2009 – The Long Road

Nov 30, 2009 | blog

Its been a long time since I really posted a personal post on what really is a personal blog.  I’ve been wondering why that’s the case, and I’m sure you have too.  Honesty I don’t know that is, but I do want to figure it out.

2009 has been a wild ride for me, with many highs and luckily only a few lows.  The rapid and exciting growth of SMBMSP here in Minneapolis & St. Paul has been rewarding, yet stressful.  The work at Land O’Lakes as their Social Media Strategist is similar but for vastly different reasons.  The amount of work involved in each is daunting and keeps me engaged.  For that I’m grateful.

On the personal side of things, life has again been good though recently my wife has started having some heart palpitations that have me worried.  It’s worse for me because I just don’t know all the medical things that go on or what they mean.  Yeah, I’m a pretty typical male when it comes to medical things – just don’t pay attention as well as I should.  We’re still finding out more about this and it’ll be a learning experience as we adapt to new lifestyle needs.

I’ve been quiet around here for awhile, and I don’t have a reason or message as to why.  This year has been a challenge and I neglected making the time to share information and ideas.  The past week, I’ve started posting on my Happiness series again.  Mostly because of recent events, but partly because I liked them so much.  They have little to do with social media in business, which is where my specialty in social media is going, but proved to be an important part of my inspiration in 2008, so they’ll be making a comeback.

Overall, I’m looking forward to the next couple months.  More writing is on my todo list, but more important is taking things to the next level.  I guess that’s what I’m here to invite you to do as well.  Its time to make the next step on all levels.  Enough of working within the confines of the current norms.  Are you ready to step up the pace?  Ready for the challenge?  I hope you join me on the journey as we plan for and enter 2010.  I hope to share a few new and exciting things in the coming weeks as we close out this year, and begin to cap off the decade next year.  Until tomorrow my friends.

Campfire Computing Part 2

Jun 14, 2009 | blog, happiness

As always its the simple things that make the difference, and so it was this weekend.  Ok, it’s not a campfire, but one of those fire-pit thingies that you can set up on the patio.  It’s been an incredible month since we’ve moved to our place just out of town, and we’re beginning to settle into a relaxing routine.

Amy, Brianna and I are enjoying the stars in the sky, and the crickets in the yard.  Watching the fire flickering away and playing “20 questions” to pass some time.  Its been awhile since we’ve had some quite time like this, and its nice to have it right in the backyard instead of several hours drive away.

There’s a lot of writing I do that never makes it anywhere.  Sometimes I think make a mistake in not publishing more posts when the muse strikes.  Like tonight.  There’s a lot of things that come to mind and, for once, I’m not going to talk business, or strategy or ideas around any of it.

Instead, it’s really about the simple things in life.  Family, quite time, a flickering fire, and getting a chance to listen to it all.

Oh, and an the occasional shooting star doesn’t hurt too much either.

So, for all of us rushing through our days and weeks.  Please don’t forget to take a day, an afternoon, or an evening, and sit down with family or friends.  Or simply take time for yourself and relax.  A few hours can make all the difference and is the recharge we all can make use of in our busy lives.

Living in the future

Mar 26, 2009 | blog

'Milwaukee Art Museum Detail' by Hometown Invasion Tour Several years ago (okay, more than a decade) there was a great keynote speech by James Burke at ACM 97 where he talked about ‘The Next 50 Years of Computing’.  Now, if you’ve seen James Burke’s Connections series, you know what he’s good at.  Describing the intertwining relationships of time, technology, and happenstance.

Here, a decade or so later, I’ve been thinking how true those words are.  At the time, Windows 95 was still new, Microsoft Outlook was in it’s initial ‘1.0’ release, and the browser wars of Netscape vs. Internet Explorer were on, and Google was still a dream to be developed.  Back then, I was waist deep in technology as a Novell NetWare and then Windows NT “expert”, and loving it.  It was all about connecting computers together, and getting businesses connected to the Internet.  Email and ICQ were HOT.

Fast forward a decade, and so much has changed.  Where cell phones were a luxury that businesses could barely afford to sponsor, they’re now the de facto communication device of nearly all of us (who needs a land line).  Why have browser wars when you can have 5 to choose from that all have a spot on your Start Menu?  Where we used to pay upwards of $30/month for 56k dialup access, today most folks pay about that much for about 100 times that speed.  Heck, we have faster connections on our cell phones than we did at home back then.  GPS was a nifty gadget where you could plot waypoints to your favorite fishing hole; today, we have full-on navigation packages built into our vehicles to guide us anywhere.  The list is endless.

The point I’m getting at is the change all these things have made to our culture.  We’ve brought the concepts of democratization to technologies and industries that we used to think impenetrable.  Through citizen journalism and social media, we’ve toppled once powerful institutions.  We’ve squeezed huge entertainment companies to the point that they lash out at their own customers because they can’t find a new business model.  The people of the United States felt they had a real voice that was listened to in the selection of their latest President.

All this is through the incredible advancements in technology that changes our culture.

A decade ago in that keynote by James Burke, he talked about how developed countries were 50 years ahead of underdeveloped countries, and how this pattern would repeat into the future.  I believe we’ve sped up the process and are much farther down that path than we believe.  We are living in a future that our parents could never have dreamt of.  We have the opportunities available to us at the touch of an iPhone that a decade ago weren’t thought possible.

My question then, is what will you do with the advantage of living in the future?

Photo credit: Hometown Invasion Tour

 

rickmahn-hr 

As a note, if you follow the link to the ACM97 slide deck and videos, I just want to point out that it was compiled a long time ago and is not as polished as we see today on YouTube.  Just remember that as you go through it.  It’s still a great presentation, by a master at telling stories of history and technology.  Oh, and I did try to find it elsewhere without luck.

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