I’m not sure whether it’s me. But I’m REALLY noticing a focus on water when it comes to giving.  Scott Harrison’s Charity: WATER continues to do amazing things and now one of my favourite bloggers, Chris Guillebeau has joined the cause too focussing on water in Ethiopia.

But there’s another groundswell going on where B1G1 businesses are linking their water-based products and services directly back to water charities like WellWishers.

We’ve already written about the great things going on with Elaine Buckland’s mokitaonline and Patterson Stark’s alkaline water . But one that’s escaped our attention (at least in print until now) is the lovely concept of Water-In-A-Box done by New Zealand-based Aquaceuticals.

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Over the last four weeks, there was no blog entry on this site.

Did B1G1 team loose the energy and momentum? - Absolutely NOT!

We were touring in Australia and New Zealand covering 7 cities in total. And our main blogger and social media writer Paul Dunn was the centre of all these events this time.

Paul's fun, engaging, inspiring and insightful talk, "WOW - Standing out in 2010" created great energy and interest toward B1G1 in every city we visited. Some of the events attracted so many more people than we expected that we did not even have enough seats (RYDGES in Auckland for example ran out of all spare chairs and we had to 'steal' more from the restaurants!).  Many people were standing at the back of the room enjoying every moment of the evening until the very end. 

If you are one of them who missed the opportunity to be there, make sure to watch out for the next round because we had so many people saying that the event was full of amazing values that they could not believe it was free (thanks to the generous sponsors for each of the event) and some people even came from other cities driving hours to get there. 

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You know how it is when ideas hit you – it’s kind of like a ‘KAPOW!!!’ moment.

I had one yesterday.

It’s been brewing for a while and like all ‘interesting’ ideas, it’s so simple and obvious you wonder why it took you so long to get it. So here it is:

Take for example the oft-heard phrase ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’. It’s used so often we don’t even think of the potential turn-off effect it has.

For example, imagine a conference being held in your city. It has the theme of Corporate Social Responsibility. And imagine too you’re a so-called ‘small-to-medium scale-enterprise’ or SME.

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Disclosure: I’m not what you'd call a keen student of the Bible. But after a recent trip to New Zealand, I believe I can imagine how the man felt who actually did pick up his bed and walk.

That’s because I was ‘operated on’ (as you’ll soon discover, that’s COMPLETELY the wrong term) by new B1G1 Business owner, Master Applied Kinesiologist, Doctor of Chiropractic and author of  ‘Live now - Die later’, Patterson Stark .

I’d met Patterson the night before with my dear friends Martin and Sarah Jimmink. They’d held the equivalent of a B1G1 Seminar in their home in Christchurch, New Zealand.

And after the program, Patterson and his Partner, Gayel Marquet, not only decided to become a B1G1 Business linking their Alkaline Water with giving kids access to water in Africa, they stayed for hours talking about water, about B1G1 and about Patterson’s views on health.

Twenty years ago, Patterson was told he had 2 weeks to live.

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Most weekends I try to get started on at least one book. Some I can start and then get back to over the course of a few weeks. Others I've just got to keep reading.

This weekend I got one in the 'other' category. I'd actually had the book for 4 weeks but hadn’t read the inside flap properly. Had I done that, I would have been writing about the book 4 weeks ago.

The reason? It's brilliant: probably THE best book on Social BUSINESS Entrepreneurship and so-called 'Conscious Capitalism' I’ve yet read.

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Every day I’m in the gym early in the morning. And I find it tough whether it’s 25 minutes at level 6 on the stepper or 40 minutes on the treadmill at a 15 incline. Then there’s the ‘core’ exercises afterwards. Sweaty. Puffing. And tough.

But I’m fortunate to share the gym with Buy1GIVE1 (B1G1) founder Masami Sato. Yesterday she asked me to take a look at my face.

‘Is it hurting?’ she said.

‘Your face looks like it’s in pain and it always does even when you start exercising. Why not try smiling and see what happens,’ she said.

We’ll get back to that in a moment.

Because after the gym yesterday I caught up with some reading. In the Chronicle of Philanthropy I learnt of a survey that ‘verified’ that sad photos of kids in fund-raising campaigns raise more money from donors that happy faces. I find that probably true but sad if you know what I mean.

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This really has been my week for ‘G’ words – words like ‘geek’, ‘gift’, ‘gratitude’ and my current favourite g-word, ‘goat’.

Until Tuesday this week, whenever I used to talk around the world about ‘WOW’ things, I’d always begin the discussion by talking about the iPhone. It is, to me at least, just so cool. People even think of me these days as something of a geek because of my fascination with technology.

And when in the seminars I actually show a video of me using just a few basic things on my iPhone, people do go ‘WOW’ and they do go out and by iPhones. (Yes, I’ve often thought that our live programs should all be sponsored by Apple.)

But on Tuesday, all of that changed.

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Just a few weeks ago, I had the real pleasure of meeting Professor Nicholas Negroponte. He is, of course, most well known for his breakthrough ‘Being Digital’ book, his work at MIT Media Lab and, most recently, his breakthrough One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative.

Negroponte is a truly warm human being. And he has that special professorial wisdom of asking better questions to get breakthrough answers– it’s that process that led him to create OLPC. And how interesting is it that the largest selling machines right now are NetBooks, muscling in on the market created by OLPC.

And although his questions are searching, his statements carry great power too.

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It's really interesting how things come into your life in groups isn't it. You know what I mean - this happens and then some related thing happens and we go 'what a coincidence' or 'dah dah dah dah' in that scary movie tone of voice.

Well, today that sequence happened to me. Just 24 hours agoI got to meet with the wonderful Jack Sim. Jack is the founder of the WTO - no, not the World Trade Organisation but the World TOILET Organisation .

  Jack is amazing - his life is toilets (or more correctly the lack of them and the impact that has on our world). Typically he's doing media

Here I am on Flight SQ 245 out of Singapore to Brisbane, Australia.

And in meeting after meeting last week in Singapore I really started toget how wonderfully important this 4-word phrase ‘ Less communication –more connection’ really is.

One is about presence – the other is not.

Right now I’m experiencing the presence piece on the Singapore Airlines flight. Singapore Airlines is absolutely my favourite airline. They get ‘connecting’. From the simple use of my name at every possible point to the simple and gracious way they seem to give. This is not a job – it’s an opportunity

Several times a week it seems we have the question asked, “so when we give, what do we get?’

The question is rarely asked precisely that way. More often than not it comes out like this: ‘so when I give through B1G1 , does it impact my sales; do more people buy from me?’

And perhaps not surprisingly with my marketing background I sometimes want to scream ‘of course!’ I’m eager to tell people about the impact giving has in all sorts of ways. I want to quote the stories of B1G1 businesses. I want to talk about how giving develops much more ‘connection’. And I know the Duke University study backwards (the study that showed as much as a 74% ‘uptick’ in the sales of products directly linked through transaction-based giving).

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Sure we love what we do at Buy1GIVE1 (B1G1).

And when we see the results of what we do we get even more passionate about the journey we're on. Importantly, it's a shared journey too - none of what you're about to read could have happened without the businesses in 14 countries around the world who have so enthusiastically emabraced the magic of B1G1 transaction-based giving.

It's a world where every transaction makes a difference every second, every day and in every way.