Hello world!

Just joined WordPress. Time to do some real blogging… not just pictures of my wife and kid and links to favorite movies and websites. I chose WordPress because of their impressive use of grey hues and strategic mix of Georgia and Arial. Once upon a time I designed fonts… it was a great gig. I made about $200/hr at the ripe old age of 12, and had the coolest BMX bike in the neighborhood. Until it was stolen. But it was returned… by my future brother-in-law, no less. We still talk about that bike (blue Mongoose with yellow mag wheels… which, if you weren’t a teenager in the 80s, is the BMX equivalent of a Ferrari with 24″ chrome spinners). Yet I digress. I really wanted to start this blog to post great stuff about marketing, strategy, customer loyalty, product development, and social (and non) media.

I grew up with newspapers as an integral part of my life. My dad started several, and wrote some software to publish them that has made him very successful. He brought home newspapers and I would lay on the ground (several months old) and roll around in them, crumple them up, and eat them. I literally have newspapers in my blood. I was a paperboy, then a press boy and one of my favorite passtimes was dumpster diving from the paper roll towers into huge garbage bins full of shredded paper. I loved the smell of ink, newsprint, and the sound of the rolling presses.

Things have changed… newspapers have been slow (and sometimes reluctant) to adopt new technology (I know because I spent years trying to sell it to them). They are now paying the price… but I don’t think the game is over. Breaking news isn’t/won’t be their gig so much, with independent journalists abandoning their cubicles in droves and posting great and immediate content on Twitter and other social media channels. However, much of that focus is on national and international events, rather than local events. And while it is amazing that you can get the 140-character synopsis on what’s happening at nearly the moment it happens, it is still valuable to be able to get the whole story at some point. News still happens, and in-depth analysis is still valuable. There is room for news organizations to not be news “papers” so much any more, but to empower, organize, and distribute news content in various forms that complement and reinforce each other.

That’s what this blog will mostly be about. I am working on (O-CODES), a startup idea that could change the landscape a bit, bridging the widening gap between print and digital, social and non-social, offline and online media. I will post about the company, ask for feedback and ideas from customers and investors and critics alike, and will collect articles and images and information that I find informative, humorous, or intriguing.

I may also use this blog as an emotional outlet… other than working out, writing is cathartic for me. You may not enjoy what I write. In fact, you most likely won’t. But this is cheaper than hiring a therapist, and I’m in bootstrap mode right now.