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LOVE: Speaking to students about social media

by Jeff on February 17th, 2012 in me with 2 Comments

Today I was given the opportunity to speak to a class at Bay State College about social media. It was wonderful. The enthusiasm during our discussion was great and before you knew it an hour had gone by. Secretly, I went into this thing trying to figure out what we were going to talk about for an hour. Almost immediately I was comforted by the fact that a few of the students had a real interest in Social Media and we just ran with a Q&A session.

These are my favorite kind of chats. I was sitting down with them, not standing looking down at them. It was comfortable and held quite a conversational type atmosphere. I think this type of talk is the easiest to have the BIGGEST impact in. With a small group hanging on your every word and throwing back questions to something you might just have said. It’s a great way to get the juices flowing and the gears in the head turning. I spent the entire ride home thinking about that talk and what I can do better and how I should go about acting on ideas that are now wildly spinning about my head. I’m going to follow my own advice that I gave to the students: “Jump in, get your hands dirty, if it doesn’t work pivot.” I’ve got a couple ideas that I’ve had in my head for the past couple of years that I’m going to launch and see if they work. You never know unless you take that risk. Hopefully if I go back and talk to these students again I can tell them that the last time I was here they helped me launch an idea that became super successful or perhaps it flopped but here’s why it did. Learning from failure is nearly as important if not more important than learning from success.

Hopefully some of the students will reach out and ask some more questions that they might not have been able to ask and we’ll start a whole new conversation and spawn some more great ideas. Only time will tell.

It was a great day and I’m smiling ear to ear.

I’ve got an addicition

by Jeff on February 12th, 2012 in me with No comments
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Really. I’m sure I’ve got more than one but one that stands out more than the others is my addiction to online gaming. More specifically World of Warcraft. I enjoy playing a gaming an slaying internet dragons. There, I said it. I’ve been playing since closed beta which happens to be 2004. So that’s 8 of years of playing the same game. Do I play every hour of everyday? No, most certainly not. If I did that then my client work would never get done and I’d be homeless. Those two things are for sure.

I often think about why I play the game and why I’ve played it for so long. I’ve never played any other game for as long as I’ve played this one. I’m not a casual player but I’m also not a hardcore player. I’d rank myself somewhere in the semi-hardcore bracket with a whole ton of content completed in game and just putting the finishing touches on the end game. There have been times where I stepped away from WoW for a bit but for no other reason than I’ve had other, more important things going on in my life that had to be handled. No I didn’t get the sweats or the shakes or the crack itch. Sometimes you just drift in and out of a game. I’ve seen it happen for years on end. Good players/friends come and go and come back again. New games come out and a month later those folks that left WoW to play it generally return back to the drug that is World of Warcraft.

Alliance BannerI thoroughly enjoy the social aspect of the game. Getting together for a few hours every night with 9 other people, who share a common interest and get pretty much the same satisfaction you do out of the game is fun for me. What else would I be doing on a Tuesday or Wednesday night? Watching TV? Same thing really and I’d rather play the game than sit and watch TV. Back when I first started playing WoW it was all about you could be whoever you wanted to be. I started on a Roleplaying server and was there for a couple years. I did get tired of it and wanted some more action so I transferred when I could and ended up on a PVP server which was a massive change in direction than what I was used to. No more carebears it was all about “if it’s red, it’s dead”. Currently I reside on a normal server but remain PVP flagged 100% of the time. It’s fun and I enjoy the challenge. The raiding end of my guild is a pretty close knit group of people. We all have a common bond in that this is what we do on our downtime. Most of the folks on my raid team are out of college, have jobs, families, etc. And this is what they do when the kids are asleep and they have time to themselves. I love that. Are they my friends? If you’ve read my blog you’ll know that I don’t consider myself to have many friends. Acquaintances sure but not friends. All these people are good acquaintances. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t share a beer with them though. I absolutely would. Anytime.

Solid Iron ChestSo I pay $15 a month to play this game and have done so for pretty much the better part of let’s say 7 years. That means Blizzard has gotten about $1250 of my money in order for me to play. I’m ok with that because there are plenty of other things that I could be addicted to that would cost me a whole lot more than that a week or month. What’s interesting to me is I’ve always been cautious about telling people that I play WoW. It seems that once someone knows this about you they see you as some sort of basement dwelling, hot pocket eating, sausage fingered, lives with his parents, fat kid with nothing better to do than play games all day. I’m not that person, at all. I live on the third floor actually :) It wasn’t until I found that a Social Media Giant that I look up to Chris Penn plays WoW that things finally clicked for me and I felt it was ok for me to spend my time playing the game when I wanted to. It’s weird to me that I needed validation from someone in the same industry as me to make me feel ok about admitting that I play the game. It’s almost childish now that I look back on it.

So I’ll keep playing until something new comes my way and manages to pry $15 a month out of my hands. I think I’ll do more updates on WoW here and other games I’m playing. Diablo 3 is coming and I still need to start playing Skyrim. The new WoW Expansion should be out this year and the new Starcraft 2 Expansion is slated for release as well. It looks like I might just have a lot to talk about.

Want to find me on WoW and say hello? Here’s a link to my armory: click here – I mainly play a Holy Paladin on the server Turalyon, Alliance side, named Seltzers. Stop in game and say hello. If you’ve got questions I can answer I’ll do my best to do so.

New Year, Fresh Start.

by Jeff on February 10th, 2012 in me with No comments
New Year Fresh Start

It’s February. I know.

Oh blog how I’ve neglected you. I’m not going to say “NO LONGER!” because you never really know what might happen tomorrow, or the next day. I digress. So let’s catch you up. November, December & January were insanely busy. With a bunch of life changes, the holidays and all that I had barely any time to sit and think about this new year. But hey here we are and here I am and I’m ready to go. Work is great, kicking ass and taking names as per usual. However, I find I could stand to have some more freelance work so after being asked where my “business” type page is for the thousandth time I figured I’d whip one up and go one step further and give you some pricing options so you can get started right away if you’re ready to pull the trigger.

Head on over to: http://services.ffej.me and see what I can do for you.

All of that out of the way I’m currently working with some kick ass clients and loving it. My good friend Graeme has sent some work my way and each time it’s been an honor working with these amazing organizations. I’m tired of great people and places thinking they can’t afford quality work because they’re not a multimillion dollar a year organization. If I can help, I’d like to. So get in touch!

I do have one caveat though and I’m sure it’s going to grow into a blog post (it’s already floating in my head). I feel like every now and again a perspective client comes along in which they make me feel like I’m interviewing for a job. While I can take a certain amount of question asking there has to be a point in which someone says that’s enough. We’re talking about small potatoes kind of work here. Nothing in the $100,000+ mark. Much the opposite to be honest. Again, I’m not going to turn away the work but where do you draw the line and say enough is enough? Asking for non client references? Really? I’ve been doing this a long time and I’ve never had anyone else ask me for this stuff. I might just put myself through it this time to see where that threshold might lie for me and then do a study and a post on it. We’ll see!

Anyways so answer my question: how far is too far and what’s that breaking point for you when a perspective client has exhausted all of their “prehiring questions”?

Pick it up. Put it up. Be Awesome.

by Jeff on October 28th, 2011 in me with 2 Comments

The title says it all. Seriously. Why should I even write anything else? When it’s all crumbled down around you, within you and through you what else is there to do?

Step 1. Pick it up.
Absofuckinglutely. Pick the pieces up, put them together and get ready for step 2. If you can’t even get past this step we’ve got a problem. Close your eyes, count to 10 and get ready to be baller again. Handle it man. Handle it. Life doesn’t rule you, you rule life. Don’t ever let it step in front of you, your goals or your wishes.

Step 2. Put it up.
Shut up and get it done. Enough of the chitter chatter, pitter patter of that bullshit you’re raining down. Either do it or get out of the fucking way. If you’re not going 100% then what are you doing? Where’s the other 10, 20, 30% going? Sitting on your ass not smiling, not giving a shit, not being focused on the goals you’ve set. Enough of that. Get up, get out, pick it up & put it up.

Step 3. Be Awesome.
After all this is the final goal right? You want to be awesome, happy, smiling, loving, etc. Then get there. You’re the only one in the way of you. Appreciate what you’ve got and what’s around you and OWN IT. Don’t want to own it? Want to float on through and not kick ass? Then get out of my way, my friends way and everyone else who is driven to get to the next level. If you’re not doing everything you can do be your BEST, be AWESOME then what the fuck is going on man?

Fin.
This post was created to make you think, inspire and be here for you to always look back on in case you need that kick in the pants from someone or something. Enjoy and I’d love to hear your thoughts.

In the End of all Things

by Jeff on October 11th, 2011 in me with 3 Comments

The past week has been an exciting one, an eye opening one, a tremendously sad one and a mind set changing one. I’ve never in my life gone through such a roller coaster of emotions. The highs were oh so high and the lows were knuckle dragging, skin tearing lows. And in the end, I’m still here. You’re still here. Life moves on. Truthfully if I were here or not life would still be trucking on for everyone else anyways. I was listening to Johnny Cash sing his version of Hurt originally by Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails (it can be found on the Downward Spiral Album circa. 1994) and this phrase he says struck a massive chord with me. He talks about having it all, his empire of dirt. That got me thinking a bit.

In the end we’re 6 feet under and everything we had is widdled down to nothing. We could have had all the money in the world but in the end where did that get us? We’re still destined for that hole in the ground. No matter which way we slice or dice it that’s where we’re going, in the end. What we do up until that end is what matters. The legacy we leave, the memories people will hold onto, the verses people will write and sing, that’s how we’ll be remembered. Happiness for me, isn’t having the latest and greatest thing (although it is nice), it’s about the people I’m sharing my life with. I don’t have many friends. I’ll be the first to admit that. I have a whole lot of acquaintances and people that I interact with but at the very core of my life I only have a few close friends and that’s it. I like it this way. But how am I going to remembered when I go? If I don’t have a large circle of friends will memories of me just fade away and never see the light of day again? Call me selfish but it scares the hell out of me to be forgotten. So then I ask myself what am I doing today to ensure that I’m never forgotten? I woke up this morning with the will power to make a life change, turn 180 degrees and start checking off things on my list. I’ve already started and I have faith that one day one of the things I check off my list will be the reason I’m going to be remembered. Until then I’ll keep listing and I’ll keep checking things off.

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