Happiness CDXCII

Oct 20, 2025 | happiness

If it weren’t for double standards in Washington D.C., there would be no standards at all.

Blogging at a Crossroad

Jan 16, 2014 | blog, featured

At the crossroads by Thomas Guignard

Maybe it’s the years, or simply wanting to share my thoughts again. It seems I’m at a crossroads in regards to blogging, and to be honest I’ve been at this crossroads for a long time.

Over the last 8 years (can you believe this blog turns 8 next month!) I’ve focused almost exclusively on social media. It was a great ride and a lot of fun which taught me quite a bit in areas that I hadn’t even known to exist before. It brought me out of my introverted shell, allowing me to meet hundreds (thousands?) of great people who I would otherwise not have had the opportunity to.

All that time, however, there was another side to what I do and who I am. In fact, a larger more important aspect that I rarely touched on was my real career in information technology.

Though I mentioned it in passing many times, I never really delved into the technical aspects of my profession, choosing to explore the social media path at its infancy, helping to bring ideas and establish connections among people. This is what drove me to start Social Media Breakfast in Minneapolis early in 2008.

That experience was entirely possible from blogging and my work with early social media tools. Being among the first wave of people to really “get” what social media was about and take part on a national scale. It was great fun. It still is for many of the people I initially met and conversed with. Several have built and are growing great, strong businesses on local, regional, and national scales.

What I found over time was that it wasn’t exactly for me. In my heart I’m not a marketing person, though I do understand some of the inner workings. I’m also not a public relations person, though again I did seem to adapt to a portion of that role in my work with SMBMSP. What I am, however, is a storyteller… or at least that label feels more comfortable than the others, and that is a core piece of social, and the work I was doing.

Today, however, I have completely reverted to my IT roots, and I’m happy with that. What I have had trouble with though, is getting back to blogging. At one point back in the day, I was posting on a daily basis. Today, it seems I can’t even post monthly, let alone once a week. I seem to keep holding back on writing/posting anything because I’m afraid of what “my audience” might think of a change of topic. The reality, of course, is that practically all of the readers I once had have long since moved on.

I’ve fallen into the classic blogger’s dilemma of worrying too much about what people think and not enough of the value of my own contributions. Believing that I might let someone down just for being myself and following the path I’m meant to follow.

So what does it all mean?

What this post isn’t, is a proclamation or promise to blog more often. It’s really just a note to anyone interested that what I may post about in the future is likely to be a lot more technical, and a certainly a lot less about social media. Who knows, by changing the topic of this blog and my focus for it, I just may find that gumption and passion to actively write more often. That will be the true proof that I’m out of my writers block… we’ll see.

Home page header photo credit: At the crossroads, by Thomas Guignard

Blog post photo credit: Crossroads, by Richard Elzey

Comment Cleanup

Nov 14, 2013 | blog

Who's the dick writing comments on my blog? by Scott BealeIt was overdue really.  Over 7 years on this blog and I hadn’t done a thorough review and cleanup of my comment section ever.

There were nearly 4,000 comments and, unfortunately, a very large chunk of them were duplicates and a more than I want to admit were some kind of spam comments.  The duplicates undoubtedly came from the time that I imported my comments into Disqus and then exported them back out to my blog to stand alone. I should have caught the duplicates then, but I must not have been paying attention.

The spam comments are a frustration.  They weren’t rampant, but there were a lot more than I thought there were.  Some were the passive kind of spam where they didn’t leave a link in the comment, but the name and URL they used to “log in” were certainly links to follow.  Luckily, only a handful were “lightly” inappropriate, counting them on one hand easily.

In the end, it turns out that there are just under 2,000 comments left, but they are at least valuable conversations that I had regarding posts with a number of readers and a good many friends online.  These I will treasure.

Photo credit: Scott Beale

Jobs

Jun 22, 2013 | blog, featured

 

I’ve honestly not been interested much in Steve Jobs, or Apple to date. I watched the Apple/Microsoft/IBM ‘wars’ when I was a teen back in the 80’s and had always been interested in what a ‘real computer’ could do.

I didn’t really ‘get’ the idea of computer clubs and the passion hobbyists had for Apple at the time. I understand it today, but still don’t connect with Apple fans.

In reality, the world did loose a visionary when Steve Jobs died. I respect him for the work he did, and the passion that drove him to greatness. I miss the contribution and the competition that he brought to the technology world, and hope we can achieve as much as new people and new ideas continue to stream into the industry.

Post Idea Giveaway 2012

Apr 20, 2012 | blog, featured

ideas-notebook

Ideas Notebook By Matthew Allard

Sometimes you find that you’ve got too many ideas.  Ever have that problem?  I do this week, and I swear I’m going to do something about  it. I’ve got blog post ideas going back several years covering things from social media to technology to life topics and so on.  It’s time I liberate these post ideas.  I’m giving them to you to take and run with, just in case you’ve run out of ideas and need some inspiration.  What better way to end the week, right? Alrightly, here we go:

  1. Social Networking & The Impact On Your Personal Brand
  2. Moleskine Notebooks – Going Analog For The Fun of Writing
  3. How To Balance Social Network Participation In The Workplace
  4. 101 Uses for Twitter
  5. Why I Believe The “Smartphone” Isn’t So Smart
  6. Your Blog IS Your Social Network
  7. Online Communities – You Get Out Of Them Only What You Put Into Them
  8. The New Social Economy
  9. Social Media Is About Sociology Not Technology
  10. Never Stop Experimenting To Grow Yourself Or Your Brand
  11. If Words Mean Things
  12. Old Media Using Social Media
  13. Building A Better Branded Blog
  14. Decline Of Technology In America?
  15. Social Media And The IT Professional
  16. Anonymity – Pros & Cons
  17. Can You Connect Up To 6 people?
  18. Linux: Ubuntu Or Fedora Or ?
  19. The Most Powerful Social Media Tool: YOU
  20. Decisions: iOS Or Android
  21. Personal Branding And The IT Professional
  22. 10 Reasons For A Windows Hack To Love The iPhone
  23. Disengage From The Collective That Is Your Corporate Mindset
  24. “Who Am I?”
  25. How Can I Help People?
  26. Linux Software Installers – Why Do They Suck?
  27. Essential Software For The Blogger
  28. The New Intellectual
  29. Is the Theme/Style Of Your Blog Important To Readers?
  30. Social Realities Of A New Generation
  31. What Do I Do?
  32. What Can I Accomplish?
  33. Powerful Writing…
  34. Do I Realize How Lucky I Am?
  35. Social Media In The Enterprise
  36. Negativity In The Workplace
  37. Don’t Talk, Just Do
  38. Social Media Is An Evolutionary Step
  39. Tear Down This Wall (Cubicles That Is)
  40. What Is A “Social Entrepreneur”?
  41. Enterprise/Corporate Culture Clashes
  42. Good Enough
  43. Social Media Shoehorn
  44. Blogging Is A Commitment, Social Networks Are A Fling
  45. Making It Happen
  46. Why My Blogging “Rock Stars” Are From the Z-List
  47. SharePoint Can Be An Internal Enterprise Social Media Tool
  48. Labeling Things And Why It’s Ok
  49. Why Paper Publications Will Never Go Away
  50. A Culture Without Culture
  51. To Meme Or Not
  52. Step Away From The Ledge – It’s Going To Be Ok
  53. Help People
  54. Want To Be A High-Buck Consultant?
  55. Positive Growth Through Negative Feedback
  56. Virtualization: For Technology Only?
  57. Build Your Own Brand Armies
  58. Networking For Fun And Profit
  59. Fostering New Communication In The Enterprise
  60. What Social Media Has Taught A Techie Geek
  61. Afraid To Succeed?
  62. Stodgy Or Stale Brand? 10 Sure-Fire Ways To Freshen It Up
  63. Social Media Does Not Equal Marketing Or PR
  64. Fearing Free (Free Rage Fears?)
  65. The Problem With Technically Excellent Solutions
  66. Be Your Own Editor
  67. Thinkers – The Ones To Watch
  68. Getting Back To Where We Came From
  69. Go Where Your Forefathers Couldn’t
  70. Unsung Heros: Headhunters
  71. The Line In The Sand & When You Step Over It
  72. Landing Pages – Why Bother?
  73. Put It On paper
  74. Gen Y & Why They’re different
  75. Engage HR For Change
  76. Friend Counts Do Mean Something
  77. Anatomy Of Twitter
  78. Lack Of New Examples
  79. The More You Share
  80. The Android Dilemma
  81. Is Your Day Job Your Only Gig?
  82. When Self Promotion Goes Too Far
  83. The Joys Of Building Community
  84. Is Social Media Respected In Corporate Environments?
  85. Lets Not Screw Around
  86. Why The Old Tools Don’t Work
  87. Why The Old Tools STILL Work
  88. Corporate Obsolesce
  89. The changing Face Of Social Media
  90. What’s The Big Deal About 4G?
  91. What’s Next For Social Media
  92. The Dark Side Of Social Media, And Why It Sucks
  93. You Will Live Online
  94. Why Tablet-Haters Loose In The End
  95. 10 Billion Apps
  96. Do What Comes Naturally
  97. The Decline Of Social Media
  98. Social Media Posers
  99. Ongoing Standards Wars
  100. Shortsightedness Of Newspaper Publishers

Well, there’s a handful of the post ideas I’ve got in my notes.  That was just from one page of a OneNote notebook of post ideas! Sometimes, you just run out of time or simply never get back to the ideas you had when you thought of the topic.  Whatever the case, I figure somebody might make use of one or two, or ten of these.  Better to set them free than keep ’em in a dusty digital notebook right?

Photo credit: Ideas Notebook By Matthew Allard. Thank you Matthew the use of your photo!

Blog Header Photo credit: JOH_1994 by star5112.  Thanks for a neat picture of post-it notes that captured my thought!

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