Schools and Wishes

As I prepared for my TEDx talk, which happened last week and I'll post the video when it's online, I watched a lot of TEDTalks and presentations. The difference between TED and others is the personal side. It wasn't easy to share my story and experience but it's what I love about TED.

If you ever get the chance, do it; it was a remarkable experience.

One of the talks I went to first was this one from the brilliant Dave Eggers from TED 2008 who shared his wish - along with the hundreds who have joined him since - of education and the creation of The 826 Valencia Writing Center in San Francisco.

If you haven't seen this, you need to, click play.


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Four Words That Could Save Your Life

Perhaps it's just my experience, but I'm having a lot of conversations lately about life purpose. Those include family issues, ending relationships, money, careers, marriage, fear, and it seems many I know (me included) are asking a lot of deep and difficult questions about the choices they make in their life.

Next week, I'm speaking at TEDxGuelphU and the process has turned into much more than I ever imagined. I was working on my talk and mentioned it on Twitter. Suddenly the flood gates opened. Someone I had never met reached out and offered to help. His name is Jordan Axani and you can see his talk down below.

Dig Deeper

We had a three hour call last week and in short, he tore me to shreds. He reminded me that doing a TEDTalk wasn't like any of the workshops I had done or speaking gigs or radio work years ago. This was different. If you're not familiar, TED stands for technology, education, and design. And the reasons I visit it several times a week is to learn about people's stories and experiences.

As I worked on my talk, it was as if I was telling my story in the third person. A close friend has been kicking my butt for a long while now and between the two of them I feel like I'm in a boxing match that is my life!

Four Words

I've eluded to it a few times here on this site, but the past few years have been a roller coaster and I had thought they were affecting my life now. Was I wrong! It's been a lifetime of habits and actions that have affected now and if you dig deep enough you'll discover the same for you.

More practice, more digging, I'll let you know how it goes next week, but I've discovered four words that could save your life. I've been using them a lot lately and the reactions have been amazing.

Can you help me?


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Making it a Reality

Between working on client stuff, meeting new potential clients, writing a book which has been quite an enlightening and soul searching process, and trying to figure out what this thing called life means, I've been approached to submit a proposal to speak at a TEDx event early next year. No humblebragging here, straight up, this is a huge honor.

The audience will be university students, professors, and guests. The theme of the day is theory to reality. At first I thought about the fact every company started with an idea. There are none that started without one, which is the theory.

Then the work begins...

But I think it happens more often than we realize. It might have happened to you today. An idea came to mind, you acted on it, boom it became a reality. So we may not want to minimize these moments as they can lead to the big things.

The other element I keep thinking about is kids and the chances they have as they embark on their journey of discovery and potentially a handful of different career paths. This lead me to Kiran Bir Sethi who is the founder Riverside School in India which teaches kids life’s most valuable lesson: I can. That's something we know-it-all scared adults seem to forget.

Watch this!


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Kneale Mann | People + Priority = Profit
New Book out in 2016 – Details soon!

Sharing in a Narcissistic World

We are connected by no more than six degrees of separation. You may know someone who knows someone who knows me, done. And with close to seven billion of us walking the earth, that remains a fascinating reality.

Johannes Gutenberg was the person most attribute to the invention of the printing press around 1439. It revolutionized the world and allowed ideas to be spread faster between people across vast distances.

Connected by Thumbs

Depending on who you ask, the Internet is somewhere around forty years old. The look, feel and ease we see today began in the early 90’s. The ever expanding electronic web has revolutionized the world. It has allowed ideas to spread in an instant through computers and mobile devices. The digital world is more social. Or is it?

Mitch Joel has been studying the digital space and human behavior for more than two decades. He is the president of Twist Image - an award winning digital marketing firm in Toronto and Montreal and in his spare time he speaks all over the world, writes one of the best marketing blogs in the world and has a podcast and a book of the same name - Six Pixels of Separation. Mitch suggests we may not be as social as all the chatter suggests. He explained during his recent keynote at TEDx Concordia in Montreal.



Kneale Mann

video credit: TEDx Concordia