Stephanie Leffler at TEDxStLouisWomen

I've been a big fan of TED conferences for a number of years now. The acronym stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design.

TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading -- through TED.com, our annual conferences, the annual TED Prize and local TEDx events.

The original main conference got so big that it branched out into several different local conferences around the world, sometimes with different themes or discussions. But always the important point is that the speakers are by invite only, they get no more than 18 minutes and their task is to speak about something that is the most important thing to them.

Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth began as a speech at TED. Other famous examples include Tony Robbins, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs and numerous others. All the videos are available online and some collections are available through Netflix. They are a big deal.

Imagine my surprise and delight when I learned that someone I knew had done a TEDx speech at a local St. Louis conference. Stephanie Leffler was the CEO and driving force behind MonsterCommerce when I started working there. Actually, I think she was the sales director when I interviewed and she was my first face-to-face interview. Very soon after that, her and her partner Ryan Noble would become the sole owners and leadership for the company, and would drive it's success skyward. She was part of the hardest-working team I've ever worked on hands down.

Here she is talking about the future of work, the expansion of freelancing and how cloud computing has birthed cloud workers.

I'll never forget that first interview in 2003, when she asked me the "where do you see yourself in five years" question. I joked that if it worked out, I honestly saw myself working at the same company for as long as possible. Three years and many layers of success later, the company was sold to Network Solutions. The two of them stayed on for many months making the transition of leadership as smooth as possible. By the time my five year anniversary had come along, I was still working there. She was not. She and Ryan took some time to themselves, and have been working hard on Juggle, CrowdSource and other projects ever since.

Congratulations to Steph!

An Honorable Mention of Mentioning People

I've blogged since 2003 or so and one of the features I've always been hassled with was how to easily link to someone else. I mean, it's very easy to use the built in link tool and simply enter the proper URL of their personal website or blog or ... whatever. But my problem is recalling the right URL. For instance, let's say I want to link to my friend Vincent Le Pes III's website. He's a musician, web developer and all-around cool guy so perhaps I want to share a link to his site. However, I always have a moment's pause here as I try and recall the exact URL of his site specifically -- www.vincentlepes.com -- since I don't go there every day and I don't have the bookmark handy. In case you don't know this, misspelling a URL can lead you down a dark path. If you don't believe me, try going to www.whitehouse.com instead of www.whitehouse.gov. Inevitably, I end up going to Vinnie's Facebook profile and then his About page. Sure, it's handy but it seems like there are too many steps. I've always wanted a shortcut of some kind. I start to type out his name (or the name of some other friend) and the Blogger tool completes it for me and adds in the link. Facebook has had a feature similar to this for their posts and comments for a few years now, so it stands to reason this is not impossible.

I didn't really notice it right away, but it would appear that Blogger has added just such a feature recently. They talk about it on Blogger Buzz and explain how this feature works with Google+ to link your friends' names at your choice to their profile. It does not escape my notice that this is their profile on the social network, which might be somewhat private or might not. But it is not linking directly to their site. Still, it's a potentially cool feature.

It's kind of funny that my second thought regarding this feature was... "I wonder how many people I can annoy with this new toy?" Suddenly this feature seems a bit dangerous. Oh well, time to put the question to the test.

Say hello and a big HAPPY NEW YEAR to Lisa Arconati, Matt Armfield, Shashi Bellamkonda, Michelle Behymer, Ian Baird, Eric Berger, Amy Bliss, Amanda C. Peterson, Andy T., Adam Hallas, Andy Scott, Ben Durnell, Eric Baggett, Brad Vonder Haar, Cale Fischer, Chris Coy, Cathy Nicol, Chris Stoddard, Shawn Duncan, Don Krutewicz, Rachel Duncan, Mike Damewood, Dave McCann, Mike DuBois, Dan Kennedy, Erin Moloney, Erin Steinbruegge, Eddie Parker, Cari Schueller, Eric Patmythes, Aaron Eversgerd, James E. Arconati, Jonathan Frazier, Fayth Kleg, Scott DuBois, Alex Foster, Matt Galligan, Gina Ronat, Gina Maness, Mike Goggin, Greg Simms, Angie Garner, Heather VanMeter, Russ Henneberry, Jerry Henderson III, Jason Kevin Hill, Ryan VanMeter, Travis Irwin, Robin Rath, Jeremy Stoeckel, Janet Lackey, Jeremy Polen, Jeremy Zhang, Jacalyn Rausch, Joseph Madden, J.D. Pohlman, Toni Phillips, Scott Kingery, Brandon Kendall, Lisa Keller, Andrea Kuehnel, Jordan Koene, Lexi Long, Stephen Lotz, Adam Lefever, Mark McCoy, Nils Rurack, Robert Noles, Nikomas Perez, Jonathan Needleman, Nathan A. Tuskey, Jayme O'Renic, Jason O, Tracy Papproth, Mark Page, Robert Amos, Sparky Walkup, Tracy Papproth, Tolga Tanriseven, Tony Mast, Josh Brink, Valerie Starr, Wain W, Timothy Yow, Jeremy Zhang ...

Note: As I go through this process, these listings are showing up in alpha order, but sometimes by first name and sometimes by last name,.. and sometimes by email address? With this setup, I'm likely to have listed someone twice... Errrk! Usability fail!

Also notable are a few folks who don't 'technically' have Google+ profiles, but I email them often enough they got invites somewhere along the line. However, if Google/Blogger allowed me to link to them here, I kept it. There were a few names that did not become links. If you see your name and you'd rather I removed you please let me know immediately!

It does occur to me that I just made a very public list of nearly all of my friends, exposing important information about me in addition to possibly exposing their information without their permission. It gets all the privacy-loving hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. I'm guessing that you all each got some sort of notification emailed to you OR posted to Google Plus OR both. Perhaps you even have to approve my link or something. Perhaps not. My intent is test the technology a bit and wish you all a sincere Happy New Year. I apologize in advance for any inconvenience. If you are mad, I owe you a beer or coffee. Let's catch up.

2012: Year in Review (Facebook)

Today I noticed that Facebook has a new feature showing snippets and photos from the past year as some sort of summary.

A look at your 20 biggest moments from the year including life events, highlighted posts and your popular stories.

"Big moments" include life events, posts you've highlighted, popular posts you've been tagged in and popular posts you've shared.

Since Facebook is ephemeral and my blog is less so, I thought I'd post some of the moments and photos and reminisce with a little bit more detail. I'll try and repost all the photos and stories with more details, but this could turn into a really long long post if I get too carried away.

33 Friends Added This Year

I'm not one to brag about a large number of friends on Facebook. Feels weird. If the number gets too high it begins to look artificially inflated. I'd rather have a small set of really close friends than a large set of loosely-associated acquaintances. Additionally, some folks (including me) get carried away with some Facebook games that encourage you to share/invite as many friends as possible into the game to get more bonus "widgets" of some kind. So you end up inviting folks you barely know to be on your friends list. I'm well aware of this and have fallen victim to it sometimes. However, I've not jumped up and done a 'friend-purge' as some folks are wont to do. It is what it is.

However, I was honestly surprised that the number of friends that I'd added this whole year was as high as 33. I'd had this idea that I've previously added all the friends in my life that I already knew and it was not going to increase much. Who are all these people? I thought as I looked them over.

The large part of the group are folks I met and became fast friends with when I joined the band Dirty Soap. Funny enough, I was actually looking on Craigslist for a used car when my old PT Cruiser died. I got bored with not finding the right one and kicking scammers around, so I browsed other areas like musicians and web designers. I found a band looking for a trombone player and we got along great. I did find a car eventually of course, thanks mostly to my brother's help.

Dirty Soap at Eddie's Pub

Dirty Soap had quite a number of gigs over the summer. And it was some of the most fun I've had in years. It's cliched to say it made me feel young again. Since the fall things have dried up a bit since most of the gang is away at school in various places. I'm hoping and expecting we will get back together in the spring.

Dirty Soap: June 6, 2012

The band had a number of photo shoots that our different photographer friends wanted to take for us, so there's plenty of fun shots. Some of the best ones were really popular.

Other new friends on my account were a few family, work or church friends that I was finally catching up with.

38 Pages Liked This Year

This number was lower than it seemed to be in years previous. Obviously, I liked the Dirty Soap page, but I was also administering the page part-time, so it makes sense. I was also liking other bands that we met and partnered with, locations we played at (like St. Charles Coffee House) and similarly related stuff. Additionally, I created a few pages for work at SoTel Systems, including MTR. Other than that, I've actually streamlined out a lot of the "Likes" that I subscribe to on Facebook as it was getting a little overblown. Most of the new ones from this year are related to projects my friends are working on or other businesses I'm close to.

For instance, one of my friends Vinnie from back in the Network Solutions days (2008-ish) has a home studio which he's working on building up. He helped Dirty Soap a bit with one gig where we needed a bassist to stand in AND he helped us start a project to record a demo set (on indefinite hold). He has also entered a few contests this year with remixes he's done in his basement of raw tracks.

I've got another buddy Ian, who has been doing music and mixing for what's probably just as long. Even back in high school, Ian always struck me as a guy who juggled a lot of projects and over the last year I liked at least three separate pages for projects he worked on.

• Spring Clock Wonder
• Arjuna Sound
• Freefall Effect

Check out Ian on the drums/bass at the beginning of this in-process clip for a project that Arjuna Sound is doing.

Did I forget to mention previously on my blog that I did a one-time guest shot on a project that Ian did in 2010? Ian sang in a band in high school called Since Hector Was a Pup. In 2010, Ian and his brother Wade put together a new album called 2010: The Year We Forgo Contact. At the time, I asked if he needed a Trombone on anything and he did. You should check out the whole album, but you can hear me on the following track.

I've learned quite a bit in the last few years and I cringe a little hearing myself on that track now. But that's me. The rest of the song and album are awesome. Hmm, this is technically a flashback to 2010, rather than topical to 2012. I'm getting off-topic. But it occurs to me I hadn't mentioned this back when it was relevant.

Let's see, what else? Regarding FB pages, there was at least one other band I tried out for after most of Dirty Soap got busy with school. I met and played briefly with the folks from Bullseye Womprats. They are a class act, good people with more of a pop dance band. I did my best, but ultimately they decided to add a trumpet player instead of a trombone player. That's okay, they gained at least one new fan.

More Photos?

After the new friends and new likes, the year is summarized by a bunch of highlighted images posted by me.

That looks pretty random. This was a cool abstract image I'd made using Aviary advanced suite, which as I've blogged about before is now gone. Still, I use this as a fun background for my online portfolio --which at some point I'll get around to finishing.

Holidays are always a fun time for family. Here's my extended family on my dad's side. This is what Thanksgiving looks like at my Aunt Jeannie's house which is always one of my favorite spots. If it's possible, here's an almost bigger group at the Arconati Family reunion, which was this past summer. My dad's a fan of group shots and despite the grumbles, so am I.

And speaking of family photos, the year would not be complete without another photo shoot with JLL Photography.

This past year also has a momentous occasion in that we finally returned to our church home once again as reconstruction completed on Ferguson Christian Church after the tornado in 2011. It was a long wait, but it was worth it. We had a fun revival weekend when the building first reopened and things are really great right now. I don't actually have photos that I took, but a few news crews showed up to interview and I think I can find some of those. Here's probably the best one...

The fact that my wife is one of the folks interviewed does not affect my bias at all. Of course, she played a part behind-the-scenes getting the interviews set up and writing the press release. Here's another interview.

This has also been the year when my son Sam has started to get into everything.

After seeing this next photo, you may ask yourself if that's my son sitting between two girls, but that would be a redundant question because I'm telling you now that it is. Third kid from the right. Like a boss.

Something that Facebook didn't include on my retrospective wall; my brother-in-law got married to his long-time fiance this year. Congratulations to Nate and Beth! Do they look like it was freakishly cold? Even in October in Chicago? Yes, it was ridiculously cold.

What else has been happening this year? My daughters keep getting smarter and taller and I keep getting prouder. My wife keeps getting skinnier and I get luckier (yep). This spare tire I'm carrying keeps getting smaller then bigger again with the wrong frequency. But I am taking better care of myself in small strides and making new commitments to less of too much. We also have a guinea pig named Vicious. Random.

So all-in-all, a very good year. I'm filtering these stories through the Facebook tool, which admittedly did okay with surfacing some of the best and most popular posts and photos relevant to me. I said goodbye to one job and am picking up a different one this next week, so the end of the year will meet me at a really great spot. I may or may not post again before 2012 is kaput, so in case I forget; Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Third-Party Candidates

My friend Derek posted on why he can't vote for a third-party candidate and I thought I'd weigh in on this too.

When I hear an advocate for third-party candidate saying "Why vote for only the lesser of two evils?" I'm always a little confused. I want to retort "Because choosing between three or four different evils is so much better?"

And I'm sure to catch grief for that joke. If you are still reading, let me state now that I don't think ANY of the candidates is truly an 'evil' person. I believe all of them have good intentions, truly I do. I think some might be misguided, misinformed or their values do not match my values. The beauty of the system is that I get to choose the candidate that most closely matches me, my values and my view of the world.

However, I'm not sure third-party folks can't get involved too. The two-party system we have isn't set in stone and some day it too may be washed away. The modern flat world allows grass-roots movements to succeed in ways that have never been possible before. On the Internet, 'small' can be big and do big things. Maybe my friend is right and a third-party vote is a wasted vote, but I'm not sure and I wouldn't want to live in a country where it was.

Vote for who YOU want to vote for. Vote for who you think is best. Don't just bet on the horse most likely to win. There is no shame in voting for someone who ends up losing.

Web Design Work - A Portfolio In Progress

Confidently boasting about what I've done or can do is not something that comes naturally to me. However, it is a given that when selling your services as a freelancer that potential clients will want to see some of your previous work. I can't share everything because of certain confidentiality agreements but here's what I've put together so far in a very rough format.

---

By way of introduction, I've been working in the e-commerce site setup, design and promotion industry for the past six years. Here are a few things that I've worked on personally.

The project that I'm most proud of is the site I maintain and update voluntarily for my family's church, Ferguson Christian Church. I also maintain the church's Facebook pages and Twitter account.

One of my most steady freelance clients is the American Optometric Association. In my role for them, I format email marketing and newsletters for distribution to their paid membership.

I'm the administrator and co-owner of an e-commerce site that sells wedding favors and supplies called HappyIsTheBride.com.

I've set up and contribute to a blog about video editing with my father called ColorBurstVideo.com.

I've set up numerous WordPress blogs including one for a family friend about horse training called FrenchClassicalDressage.com.

Additionally, I have a personal blog, mostly for my own ramblings. So this really doesn't look like much but it's a start. I've left so much out that I simply can't yet talk about. Additionally, if this were a real portfolio it would include screenshots and other examples.

Not to worry, all of this is in progress! In the meantime, this draft will give an introduction.

I Have The Facebook

Sounds kind of like a contractible and misunderstood illness, doesn't it? Well, I've gone and signed up for Facebook as of today. I was being an elitist snob about it until my wife got interested in it from her friends at work.

I predict I will be addicted to it quite shortly.

Update (a few months later): I saved this post on the listed date, but forgot to publish it until just now. My prediction came true, just in case you wanted to know. Or hadn't you noticed a lack of meaningful blog posts?

Tattoo

You might agree with me that this would make an excellent tattoo.

Of course, you might not. I'd ask for your opinion, but it is perhaps a little too late.

Wait, what?! you stammer as the idea of me getting a tattoo starts to sink in a little.

Shhhhhhh!! All will be explained in due time.

Friends of ArcoJedi

I have a 'friends' site that I maintain infrequently. Basically, it started as an idea of mine to have one specific place where I linked to the business or personal websites of my friends and coworkers. I started it as part of my main site, but broke it off into it's own sub-domain at some point. I'm seeing a lot of my friends also have MySpace accounts, but I'm not going to get one. I'm staring at the list of published and unpublished posts and I have a dilemma.

Do I let each friend have one post and periodically update that one post with new content every time I notice a new site or project or article written by that friend? Or do I have new posts for each individual piece of web property? At this time, I've got some with the latter and some with the former and am looking to streamline this and have it all organized one specific way.

It's too late at night and I'm too tired. I'll figure it out another day.

Today's Lunch

There are a variety of things written about on any random blog. Just spin the random blog wheel if you don't believe me. The topics vary from the very important to the mundane. I usually write about what's important to me, but that might not be that important to anyone else. The point is that I write for myself and all the clichés about whether anyone else cares apply.

But right now, I'm gonna spend a post talking about something completely mundane, even to me. I want to post pictures of what I had for lunch today at the Chinese buffet.

Photo from Popug.com User Jer86gn^*

Photo from Popug.com User Jer86gn^*

Aren't you impressed with my presentation? The first plate there inspired the need to photograph these morsels. Note the way that the chilled shrimp are arranged so nicely on my plate? Yeah, that was completely random. I grabbed the first shrimp and threw it on my plate and then after grabbing a second one, I noted how completely symmetrical they were right next to each other. It looked like a commercial. So I wondered (aloud, and in earshot of strangers) if I could get the third one to line up the same way and without another thought I put a third one on my plate. My coworker, Jeremy G., was impressed enough (and goofy enough) that he decided to snap a shot with his camera phone at my urging. Minutes later, he did the same thing with my bowl of ice cream. Little did I know that moments after he snapped the pictures that they would automatically be sent to a website and shared with unknown strangers across the internet. These folks could post comments and these would be sent back instantly to Jeremy's phone via text message. Apparently, someone watching the pictures even complained to Jeremy, I'd guess because they were getting hungry. It all happened so smoothly and quickly and seemed almost normal.

And I guess the interesting part of this uninteresting story is the technological angle, weak as it is. I mean, I do find it interesting how the communication on the web is so tightly woven in everyday life. Something so small and so revolutionary and yet stupid at the same time is happening every day. Cameras, phones, ice cream, web sites, online world wide communities and chinese food all consumed in one lunch hour.

Lisa's and my new cell phones that we got each other for Christmas do take digital pictures, but I've not really used it much. Perhaps it's time that I started. I do post the occasional photo on my Flickr page from my digital camera, and I could do that from my cell phone.

Note: I do want to apologize ahead of time because the Popug.com website mentioned above is rife with pop-up ads and other flashy annoyances. Thankfully, I just blocked them all one at a time in Firefox, and it's not a problem.

More About My Del.icio.us Archive

So I'm pretty sure that My Del.icio.us Archive has a Google Pagerank of 3 -- at least at the moment. The traffic for this site actually surpasses the root directory for the Arconati News - http://arconati.net/ site.

I just went through the site's controls today and smoothed out some of the settings. I especially concentrated on the "Blogroll" section, adding links to a lot of my friends' blogs. The following is what it looks like right now.

Blogroll

• Bryan Farr
• Derek Brink
• Kate Tuskey
• Michelle Nicholson
• Nikomas Perez

I also included links to my two main sites as well as Ferguson Christian Church and MonsterCommerce. I think one of the main reasons for the site's success (if that is the right word for it) is due to Wordpress' Trackback / PingBack features. In del.icio.us, I have been bookmarking a lot of high profile, high quality tech sites, and a lot of these sites list the most recent / most relevant links to their sites reciprocally.

The website builds itself. Thinking about it, every del.icio.us user should at least create a free Wordpress blog and make sure their bookmarks are being posted there every day.

New Blogger Version

I've just had all of my blogs upgraded to the latest version of blogger. It took a few minutes to complete, but was mostly painless. One immediate change I noted was that the dashboard lists all unmoderated comments and has a decent interface for viewing them. I noted immediately that this blog had five comments I didn't even know about. I'm wondering if they were there and I just never went to the "Moderate Comments" section, or if some bug had kept them hidden even on that menu.

I thought nobody read my blog and here were several different comments from people other than my close family. There were two comments from J.D., one on my post about Ferguson-Florissant School District and another post about Olivia's adventure in the supermarket late one night. I also had a comment on my post from last summer when I created the website for Ferguson Christian Church from our former Youth Minister, Nikomas Perez. I also got a comment on one of my posts from a coworker from MonsterCommerce, Janet Lackey thanking me for linking to her site, which I was all too thrilled to do.

Most exciting to me was a comment from an old best friend, Jeff Kirchhofer, who I've been thinking of getting back in touch with for the longest time. What bugs me most about this comment thing is that he posted a comment way back in January of this year and I am only finding out about it now. Don't I look like a jerk? Oh well, I'm emailing him now.

Trip to New York

Back in August, I took a long weekend trip to New York to visit my step-brother Lonny and his girlfriend Tami. It was great. I'd like to have more time for details to post about that trip, but I'll start by posting an index to a few details I kept on my Axim PDA and just now saved as individual entries.

• New York, New York - Frank Sinatra
• Start Spreading The News ...
• @ Lonny's Place (10:45pm Locally)
• @ Tami's Place in Brooklyn (10:26pm Locally)
• @ Lonny's Place Again (12:12am Locally)

Yeah, not much there right now. I'll update with more information some other night. I had a great time, despite the grumblings about how much my feet hurt.