Capsun's Corner – by Capsun M. Poe

Media Credit: Sandee Oshiro

A week ago today, I had a great opportunity to have a very intimate lunch with Leo Babauta of ZenHabits.net who was in town to run the Honolulu Marathon.  Many thanks to Sid Savara for arranging our mini-meetup and Sandee Oshiro for the above picture.

Here’s how Leo described us in his post:

I also had a chance to have lunch with a few Zen Habits readers: Sid Savara, Capsun Poe, Sandee Oshiro and her sister Cindy (who isn’t a blogger but trust me, I tried hard to convince her to at least microblog). It was nice because it was small — I’m better with small groups — and they were all lovely, friendly, interesting and disproportionately attractive people. I had fun!

It was really great meeting a legend in the blogging community – Leo has over 80,000 subscribers!  And he was a nice, down-to-earth guy.  I only wish Leo and his wife could have stayed longer so that we could have given him a local’s tour of Honolulu.  Maybe next time!

Being that we apprentices were meeting with our Zen Master, here are some things I took away from Leo:

• He believes in the democratization of the internet. As such, he is very open about sharing his work.  So much so that many things on his site aren’t copyrighted.  He mentioned other people who publish his stuff:  while they are making profit, they are also promoting him, which in the end helps him out.
• He knows that democratization efforts often are at odds with efforts to monetize. I think this may be the difference between building a brand (like Leo and ZenHabits.net) and running a commercial operation (like a newspaper or TV station).  While he can afford to share things without copyright, a major news organization, with its associated costs for news-gathering, would probably be less likely to embrace the idea.  But with the declining profitability of newspapers, perhaps Leo might be onto something to save the industry.  Of course, the question remains whether shareholders and corporate leaderhsip would accept that.
• He admitted that he doesn’t follow his own advice sometimes. Whew, that’s a life-saver for me.  But the point is not that someone falls off the wagon, but how quickly they can get back on track with their goals.  It’s encouraging to know that even the best of us might need a few chances to achieve something.
• Perhaps most interestingly, he noted that Guam has many Hawaii ties and similarities. First, I learned that they have Roy’s Restaurant there.  We also learned that they have a large military presence and many of them serve in the military.  And when we used the term “haole” to refer to a Caucasian, he totally understood, and informed us Guamanians use that term as well.  Cool!

If and when Leo and his family make it back, I hope we can host another event and better tours on the next go-round.

Mahalo!

Tags: babauta, leo, zen habits, zenhabits