One thing that annoys the heck out of me about the end of every year is that starting in December, the entire blogosphere becomes Miss Cleo and obnoxiously tries to predict what will happen in the next year in social media/tech trends, fake Jamaican accent and all. (OK, maybe I just read them in a fake Jamaican accent to make them more entertaining and bearable. Try it–you’ll see.)

Yet, seldom do most of those fake-Jamaican-accented, blogging tech prophets actually compare how well their last year’s predictions stacked up to what really happened.

I’ve never been a fan of this yearly tradition of Miss Cleoing*; all it ever does is just stir up more unnecessary noise in the echo chamber. Any idiot can pull predictions out of their butt about what the next year will bring, and few ever do any real research to make educated guesses.

As fate would have it, last year I was charged with doing just that — not pull predictions out of my butt and write a blog post, but researching past and current trends, past and current predictions, what might be under the radar, yet up-and-coming, etc. and, along with the assistance of a colleague, write a big ol’, in-depth paper of educated guesses

predictions for our own “11 Trends to Watch in 2011″ (original, I know).

Unfortunately, because of some situations beyond our control that we could not have predicted, our paper was never published.

However, I’m a pack rat when it comes to research (both digital and hard copy), and upon cleaning my desk a week or so ago, I came across my printed-out research for this shelved project, an inch-thick stack bound together by a binder clip which must have been magical because it seemed to defy the laws of physics. (I should have taken a picture.)  Practically every end-of-the-year Miss Cleo post and whitepaper I could find in the blogosphere, printed out, hand-highlighted, notes written in the margins — it was enough for me to basically say  to myself, “Holy crap, I did this all in vain.” 

Or maybe I didn’t.

I’d like to not think that all of my research and efforts were futile. After all, I did subject myself to combing through everybody’s Miss Cleoing, which not only fueled my disdain for end-of-the-year predictions posts, but was enough to unconsciously get me reading everything in a fake Jamaican accent for the next three months. (It’s funny when you do it in your head but when you accidentally do it out loud … well, I digress.)

Anyway.

Even though it was never published, I wanted to see how I did in my educated guesses

predictions compared to what actually happened. So I dug up the outline from my files and took a look. I didn’t do too bad. I was WAY off on a few things, but you know what? Very few end-of-the-year blogosphere Miss Cleos revisit their last year’s predictions and compare them to reality (or, at least not publicly). But I will.

So here it is. The outline for the unpublished paper, my own attempt at Miss Cleoing last year and predicting what 2011 would hold. I haven’t modified it except to add the preface at the top, and clean up a couple typos.

About the beginning…

From everything I read of everybody else’s, I noticed that there was a LOT of what seems to be a common problem in this field — stating the obvious. In December 2010, many people were “predicting” what was already happening, things that were already a given. Saying that people will use a lot more apps for their every day needs (whether on tablets, phones, in browsers, etc.) is hardly prophecy. It was already happening. Saying “search will get more social” had been happening, too. Growing concern for privacy? That too.

Things that are obviously becoming  (if not already) omnipresent do not count as “trends” to “predict.” That’s called practicing your superpowers as Captain Obvious.

So I acknowledged these things and moved on. After the jump, I’m going to attempt to examine each of these and whether or not they came true. As I said, I know I was way off on a few of these. Some of them I was right, but others, I’m honestly not sure and maybe you can help me out to let me know if it happened or not.

[Note: This ended up being a much longer post than I originally anticipated, but it reads quickly, I promise.]

Oh hai! You’re still reading! Woo! Now, let’s get down to it…

Theme 1: Stop the Insanity!

• Trend 1) People suffer from internet information overload; strive to pare down and simplify their social stream.

I would have to say CORRECT.I don’t know about you, but I’ve noticed a lot of my friends go on mass unfriending exoduses on Facebook, mass unfollowing on Twitter, etc. (I haven’t yet but it’s on my To Do list.)

• Trend 2)  “Everything old is New Again” — smart brands understand Trend 1; need to stand out of the clutter so revert back to tangible content marketing (Sbux pamphlet), direct mail

I don’t know to what extent “smart brands” have noticed they need to bring content marketing back offline in the past year, but I have noticed it. A pamphlet about Coffee 101 from Starbucks I picked up while waiting for my drink. Leinenkugel inserts a newspaper-like publication in their 12-packs.  David Meerman Scott recently wrote about content marketing historically being offline and reminded his readers after being inspired by a placemat from a hotel in Finland.

• Trend 3) Gadgets and other devices continue to get simpler in design, ease of use (see iPod, FlipCam, Jitterbug phone, Amazon interface, etc.)
• “Less is More”

OK, so the FlipCam died, and I don’t know how many grandparents use the Jitterbug phone, but the point was more simplicity in design and function of gadgets. I’d say this could have been filed under Captain Obvious in the beginning, but really, who’d have thought this simplicity and ease of use would stretch so far as a learning thermostatbeing one of the year’s hottest items?

Theme 2: Social/Mobile Melding

• Trend 4) Peace Treaty in the “Location Wars”
• Facebook doesn’t “win” as many project because of privacy, slow adoption, apathy
• Other LBS grow but stay niche
• Gowalla/Whrrl will rise in numbers dramatically, be more mainstream
• FourSquare plateaus and becomes stagnant because of difficulties in partnerships, slow to introduce new features, loses its “cool factor”

I don’t know if I would say there was a “Peace Treaty,” but it was certainly a busy year for location-based services.  Facebook killed off their “Places”  mobile “FourSquare competitor” check-in feature. Groupon bought Whrrl and shut them down. FourSquare raised an insane amount of money and it looks like they’re doing even more partnering. Facebook bought Gowalla.  So I was pretty off on this one.  But whether or not location will ever become “mainstream” … I doubt it.

• Trend 5) SHOPPING because a seamless geo-social-mobile group (or individual) experience (I drew a diagram for this)

Yesterday I bought a Groupon from my phone for a sandwich at a nearby restaurant and within ten minutes walked to said restaurant and got my sandwich. ‘Nuff said.

BLIPS ON THE RADAR:

• Trend 6) Augmented Reality rises, remains niche, but WordLens opens door for tipping point in future

Yep. Augmented reality got a bit more attention but it’s hardly mainstream yet. It wasn’t until later in the year that household brands like Starbucks and Volkswagen Canada (definitely check out that link) started integrating AR into their marketing efforts, but if big brands like them continue to do so, expect AR to be much bigger in 2012. 

• Trend 7) NFC gets more attention, not as big a blip on radar as AR, there are infrastructure reasons for why this will take a lot longer to catch on than people think

Yep. Near field communication is the technology behind the Google Wallet idea. Theoretically, you can pay for something with your phone by tapping or holding your phone close to a “reader.” (NFC can obviously be used for more than payments but I’m using this as example.)

The problem is, not all phones/devices have the NFC chip. And not all merchants have the technology (yet) to process such payments. The biggest hurdles are time and logistics. NFC payments will eventually become commonplace, but just like it took a long time for merchants to be able to process credit card payments, it will take a while for this technology to be widespread and fully integrated. People usually get a new phone every couple years, so outfitting phones won’t be the problem, it will be on the receiving/processing end. It’s going to be at least 2015 before this NFC payments are as common as Google wants it to be now.

• Trend 8) Social Scoring (Klout, PeerIndex, etc.) gets a lot of attention, but lack of accuracy, etc. leads to much debate, this one’s a big miss

If there was anything we (read: I) got sick of hearing/reading about other than the word “occupy” in 2011, it was The Great Klout Debate. Just google “social media influence score”and you’ll see what I mean.

Theme 3: It’s DATA’s Time to Shine! (“DATA is a ROCKSTAR”)

• Trend 9) Visualized Data will be HOT

Personally, I’m a total geek about data visualization. I seek out stuff from FlowingData and JESS3 because it fascinates the crap out of me. That said, because I seek this kind of thing out, I don’t know how popular it was to everybody else. (Help a sista out here?) If I had to guess, I’d say infographics were much more popular in 2011 (there is a difference), but really bad, misleading infographics.

• Trend 10) Email will make a comeback (esp. since the rise of Groupon & clones)

Email never really went anywhere to begin with. I was implying email marketing, thanks to Groupon and its clones, but I don’t know this to be true or not. I do know that every day I get an email from Groupon, LivingSocial, CBS Daily Deals, and a couple others, but I don’t have any stats about the rest of the world and their reception to email marketing, and daily deals in particular. Anybody?

• Trend 11) Cloud consumer data becomes an invaluable resource as brands/corps realize the value in target marking w/the info they already have

I was a year ahead on this one. Seems everyone under the sun is now predicting 2012 to be “the year of Big Data.”

Bonus Round/Conclusion

• Tablet Frenzy – iPad will remain dominant

I’d say this one is true.

• Mobile Handsets – BB is safe in home base in corporate environments (iPhone won’t take over) because BB is much more secure; Android wins in VOLUME of handsets, but iPhone/Apple still dominate

Boy, was I wrong about Blackberry!!  As for the other, as of December 30, 2011, Android has the volume, but iPhone/Apple do still dominate.

• Apple incorporates each of these trends into its brand in some way, shape or form, with design/simplicity, streamlined ecosystem/platform for content, other reasons

I think that the iPhone 4S is a pretty good indicator here.

What do you think? 

If you’ve made it this far in reading this gargantuan post, I’m impressed! Thanks for sticking around.

Overall, I think I did pretty darn well, save for a few things. Of course, many things happened in 2011 that nobody on the “outside” of those projects could have predicted, such as Google+ and the Facebook Timeline. And of course, there will always be the unexpected … in the field of tech communication and the world at large. Which is why I’m not a fan of year-end Miss Cleoing, but I am a fan of research, educated guesses, and postmortem analysis.

Now it’s your turn.

Did you make year-end predictions last year? How did they fare in retrospect?

If you were a year-end Miss Cleo blogger last year, I would love to see you do a similar post comparing how your predictions last year stacked up to what actually happened in 2011. I think it would be both interesting and a good exercise, not to mention a great habit to get into. If you do, please track back to this post so I know where to go look, or drop me a link in the comments.

Thanks, and Happy New Year! Here’s to a great 2012!

 *I just coined that term. I encourage you to use “Miss Cleoing” liberally and incorporate it into our modern lexicon. Attribution appreciated but not necessary.

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I absolutely LOVE it when Amazon gives strange pairing suggestions. Like, “People who bought that folk music CD also bought this toaster!”  Some of them I’ve seen are really funny, but I haven’t gotten any good ones lately.

However, almost exactly a year ago today, I was Christmas shopping for my dad on Amazon and needed ideas. So I looked in their gift ideas guide under  both “Dad” and “Boyfriend/Husband.” The latter category had a “Cycling Accessories,” to my delight since my dad is an avid cyclist.

The following is a screenshot that I took last year and posted on Facebook, asking my friends,

“So, should I get my dad the Hello Kitty bike bell or the Disney Princess basket?” 

This year I’m finding myself once again not having any idea what to get my dad for Christmas. So, I went back to Amazon and checked under the same gift guide, and the same categories.

That Hello Kitty bike bell and Disney Princess basket must’ve been really popular last year with the guys, because they’re still there. 

Have you gotten any fun and/or odd Amazon pairings lately? Please share if so! (Links to screen shots encouraged.)

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This blog underwent an identity crisis for quite a long time, and the last time I thought I knew what I wanted to do with it, I decided to keep it (somewhat) focused on communications technology. I strayed away from what I thought I wanted to write about quite a bit. I wrote a lot about music, which is my first love. There’s quite a bit in the archives about that, but I decided to launch a music blog for that kind of thing, which took a backseat to real life happening and my inability to make a decision on what to do with this one.

This morning I woke up all but certain I was going to retire this blog and domain forever, but still keep the archives up (to completely kill it would be foolish, it has great SEO). I was just about to pen my farewell post when I visited my big identity crisis post  and re-read the comments.

You know what? My commenters were right.

I shouldn’t feel like I have to pigeonhole myself in one category or another here. That invisible obligation is what has kept me from publishing a lot of stuff here that I’ve written offline. I’m not going to do that anymore.

This is my damn blog and I’m going to write about whatever I want here.

The funny thing is, I never really had any intention of doing anything huge with this blog in the first place.

I’ve said in the past, and I continue to say, that it exists as a sounding board for whenever I feel like I have something to say. I never had any “strategy,” nor was it ever my goal to become any sort of online “public figure,” or even make any money. I bought the domain because it was a funny nickname given to me from a few friends, and then the online handle just kinda stuck. It was my own self-imposed pigeonholing that I’ve been contending with.

Ironically, I’m a staunch nonbeliever in classifying artists these days into genres of music. I’m not sure why I was trying to peg myself in one particular genre of blog.

That Damn Music Blog was ideally going to launch in 2011 (though I never gave it an official launch date since I had lots of stuff happening IRL), but now, because of life and being wishy-washy about this blog and a few other life-type things, it’s looking more like January 2012.

Anyway, henceforth (yes, I say “henceforth” in real life, it sounds so much better than than “from now on,” dontchathink?) — consider this under the “personal blog” category.*

*I realize this is not exactly an earth-shattering announcement, but I think I had to write it for my own clarity of thought. What I do know is that I’m going to have a lot more fun here in the future, and I hope you do, too. Thanks for sticking around. 

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If you know nothing else about me, you know that I love cats.

In fact, I’m pretty sure that half of my Facebook friends have hidden my updates in their newsfeeds because of my excessive sharing of photos of my cats, cat videos, LOLcats, etc.

I’m not as nuts about cats as this girl, but boy, do I love me some cats. After all, the internet is made of them.

Anyway, it’s not often I actually blog about my cat findings on the web (or blog in general, I know, I know…), but yesterday I found the BEST cat-related thing EVAR.

Introducing. . .  The Procatinator!!

It’s random GIFs of cats. Set to music. And it’s wonderful.

Like its name suggests, it’s easy to waste time on this site.* I’ve found it to be the perfect thing to lift my mood up if I’m in a funk and make me laugh. Yesterday I kept clicking the “show me another cat” link on the left and about fell out of my chair laughing.

You’re welcome.

*I am not responsible for your lack of productivity from The Procatinator. 

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Way back in July 2010 (which is light years in internet time), the “create-your-own-social-network” platform Ning decided to nix its freemium model in favor of a tiered pricing plan. Even though its lowest tier, for groups under 150 members, was only $2.95 a month, many small nonprofits, civil service organizations, and other groups already strapped for cash that were using the Ning platform as their main hub were up a creek with nowhere to go. So I wrote a post about a service I was familiar with called Amazee, and called it “a winning alternative to Ning for cause-based communities.”

It was recently brought to my attention in the comments of that post by one Tobias Eigen of Saidia.org that Amazee will now also be shutting down, as of December 23 of this year. Tobias wrote a post about this story, and drew some lessons from it in particular for civil society organizations looking for “free” places to host their campaigns and other stuff. He feels very strongly that they should be looking to open platforms (preferably run by other civil society organizations), so as to not get shafted again.

Said Tobias,

This trend reminds me just how important it is to have civil society platforms run by civil society organizations. We need to have reliable places we own and can rely on to put our stuff and to run our campaigns to fight for our communities, our environment, the future of our world.

I couldn’t agree more, and encourage you to visit Saidia.org to read further into his points.

As an example of an open platform, Tobias points to Kabissa, a volunteer-run platform which is a “space for change in Africa,” and supported by donations from the community. While I personally love this idea, unfortunately not all nonprofits have the knowledge of how to set something like this up, which as I pointed out, was why the Nings and the Amazees existed in the first place.

An alternative open platform,  WiserEarth.org, was mentioned in the comments, and while it is an open platform, I personally found the usability rather poor and hard to navigate. There’s very little “social” about it, and most of the causes I indicated interest in hadn’t had any activity in months. I see WiserEarth (as a concept) as a step in the right direction, but they really need to work on their UX.

When looking for alternatives a couple months ago I found  Mixx, which since I began researching for this post, has change into a platform called Chime.in, a network based around interests. When researching what happened to Mixx, I found this on the Wikipedia entry:

As of October 4, 2011, the Mixx Classic website has been shut down and now only displays a “we’ll be back soon message” and a e-mail address collection form which subscribes you to a newsletter that will announce the relaunch of Mixx. As of October 8, 2011, this message still exists. All former Mixxers lost all their saved and indexed data despite being promised otherwise by the Mixx staff. All Mixx user profiles have been deleted. The profile pages return errors, do not even 301 redirect to home, and the site lost significant PageRank and potential rankings. Apparently a total fail.

As I write this, obviously the Wikipedia entry hasn’t been updated, but I’m sure it will be soon. (I’m too lazy to do it myself right now.) The concept of Chime.in itself is fine and not too unlike what the original Mixx was, but this serves as yet one more reason you should not be reliant on third-party platforms. They’re always subject to change, and like Amazee, Mixx offered no downloadable CSV or XML file, or any other way for users to preserve/archive their content.

While the majority of the emphasis in this post thus far is on civil society organizations/nonprofits, as I said in the comments of Tobias’ post, it isn’t just  those folks that need to keep this in mind.

No matter if you are nonprofit, for-profit, a public figure, musician, etc. — You need to have your own “home base.” Period.

I’ve personally always advised my clients, regardless of what kind of entity they are, that they needed to “own” their presence on the web and not rely on other platforms such as Facebook, though those are a nice complement to your online presence.

I don’t know how many musicians I’ve worked with who have insisted that they “didn’t need a website because Facebook/Twitter/ReverbNation/whatever was enough.” All I had to do was point to MySpace and the demise of its relevancy on the social web, asking them if they’d REALLY like to keep migrating from platform to platform all the time and not having an online “homebase.” Oh, and grab your digital knapsacks, kids, as of the other day, there’s now Google Music.

I also know there are myriad small businesses who are in this similar mentality that they don’t need a website, their presence on Facebook is “enough.” Guess what? It’s not enough. If you’ve got a presence on Facebook, Twitter, now Google+, etc. … THAT’S GREAT. Good for you for learning how to check off a box, no matter how much you might hate the “hassle” of doing it. BUT, unless you own it, you’re just squatting on free property until “the next big thing” comes along or, in the case of Amazee, that property decides to close down.

“Oh, but where to start?”

I undertand that a lot of the ins and outs of this can seem overwhelming or intimidating to people who are not “digital natives” or otherwise comfortable on the web. But it doesn’t have to be.

There are plenty of resources out there to buy domains and host a site. I personally prefer 1and1.com for my domains and host elsewhere (though they host, too), but there’s GoDaddy, BlueHost, Rackspace, and plenty of others out there. If you fear the technical stuff or the design stuff, most of them offer “one-click installs” of various content management systems, including WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and others. For collaboration purposes, in the place of something like Amazee, MediaWiki is usually one of the one-click installs offered, and it’s pretty popular with the nonprofits and rather straight forward.

If you are still overwhelmed and don’t know where/how to start, there’s also Page.ly, where you can set up a WordPress self-hosted site and host it, and they’ll even give you plenty of templates to get you started with a “look.”

I can’t stress enough how important it is for everyone, no matter if they’re a nonprofit, band, brand, small business, “public figure,” singing midget telegram service, rodeo clown, or WHATEVER that you can’t rely on third party, “free” service for your main online presence. It’s a relatively small investment to purchase a domain (less than $10) and host it (varies).

The best part? It’s YOUR site, that YOU own, and nobody can take it away from you.

Detroit Tigers photo via heidigoseek, rodeo clown via Bill Gracey.

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Country sensation Miranda Lambert has been taking the world by storm, becoming the first country artist in the 47-year history of the album charts to have her first four albums debut at No. 1. Her first single off her new album, Four the Record, is entitled “Baggage Claim,” which she performed at the 45th Annual Country Music Association Awards recently, just moments prior to taking home “Female Vocalist of the Year” for the second year in a row.

This no-nonsense, “kiss-off song” about a woman liberating herself from the emotional burdens of a no-good, soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend, is a light-hearted approach to a situation that is often most vocalized by men:

At the baggage claim
you got a lot of luggage in your name
When you hit the ground check the lost and found
cuz it aint my problem now I can’t carry it all
I got a lot of troubles on my own
Its all over the yard and in the trunk of the car
I’m packing it in, so come and get it

Regardless of our gender, yeah, we’ve all been there once or twice. Just admit it.

While I’m still in preparation to launch That Damn Music Blog,  I thought I’d share this wonderfully amusing and cathartic site I found recently called EmotionalBagCheck.com. (Think of this post as a preview to the kind of content you’ll find at TDMB.)

Emotional Bag Check is a brilliant site powered by the API of Grooveshark (but created independently) that basically allows you to check your emotional baggage online and tell an anonymous collective your problems. When other people read it, they can send you a song that they feel appropriate.  If you’ve got no baggage to share, you can pick someone else’s up and send them a song to (hopefully) make them feel better.

I personally love this concept, so I decided to try it. Hesitant, I decided to pick someone else’s baggage up first, and this is what I got:

Well, OK, so I’m probably not the most original person here but the first song that popped into my head was “Comfortably Numb,” only not the original by Pink Floyd, but by Dar Williams with Ani DiFranco on backing vocals. So that’s what I sent the anonymous, non-feeling person, with a note:

If I could sum up “why I love music” in a nutshell, it would be one word: therapy. Simple as that. In fact, not only is music therapy an established profession these days, but back in the days of Beethoven, doctors used to prescribe music to people to lift their moods. (I read that somewhere the other day and wish I could remember where in order to cite it. I can’t, but if you can find the link for me, let me know in the comments, thanks.) However, you don’t need to be a genius to know that music is medicine for the soul. You just need to be human. Which, if you’re reading this, I’m sure you are.

Anyway, so I decided it was only fair I dump some of my own baggage at EmotionalBagCheck.com after lifting someone else’s. After I “dropped off my baggage” (so to speak), I was greeted with a message that linked me, the user, to appropriate sources if I felt I was in danger or in need of help right away:

(Note that this site is not the product of any kind of corporate funding to do PSAs or whatever, but rather a single person with a conscience. Frankly, it makes me feel good to know there are still a few of us out there.)

I’m not going to get into the details of  the baggage I dropped off, but literally within minutes, before I even finished this blog post, I got a response from someone with some heartfelt advice and a song I had never heard, from a band I normally wouldn’t listen to, let alone would have suspected would write something congruent to my situation. And you know what? It helped.

I’ve come to the conclusion that a service like EmotionalBagCheck.com is way overdue. The closest thing we’ve had until this was radio dedications a lâ Delilah, and while I love Delilah, she’s not quite as instantaneous nor as interactive as the interwebs. I thank Robyn Overstreet for making this giant, anonymous, ethereal support group on the web happen, and I encourage y’all to give it a try, and let me know here in the comments how it works out.

In the meantime, I think I need to make myself more familiar with the catalogue of Linkin Park.

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Seems like the new “ticker” on Facebook is the one new feature everybody loves to hate. Well, most people, anyway. The past couple days, while everybody on Facebook is trying to figure out what shows up in whose ticker, how to stop it, etc. I’m absolutely LOVING it.

Maybe it’s because I’ve got the maturity of a 13 y/o boy, but it seems to me that “show up in my ticker” is the new “poke” — the latest innocent Facebook feature that just sounds, well … dirty. This morning I was having a BLAST with ticker innuendos. So much that I made a status update and invited others to play.

Of course, I brought it over to Twitter, too. Here are some others I’ve come up with:

“I don’t want that to show up in my ticker, I better test it first…”

“Every time I cook that for dinner, it shows up in everyone’s ticker!”

“Lately I’ve noticed a lot of my friends are taking screen grabs and comparing each other’s tickers.”

“Son, I told you if you make that face in your profile picture too much, it’ll show up in everyone’s ticker … FOREVER!”

I recently introduced my friend Jackie, who loves sock monkeys, to The Monkey Shop. She “liked” their page the other day, and this morning, I couldn’t help but notice that all her monkey business kept showing up in my ticker!

So far my favorite from a friend is from my friend Mike:

So we had a few drinks, yadda yadda, long story short, I showed up in her ticker the next morning.

I’ve been having WAY too much fun with this.

Is this immature? ABSOLUTELY.

But you know what? I don’t care (and neither should you). Suddenly, social media is fun again, and I couldn’t be happier.

Now it’s your turn — show me your ticker jokes, and I’ll show you mine!

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Two Things:

The other night I was weeding through my files on my hard drive and found a project I forgot about — it was a little ebook based on this post I wrote way back in 2009, wherein I compare water skiing and social media, and what you can learn about both. It was about 75% finished, so tonight I finished it. It’s short, a very quick read. I know I mentioned I was tired of writing about social media, but this was already written. I just compiled it into an ebook “just because.”  So here, enjoy:

Another blog?

Also, I mentioned a long time ago that I was going to be publishing some of my writing elsewhere on the web, and I’ve been writing a lot and stocking up on stuff to publish, which is sort of one reason why it’s taken so long. (That, and because I’m just a really bad procrastinator when it comes to my own stuff.)

Anyway, I’ve had some crazy stuff happen in my life, and I’ll be publishing stories about many of these things that actually happened over at thisactuallyhappened.posterous.com … so head on over there if you’re so inclined. The first post is up, and it’s about sushi, stripping, and Indian food. All names are changed to protect the guilty parties, and I must warn you that while nothing is (or ever will be) “NSFW,” I don’t recommend your kids read that blog. Any and all feedback is appreciated, and no, that is NOT a “professional” blog by any means (like I had to clear that up). Consider it as me just showing a different side of my writing.

… and yet, another one on the way!

OH by the way — I made a New Year’s resolution to finally get my damn music blog off the ground. Life got in the way, then I reconsidered, then I put it off, and put it off … and I’m sure that by now, many people are doubting that I’d ever actually launch it. Well, guess what? IT WILL BE UP SOON. Like, very soon. For realz. So go on over and bookmark that damn music blog now, and I’ll let you know when it’s up. Got stuff in the hopper, finalizing an editorial calendar, etc… just have a few final things before v1.0 finally lifts off. (It won’t be as pretty as I want it, but I’ve got someone working on that.)

As for this blog, I’ll be writing here from time to time about technology-related things, but my energies are going to spent on those two plus a couple other projects I’ve got going on behind the scenes. But I’m not shutting this blog down, I’m just shifting my attention elsewhere.

OK, so that was more than two things. Ah well.

Anything in particular you’d like to read here (or thither, or yon)? Let me know.

kthxbai

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1. I’ve been cheating on my blog.

As I sit here and type this, I am listening to a live feed of the scanner by the Marion County MECA Fire & Rescue in Indiana. Apparently, the stage collapsed just before the Sugarland concert at the Indiana State Fair.  They had delayed the show, but were hoping to ride it out. Yet strong winds and storm conditions were enough to make the stage collapse, injuring at least a dozen and right now the Indy Star has confirmed 4 dead. For the past hour on the scanner, I’ve been listening to reports that there is a certain 10 year-old girl nowhere to be found, yet a second ago the paramedics just said that they transported a 10-13 y/o “unconscious female, possibly named Maggie” to the local emergency.

Last night and tonight, Kid Rock is having sold out shows at Comerica Park and holding a huge block party in downtown Detroit. I almost went to both, but passed.
When I followed a link to this story at MSNBC, it delivered me to my local MSNBC page, where I saw a story headlined, “Kid Rock Show Will Go On, Rain or Shine” … I don’t know if it’s even fair to make a comparison, or draw any parallels here, but one thing rings true, regardless:

It doesn’t matter what the show is, “the show must go on” isn’t always true. Safety comes first. Period.

. . . and just as I typed that, someone on Twitter tweeted at me, “So REO Speedwagon is coming on stage to play youtu.be/DPk4EX2GDc0” … wherein the story behind this song/link is:

In 1991, there was a huge event in Orlando called Festival in the Park. Several big name acts were scheduled to play but a hurricane came through the day before. Most acts canceled & instead of 10s of 1000s of people, only a handful of people turned out. REO probably still would’ve gotten paid if they’d canceled, but they came out anyway & played to us, less than 100 people in the pouring rain, full-throttle for 3+ hours non-stop. they closed the show with this song and it was truly incredible.

While that’s nice, and could seem a gallant effort, the timing of that person’s tweet to me was before he was aware of the confirmed causalities, and I was. Which means at that specific moment in time, I found it very tasteless. He didn’t know at the time, so I can’t blame him for just wanting to be funny, but still …… the point is, people, SAFETY trumps everything else.

Earlier today I was elated to find out that the National Show Ski Championships (Division I) were being streamed online, and watched it fervently as I was cleaning my apartment today. See, show water skiing WAS MY LIFE growing up. My home team, Silver Lake Ski Club, just placed 4th in Division II a week or so ago, and lately I’ve had nothing on my mind but show skiing and “back in the day.”

Then the storms rolled in today. And I was also reminded of some shows where we did some pretty stupid shit in the name of “the show must go on.”

The one incident that stands out the most in my mind was the year we did a show at the Michigan State Show Ski tournament (a.k.a. “states”) with an impending storm very close on the horizon. The judges decided that the weather was OK enough for us to go on with the show, and so we did … but toward the end of the show (you’re allotted exactly one hour) the clouds were so ominous, and it started raining, and we were worried we wouldn’t be able to finish.

Traditionally in show skiing, the pyramid is the last act. And we were lucky enough that the weather had let us make it to the pyramid act. But though we had taken first in states numerous years in a row previous to that year, our competition that year was
TOUGH.

There were about 5 minutes deliberation among our team of whether or not we should go on with the show. I was in the pyramid act, and really, I was very young, and I didn’t have much of a say one way or the other. If I was to climb to the top of the pyramid, honestly, I didn’t have much of a choice. I trusted their judgment.

Let me just tell you one thing: Deciding to do ANY kind of sporting event in an impending thunder/lightning storm is NOT A SMART IDEA. And it’s REALLY not a smart idea if you’re ON THE WATER.

We decided to go with it anyway.

Luckily, we made it off the dock OK, but I was a part of that pyramid act, and let me tell you, when you’re standing on someone’s shoulders on water skis, being pulled by a boat at aroud 25-30 mph, and you see a lightning bolt come down from the sky NOT-TOO-FAR-IN-THE-DISTANCE, even at 13 years old, you start to wonder one simple thing: Is this REALLY worth almost getting killed?!

Obviously, since I’m writing this, we didn’t get killed, and yes, we did walk away with another state trophy that year, but I can’t help but think, “what if we didn’t? what if somebody were seriously hurt?”

Even though we were extremely lucky on all fronts, the fact is, given the weather conditions, we really should not have been on the water at that point. I was 3-tiers high, being pulled by a boat, on a lake, and I saw LIGHTNING, people! 

Which brings me to the Sugarland concert tonight in Indiana.

I’ve been working in and around music for over a dozen years. It’s not nearly as physically dangerous as show skiing (usually), but there’s a lot that can go wrong. Unfortunately, tonight, it was the concert goers vs. G-d, because there’s nothing anybody could have done. I mean, they were waiting it out … the opener had already performed, Sugarland had decided to wait it out, the fans were waiting, enthusiastically, in the rain and the storm … and then Mother Nature decided to take down the stage, and some dozen or more people with her. You can’t blame the roadies for this.

This isn’t even a question of whether or not that was “fair,” because those arguments are futile. This is more or less a reexamination of our common sense here, people.

Obviously, by my example above, I’ve done some really stupid shit in the name of glory.

And obviously, by my twitter friend’s example above with the REO Speedwagon story, people will do some similarly stupid shit in the name of glory/music/whatever. I could add plenty more of my own examples to that, but I won’t.

The fact is, however — it doesn’t matter how “die-hard” you are in your passion, whether it’s music, or sports, or whatever … if your safety is in danger, your dedication is trivial.

(Note that I am NOT talking about those brave men and women who put it all on the line every day for our country … that’s a totally different story. NOTHING they do for our freedom is trivial, and EVERYTHING they do is appreciated.)

But the things we civilians take pride in — whether it’s a water ski state championship, or saying “I saw Suglarland in the pouring rain” … is, indeed, trivial compared to the big picture here, and we need to just use some common sense. I know that once those folks were there in the crowd, they couldn’t quite easily say “never mind, I’m going home.” But still, I chose not to go see Kid Rock tonight for a reason. I had plenty of opportunities. The degree of which you’re a fan doesn’t matter. The fact is, there will always be another concert, there will always be another tournament, and there will always be another chance to do or see something cool. But there will never be another YOU.

So please, be careful out there.

Photo 1 via IndyStar, photo 2 via the Silver Lake Ski Club. 

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