Reputation is today's keyword

The serependity of blog posts and real life makes reputation my keyword of the day. Maybe I've found one more argument in my war against separate personal and professional profiles anywhere. Or perhaps, we are closer to understanding the importance of now over yesterday.

Much chatter was started by Reputation is Dead. It's Time to Overlook Our Discretion, an acknowledgement that we all do some silly or stupid things and that just the sheer mass of Twitter, Facebook, and so much more means we can no longer pretend to keep our past just to ourselves.

Michael Arrington, who drops hints of a new application due out, first writes:

"We’re still wired to think of gossip as something that spreads quietly behind the scenes, and relatively slowly. But we’re already in a world where it’s all completely public, there are few repercussions to the person spreading it, and it is easily searchable."

Get ready to laugh

He calls it the closet skeltons moving to the front porch, acknowledges the obsuridity of trying to keep anything private today and suggests one day we'll look back and laugh about this.

"And the kind of accusations that can kill a career today will likely be seen as a badge of honor, and a sign of an ambitious individual who has pissed off a few people along the way."

Or, perhaps we can start believing that people change, grow and/or improve and what is most important is now, not yesterday, not tomorrow.

Flint seeks future

A belief like that would help the region I now call home - Flint, Michigan. The city is one 1,100 competing for a blessing from Google. There were videos, a sea of white at a meetup, a Facebook group (I bet the Flint,MI Google Broadband Project will get 1,000,000 fans), a website and much more to showcase how this once strong city is ready for new investment and technology.

Even though the city is best known now for its auto manufacturing, technology has always thrived here: bulletin boards, a free-net, free public computers and other efforts thrived beneath the main street visionaries.

Flint fights reputation

Still there is a reputation for this city, one built by the war between unions and bosses, acknowledged by the still controversial "Roger & Me," and reinforced by an out-of-context remark on bulldozing neighborhoods that draws worldwide media attention.

Indeed, a Facebook status from a man who just finished touring Buffalo, New York, muses on Facebook how the "town has been through many economic changes" that his hometown, Flint, could also turn-around but acknowledges the difficulty:.

"The Flint area can evolve and arise once we get past the idea that we are only a shop town."

Also from Facebook, this time from the Mott Foundation, is an acknowledgment of creating something new:

“Much like the ‘Little Engine’ children’s story,” notes this article, (on the Michigan Municple League's site) the Mott Foundation’s hometown of Flint, Michigan, is “gaining a reputation as the town that could.” Several economic development and revitalization projects – many funded with Mott support – are helping the community to reinvent itself and create a new future"

That means like the advice given in Reputation is Dead. It's Time to Overlook Our Discretions ..... we just need the world to overlook what it thinks Flint is and consider what it is or could be.

Reputation, yep. Today's word of the day.