Ever sit down to draft a post, only to have to look back at the home page of your site to remember how you format your intro paragraphs? Does the picture go before or after the text? That’s exactly how this post started. I’ve been thinking about mixing things up on this site for a while. This post will hint at some of the topics I’d like to get into moving forward.
Gearhead Philosophy
One of my favorite Tweeple is @CASUDI. She’s an intellectual, an artist, and an entrepreneur. She’s someone I view as actively trying to make the world a better place through education, international business understanding, and art. She travels the world. She lives on an island. She is relentless and she is successful and, more than a couple times, she has complimented my work and called me a “Gearhead Philosopher.”
The time I’ve spent with the wrench has made me who I am. There is more to being a gearhead than simply working on clapped-out cars or looking to make ridiculous amounts of horsepower. The wrench brings people together around the corner and around the world. We are troubleshooting problems, we are consulting with subject matter experts (SMEs), we are performing the repairs ourselves, and we are gaining knowledge and independence in the process. I’ve been participating in online communities for a decade now and doing so has made my life better.
The internet really IS a highway.
What I find most interesting is that, although we now have the ability to go virtually anywhere in the world, we organize into cliques and engage in groupthink. The DSMers hang out on DSM forums, the Evo owners go to Evo events. The SoCal Evos all park together, as do Midwest Evos. I supposed I’ve touched on the subject here a couple times before, but if I haven’t come right out and said it yet, allow me to now.
I want to unite every gearhead in the world.
How much can we learn from each other if we look beyond our comfort zones of platform or local geography? How much can we learn from people who are just as passionate about using their vehicles to do things we’d never in a million years do with ours? How much better could our lives be if we viewed each other as brothers and sisters under the wrench? This is what I’m trying to do and I’m trying to do it with Gearbox Magazine. Every time I publish an interview, putting another gearhead into the spotlight to share his or her thoughts, I feel like Lester Burnham announcing he finally bought that 1970 Firebird.
It’s not so black and white, though.
We can’t build the global community without national, regional, and local communities, so we have to burn the candle at both ends. Promote the global perspective while laying the local foundation. I’ll be perfectly honest with you, Gearbox is now nine months old and I still have a hard time putting the vision down in words. I mean, I’ve got the fuzzy, big ass goal of uniting the global automotive enthusiast community, but I don’t have much in the way of specifics on how that’s gonna happen. Right now, I’m scouring the world looking for gearheads to interview. This is how I spend my lunch hours at the office and easily a couple evenings every week – throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks. I know there’s a better way.
Taking the next steps…
Here’s what this post is all about. I’ve been learning about instructional design, the ADDIE model, and SMART goals. Social media, marketing, branding, conversation skills, storytelling, the death of the PowerPoint bullet – I’ve been studying all of this. I’ve got my big idea, it’s already improving the quality of MY life, now I need to figure out how to reduce resistance, apathy, and distractions, while increasing adoption and results. I’m going to start trying to mash these topics together in some way. It’s not going to be easy. Gearheads talk about gearhead stuff. Education/Marketing/SocialMedia-types talk about their respective topics. I wonder if I’m the only one out there trying to actually apply any of this to the social autospere…
Nietzsche said, “Stare into the abyss long enough and the abyss stares back.” If I keep trying to make the world a better place, is the world going to make me better? If I keep trying to help gearheads, are gearheads going to try to help me? I sure hope so, because I can’t do this on my own.
In a nutshell:
Expect to see this site get a little bit busier, with more content seeking to mesh gears of the social autosphere with the cogs of instructional design and pedagogy. I’m going to be trying to establish a more clearly defined vision of success for Gearbox, along with milestones along the way. We’re building a clock, not telling time.
In the glovebox:
Working Credo
