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Sarah holding up her Soda and ice cream at Pops

Sarah enjoying her 10th birthday at Pops

Lately I’m noticing a major trend in helping people.  I’m kind of addicted. This set of stories is almost in order, but the shorter story that happens later, I’m putting in the front.

While at dinner at the 140Conf Smalltown, I got to talk to Sheila Scarborough, who was telling me about how on her drive to Kansas, she stopped by Pops Soda Shop in Oklahoma.  This place has over 500 flavors of Soda from all over the world!

This of course fascinated me, so I decided I would go on my way to Austin.  I went and it was pretty cool (and that will be another blog post- I took video and photos). In this blog post I’m not writing about the soda.  I’m writing about Sarah.

While I stood at the register to pay for the sodas that I was purchasing as cute gifts for my Austin family (friends), the speakers blasted “Attention.  Attention.  We have a very special announcement.  Today is Sarah’s 10th birthday!  She is sitting in the 3rd booth on the left.”

I quickly asked the cashier if she could watch my cases of soda, and quickly went to find the 3rd booth.  I asked the little girl there if she is Sarah.  When she confirmed that she is, I wished her a happy birthday, and then offered a birthday portrait.  Her mother wrote her email address using crayons :)

I told them that I would send in the morning when I arrive at Austin (I arrived at 6am), but what I ended up doing was going to my car, getting my laptop, and processing the photo, and sending it… right then, from Pops.  I figured that getting a birthday present would be more fun on your birthday, as compared to the next day.  I sent it without my Couch Surfing Ori watermark.  So that Sarah also has proper bragging rights, I informed her of my photography background (that I’ve shot such celebs as Nikki Taylor, Hulk Hogan, Rob Zombie, Wycleff, etc…) and some links to see my work.

THAT is the majority of the point of this post. When was the last time that you did something nice for a complete stranger?  When was the last time you did something just to make someone happy?

These days the media is constantly trying to teach us that all strangers are evil.  That people are out to kidnap us (You should see the length of the email that I wrote to ask permission to use Sarah’s picture in the blog post) and kids.  There are numerous cases of people being harassed and even arrested for feeding other peoples’ parking meters!  The negative media hardly delivers good news… just fear fear fear…. and while I understand that that gives them viewership, it is actually hurting the world by convincing people not to nice or helpful!

My travels have taught me that people are awesome!  People are friendly, and helpful, and fun, and definitely worth going out of your way to help.

More than that though, you know my theory on serendipity— the more people you interact with, the better your luck.  You never know who someone is.  Not to mention Karma is always a good thing. It works better when you don’t expect anything back, and you generally get yours back in ways you didn’t expect.  I also love good stories, and events that make for good stories.

This is the equivalent of “No regrets”– the equivalent of seeing a beautiful girl, and then kicking yourself in the ass later for not having gone up and said hello because of some internal dialogue in your head that told you why you would get rejected.  Take a chance people!  Get involved with other people.  Yes, I thought “Geez, if I go up to these people and start talking to their 10 year old, they’re going to call the cops.”  “Should I go say anything?”  “Should I offer a photo, or is that too creepy?”  What the hell?  I’m an award winning photographer, and I’m feeling creepy for offering to do something nice?  Thanks a lot media!  Yes, I almost did not do anything… but then I thought about the whole no regrets thing, so as Anthony Robbins said “If you can’t, you must. If you must, you can.”

Was it the coolest present Sarah ever got?  Probably not… but I didn’t see other people going to wish her a happy birthday after the announcement, so I’m sure that wishing her happy birthday at least made her birthday better, and the photo added to that.  But even if it did nothing, I tried, and that’s what counts.  I did something nice for someone for no reason, with no expectation of something in return.

Yesterday morning in Austin I was having coffee, and this woman was carrying her coffee, and her kid’s hot chocolate.  My hands were full with my coffee (I had put Sriracha – a thai hot sauce – in it! Adventure!), but I opened and held the door for her with my foot.  I could see the relief on her face as she thanked me for that.  Holding the drinks was tough, because she was also trying to keep an eye on her hyper child that was running every which way. And now back to Detroit:

As I was driving towards Kansas to attend the 140Conf there, I got a DM (Direct Message on Twitter) from Becky McCray “I think you should present at the 140 Smalltown, and Jeff Pulver agrees!” I enjoy public speaking, so… sure I agreed.  Many speakers just repeat the same presentation over and over, but since I loved the concept of the 140 Smalltown when Jeff told me about it in LA, I started thinking about what I could say that would help.

I not only wrote a presentation, but I then presented it to some friends and got their feedback, then I conferred with one of my couches (Katherine Hoppe of Coos Bay, Oregon) who represents a small town (3 counties that together have a population of 16,000 people).  I picked her brain about what goes on with social media use in her area.

Kat teaches other counties how to use social media, as well as businesses in her area.  She is a genius when it comes to this.  After I presented, people were talking about Coos Bay for hours.  I guess that’s Karma, eh?  She helped me with the questions I had for my presentation, and in return I totally pimped her and her town out.

A saying that I really love is “If at first you DO succeed, try not to look so damn surprised!” (Spoofing “If at first you don’t succeed, try try again.”) –  Well… my presentation achieved its goal: it gave solid usable ideas for social media usage that would be easy to implement, and not overwhelming, for people in a small town.  The reason I mentioned that saying is because I was caught off guard when all these people were thanking me.

I’ve gotten “Great presentation!”  or “I’ve enjoyed that!” before… but being thanked so profusely by the people whom I wrote it for, about how helpful and useful it is, that was exciting.

I spent the evening mingling with the people, giving them further ideas, and of course telling my various stories of travels and mischief.  After the 140 Mixer, I skipped out on dinner with everyone at (If all the girls with big boobs get jobs at Hooters, where do the girls with one leg work?) IHOP so that I could encode and upload the video clips from the event.

That too was something helpful, and I’m still being thanked for that.  The speakers now have a venue to share their presentations.

The next morning I got a tour of the Cosmosphere – a space museum in Kansas.  Seriously, who knew?  I felt pretty rockstar, because I got a 1 on 1 tour from Patsy, whom I met the night before. It was mindblowing seeing the ACTUAL crafts that were in space.  The SR-71 was my favorite.  It’s friggin huge!!!  These things look so much smaller on TV when there’s no people next to them for perspective.

After the tour, I gave Patsy some of my consulting for free because I had such a blast in the museum, and these solutions would help the museum grow their collection, grow awareness about the museum, and do things that no other museum is doing.  She was pretty excited, “I’m stealing that!”  “ummm… you can’t steal it, I just gave it as a gift!”  *chuckle*  She also has my permission to buzz me whenever the museum needs any ideas.

I can’t blog my every single deed… I’m just writing a few, because I just noticed that I’m doing it more and more…so I thought I’d write.  Hopefully, it inspires you to go and do something nice for someone else.


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