This morning, I had the pleasure of hosting Jullien Gordon in the Capture Your Flag Manhattan studios for his Year 2 interview.  Personally, the Year 2 interviews have been immensely fulfilling as I'm fortunate to get to see firsthand the personal growth and career development incrementally taking place across our interviewees.  In a way I feel like a documentary filmmaker though I feel exponentially more blessed to share in these windows into interviewee experiences as we build out the Near Peer Learning experience to connect the dots, step by step, floor by floor, on the aspirational career staircase. 

Jullien and I covered an immense amount, as few are as productive experience creators as Jullien (well, Jon Kolko might be good competition!).  One topic was his new "Innerview" platform.  Here is a lecture Jullien gave at Indiana University to help students better align passions to purpose and channel that into career planning and interview preparation.  NOTE: this video includes messages and career learning methods right for all ages and audiences, not just college students. 

Be well.  Capture Your Flag. - Erik

Over the past two years, I've had the great pleasure of meeting Dave and Michael Radparvar as well as Capture Your Flag interviewee and Sandbox Network co-founder Fabian Pfortmüller.  The inspiring threesome co-founded Holstee to create lifestyle goods that are designed with a conscience.  It's been a joy to watch the Holstee story unfold as the company has combined messaging around living life passionately and purposefully with its own design and manufacturing efforts. 

Today Holstee released their #LifeCycle film to bring the Holstee Manifesto - a call to action to live a life full of intention, creativity, passion, and community - to life via a biking passion narrative in an online video medium.  

After you watch the embedded #LifecycleFilm, I invite you to watch Fabian Pfortmüller answer "What Does It Mean to Be Green?" as it relates to Holstee in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview. 

UPDATE 11/18/11:  Wonderful Washington Post piece on "How the Holstee Manifesto Became the New 'Just Do It'."

Fabian is scheduled to come in for his Year 2 Capture Your Flag interview in early 2012 so stay tuned!

Be well. Capture Your Flag.

- Erik

In her 2011 TEDx Talk at TEDxHouston, Nina Godiwalla shares three simple ways to make a corporate work culture more welcoming.  Godiwalla's TED talk focuses on what she learned about diversity messaging and more inclusive and welcoming workplace cultures through her investment banking experience on Wall Street, the stories from which she shares in her first book "Suits: A Woman on Wall Street."   In 2011 Nina shared her anticipation preparing to give this TEDx Talk down in Houston. 

Source: TEDx Houston 2011 - Nina Godiwalla (http://youtu.be/VaKV1iH65wM) by TEDxTalks

Capture Your Flag interviewee Fabian Pfortmuller presents "Another Generation, Really?" at TEDxEastHampton.  Fabian shares more about bringing together online and offline relationships to create innovative new communities.  He terms these "curated innovation communities" and lists the elements of what makes them happen.  He shares experiences from his company, Sandbox Network, a global community of the most active and aspiring doers between the ages of 20 and 30 as well as others, including the TED community and university alumni communities. 

Learn more about Fabian's work in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interviews, including "How Sandbox Network Creates Sustainable Leadership" and "How to Create Social Network Value" to expand upon Fabian's TEDx message.  

Source: TEDxEastHampton - Fabian Pfortmuller - Another Generation, Really? (http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxEastHampton-Fabian-Pfortmul)

After you enjoy Simon's talk, please check out our Year 1 and Year 2 video interviews - 36 in total - with Simon.  Here is one from 2011 - "How Finding Purpose Increases Sense of Fulfillment" - and one from 2009 - "How to Define Fulfillment and Measure Success Each Day."  If you want to watch them later, save them to Instapaper. 

Source: If You Don't Understand People, You Don't Understand Business - Videos - 99 Percent (http://the99percent.com/videos/7058/Simon-Sinek-If-You-Dont-Understand-People-You-Dont-Understand-Business)

Last month I had the pleasure of speaking at the RISE Global Entrepreneurship Conference in Austin, Texas to discuss how knowledge video and near-peer learning could be a powerful career education frameworks for next-generation career development.  I believe Capture Your Flag’s mission –  interviewing tomorrow’s leaders today to provide a more approachable means for young professionals to develop aspirational careers – is aligned to not only the entrepreneurial journey but also to any meaningful or purposeful career plan.

Watch the 10-minute video presentation to learn more about why I created Capture Your Flag and how the learning model is enabling knowledge video and near peer aspirational career development and educational experiences.

Thank you so much for your continued support and participation in the Capture Your Flag journey! 

- Erik Michielsen

Abroad Experience is a pillar amidst the leadership enabling ingredients, or themes, that provide structure to the video interview segments shot, edited, curated and presented to you on Capture Your Flag.  By experiencing the unfamiliar, we are constantly pushed to better understand not only our passions and interests, but also our potential and capacity to evolve them over time. 

Whether you have friends and family attending the 2010 World Cup or are, like me, simply enjoying the games from afar, it cannot go unsaid that the effect global culture has on opening our eyes to possibility is tremendous. 

Many Capture Your Flag interviewees have shared their abroad experiences with me in our interviews.  As interviewees return annually to share new ideas and insights into their developing careers, we will build upon these stories. What excites me most is how the video panel element - year over year interviews - will chart change and development over time. 

EMBRACING THE UNKNOWN

Just as we started out here in Brooklyn knowing little and aspiring high, abroad travelers only know a destination.  Plans and events may be charted, but the stories and their effect on us remain unwritten until actually experienced.  Often, these experiences are unfamiliar, yet, is unfamiliar a bad thing?  Interviewee Yoav Gonen shares why he embraces the uncomfortable and unknown and uses it to better chart his own course in life. 

IT BEGAN WITH A PINEAPPLE...

I had the pleasure of meeting Andrew Hutson out of school back in 1996, where we worked together at what was then Andersen Consulting (now Accenture).  Hutson found purpose outside business process consulting and it hit him by complete surprise, while traveling abroad to Honduras to assist with Hurricane Mitch relief efforts.  His story certainly does not begin here but this moment, and those pineapples, proved more transformative than anything he could have imagined.  Have a look...

...AND BLOSSOMED INTO A WORLD CHANGING CAUSE

From that point, Hutson continued his quest toward what he would soon be defined as "corporate sustainability".  After returning to school to evolve and refine his ambition, Hutson was released back into the wild - in other words the job market - to apply his trade.  Over time, a job at the Environmental Defense Fund led him to Bentonville, Arkansas, where Hutson was presented an opportunity to work with the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart and help lead its corporate sustainabilty strategy, in particular the elements involved with green supply chain.

Who would have thought that an idea stemming from a pineapple field could frame a life purpose realized by working inside the largest country for the largest company to plan a green initiative scalable to the entire world. How, exactly?  I'll let Andrew explain...

In short, abroad experiences offer extreme potential but that potential only has possibility to be unlocked when the trip is taken.  I highly encourage everyone I meet to push themselves to meet new cultures, be they regional, socioeconomic, generational, or, of course, global.  Watching Andrew Hutson, Yoav Gonen, and the other interviewees inspires me to continue trying new things and also, for new things I discover and like, to revisit and share them with others over time. 

Please visit the Capture Your Flag Facebook Fan Page to share your own Abroad Experience! 

To date, I have found three elements, knowledge, experience, and wisdom, central to understanding how interviewee views, and the resulting intent and actions, develop. 

KNOWLEDGE

The first, knowledge, is less about building academic subject competency and more about the unsuspecting ways the classroom environment may unleash passion onto the career experience.  For some interviewees, formative education experiences underlie why interviewees choose a certain path of profession.  Based on interviews to date, "Knowledge" goes beyond choosing a major and, in the case of formulating viewpoint, is often tied to an unexpected moment that broadens options while sharpening direction.

This unexpected moment strikes Scott Gold during college non-fiction classes.  Gold finds non-fiction an appealing writing an appealing medium, in particular the process building characters, dialogue, structure, and story around a framework not present in fiction writing.  The realization propels the Washington University philosophy major to build his world around non-fiction writing and launch his food-inspired publishing career. 

New York Post reporter Yoav Gonen relishes the unfamiliar and foreign as a traveler and the same can be said in his career.  After journalism school at New York University, Gonen finds himself reporting for the Staten Island Advance daily newspaper doing investigative journalism across education and community.  New York City provides Gonen access to a wide array of experiences, and through them he learns to embrace the freedom, license, and responsibility the journalist role provides in connecting him to previously unapproachable city elements, including Staten Island public housing residents. 

EXPERIENCE

The second, experience, is more about life experience connecting to core passion and belief rather than "punching the clock" or "clocking hours" in the office or on the job.

Jason Anello's direction and passions are found in design details.  From food to advertising to Yahoo marketing, Anello starts everything understanding how and why details - shape, color, arrangement - create an experience.  Over time, Anello's ongoing desire to use details to build larger experiences builds a bridge not only into advertising and marketing, but into a larger social sciences context, specifically ways details inform behavior.  Repeated projects then allow Anello to better understand the human condition as it pertains to how individuals function and make decisions in social environments.

A Cambodia travel experience transcends initial goals to visit Angkor Wat and proceeds to transform how Shaheen Wirk approaches conversation.  Wirk, no stranger to being inquisitive in his medical school and financial services training and career, nonetheless learns to be more engaging in everyday discussions, providing once common interactions the opportunity to be unique, inspiring, and memorable. 

WISDOM

The third, wisdom, builds upon knowledge and experience into a mental or spiritual state that offers connections into higher level fulfillment areas, including legacy building and mapping purpose. 

A necessary ingredient here is time.  Formulating a viewpoint or perspective is a continuum and the contribution "Knowledge" and "Experience" make advances informs a broader commentary on life and why we live it.  At some point in the continuum, "Wisdom" forms.  Now, by definition, Capture Your Flag interviewees are up and coming, developing, cultivating, learning.

Filmmaker Tricia Regan kindly shared her own commentary on what she has learned to date and what, at its core, informs her actions and shapes her intent. 

"Formulating Viewpoint" is a common theme continually underlying Capture Your Flag guests development and aspiration.  We will be closely following how this develops both with new guests as well as with existing guests care of annual interviews.  Moreover I will continue to gather feedback and information to build upon the "Knowledge -> Experience -> Wisdom" approach highlighted above.  It is only the beginning and I look forward to enjoying the journey with you all. 

*** For a complete list of all "Formulating Viewpoint" chapters, click HERE ***

- Erik

Adaptation is a fundamental theme that continuously occurs in Capture Your Flag interviewees.  It occurs in very interesting and diverse ways, all keeping the fundamental flexibility above. 

The flexibility and adaptation is less about survival than it is about identifying and seizing opportunity.  Whether it is an incremental step in a path toward shaping a fulfilling purpose or an actual immersion into that state, it is indeed a powerful and actionable force. 

There are many "Adaptation" themed Capture Your Flag video chapters from which to choose (Click here to view them all), though the below four showcase how interviewees progress by making changes and tweaks to position themselves for opportunity. 

THE IDEA AND ITS OUTLET

It began with a blog.  Cathy Erway decided not to eat out for two years.  Then came a book deal and there came a challenge.  How to turn A blog ripe with recipes and anecdotes into one girl's coming of age story in New York City.  Erway charts her course and a memoir, anchored by food in so many ways, results. 

SPREADING THE IMPACT SEED

As a college student in New Haven, Connecticut, Louise Davis volunteered locally to build a program teaching health education to teenagers engaging in high-risk behaviors.  Into her senior year, it dawned on Davis that the potential exists to build the program into something larger across communities nationwide.  Six years into building national non-profit Peer Health Exchange, Davis highlights the necessary mindset shift from maintaining one local community program to building an infrastructure to support a nationwide location network serving 100s of schools and 1000s of students annually. 

TOWARD A MORE NORMAL LIFE

Intellectually rigorous and time and energy demanding, law firm Prosauker provided attorney Jennifer Duberstein a launching pad into a sports law career upon graduating Northwestern Law School.  After years serving an array of clients, Duberstein leaves behind the firm to go in-house at a large corporation.  There, the pace slows and Duberstein finds time to contemplate broader life issues amongst a new colleague mix.  

A NEW HOME AWAY FROM HOME

Writer Mark Graham did not expect or aspire to be a New Yorker.  It just happened.  When the opportunity landed, launching Graham from his childhood Detroit home and into the Big Apple, the unknowns were many.  More over, one known was clear: Graham expected to stay in the Detroit, Michigan area indefinitely, surrounded by family and friends, and that was now changing as he moved to New York.  Different cultures, different economics, different expectation, same Mark Graham.  Acclimating to a new career, lifestyle, and location, Graham stays true to himself while learning the ropes so many writers have wove before him.

Nothing about the these adaptive stories shouts easy or obvious. Each took work, thought, and time to assemble.  And they did assemble.  Adaptation begets opportunity when the intent remains true to a core passion to make a difference.  Habitat, specialization, and opportunity know no limits in the variety of definitions that may apply.  This is true with finding one's particular place at one particular time to make it happen. 

*** For a complete list of all "Adaptation" chapters, click HERE ***

- Erik