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Face it, the news can be a real downer. And is it really the truth? If you stick your head in a septic tank and report every detail of how things are decaying and falling apart in there, yeah, it’d be true, but the question is how true. Outside, a tree blooms, children play, birds sing. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, perhaps truth is in the heart. If that’s true, what kind of truth do we want to put there?

I’ve seen some great truths, some beautiful truths, some helpful truths at 100bloggers.com. The material you’ll find can help improve your game of life, but even more amazing is that you can get in conversation with these folks, and they’re up to great things, writing books, forging networks, and making this little blue brown ball a little better. Check them out, from the founder Troy Worman, to the wonderful Phil Gerbyshak, Trevor Gay, and many others.

A friend once related a horrible study where the mad white coated scientists put cats in a vise so they could see the world, but not interact with it for a long time, and then dissected their brains and compared it to a normal kitten’s development. He said they found it was mush. Don’t let your brains become mush! The bloggers need your comments and interaction to keep them going, and it will help your brain too. See you in the blogosphere.

My wife and I saw a movie in downtown Missoula last night, “An Inconvenient Truth“. I came out moved, despite having heard about global warming for many years, I was shocked at how bad it really is, and how well understood the crisis is. Please please, if you care about the planet, check out the film. It was very well done, and it deserves your attention. At the very least, you’ll be more prepared in case we don’t turn the tide. It’s pretty clear Katrina was a result of global warming, and Katrina will look like a picnic if the trends aren’t significantly reversed. Here’s the official site for the movie, www.climatecrisis.net.

Conferences are wonderful opportunities to network, meet people, and to learn about the topic area of the conference. If you’re fortunate enough to be a speaker, the opportunities increase even more.

What about hosting one?

Tim O’Reilly has invited friends in the computer field to participate in his exclusive “Foo Camps”. They’re conferences that are bascially self-organizing, if you’ve been lucky enough to be invited. But some didn’t feel like waiting, and they started “Bar camp”. You just find a space with several rooms where speakers can speak, invite whoever you want in whatever topic area you like, and let them create the conference.

Would like you like to host a conference? If you need some inspiration, check out this video.