I wanna be a Guru
After much consideration and personal reflection, I have decided to become a guru (Guru?). From what I can see, it takes remarkably little effort to actually become a guru nowadays (compared to the time and patience required to become a certified electrician or small appliance repair professional), and time is money, right?
The sweetest gig going is becoming a social media guru. The pay is probably crap, but I suspect it's pretty easy to become a self-professed hyper-expert about a topic that has everyone else slightly confused. As a bonus, social media itself is the best way to convince people that you're a social media guru, so it does have that whole "medium is the message" thing going for it.
A lot of people would call Seth Godin a guru. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. He certainly has a better guru-ready name than I do, and the hair thing helps big time.
If I look over my fairly extensive professional career, there are 3 people I consider to be gurus. My mostly younger staff and I have the remarkable fortune of actually working with two of them: Roger Hall and Jim Cavanagh. Both men have rich histories, wonderful stories and share their knowledge, brilliance and insight through actions, not a Twitter account.
If I called either of them a guru to their face, they would likely laugh.
Which tells me something.
Comments
I think the picture you selected above says it all about gurus. It's a person that has been around for a long long time, and has gained the knowledge to pass on. Usually by experiencing the situation first hand and discovering the solution.
"Social media" on the web is still in it's infancy stage. How can someone be a guru of an ever changing technology. (from Norm Roussel on 11 February 2010)
Thanks for your comment Norm.
Cheers
Nick (from Nick Hall on 11 February 2010)
What? No plug for Ripple? :-) (from Brendan Farr-Gaynor on 11 February 2010)
Thanks for the plug. Cheers (from Nick Hall on 11 February 2010)
