Over the past seven years, I’ve spoken at a lot of schools with our Dance Floor Theory Student Leadership Training program. I’ve always considered myself more of a theory/practice type of speaker than motivational/inspirational. It’s not that I don’t value the motivational/inspirational type talks, it’s just that every time I tried to go down that road, it didn’t feel natural to me. So I stuck with being the “smart” speaker.

Yesterday, however, at the closing keynote for the #SAtechBOS conference, I decided to try on a new hat and see what it would be like to mix more motivation/inspiration into a “smart” talk. The talk was brand new and one I’d never done before which made me extra nervous. It was in front of a lot of people I truly respect and was streaming live on the internet to anyone who wanted to watch. I also didn’t finish the slides until 2am the morning of the talk because I kept wanting to shift things around. Needless to say, I was nervous.

In the end, the talk came together in a way that totally blew me away and based on the comments that filled up the Twitter Backchannel (see below), I walked away from the conference totally humbled by the impact the talk had on the group. I’ll remember this talk for a long time to come.

P.S. The video of the talk should soon be posted online at which time I’ll also share the slides.

#satechBOS Officially crying in this keynote @tomkrieglstein . Going home tonight to thank both my mentor and my mentee for inspiring me.

August 3, 2012 12:55 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@ColleenCentral

Colleen Bunn

If you’re not inspired or reenergized after listening to @tomkrieglstein, check your pulse. #satechBOS

August 3, 2012 12:56 pm via Tweetbot for iOSReplyRetweetFavorite

@timstjohn

Tim St. John

Everyone has some brain leakin’ out of their ears…@tomkrieglstein is dropping epic knowledge / asking big questions. #satechBOS

August 3, 2012 12:33 pm via Tweetbot for iOSReplyRetweetFavorite

@EricStoller

Eric Stoller

@tomkrieglstein is giving one of the best presentations I have ever heard! #satechbos #thanks4theInspiration

August 3, 2012 12:52 pm via Twitter for iPadReplyRetweetFavorite

@PMaxQuinn

Max Quinn

@tomkrieglstein Best part of the whole day! #satechbos #sachat

August 3, 2012 1:00 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@briannemcd

Brianne McDonough

How many people's eyes just got watery in the room or on the live stream? Mine did! Thanks for inspiring us, @tomkrieglstein #satechbos

August 3, 2012 1:03 pm via Twitter for iPadReplyRetweetFavorite

@jdcrash

Jimmy

I'm not big on keynotes, but @tomkrieglstein gave a good, thought-provoking, and well-presented talk. #satechBOS

August 3, 2012 1:05 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@istudentaffairs

StudentAffairs.com

@tomkrieglstein the best keynote I have ever had the privilege of hearing! Thank you. #SAtechBOS

August 3, 2012 1:05 pm via TweetCaster for iOSReplyRetweetFavorite

@RichFox13

Richard Fox

That is what an authentic, genuine, engaging, inspiring speaker is like! --> @tomkrieglstein #satechbos

August 3, 2012 1:05 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@JoeSabado

Joe Sabado

@tomkrieglstein That was an amazing keynote. Thanks so much for inspiring all of us. #satechBOS

August 3, 2012 1:19 pm via Twitter for AndroidReplyRetweetFavorite

@ChrisCFaulkner

Chris Faulkner

It was an honor to meet @tomkrieglstein, and another to hear him speak! #authentic #awesome #satechBOS

August 3, 2012 1:29 pm via EchofonReplyRetweetFavorite

@walker_desiree

Desiree Walker

Watched @tomkrieglstein bring down the house as #saTechBOS's final speaker. He gave me inspiration for a new blog post.

August 3, 2012 1:36 pm via Twitter for MacReplyRetweetFavorite

@sportsgirlkat

Kat Hasenauer

.@TomKrieglstein Officially the most moving and empowering speaker I have ever heard! #satechbos http://t.co/7IGODjCb

August 3, 2012 1:38 pm via InstagramReplyRetweetFavorite

@Thomas_A_Kelley

Thomas A. Kelley

@AndrewGresenz Loved @TomKrieglstein talk. 1st time I realized all my ed experiences - K-12, college - led me here.

August 3, 2012 5:43 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@IlySaw

Ilyana Sawka

They stop innovating, supporting, and updating.

My Tungle.me syncing started having problems several months ago and I kept pushing off spending time trying to fix it because after I went through an initial round of trouble-shooting it still didn’t work and I was stumped. Today, I dug back into the issue and again fell short. So I wanted to email them, but couldn’t find an email address anywhere. I went to their Twitter account, but they haven’t updated since February. Lastly, I went to their blog and their last post was in May…right after they got acquired by RIM (Blackberry).

On April 9th, I hit what one could call the Social Media Lottery. At 1:25pm I posted this tweet…

With Instagram selling for $1bil & Draw Something selling for $200mm, why would any innovator bother trying to solve real world problems.

April 9, 2012 1:25 pm via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@tomkrieglstein

Tom Krieglstein

A half hour later I logged back into my account and was shocked that my tweet had been retweeted by 30 people. Then, while I was looking at the 30 retweets, another 30 came in. My tweet was going viral. By viral, I mean it was retweeted and favorited at least two times per minute for the entire day. This is the first time a tweet of mine has spread that far.

I call this a Social Media Lottery because there is almost no way for me to duplicate it. The tweet went viral because it was the right content, seen by the right people, at the right time. Essentially, it was luck, because the right content, people, and time are ever changing.

It’s April 11th today and people are still retweeting my tweet.

Between the trolls, I did gain some new followers, but for the most part I kinda treat it like a social media merit badge, kinda like when a blog post of mine went viral.

My wife continues to dominate the print media with yet another article about her job as a Ghost Twitterer. Her last media cameo was in Wired Magazine. This time it’s for a Swiss newspaper with a full page headshot! (full image)

Between Facebook, multiple Twitter accounts, Google+, Google’s address book, and our internal CRM system for Swift Kick, I have so many different names for groupings of the people I follow, that it was getting extremely confusing to bounce between each network. I know my network is my net worth and it’s paid me back infinity+1, but that only happens when I can access the correct network at the correct time. So I set out to determine a default list of groupings that I could use across the networks. Here’s where I’m at…

PROFESSIONAL CONTACTS:

• Student Leaders
• Student Affairs Professionals
• Alumni Professionals
• Entrepreneurs
• Investors / VCs
• EO Members
• Speakers
• Education PR People
• Other Education Folk
• Other Professionals
• CrowdFunding / MicroFunding Professionals

PERSONAL CONTACTS:

• Family
• Extended Family
• Colberts
• NYC Friends
• Chicago Friends
• College Friends
• Highschool Friends
• Forum Members
• TechStars NY
• Swift Kick
• SuperCamp

ORGANIZATIONS:

• Student Affairs Accounts
• College Accounts
• Alumni Accounts
• Alumni Organizations
• SA Organizations
• CrowdFunding / MicroFunding Organizations
• Other Companies

OTHERS:

• World News / Info
• NYC Happenings
• Randoms

Those who know my wife, know she has a ridiculously amazing writing ability. Just peruse through her Twitter feed and you’ll see what I mean. Her mind is like wikipedia and her pen is like David Sedaris. She can pull out references to just about anything and make it funny. This is why she not only has a collection of online adoring fans, but has also landed her a two page interview in the December Wired print magazine. Though not her first brush with the media (here, here), it’s for sure her biggest. You can’t buy the magazine off-the-rack any more, but if you have a copy, turn to page 94, and you’ll see my lovely, and talented, wife talking about her life as a Ghost Twitterer. Here’s the opening line…

“Think your favorite celebrity posts awfully clever tweets? They’re probably written by Annie Colbert”

Luggage Porter by ColbyBluth

The day before Hurricane Irene made landfall along the Eastern Seaboard, a friend asked my wife and I to help volunteer setting up an evacuation center in NYC. While helping out, I was trying to be as nice as possible to the people coming in seeking shelter. I’d stop my work to help people carry luggage up stairs, answer questions, and clean up water spills. All of which I thought was part of my job as a volunteer.

After helping a family carry their luggage up some stairs, a supervisor stopped me and said…

“You shouldn’t be helping the evacuees as much because we need to train them to know that this is a self-help facility. They need to do things on their own. Training them that we will help them with everything is just setting us up for failure because there will soon be a lot more of them then there are of us and we won’t be able to help everyone.”

As soon as she said that, I flashbacked to the day before when I was doing an orientation training at a school and the president spoke before me. In his closing remarks to the orientation leaders, he said…

“No matter what, make sure to never, ever, ever let a parent pick up any luggage.”

Then a couple days ago on Twitter I saw this Tweet…

So my questions are, are we doing too much for our new students? Are we training them that no matter what they need, we are going to make it happen for them? Are we turning college into a daycare facility verses a place where you are expected to carry your own bag because after all, it’s your life?

A couple months ago, a debate erupted over the possible elitist nature of the popular online student affairs community, #SAchat. The discussion lasted for several days, before trailing off. But the idea of elitism stayed with me for a while afterwards because back in college, my student activities group was also accused of a similar thing. Ironically, the whole purpose of our student group was to promote student involvement on campus.

Thinking back on my time being involved in college and my experience of being with #SAchat since the beginning, I think I have another view on the elitist debate that I need to go back to a dance floor to help explain.

Let’s start with the idea that on any dance floor there are varying levels of engagement from five, being the most engaged, to neutrals, being the least engaged.

The most engaged people will tend towards the middle of the dance floor and the least engaged people will camp out next to the wall. Go to just about any dance around the world and you’ll see this same structure.

Most of the time the most engaged people tend to stay dancing in the middle of the dance floor because that’s where they’ll have the most fun. They get to interact with other fives who are just as excited as they are. And the longer they stay in the middle, the stronger the relational bonds between the other fives, and thus they’ll want to stick around even longer. Being a five in the middle is addictive and will make you forget that there are other people on the dance floor. Rarely will a five unconsciously break away from the other fives and spread out to the neutrals on the edge.

Unconsciously we all want to continue to hang around the people with whom we’ve built up the strongest relationships with and who are excited about the same things as we are.

Leadership is about consciously thinking about how you interact within any situation. It’s easy for leaders to clump together and celebrate how cool it is to be a five. But that doesn’t help the greater cause of bringing more people onto the dance floor. It’s hard to break away from your group and reach out to someone brand new. But if fives continue to only interact with fellow fives, I can see how easy it is for someone to call them elitist, and over time, for the fives to be the only ones left within the community.