When I hand people my personal business cards, they immediately react to my job titles with delighted curiosity: “Wow, Life Explorer!” followed by, “What’s an Experience Architect?”

Usually the latter requires a lot of explaining, ending with my recommendation that they read Tom Kelley’s insightful book The Ten Faces Of Innovation. So I was delightfully surprised by a cold-call I received from a senior editor at a national news station who found this YouTube video revealing how I spent my year in New York City as a Knight-Bagehot Fellow at Columbia Business School and Columbia Journalism School:

The editor told me: “I was intrigued. Not many people can pull off the ‘experience architect’ title. And I thought you could.”

That’s the best personal proof I have that a picture is still worth a thousand words … and that it pays off to persistently transform ordinary life experiences, like walking through the Times Square subway station, into extraordinary ones.

By the way, the deadline to apply for the 2011-2012 Knight-Bagehot Fellowship at Columbia University is March 1. If you’re a mid-career or senior journalist who’s eager to plunge deeper into the world of business and economics, definitely apply. The fellowship paved the way to the best year of my life — and not only because of all the fun experiences and adventures that I created time for during my first (and last?) time living in Manhattan. What my YouTube video didn’t show (because I didn’t want to disrupt the classroom environment) is the knowledge I gained from my MBA+ courseload (that’s right, fellows can take more credits at Columbia Business School than MBA students can take because the fellows aren’t typical grad students). You can see the courses I took here and watch a video of famous alums testifying about the fellowship being a career-defining or even life-changing year here. Good luck!