Good to meet you, Chris Guillebeau

Meet Chris Guillebeau, world traveler who changes the world a little bit wherever he goes. He can't help it. He's a noncomformist, author of The Art of Non-Conformity, whose credo is if you're not having fun and living a meaningful life, change what to do.

Leap the chasm. He was raised in Virginia. His dad would take him to the book store where little Chris would pick out piles of books. His dad would buy him all the books he wanted.

"We can empower and energize each other," he said to a room full of admiring applauding laffing young people, and a few grandmotherly types, ahem. He encouraged us to talk to one another and network in our time together.

Chris is traveling to all 50 states to promote his newly published book by Penguin. He writes for his "small army of people" from his blog as well as Business Week and Huffington Post.

Suburban Philadelphia was his third city. Tomorrow is Delaware or "The Forgotten State" as the license plate read. He spoke in the huge whiteboarded classroom at email marketing firm A Weber.com, which happens to be the place my son works.



In fact, this was the very first extracurricular use of the Classroom. Is it possible, I asked Sean, the marketing director, for my support group to use it to give our next Career Seminar?

We'll talk, said Sean.

I LOVE finding new places and had actually lay in bed last nite trying to think of a place other than the Giant Supermarket Upstairs Classrooms and the Huntingdon Valley Community Room.

Can you believe the Serendipity-doo-dah!

Chris unabashedly uses phrases like "changing the world" and "world domination." After Sept. 11, instead of sitting around moaning, and he his wife Jolie moved to West Africa. They spent four years in Liberia and Sierra Leone helping its citizens by building up the infrastructure. Just two people determined to change the world.

Proceeds from his book go for water projects in Ethiopia. He and his wife Jolie are deeply involved there.

Jolie Gillebeau, artist

Chris is arranging a huge conference next year in his home of Portland, OR. "Manifesto of World Domination" will be held at the Portland Art Museum. Seminars are being lined up.

What is this movement? Who are these good people? Why didn't I know about it? Who am I? Do I matter?

Ask yourself two questions, Chris said.

1. What do you wanna get out of life?

2. What can you offer that no one else can?

How can our lives tell a good story that will leave a legacy behind. It's not about money, he stressed. It's about being ourselves and "inspiring people to make positive changes in their lives." He said he's not interested in evangelizing. "I'm interested in recruiting."

One young woman with blond curly shoulder-length hair was an energetic new recruit and wanted to know how to keep in touch with him thru some kind of online forum. I was gonna holler out to her, "Create one" but kept my mouth shut. I would've signed up immediately. Reminded me of a feller who has an online forum for folks to write a novel in one month. "Unsubscribe me" I wrote. My novel took two years.



You know what I felt like being there? That I was entering a whole new world that I should've been a part of 20 years ago. Yeah, when these kids were in pre-school. Where have I been? Why haven't I known about this world? Is it too late to join?

Sign me up!



We sat in these chartreuse chairs, ergonomically correct. I said to myself, If I could photograph my fave thing in the room - other than a few of the really outstandingly adorable people there - what would it be?

It's imperative you seize the opportunity NOW. Don't wait. Do not leave with regrets. Do not say, Hey, I wish I had talked to Melissa Hancock from Bryn Mawr and learned more about her. Well, my sister Ellen and I, talked to her and learned about her one-woman crusade to call attention to Matthew Carey, a Philadelphia publisher from Revolutionary War days who is a distant relative of her late husband. She's a historian, going thru untold numbers of documents his family bequeathed to the Philadelphia Historical Society.

Someone should write about this, Melissa, I said. After you get your website up and running, contact the Inquirer. You created the little cosmos of Matthew Carey and his work. If not for you, no one would know about this man.

Then Ellen and I went out into the larger cosmos, a brilliant black night with cool caressing breezes and pinpoints of star after star in the unfathomably large cosmos.

I'll read Chris's book tonite. As you know, I'm on a reading binge. Last nite I said to myself, Ruthie! You're filling your brain up with so much stimulation. The news. The radio. Books. Magazines. Maybe you should give your brain a rest. Maybe it's tired. Maybe you should just lie quietly and do nothing.

I tried. Honestly, I tried. But ya know what? I could not stand it. Stimulation is what I crave. Call it an addiction. Maybe it is.

Bring on Chris's book!