Three years ago I was living in a van in a Wal-Mart Parking lot. This year I spoke at one of the world’s most prestigious conferences – the TED Global conference at Oxford, England. And it all began with not one, but a string of chance encounters. In 2005 I was fired from a job as a journalist. Later I happened to be surfing the net and found a site asking for submissions about stories about one’s father for Tim Russert’s new book. I fired off a story and it became the number one story in the book, and Russert credited it with his decision to add a chapter on forgiveness in his book. A year later, I quit a job to travel and freelance, but things went wrong and I ended up homeless, living in a van with my rottweiler and cat. I went into the library to use the computer and found a site asking for people to tell why they should be “hooked up” with technology. I wrote with my story about van dwelling and won. I won a cell phone and laptop. A year later I used that laptop to get a job and apt. Then I was fired again, but started freelancing. One of my first clients asked me to ghost write a book that “read like Seth Godin.” I didn’t know who Seth Godin was, but looked him up, ended up reading his blog and happened to join his social media group because of the client’s request to “write like Seth.” That media group led to a site with a contest to write a piece for Dan Pink, Al Gore’s former speech writer. I won his contest and an all expense paid trip to TED Global. I also entered a contest to speak at the conference, and was selected for that as well. It all began with a chance meeting and each turn has been a chance meeting as well – one that has taken me from being an unknown, to internationally known – for being homeless. Amazing story I think! Oh – the Tim Russert article? It played a central part throughout the entire three years – inspiration and motivation…and first of the chance encounters…since ultimately that connection brought me the agent that I now have.