Maine wharf

A wharf in Maine.