This isn’t about how to craft a perfect presentation or article, garner more clicks and shares. Instead I’ll focus on more esoteric topics such as: understanding the sharing platform hierarchy of influence, balancing public-and-private personas, and how public recognition can affect organisational dynamics. It will conclude with principles that have guided my decisions of what to share, where, when and how. It’s built on 20+ years of sharing in the public domain, 100s of engagements with a few big successes and some definite duds.

—Jan

 

Contents

• I. Failure as stimuli for invention
• II. Why we share
• For individuals, sharing is about career evolution and advancement
• For corporations, sharing is about survival
• III. Who we share with, the Audience Sentiment Arc
• IV. Making sense of our professional identity, what we stand for
• Attributes of a professional identity
• Touch points of a professional identity
• “Meaningful moments” anchor the professional identity
• Why pay attention to meaningful moments?
• Coming up next...

Read Part II of this essay.

 

I. Failure as stimuli for reinvention

I remember the first time early in my career when I was on stage in front of a professional audience. Asked to step in at the last minute at a conference, I was ill prepared, froze, petrified in the spotlights, and spouted nonsense. The scars of that experience turned me from any public speaking for half a decade. My ineptitude would have haunted the audience too, although thankfully I doubt I left any impression.

A decade or so later, my research career was taking off, and I was on a stage in Bengaluru to give a talk at the Doors of Perception Conference. I love being in vibrant India, but on the way back to my hotel from a pre-conference workshop, a fever started to kick-in. Over the next two days I hunkered down in my hotel room as my body violently expelled anything and everything that could escape from orifice or pore. I survived those two days with bottled water and intermittent rest, until finally the fever broke.

On the final day of the conference, I was ill-prepared to give my talk—being physically depleted and mentally futzed. Indebted to the hosts for the invite I ventured out of my room, nibbled on some plain rice—drunk perhaps an unwise amount of water—and headed to the venue. As listened to the host announced my talk, I realised I still had no control over certain bodily functions.

That was the only time in my career when I’ve gone on stage unsure of whether I could last thirty minutes without soiling myself.

Having lived through that experience—notably retaining a clean pair of pants—I lost all fear of public speaking. Tech not working? Ill prepared? Permalagged? Hostile audience? These pale in comparison to what might have been. It provided the perspective to take a breath, appreciate the opportunity of public speaking, and strive to become better. 

A few years later, I was in Las Vegas for a walk-on talk as part of the Nokia CEO’s CES keynote. In the intervening years I’d given over forty talks and keynotes around the globe, and had figured out how to communicate something worth paying attention to, whilst balancing professional obligations with staying true to myself (more of which later).

However, I arrived at the auditorium for a practice walkthrough in a suboptimal state. One week earlier my daughter had been born. I was sleep deprived and emotionally exhausted, though naturally this is nothing compared to what her mother had been through.

I’d always written my own talks, but on this occasion I was working with the CEOs speech writing team, his body language coach, and various comms staffers. We had enough time for a single walk-through on the main stage the day before the talk and once again I futzed the practice run. It was my first time working with this team, and it was obvious I was the weakest link for the CEOs main event. I returned to the hotel and for the first time in a week was embraced by what was, to this day, my most glorious sleep.

The pressure to deliver a walk-on part for someone else’s keynote is relatively trivial compared to the CEO whose words could potentially impact the job security of thousands of people. At the time Nokia had 40% global cell phone market share, and employed about 70k people—a misplaced phrase could affect market confidence, Nokia’s cost of borrowing and numerous other weighty issues.

My small part in the team’s success on that day, led to becoming a regular company spokesperson and taking on a more public role in addition to my regular research duties. It also opened up a world of opportunities and experiences working with a wide range of organisations, the lessons from which I'll collate to share here.

I've included personal, depreciating examples in this introduction to acknowledge that the more polished version of me that you are more likely to have interacted with was shaped over years by extensive practice, and repeated, potentially catastrophic failure.

II. Why we share

For individuals, sharing is about career evolution and advancement

How does the thought of presenting your work on the main stage of a conference make you feel? Dread? Anxiety? Excitement? Elation? All of the above?

How about sharing through other channels: through social media; with peers at a workshop; appearing on a podcast; being published in a journal, or picked up by a widely read newsletter or mainstream media?

For some people, sharing is part of a deliberate, systematic process to build a public, professional persona, with clear goals and a strategy of how to achieve them. For others, it's reactive: not aspired to, but something which requires attention in order to fulfil professional obligations.

Whatever level of motivation we have for sharing, at a high level, we share work in public to evolve and advance our career. To some readers this will appear obvious, whereas others will push back—surely there is a more noble intent? I posit that the umbrella term “career advancement” can encompass a multitude of goals, such as to:

• find a tribe, with similar values and shared interests,
• nurture an established community, and position oneself within it,
• external validation,
• influence others, e.g. to direct attention to a topic or way of working, a call to action,
• signal status, by making associations such as “... alum of” or “... fellow”, often explicitly called out in bios,
• financial gain, direct or indirect,
• attain the trappings of a celebrity,
• attract interesting conversations, people, opportunities, or to
• support the survival of the organisation, or oneself.

If I’m honest, I’ve leaned into each of these at different stages of my career and in response to a range of opportunities.

We often associate the term “celebrity” with attention seekers, whereas my definition is more prosaic: “to be celebrated by one’s peers when one is not present”. We are all celebrities, although some people are celebrated more widely and intensely than others.

Celebrity status might be attained because a person pushes the boundaries of a professional domain, shapes the community’s narrative in an important new direction, provides inspiration, or demonstrates selflessness in the service of their community or tribe. By this definition, the main value of celebrity lies not in attaining an elevated status, but in an ability to attract interesting conversations that lead to near- to medium-term opportunities. These opportunities require significantly less effort to realise than when that status is not present. Thus, attaining celebrity status takes on the properties of a platform, which begs the question: “For whom or what should this platform serve?”.

Being celebrated is not always positive. It often goes hand-in-hand with a loss of privacy, inbound requests that have intents-unknown that need to be managed, and exposes the sharer to a wider range of prejudices and abusive voices, for which they may be ill-equipped to handle.

Over the long term, being celebrated for a moment or stage in one’s career can make it more challenging to evolve into new domains. Firstly, it leads to more work opportunities in the thing that one is known for, which becomes a repetitive loop that at some point stagnates a career. Secondly, as ways of thinking and doing evolve, the celebrity becomes anchored to a time and place associated with “the old ways of doing things”, regardless of how they might have personally evolved. The social and commercial value assigned to ideas and the people associated with them rise and fall. Thus, of all the things that might be, specifically what do you want to be known for?

For corporations, sharing is about survival

Corporations have different underlying motivations to share than individuals. 

At a high level, corporations share to increase the likelihood of their survival.

This can include to:

• support the mission, often by attracting users or customers, or to nurture stakeholder relationships—all of which make the organisation a viable ongoing concern,
• attract and retain talent, to maintain awareness of the organisation within professional communities,
• position the organisation favourably for financial markets, by articulating achievements, outlining opportunities and why they are best suited in their industry to realise them,
• position new products, services in the marketplace, e.g. by providing a origin-story to why they came into being,
• lobbying, e.g. to make the case for a particular regulatory stance,
• harness the momentum of the prevailing industry or societal narrative, or more proactively to,
• manage a crisis, e.g. to deflect attention to alternative, more advantageous narratives.

Given what is at stake, corporations invest in communications teams and other professionals whose sole purpose is to manage what is shared, when, and by whom. If you're wondering how that small agency was mentioned in [top tier media], its very likely that they've hired in outside professionals with established relationships to attain access to platforms and build exposure.

FIGURE 1: The intersection of individual and organisational motivations for sharing.

Corporations gravitate to choosing sharers from their organisation who (as a baseline) have good communication skills. Ideally they should also be ambassadors of the organisation’s values, and understand how their sharing role fits into the organisation's broader strategic narrative 

As such sharing is a deliberate act. That interview you listened to? The opinion piece that was put out? The organisational function that was mentioned in the service of a larger story arc? These are rarely the result of serendipity. Thus, for everything that is shared by the organisation we should ask “Why this content?”, “Why this messenger and platform?”, “Why now?” and “What am I missing?”. The answers are rarely what one first assumes.

III. Whom we share with, the Audience Sentiment Arc

Everything we share has an audience. Not all audiences are equal.

Consider the many differences between peers reading a journal article, attendees at a talk hosted at an industry conference, or a mention in top tier mainstream media. Properties we might pay attention to include:

• the sharing platform’s status amongst our peers,
• the quality of interactions such as comments, conversations or job opportunities,
• the attention paid by notable decision makers,
• its value to various organisational functions,
• other roles such as selection committees, editors, agents, or comms specialists who worked behind the scenes,
• whether money changes hands (in either direction), or
• sign-ups or follows.

A typical method to measure the impact of shared content is in audience engagement. This is often defined by views, clicks, shares and other interactions baked into online platforms where content is picked up and shared. These metrics are superficial at best and implicitly nudge the sharer to produce new content that can compete in that metrics-driven environment. It often becomes a race to the bottom.

The Audience Sentiment Arc takes an alternative approach, prompting us to think about issues such as the properties of different types of audience and their sentiment to the sharer and what they are sharing.

 

FIGURE 2: The Audience Sentiment Arc, early in the sharer’s career. 

An individual's career will likely span many different audience types. However, it is common early in one’s career, to initially share with our immediate professional community, including peers with whom we have direct, reciprocal, supportive relationship:

• Professional community. Generally supportive, with a complimentary interest in the subject matter, but as yet no strong opinion of what is shared.
• Supporters. As content that adds value to the community is shared, and a unique point of view is formed, supporters emerge to interact, and propagate content though other channels. Support is often assumed to be reciprocal. Over time, supporters enable sustained (commercial) offerings such as books, training or subscription newsletters.

As our thinking evolves, and our stance for and against certain issues becomes more opinionated, we start to attract a wider range of audience types, as shown in Figure 3. 

 

 

FIGURE 3: The Audience Sentiment Arc, for an established career

 This includes: 

• Neutrals. Have a passing interest in the content, often with little or no understanding of the person who produced it. This audience is commonly reached from exposure to more distant professional communities and from mainstream media.
• Constructive critics. Critics demonstrate a willingness to invest in the sharer by understanding their content and context, before presenting alternative views—a valuable gift of their wisdom. Meaningfully engaging constructive critics—for example by providing them access to your platform and network—has the potential to make them long-term allies. Ignoring them may nudge them to become dissenters.
• Dissenters. Have reached the conclusion that your position goes counter to their world view and the wellbeing of people and things that matter to them, and that you are (probably) unwilling to acknowledge their point of view. Any new content you share is assumed by default to be tainted by past, rigid stances. Hence, dissenters seek to undermine the narrative put forward by the sharer. Addressing dissent is challenging for the sharer who is unlikely to be privy to these conversations, which are often voiced in smaller, closed, like-minded groups. However, it is well worth attempting—interactions with dissenters can reveal the limitations of one’s position, identify hard edges of how far ideas might travel, and of course the dissenter’s position may be more worthy of adoption than your own.
• Fans. Some supporters evolve into fans, who proactively seek out and evangelise your content. If things you do are for sale, they will be amongst the first to buy it—and as such they are often the bedrock of commercial offerings such a books or events.
• Stans. Uncritical, they wholeheartedly buy into the sharer’s worldview which they proactively propagate wherever possible. Their vibrant defence of the sharer’s position can be perceived as irrational by others, and if not addressed—it can become detrimental to the sharer’s position within their community. A few can also be highly demanding of the sharer’s attention, which if not sated, nudges them to become dissenters. Your stan may also be another person’s troll.
• Trolls. Hold a real or perceived grudge, and will persistently, proactively seek to undermine the credibility of the sharer. The adage “do not feed the troll” is the only long term strategy that works, until they become bored and move onto another target.

Having one’s content propagated to new audiences can be a raw, jarring, experience triggering emotions that can prove counterproductive to a sustained role in the public arena. What and whom to pay attention to or ignore? How to stay grounded if things achieve virality? Whose opinions to trust? Which egos to manage?

 

 

IV. Making sense of your professional identity

How to define the professional you? How much of this definition is intrinsic to you, and how much is shaped by external forces? What are the risks associated with an imbalance in either?

What do you stand for? More importantly, why have you adopted that stance?

The relative importance of career

Even the most career-focussed person is balancing other facets of their life. We can recognise that:

• a person’s work-life priorities change e.g. over life stages, balancing relationships, children, or in response to life-events that trigger reflection (Super, 1980),
• significant personal and cultural differences exist in attitudes to whether work is prioritised over other facets of life (OECD, 2024; Huang & Liang, 2023), or that
• work- and personal-time boundaries vary, for example, whether one responds to work communications outside official working hours, or is expected to.

That said, managing work/life boundaries has become more challenging because of the:

• prevalence of mobile devices, cloud computing,
• untethering of previously anchored tasks from time and place, a shift to more-flexible working practices including remote work, a trend accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, 
• omnipresent, highly habitual, sometimes addictive dynamics of social media that permeate working lives (Kuss & Griffiths, 2011), and
• the difficulty in effectively segregating different audiences such as colleagues, friends and family (Goffman, 1959). As more of our lives shift online, there is also the likelihood of “context collapse” where previously discrete audiences converge with one another in online spaces, leading to content being taken out of context, with unexpected, sometimes unfortunate outcomes (Marwick and boyd, 2011; Davis & Jurgenson, 2014).

Attributes of a professional identity

There are many definitions of “identity”. In order to keep things simple I’ve adopted one proposed by Marcia (1980), namely “an internal self-constructed, dynamic organisation of drivers, abilities, beliefs, and individual history”.

In order to later explore a person’s professional identity from both their, and their audience’s perspective I’ve abstracted this into three layers, as shown in Figure 4a.

Each of the three layers is dynamic, and each informs the other. An identity is also adapted according to context, and to present different versions of oneself to different people. Thus, “identity” can also be thought of as “identities”" (Schwartz, 1992). There are cultural differences in the formation of an identity in particular the distinction between “I” cultures that are grounded in the self, and “We” cultures that situate oneself within the wider context of a group (Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner, 1997).

 

 

 

FIGURE 4a. The three dynamic layers of a (personal and) professional identity, each influencing the other

Here, the attributes that form our “professional identity” are divided into three broad categories: personal, professional development and experience, and environmental influences, as shown in Figure 4b.  

FIGURE 4b. Attributes of a professional identity

The formation of a professional identity can be drawn from a single, or multiple categories. For example: if ‘status attainment’ is considered a priority and is sated by working for a prominent organisation or an important sounding job title, this can be influenced by personal beliefs and values, familial expectations, and assumptions around career progression baked into the organisation’s culture.

Touch points of a professional identity

There are a wide range of contexts where a professional identity is discoverable, revealed or proactively shared to different audiences and stakeholders:

• in a resume, job interview, cover letter,
• through interactions in the workplace, such as a person’s ability to collaborate, how they reach decisions, demonstrate diligence, handle pressure, or the effort they put into ‘looking the part’,
• informal settings with colleagues such as an off-site, an after-work meal or drinks,
• through communications-, collaboration-, and productivity-analytics in the tools we use e.g via Viva Insights or Work Insights,
• social media, what we share, interact with, the groups or channels they are members of,
• professional associations, certifications,
• at a conference or workshop, or
• personal websites, bios.

It is challenging to track which touch points different audiences have been exposed to, what they remember, and what, if anything they recall. As an example, my rule of thumb for a well communicated conference presentation is that audience members may remember up to three discrete pieces of information (although just one is far more likely with some remembering nothing), and that different people remember different things regardless of what the sharer emphasises. 

The importance of ‘tonality’

The audience also assesses what I refer to as the ‘tonality’ of a presentation. Tonality encompasses the presenter’s appearance, personality, the degree to which they might be trusted, whether they are worth paying attention to, and assumptions about the presenter/audience’s shared beliefs and values. Tonality frames any decision to learn more about the presenter, their work, and the type of relationship that might be initiated. It raises questions such as “Would the presenter bring value to my professional network?” and “Is this person a good cultural fit to my community?”.

Meaningful moments anchor the professional identity

In Strategic Narratives I posited that stories and narratives are an integral part of how humans make sense of the world.

These terms are often used interchangeable, so for clarity, my definitions are:

• story i.e. information, presented chronologically, which professionally might include a resume or LinkedIn profile,
• narrative i.e. how we reframe and tell that story, such as what else we include, emphasise, reorder or leave out.

As you are reading this, your ‘inner voice’, is making associations between what you read, your own memories and experiences. Depending on your context, the coherence of that inner voice may range from seemingly disassociated fragments to partially formed sentences. For some, new information is sorted or situated into a fully formed narrative that encapsulates past experiences. These associations are likely framed by ‘tonality’—your interpretation of my beliefs (whether they are shared with your own), values (whether these sufficiently align), and assumptions about my personality.

Of all the things you’ve experienced and committed to memory over your lifetime, why do some become associated with your personal and professional identity?

An idea that I’ve been exploring to answer this question is what I refer to as ‘meaningful moments’—experiences structured in narrative form that over time have taken on an elevated meaning in framing who we are and what we stand for. The recall of these meaningful moments in narrative form shapes how we act, the decisions that we take, and what we aspire to become.

 

For example, the following is a ‘meaningful moment’ from my teens and twenties that guides my thinking today on potential Studio D job candidates and the value they might bring to a project. On one level it doesn’t matter whether you ascribe it the same value as me, or whether you would reach the same conclusions in how that value is applied. You have your own meaningful moments that are true to your identity and the life you’ve led. 

At high school I was interested in pretty much everything except studying, and failed my university entrance exams the first time around. After resitting the exams a year later I landed a place at one of the bottom ranked universities in the UK. Compared to my immediate peers I was a failure.

At university I obtained a BA in Development Economics, and eventually completed a MSc in User Interface Design. Aged 30 I took on my first corporate job —as a usability engineer for Nokia—where I was relatively weak compared to my better educated, more articulate peers.

However, by this point, I had also travelled widely, had been exposed to a range of cultures, belief systems, and socio-economic situations—which provided me with a grounded confidence in conducting research on mass-market devices for so-called emerging markets. At that time I was working extensively in countries such as Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and Iran, and the ability to generate insight on projects relied heavily on our team’s relationships formed with locals and build rapport with a wide range of research participants.

Fast forward to today: a high proportion of people I have hired onto projects have followed non-traditional career paths associated with that work.

This life experience, recalled as a loose, highly subjective narrative, frames how I ascertain the suitability of job candidates for Studio D projects. The assumption core to this narrative—that a person’s professional  ‘value’ goes well beyond what is typically measured, or indeed measurable—is based on the outcomes and consequences of my experiences that played out over many years. My relative career ‘success’ (purely based my personal goals and outcomes), is partly ascribed to this meaningful moment, which is integral to my identity. It manifests itself in Studio D’s operating model—now proven to be sustainable, although this went against conventional wisdom at the time.

By implicitly or explicitly sharing a meaningful moment we provide our audience with insight into rationale and intent, connecting different fragments of our current and aspirant professional identity into a consistent, memorable narrative. It moves the audience from surface level understanding of ‘what’ and ‘how’, to engage with a deeper level understanding of ‘why’.

Meaningful moments are often used by startup founders to communicate start their organisation’s mission and purpose. These can be catnip for media looking for a human angle to hook an audience to an otherwise vanilla company. There are risks to adopting this approach including representation, appropriate longevity, and it often leads to significant biases such as the founder being blind-sided by their own entrenched, and over-refined narrative. In my next book I'll explore how to identify and refine organisational meaningful moments, and the contexts where these moments are prudent to be applied.

Q. How are an individual’s meaningful moments formed? What elevates them to be meaningful? 

I’ve sketched out a rough framework of how an individual’s meaningful moment might be formed, as shown in Figure 6. It reflects the path of a single meaningful moment, but fair warning that other moments are likely to follow a different path.

 

FIGURE 6. An example of how an individual’s meaningful moment forms 

An individual’s moments that are more likely to attain ‘meaningful’ status are those that:

• triggered strong emotions,
• generated heuristics that were later applied to new situations,
• led to significant outcomes, consequences that affected their life trajectory, which may take years to realise,
• challenged a person’s belief system, values, or their community’s prevailing norms, i.e. through the adoption of a stance that needed to be defended,
• were repeatedly reflected upon, implicitly or explicitly communicated.

Our experience over time provides clues as to whether a moment is ascribed “meaningful” status. It can, on rare occasions happen in the moment—that goose-bumpy feeling of recognising you have transitioned from what you were to what you have just become. However, more likely it is because of reflection, generating and applying heuristics to new contexts, and where we have been forced to defend our stance and beliefs.

Q. Are they always remembered in narrative form?

Not always. However, integration into a person’s existing narrative, or the creation of a new narrative makes meaningful moments easier to recall than looser fragments. 

Q. What is the difference between a meaningful moment and a heuristic?

A heuristic (rule of thumb) is useful, but isn’t necessarily closely aligned with our identity. The process of applying and re-evaluating a heuristic can lead to assigning a higher value to the experiences it is associated with.

Q. How about compared to life principles?

Principles are often recalled as dos and don’ts, and their formation is often considered an objective response to a person’s lived experience. Whereas the meaningful moment describes the rationale behind the principles, are more likely to be remembered in narrative form, and can embrace a high degree of subjectivity. (Well-articulated life principles often include a rationale, but these are often considered objective by their creator).

Q. Or compared to a belief system?

A belief system is what we believe to be true regardless of whether there is any evidence to support our point of view, with religion being a prime example. This system is mostly formed in childhood, based on observations of how to behave appropriately, think and act, and is updated as a wider range of contexts are experienced. Exposure to other belief systems e.g. through a new work environment, or overseas travel, often nudges us to adapt-to-survive or double-down on our beliefs. A new experience can nudge us to reassess our beliefs, and the process of doing so can generate a meaningful moment.

Why pay attention to meaningful moments?

The power of a meaningful moment lies in enabling us to:

• sift through and elevate selected past experiences and structure them in a coherent narrative form,
• support recall of heuristics or principles drawn from those experiences,
• reassess our belief system, either to double down, or adapt to the new reality and avoid cognitive dissonance, 
• recalibrate our identity to be able to function in this new reality,
• choose what to share, when and how, i.e. whether to keep the meaningful moments private, implicitly communicate through behaviours and acts, or in situations when we want to draw the audience to engage with our ‘why’, to communicate these explicitly.

Thus, meaningful moments are a useful mechanism for aligning the world to who we are and what we stand for.

Coming up next... 

Read Part II of this essay.

New instalments will first be published on the Radar mailing list.

Footnotes

To acknowledge the distinction between a profession and vocation:

• profession, is associated with type of job that requires a specific education, training or skill, and often requires certification. Under a narrow definition this would include accountants, doctors, engineers and lawyers. However, the commonly understood broader definition spans many white-collar and some blue-collar jobs.
• vocation, is associated with following one’s passion, skills may be self-taught or innate, and is closely tied to one’s identity.

A person can have a profession and a vocation, and the distinction between them can be clear or non-existent. Given this readership, I’ll default to ‘profession’” to encompass both terms, acknowledging that occasionally we may need to tease them apart.

If organisations share to increase the likelihood of survival, surely this could also apply to individuals? For some, yes, but, that would pre-suppose all individuals frame their life goals in terms of their career, which is untrue.

 

 

References

• Davis J. L., Jurgenson N. (2014). Context collapse: Theorizing context collusions and collisions. Information, Communication & Society, 17, 476-485. Mixing and matching personal and professional across various platforms.
• Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books.
• Kuss DJ, Griffiths MD (2011). Online social networking and addiction--a review of the psychological literature. Int J Environ Res Public Health. Sep;8(9):3528-52. DOI: 10.3390/ijerph8093528.
• Marcia, James. (1980). Identity in adolescence.
• Marwick A. E., boyd D. (2011). I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience. New Media & Society, 13, 114-133.
• OECD (2024). Better Life Index.
• Schwartz, Shalom H. (1992). Universals in the Content and Structure of Values: Theoretical Advances and Empirical Tests in 20 Countries. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 25, pp 1-65 Academic Press.
• Super, Donald E. (1980) A Life-Span, Life-Space Approach to Career Development. Journal of Vocational Behavior 16, 282-298 (1980). This research paper proposes nine primary roles played by most people over the course of their lifetime, with associated expectations for each role—conceptualised in the Life-Career Rainbow shown below. As Super points out, not everyone fulfils all of these roles and the amount of time spent in each role can vary considerably, but it is useful to think about the interrelated nature of work with other roles, and how they are likely to change over time over a lifetime.

 

 

Photos

• Storm clouds over Lhasa, Tibet.
• Exiting the valley near Daocheng Yading, China.
• Precarious crossing, close to Lhasa.
• Shibuya rooftop, Tokyo.
• Rickshaw mud flap seller, Ahmadabad, India.