Continuing with the awesomeness from 99U Conference…

They say there are two types of people in this world… those who divide the world into types of people, and those who don’t.

Gretchen Rubin falls into the first group and she’s been giving a lot of thought lately to how we think about rules.

As such, she’s divided the world neatly into 4 types based on how we feel about rules: Upholders, Questioners, Rebels, and Obligers.

Self-awareness being a good thing, I thought I’d share and think about how these types effect our ability to get shit done.

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“Escaping success is how I stay in a state of wonder”
– Joshua Davis

I just got back from the 99U Conference, which was filled with amazing speakers, but my absolute favorites were the ones who stood out as the scrappiest of the lot. The ones who stood on stage and you wondered briefly if they’d ever presented before as they stood up there so raw and authentic.

At the end of the second day, after hearing from a number of well-known authors and founders, this big, biker looking dude walks out on stage in jeans and a t-shirt, tattoos down his arms, on his neck – starts screaming "HEY!" … "HEY!#@$!" and then laughing with this total little kid’s smile and screaming some more.

And then proceeds to tell us that he’s going to talk to us today about… Escaping Success.

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I’m not a fan of New Year’s Resolutions. I believe that every day gives us the opportunity to reinvent ourselves and so it’s silly to put so much stock into that one day each year. Nonetheless, with the new year starting this weekend, I find myself longing to create more and – in the words of Seth Godin – to ship it. The more it terrifies me, the better!

And so, for those of you thinking similar thoughts, here’s a bit of inspiration that others have shipped to help us out:

Productivity Tie-Breaker: How Will You Feel Afterwards? by Mark McGuinness. Includes three things we can do to make sure 2012 is our most creative & productive year yet.

6 Steps to Building Your Creative Endurance by Jarie Bolander. Helping us get back into creative shape.

#YearInReview What did you ship in 2010? by Seth Godin. Seth Godin’s awesome post from last New Years that reminds us it’s not just about what we create but about what we actually ship.

What are YOU going to ship in 2012?

Photo Credit: Ship in a bottle by JohnLH

Over 130 people – half techies, half business folks – converged on Microsoft NERD this weekend to start their own companies, have some fun & make some noise.

Friday night, 50 of them stood up and pitched their ideas in quick 60 second spots, interrupted only for a quick game of multiplayer rock-paper-scissors.

Pitches ran the gamut from gamifying entrepreneurship to games to solve the world’s biggest problems. From help with dating to help finding babysitters. Investing help through forecasting small company returns to a game that lets you invest in twitter hashtags.

One pitched a joke “I’m going to create a double rainbow – I mean, a Double Game Layer around the world!”. Some just sounded like it – DidWeShag.com for sharing those vital date details. And a guy named Sting pitched something about the Police (PayYourTicketsOnline.com).

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