For those who don’t know what what South by Southwest (SXSW) is – it’s three conferences in one. A film festival, music festival and an “interactive” or high tech conference rolled into a week long event in Austin, TX in March.

A couple months ago I came up with the crazy idea of inducing the tech community to the new model of masculinity. As my post, Men and Boys Are Lost featuring Psychologist Philip Zimbardo’s TED video points out, our boys and often our men are not showing up with their full potential. It’s our high tech culture that takes us out.

Along with my partners Ken Solin and Dan Doty I invited two powerful women, Pam Slim of Escape from Cubicle Nation and Mukee Okan from Spirit Fire Productions to be on the panel. Our title: Emotionally Cool Guys Always Get the Hottest Women goes to the meat of the problem. Men who are emotionally strong in a masculine way get the hot women and the hot jobs.

There were 4500 entries for 500 spots. I need your help to get one of those spots, so please click on the link now to vote and comment. This is a new topic for SXSW, the largest tech conference in the world. We would love to break into that realm to bring new awareness and appreciation around men. Our goal is to teach men what they didn’t get to learn – it’s affecting us with women and at work.

Sharing this with others would also be greatly appreciated. Please go to this page on the SXSW site to vote and comment on our submission. You will need to create a free account to do this. It’s a quick process.

Thanks for your help!

Owen

Photo by Robert Scoble

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Two members of my group, Sandpoint Men’s Group are part of Ride Across America – a bike ride across the country. Wayne Pignolet, an avid rider was one of the organizers rides for Team Laughing Dog. Wayne just celebrated his four year anniversary as a group member. David Barth, another group member, is on the support team for Laughing Dog and is leading increasing the awareness around the team’s support of autism.

Image via Wikipedia

David and Lisa’s 12 year old son, Jackson, is not only the team’s inspiration; he is the community’s inspiration. Jackson has autism. Behind Jackson’s autism is pure innocence. He brings a unique presence to all social situations. He might be bouncing his ball, having a great time swimming in the lake or demanding his own form of attention. Whatever he is doing, he is being Jackson.

The Spokesman’s Review did an article on the Barths and Team Laughing Dog. The article also represents how a rural community gets behind a cause. All the local businesses are supporting this team and autism awareness. We donate products and services for their auctions. Others are donating RV’s for the race. Many are donating money for autism; to date $10,000 has been raised. Sandpoint might be a small town, but we have a big heart. We support our people and our causes.

To learn more, check out their video. It had me in tears… but I’m easy. Also their blog at – www.teamlaughingdog.com.

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As many of you know from my free ebook download – Secrets of Success, I am a huge fan of using business to catalyze personal development. Chip Conley who I meant a LOHAS conference he presented at put together the Enlightened Business Summit. It is FREE and is going on now, so check it out. If you miss it, the recordings are free.

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