"You're a musician? What instrument?"

"Guitar-bass-drums. Mostly."

I have some version of this conversation every week. If it's not about music, it's about my career trajectory. You know, the usual path of the film and art major turned restaurant critic turned NYC subway musician who became a marketing manager for a financial services company and also built websites and is now a consultant. (I'm leaving a bunch out.)

Refusing to specialize was never a conscious decision. At the time it felt more like dabbling until I achieved competence and then moving onto something else. But I now realize that my "failure" to decide what to do with my life has become my biggest asset. Life is a process of constant adaptation and if I'd stuck with some of my earlier interests at the expense of later ones, at best I'd be a mediocre comic-book artist. At worst, a juggler.

You never know what skills will benefit you later in life. The computer science courses I took in college taught me DOS and Lotus 1-2-3 and nothing about the web. But outside of class I guiltily frequented the pre-web Prodigy network which turned out to be time well spent. As a musician I was never in any danger of commercial success but I learned how to collaborate with other creative people, particularly when I worked with directors and actors at Inverse Theater Company. My writing, most of it doggerel,  was published in a few places but more importantly taught me to operate on tight deadlines. And come to think of it, being able to juggle five tennis balls or three machetes is incredibly dorky but requires significant grace under pressure.

Some call me a jack of all trades, which implies, of course, "master of none." But there's an older, better word for it: polymath. It's not such a bad path to take.       

It was 1987, close to midnight on a warm Miami night. My friend M and I were taking a shortcut home across an unlit golf course. We were about halfway across when we heard angry voices coming from about 50 yards behind us, then fast-approaching footsteps.

"RUN!" said M, and we ran. I had short legs and was wearing heavy combat boots. M quickly outpaced me and disappeared into the night. I was being chased, alone in the dark, and my predator was closing in. This was not going to end well.

I was 15 and had begun hanging around M a lot. He was a skater kid, a freckled blond who wore baggy shorts and flannel. He lived with his mom in a small house in Coral Gables. His mom was never home so M would skip school, smoke cigarettes and listen to records all day. He had an amazing collection of UK-import Dickies records from the late 70s. His favorite band, though, was Social Distortion. He wore their t-shirt under his flannel practically every day.

M did lots of things to get attention. He gave the impression of someone who did a lot of drugs, although he didn't have any money for drugs, and I never saw him do drugs. One time he said he'd been in a mosh pit the night before and someone with a spiked ring had punched him and cut the inside of his mouth. He pulled down his lower lip to reveal a wide slice along the ridge of his gum. It was years later before I figured out that everyone has that "slice" on their gums. He also gave me one of his Minor Threat records (the iconic one pictured here)—hinting that he wasn't going to be around much longer so he might as well. (M survived at least four more years; I last saw him at UM. I was a student; he was just riding a BMX bike around campus, completely unchanged. A Google search today reveals nothing.)

I too did things to get attention. In fact, just that day M had used a Bic disposable razor to give me a mohawk. It was uneven and left large bloody cuts on my scalp. Later, my driver's ed coach would remark that I had a dead ferret on my head. I also had braces and was small for my age. My appearance during this stage of adolescence once prompted a child crossing the street in ethnically diverse South Miami to remark, "Damn, that's one ugly-ass cracker!" Looking back, he had a point, and my haircut didn't do me any favors.

So I'm running as fast as I can, running for my life, even, and it's not fast enough. Someone bigger and faster and stronger than me, who wants to do me harm, is quite literally breathing down my neck. I reach the far end of the golf course, cross into the backyard of one of the houses on the perimeter when a large hand grabs hold of my t-shirt and yanks me to a stop. I'm caught. I'm dead.

He's winded. He's still holding onto my t-shirt but he's doubled over, catching his breath. "I can't believe I caught you," he wheezes. He's big, much bigger than me, but kind of pasty-looking and baby-faced. He's wearing an unseasonable leather jacket and an unfashionable fedora. He's not someone I would ordinarily find intimidating but now that he's chased me across a golf course and dragged me to a stop I'm plenty intimidated. I'm long past "fight-or-flight" having already fled and lost. Now there is no choice but to fight and I am going to get my ass kicked.

Then a funny thing happens. We look up at the house in whose backyard I am about to get pounded. The house has large sliding-glass doors that lead to a bedroom. A bedside lamp is on, and on the bed are a man and a woman, naked, chubby, mid-coitus. My oppressor releases his grip on my t-shirt and for a moment we just stand there, watching, open-mouthed. Then I quietly slip away into the darkness.

Some of my colleagues in marketing asked me to share my knowledge of the web—everything from HTML to social media. They think it will help them in their careers, and it will. But I plan to make them suffer. I set up server space to get them started (the single nice thing I will do for them during this boot camp), but, particularly if you have a web host (I recommend Modwest), you can play along at home on most of the drills. If you're willing to sweat blood, that is.

Drill #1

You have 24 hours to complete this task. Do not ask anyone—especially not me—for help until you have fully Googled the problem on your own.

1. Download and install a free FTP client. Log in using the protocols I emailed you. Create a directory named whatever you want in /htdocs/www/bootcamp/. (This is your personal directory. You'll see that I have a directory named "sarge.")
2. Create a second directory within your personal directory. Name this one "images."
3. Find a picture of someone, preferably someone you know, doing something stupid. (We are going to ridicule this person publicly.) Upload the image to your /images directory.
4. Next, open a new document in Notepad or Wordpad or SimpleText (not Microsoft Word).
5. Go to this this page and copy the source code into your document.
   
6. In your document, change the code so that page title, headline, and text say something different, and so that it references your image instead of mine. 
7. Save your document as "index.html"
8. Upload the document to your personal directory. 
9. If you did everything correctly, your web page will appear at www.avenuedmedia.com/bootcamp/name-of-your-personal-directory/
10. Post a link to your page in the comments of this blog post.
    

I don't find Facebook addictive or even interesting.

I check Facebook once or twice a day and skim updates from friends and family. It's nice to know that individuals with whom I share varying degrees of closeness are still kicking. But that's about all I get out of it: Confirmation that certain people are still alive. Surely there's more to it than that.

The writer Corey Doctorow argues that the subtext of the banal musings posted on Facebook is "I am thinking of you, I care about you, I hope you are well." Maybe so, but Facebook more often feels like a waste of time than any other social media in which I participate. Something about the platform encourages banality. Which is strange, because, unlike Twitter, Facebook was developed as a gated community in which only people you select can see what you post. (Facebook's recent ghastly changes to their privacy defaults are a topic for another post on another day.) So why the hesitation to post anything meaningful?

(Full disclosure: the majority of my posts on Facebook contain maps of where I have ridden my bike. If it can get more banal than that I'm not sure how.)

1. Facebook undermines conversation. Sure, you can post something, and dozens can comment on it. But it's a free-for-all, like a verbal spitball fight from opposite sides of a large room. The spitballs never connect midair; they just go splat. Since every comment becomes a non-sequitur, people tend to post comments that can stand on their own, bearing little relevance to the original post.
   
   
2. The "Like" button. Is there anything lazier?
   
   
3. Its attempts to be more like Twitter. Even as a late comer to Facebook I recognize that it ain't what it used to be. The Wall, which was once the main selling point, is now subordinated to the News Feeds and Status Updates. (Related: Can anyone explain to me the difference between the two?) At least when you posted on someone's Wall you were attempting a personal connection. Now Facebook functions more like Twitter, except, let's face it, your circle of friends and family isn't nearly as interesting as the strangers you could be inviting to your dinner party on Twitter.

How do we fix Facebook? We don't. You could thread the comments, add a "dislike" button, scrap the Twitter-mimicking. But Facebook's management has made clear that it doesn't want to be fixed. It just wants to monetize you. Time to move on to the next hot social media phenom: picking up the phone.*



*Yes, I know this makes me sound like a smarmy old git. But it's in line with one of my New Year's resolutions to acknowledge special occasions more. I plan to achieve this through snail-mail cards and phone calls and, for the bigger ones, actually planning in advance for once. Because I know something important is being lost when we resort to e-greetings and Wall posts.     

 


  

When Sarah and I worked at a small-town newspaper, we ran a column that asked local citizens to name five guests, living or dead, whom they would invite to a dinner party. Jesus, Elvis, and George W. Bush were the most popular choices.

What does this have to do with Twitter? When people complain that they don't "get" Twitter, that's it's all noise and what-I-had-for-lunch minutia, I describe the way I use Twitter: I treat it like a party with carefully handpicked guests—like Truman Capote's Black & White Ball.

Here's how I do it:

First of all, I limit the number of people I follow to 100. By being picky about whom I follow, I force myself to seek a diverse group of interesting human beings from different walks of life. I might one day follow 200 or maybe 500, but I will never follow thousands of people. I'm pretty sure the only reason to follow thousands of people is to try to get thousands of people to follow you back. Today I have only 72 followers. While I would like to have more, I want people to follow me on the merits of what I post, not just because I am following them.

Back to the party metaphor: What is different about Twitter, compared to most parties I've been to, is that with Twitter it is easy to eject boring, unwanted guests and replace them with more interesting ones.

The other nice thing about Twitter is that it's okay to be a wallflower—or better yet, a fly on the wall. I often go days without tweeting, but I check Twitter constantly just to see how the conversation is going. Because my "guests" are people I know personally and/or they are interesting and/or useful to me, there is always something worth eavesdropping.

So whom do I follow? Right now I am making the transition from full-time employee to self-employed contractor, so my tweetstream is dominated by people in my field and city who provide job leads, tips for freelancers and the like. But I also follow tennis players (@andyroddick, @clijsterskim), politicians (@billwhitefortx, @BarackObama), entertainers (@SarahKSilverman, @geneweingarten, @pennjillette), bloggers (@anildash, @dooce), and a few who have made a name for themselves via Twitter alone (@shitmydadsays, @sween,  @mktgdouchebag). And of course, friends and family (for as long as they stay interesting anyway).

In the last couple months my austere Twitter approach has netted me one job interview, one brunch meetup, two or three web services I now consider essential, loads of entertainment and the occasional belly laugh. Could I do it better? Of course I could. My follow list is constantly evolving with the goal of finding the 100 (or 200 or 500) most interesting human beings in the world. This will only get harder—and more fun—as more people sign on.

---

You can view everyone I'm following here. I'll attempt to sort these out into lists one of these days. And don't forget to follow me!

This is a fairly typical night for us. I have not slept soundly in six years. I don't expect to until both kids are long gone.

8 PM Both kids asleep. Hallelujiah.

10:30 PM Lights out for Sarah and me. Sarah falls asleep pretty quickly. I toss and turn like I always do. Finally start falling asleep when...

11:30 PM Charlie lets out a wail. I fly out of bed to stop him before he wakes Ava. I put my hand on him and he falls back asleep in his crib. I head back to bed and toss and turn until drifting into an uneasy sleep.

2:30 AM Charlie unleashes a scream that peels paint off the walls. I bolt out of bed on autopilot, my eyes still closed when I reach his room. This time he's wide awake, screaming "Mama" and "Daddy." This is the scream of "Even though I'm almost two years old, I didn't eat any dinner, and now I'm starving, and what are you gonna do about it?" Answer: Give him milk at 2:30 a.m. Like a newborn.

Now Charlie is in bed with us. There is no point trying to force him back into his crib. He used to snuggle against Sarah so that I barely noticed him in our bed, but now I'm his preferred victim. He wedges against my back, leaving approximately 8" of mattress on which to lie. Still, I manage to sleep until...

4:30 AM Sarah is shaking me awake. "Ava!" she says. I'm so tired I think she is actually talking to Ava until I realize that she is telling me that Ava is screaming her head off, which she is. Sarah and I have a tacit agreement that I get up for the majority of these episodes because I can function on about 2/3rds the sleep that Sarah needs. It's a plain fact and I harbor no resentment. So off I go to Ava's room.

Upon entering, Ava instantly composes herself and says, "Daddy, I am screaming for two reasons. One, my stomach hurts. Two, I had a bad dream."

"Rest is the best thing for your stomach," I say.

"OK. What about the bad dream?"

She has me there. I am too tired for conversation. "Snuggles from Daddy," I admit.

Ava sets about rearranging approximately 8.5 million stuffed animals to give me more room. I curl myself around her like a question mark and go to sleep on even less square footage than I had in the bed with Charlie. Every time I shift to get comfortable, Ava grabs me and begs me not to leave. Normally I can convince her that she just needs another million animals in her bed and she'll be fine, but again, I am too tired for conversation. I sleep intermittently until...

6:30 AM Sarah enters the room and says she needs to get in the shower. Charlie is still asleep in our bed and can't be left alone. Relishing the idea of 20 minutes in a king-size bed and only a toddler to share it with, I head back to our bedroom, ignoring Ava's protests. Charlie has somehow managed to stretch himself horizontally so that he occupies 80% of the bed. The other 20% is occupied by our smelly cat, Lucie. It's a bad idea to wake either one of them, so I wedge myself in and stare at the ceiling until...

6:50 AM Ava wanders in. I extract myself from my two sleeping companions and lead her into the kitchen to make breakfast. The day has begun.   

I originally launched this site to explore the possibilities of using Movable Type as a full-blown content-management system (CMS). Since then, many professional Movable Type themes have been released that make this possible, even easy. Additionally, I've had an opportunity to play with a few other free platforms. Here is a quick, possibly unfair comparison:

Use Drupal if you need a really complicated website.

Use Wordpress (self-hosted) or Movable Type for everything else. (I'm starting to lean toward Wordpress but still pretty much ambivalent. Right now, Movable Type is about the same as Wordpress in terms of features and usability, but harder to install. This could change with each new version.)

Typepad is clunky if you need a lot of customization, which virtually every client will. I imagine the hosted version of Wordpress is similar but I haven't used it yet.

Stay far, far away from Joomla.

Winning industry awards can be a great way to get recognition for your company and, perhaps more importantly, your personal contributions. Who pays the most attention to them? Your bosses. That's why industry awards are important, even if no one outside your field gives a poop.

I have a pretty good track record of winning industry awards. For example, this year I submitted five entries to the Mutual Fund Education Alliance's STAR Awards and won all five. While I certainly stand by the accomplishments the submissions represent, I think at least 50% of the reason we won is the submissions themselves. Here are some steps you can take to improve your chances.

1. Choose the award carefully.

Most of us will never win an Academy Award—or even a Webby, for that matter. Choose awards you have a realistic chance of winning, but that are still meaningful to people within your industry. Within the mutual fund industry, everyone has heard of the MFEA. There were enough entrants to make it a legitimate competition, but not so many that we'd get creamed by bigger players with more resources. (It especially helped that entrants were grouped according to assets under management, so we competed against other mid-size companies.)

2. Follow the rules.

It's amazing how many awards submissions get discarded because people can't follow the rules of the competition. If you're asked for a one-sentence summary, keep your summary to one sentence. If they want quantitative evidence, include quantitative evidence. If they want eleventeen copies of each submission, bound together with masticated Zebra Stripe gum and airplane glue... you get the idea. However, following the rules is no excuse to be boring. (See steps #3 and #4).  


3. Know your audience.

You are writing for the judges—and no one else. Judges have to sift through dozens, maybe even hundreds or thousands, of identical-seeming submissions. They're tired. Their eyes look like chewed grapes. They kinda wish they had never volunteered for this gig. (I once judged an independent film contest and the experience nearly put me down for a dirt nap.) So you need to make your submission stand out. Which leads to...  

4. Treat your award submission as a marketing opportunity.

Because you are marketing to the judges, and no one else, there is no need to be stodgy. No need to employ industry jargon that most of us hate. Write succinctly and confidently. Don't be afraid to be a little edgy, too. And above all, BE BRIEF! (I pared the communications objective of one submission down to one sentence, something like: "The goal of this web page is to provide financial advisors immediate access to the most salient information with the lowest possible barrier to entry." Boom!) You are not being judged on how many synonyms you can find for "synergy" and "leverage." You are being judged on how well you can paint a picture for the judges, without wasting a moment of their time. As Strunk and White wrote, "Omit needless words."

My most recent experience is in the financial services industry. But these tactics apply to all industries that are big enough to celebrate their own, which is most of 'em. I hope you find this useful. Let me know if you do. Good luck! 

Ever run across a piece of writing that seems only vaguely familiar until you realize that you wrote it? I found these Amazon reviews from 2000 that I (apparently) penned. The millennial Noah was cleverer—and had more spare time—than the modern Noah. Enjoy.

				Music Price: $6.99 Availability: In Stock
1 of 4 people found the following review helpful: Better Than Patsy Cline!, November 12, 2000 On this disc, Madonna--the most diversely talented human since the late Steve Allen--explores her heretofore unexplored country/western side with phenomenal results. The opener, "Music," carries the listener on a delightful magic carpet ride to a smoky honky-tonk, complete with sawdust on the floor and bottles a-flyin' through the air. She out Patsy Clines Patsy Cline when she pulls aching low notes from her diaphragm. "Impressive Instant" explores the fleeting nature of love: a star struck female rodeo clown is impressed by a swaggering bull rider -- but only for an instant. The twang of a distant lap steel only adds to the heartbreak. "I Deserve It" is about good love gone bad, as a trailer resident with low self-esteem cries herself to sleep at night after her nightly beating by her truck-driving husband. Willie Nelson ably acts the part of the hubby in this soul-wrenching duet. "What it Feels Like for a Girl" answers an age-old question: why do girls like horseback riding so much? Finally, "Gone" is a chicken-fried tribute to Greg Ginn's post-Black Flag days in the band by the same name. Merle Haggard lends his voice to this a cappela number; Madonna and Merle conjure memories of old-stlye barbershop quartets. Bravo! Five Stars! Buy it Now!

Back in July, I posited that favorable customer reviews led to a considerable spike in Amazon sales of the book I co-published with my wife, DC BABY. This seems pretty obvious, but several articles on this subject have been recently published in major media.

For example:

Web Shoppers Trust Customer Reviews More Than Friends (Adweek)

Companies are learning to make the most out of customers' online reviews of their products (WSJ)

I figured it was a good time for an update. Since my initial post, sales have continued to rise:

I think what makes our story unique is that all we had to do was ask our customers for the reviews. It was that simple.