I’m in Las Vegas today, attending the New Media Expo.  In fact, I just finished listening to the Keynote given by Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV.  Gary if a very animated, inspirational speaker - his speech rocked.  To me, one of the most interesting things he discussed was the idea that we are in a gold rush, and the ones who can consistantly put out decent content, remember what’s important to them, and become involved with their fan base are going to win.  When I get a link for the ustream.tv archive feed, I’ll post it here.

Hi there, and welcome to my blog.  This space represents a departure from the way I normally operate, and represents a bit of a shift in mindset as well.  For a while now I have tried to start and/or maintain a number of different blogs, each of which sort of compartmentalized one of my various interests.  There was one for web analytics, one for web programming, and one for podcasting, and a general technology journal.  None of these ever got over a post a month, often falling victim to the chronic time constraints of daily life. With a day job, and a family with two very active young boys - to say nothing of the fact that I spend a fair amount of spare time helping others get their new media messages out into the world - my own spaces in the community sat their in a pathetic state.

Of course, anyone reading this with experience in blogs, podcasts, and other web-based forms of communications can be excused for thinking, “he tried to maintain four blogs in his spare time!?!  Is he crazy?”.  In my defense I can only say that I come from a more traditional media background.  Everything in this world is split off into different streams of interest, and it’s the writer/producers job to package it up into a nice little, easily consumed, piece.  So why would I post things about web programming on a podcasting blog, or about web analytics on an IT support blog?  It would be like Wired Magazine printing an unedited copy of Romeo and Juliet right in the middle of their publication for no apparent reason.  At least that is how it seemed to me.

Thankfully this weekend I came to a revelation which has completely upended my thinking on how to approach my digital life.  Well, at least the public part of it anyway.  And it all came about thanks to a  little (only in relative attendance) conference in Kingston, Canada, called Podcasters Across Borders (PAB2008).

This incredible conference brought together some fantastically talented people, all of whom have some interest in Podcasting.  I have been working on two major podcasts for a while now (shameless plug: Vet In The Family and Taps TV), but for the most part I have operated pretty much outside the greater community of podcasters, so I thought it would be an interesting experience to meet others working in the same space.

Well, interesting it was.  Listening to the presentations, and meeting the other attendees and seeing what they were doing on line forced me to take a serious look at how I was managing my digital life.  I realized that I was stuck in old school thinking, and not taking full advantage of the tools available to me.  So, to make a short story shorter, I created this space and am in the process of linking everything I do in the online space back to it.  Hopefully through the strategic use of tags and categories I will be able to make this work.

So thanks for dropping by.  Feedback, advice, and comments are most welcome.