I had sent out a Quick Poll asking for feedback about the characteristics of my audience and writing style, and after many vibrant exchanges I can definitively articulate these qualities:
Audience: people who are intuitive (direct perception of truth, fact, etc., independent of any reasoning process; immediate apprehension), instinctive (visceral, spontaneous, unpremeditated), and/or aspirational (yearning; ambitious, desirous of success)
Writing Style: (note that these adjectives describe the writing, and not necessarily my personality...)
intelligent (a capacity and taste for the higher forms of knowledge; astute, clever, alert, bright, apt, discerning, shrewd, smart), illuminating (informative, insightful, enlightening), articulate (using language easily and fluently; expressed, formulated, or presented with clarity and effectiveness), holistic (emphasizing the importance of the whole and the interdependence of its parts), charming (pleasing, delightful, winning), intriguing (arousing the curiosity or interest of by unusual, new, or otherwise fascinating or compelling qualities), eclectic (not following any one system, but selecting and using what are considered the best elements of all systems)
What started four years ago as musings from a private blog, distributed via email in-box to serendipitously counteract the humorlessness found in the workplace, is going global. Here is just a small but representative sampling of people who read and share my posts:
- an African-American VP in corporate philanthropy who leads a major political action women's group supporting Barack Obama, co-chair of the host committee that brought the 2004 Democratic national convention to Boston
- a Korean-American arts and culture television producer and former White House intern in Al Gore's office
- a Native American model-actress-dramatist from Montana who is a director of education and outreach at Harvard
- a former software executive turned entrepreneur
- a high tech guru and former architecture student who repairs his own cars and renovates his own real estate properties
- an international transportation consultant in San Diego and former business professor in El Salvador
- a physician and former military officer in Hawaii
- an up-and-coming author and Ph.D. candidate in history who does field research in the Netherlands and Curacao
- an influential talent agent in NYC
- an information officer at the World Bank in Hong Kong who covers the entire Asia region and is an extreme sports enthusiast
- a high school senior who is a "triple threat": top scholar-multicultural student leader-varsity athlete who trains with a former Olympian in crew
- a cryptologist/engineer in Texas with more than 5 U.S. patents
- an intellectual property attorney who has lived on a sailboat in a Boston marina for more than 16 years and leaves a very small footprint
Addendum, August 2009:
- highly engaged print, broadcast, and online journalists across the country
(photo: room with a view from the Miyako Hotel, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto)
