'Twitterculture' countess quotes in #clarkclass

This is #clarkclass, Twitter for Journalists, captured on Vine by @MyJrny, Sheri Guyse, today's speaker, a maven of media, music and more in Oklahoma City's "twitter culture," as she called it. To me, she's sort of a countess to that culture, committed to changing and improving OKC, many of whom have spoken to this class. These people use twitter and other social media as naturally as they speak. 
Sheri, a  favorite UCO ex-student who is communications director for Good Egg Dining Group, wowed the students with her almost low-key wit and wisdom from her extremely active and varied life. She spent very little time talking about twitter, and much more about music, business, learning, life. Almost everything she said was was quotable. 

@Okieprof in #clarkclass, by @MyJrny

There's also a sly side to her, almost mischievous, in some of her answers, and by her clandestine photos of the class and me. She has fun, and as with several of our speakers, as the class has noted, its built on some past pain and problems and setbacks.
She's also a philosopher. I asked her if there was any other advice for the class, and she blurted out something that just stunned people. You could hear the  group astonishment.

"Fear is an illusion," she said.

After she left, we debriefed, as usual, and the comments below, recorded by student @JenniferHasel, are intriguing. I'm going to add some separate tweets from the students in another post, showing more of her advice.
My best classes are where the old geezer, @okieprof, is also learning, and I usually do when my former students are around. Thanks @MyJrny.

Here's the debriefing:

• She had a lot of good points and good things to say like how she promotes music in addition to her food industry job; she has a lot on her plate but she finds a way to do it all
• She has a cool outlook on life; she thinks out-of-the-box; she makes a music venue out of her house; she's a creative thinker
• She uses social media in an effective way, she is relaxed and gives free reign to her social media manager; she uses social media in a creative and genuine way that pays off
• She has her managers use Twitter as a storytelling tool with pictures; she doesn't use it as a marketing tool
• She said that no idea is original but she seems so original; she's so genuine and she makes everything seem like her original thought
• She's an example of how powerful social media is using it the way she does for her company and not having to spend money on traditional advertising
• “Learn as much as you can; of all that I learned here I wish I had learned so much more.” 
• You can learn from anything you do
• “You might be the heaven-sent solution to a problem when they haven't even had time to think about the problem; you could be their solution.”
• She doesn’t use Twitter as a marketing tool but more as a listening device to listen to her customers and get feedback
• She created her job; she's relateable and she made her connections through Twitter
• Twitter is not a distraction; it's where a community exists
• She conveys that you should find the opportunity out there, take risks, take crazy opportunities, and get out of your comfort zone
• She is making and living her own destiny, she doesn’t work to live, she lives to work, she loves what she is doing and it’s part of who she is
• Everything she said was quotable
• Regarding Twitter, “we're all here for the same reason—to connect.”
• Regarding her job at Good Egg “It's fun to tell the story of awesomeness.”
• “Oklahoma City has this really great Twitter culture happening.”
• Regarding music artists, “They're giving you their art and that art deserves your attention.”
• “There is no way to change the culture other than to start at the roots.”
• “My biggest challenge is myself-- to only bite off what I can chew.”
• “There is a certain kind of magic that happens in an intimate music setting.”
• “I started getting brave about five years ago.”
• “I didn't want to have a tiny life; I wanted to have this great big life.”
• “I took more risks; I put myself out there.”
• “I'm a self-improvement junkie.”
• “If you can be fully present in your life, you'll experience serious amounts of joy.”
• “Fear is an illusion.”
• “Never click a link in a DM.”
• “Be nice; be good, because the good will come back to you.”
• “Go to Tuckers; get yourself a burger; it will change your life.”
• “Have a wholehearted experience, show up.”
• She tells lots of stories
• She said “This is me out-doing Dave Rhea,” and then she read Roosevelt's “Man in the Arena.”

Books and Authors recommended

• The Power of Now
• What Color is Your Parachute?
• Things a Little Bird Told Me
• Brene Brown
• E. Tolle

Comparison/Things the speakers have in common

• They all say to be nice
• They are all having fun
• Their work is part of their life and they love what they are doing
• They all believe in self-development
• They all like to learn
• They embrace themselves
• They all use their unique qualities to be successful in their work
• They all have the attitude of “graduate, get out there, find out who you are”
• They ignite you; they make you think

Media, music & more maven of OKC, in #clarkclass

The main benefit and joy of my job @okieprof as a professor at UCO are my students, and especially the former students who go on to success in their lives and become friends.
Such is tomorrow's Twitter for Journalists #clarkclass speaker, Sheri Guyse, @MyJrny, a brilliant, energized caring person who is officially communications director for Good Egg Dining Group. You'll have to attend #clarkclass to hear that story.

But Sheri is more than a person with a job. Her multiple passions and work--and survival of tough times--has gained a lot of recognition in OKC, so much so that she was named one of the 40 under 40 professionals by OKBiz last year. You can read about it  and her on the  website. She also has a witty, thoughtful blog, Really Most Sincerely. She is indeed a media and music maven and more.
As with all my speakers, she speaks with passion  on lots more than twitter, and more about life.  I'm proud, and continually energized by her and her story, which mirrors part of OKC's energetic present. 

Turning the pages of a year, book by book

I always look at what people have on their bookshelves, because what they read tells you much about them. 
I'm excluding the administrators' official bookshelves, properly arranged and there to impress visitors. I suppose I'd include professors' bookshelves, because there are favorite books there, books that have long histories of research or teaching, though many of them are free textbook copies or books that have been forgotten. I'm primarily referring to personal bookshelves.
So I guess you can tell something about me this year by the books I've read. I'd lost track of the books I'd read this past year, as fall seemed to buzz by, and a feared I'd not made my goal of a book a month. But when I started gathering them up for this post, I was surprised, with 11 more. 
In August I'd completed two books, the eighth and ninth of the year. Thus the year's total is more than 20.
So what does this list tell you? 

• Non-Fiction:

1. Fresh Air Fiend, Paul Theroux
2. The Blue Zones, Dan Buettner--about areas of the earth where there are an unusually large number of people in their 90s and 100s.

• Spiritual:

3. 4.5.6. --How God Changes Your Brain, The Meditations of John Muir, The 21 Skills of Spiritual Intelligence, Living the Questions--the Wisdom of Progressive Christianity,

• Poetry (I'm working on a story about poetry in Oklahoma, and find it difficult to write about poets without reading their books):

7. The Smell of Good Mud, Lauren Zuniga
8. Nocturnes and Sometimes Even I, Carl Sennhenn

• Self help(?):

9. I Don't Know, in praise of admitting ignorance

• Fiction:

10. The Lovecraft Anthology, graphic collection

• Writing:

11. Several Short Sentences About Writing, Veryln Klinkenborg--my favorite NY Times columnist ("The Rural Life"), and the book I'm adopting for my feature writing class this fall--the first book I've required in over a decade.

• Uncompleted (Probably never to be completed):

1. Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynne Truss, about punctuation
2. Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch, Constance Hale, about verbs.

• Underway

1. And at this time last year, I was wading through Across the Wild Missouri, history by Devoto about the fur trade--I'm still wading through it.
2. Misplaced, to my chagrin, maybe disappeared is better, first edition gift from son Vance, All the Little Things, fiction by Wallace Stegner. I began it, and laid it down and cannot find it.

Obviously, I need to read more fiction. To quote by former student and friend Sheri Guyse, @MyJRNY, speaking to my twitter class last week--"Read fiction, it'll make you a better story teller."