No Direction Home

Recently, I was told I was going to receive a special honor from my alma mater, and I started reflecting on my career, which ultimately started thinking about all the people that have helped me in my life. I can’t say that I am not at the benefit of some amazing people, but as I enter the fourth decade of my life – I realize I am without someone that can help me blaze the path that I want for myself.

There are few things that make me happier than working with college students and young professionals on their careers. It’s the thing that I look forward to the most in my day to day – to sit with someone and help them find their strengths, work on their weaknesses, and give them the confidence to succeed in whatever lies ahead. I think I take such pride in this because it was never afforded to me. I never received such mentoring from family, from friends, and very rarely from colleagues. My current employer is definitely a place where mentoring occurs, and as I navigate through my second year, I am looking forward to finding and cultivating those relationships that have always eluded me. I am an on search to find that person that I strive to be to the young professionals in my life.

It’s somewhat scary. My career has always been powered by my confidence. There have been many people around me that have been smarter than me. More creative than I am. More organized. Very few of them had my confidence. I, however, am at a crossroad. It’s not that the confidence has gone away. In fact, the confidence is stronger than ever. I just wonder where that confidence can be applied. What is the direction for my career? What are the next steps? What tools and weapons do I need as I step into a new arena? These are the questions that I want to ask that mentor that’s eluding me. These are the questions that this year will help me answer.

Goodbye….

This blog was created by me back before he ever thought that he would make any money from the internet. Since the first post (which has long since been hidden), this blog represented who “George” was as a person, his many interests, and his growing career. Change – however – is inevitable. This blog has wrestled with that change over the last few years. Only recently, has it became obvious that I have outgrown it. I still love it in so many ways, I keep telling myself that I will return to it. And perhaps I will. But my creative energies have somewhat shifted. The long form, often emotional narratives are few and far between. They lived concealed in their analog siblings or possibly lay unwritten in the crevices of my imagination. I just can’t simply write them anymore. And so, with that, my artistic expression has shifted toward simpler devices – a Tumblr blog where I spend more time reacting rather than creating – or, twitter, where I capture my daily thoughts and conversations with friends and acquaintances alike.

I want to keep this site alive – which is something I have never done with blogs before. The delete key has erased from the web so many of my thoughts, writings, poetry, emotions, stories, and I couldn’t do that to this blog. It meant to much. Everything I ever did on the web lead me here, and now I want to leave it – both as a memory of who I was, and for the possibility that I will return to it. Please – if you’re so inclined – continue to follow me on the sites listed below. If not, I understand. Thank you for reading….

Tumblr: http://www.georgegsmithjr.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/georgegsmithjr
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/georgegsmithjr

George G Smith Jr
8/7/2011
George G Smith Jr
8/7/2011

Five Things You Should Know about SXSWi Before You Go

Here are my 5 things you should know about SXSWi before you set foot in Austin:

1) You’re not cool: It doesn’t matter how many parties you go to, whether you’re VIP or not, if you’re discussing something that has to do with SXSWi – you’re not cool.  This is for the geeks.  And, even if you’re the king of the geeks, you’re still a geek.  You can still have fun and a great time, but remember to be humble – the cool kids don’t arrive until SXSW music starts.

2) No One Cares About Your Panel: SXSW is an amazing time and there are amazing people that are totally worth learning from.  But sadly, panels are secondary – sometimes even tertiary – in the tier of things.  Not only that, there are almost 200 different panels.  Seriously – that’s too many.  So – speaking at SXSW isn’t that big of a deal.  So stop trying to make it seem that way.  So stop telling everyone to come to your panel.  Just worry about putting on something good for the people that do show up.

3) Your party is lame: Parties are a big part of SXSWi.  I have seen more eventbrites invites than anything during the buildup to SXSWi.  If you’re sponsoring one, that’s awesome – I am glad you understand the culture of SXSWi.  You get bonus points for that.  However – your party is lame.  Why is it lame?  Because no one really cares that it’s YOUR party.  All they care about is two things: Open Bar and/or whether or not there is an open bar.  A few parties will have a chance for non-lame success – “Maybe I’ll meet Pete Cashmore at the Mashable party.”  ”Dennis Crowley is dreamy in his gap ad, maybe I’ll meet him at the Foursquare party.”  Other than that, your party is probably lame.  Deal with it.  Have fun.  Try not to do anything that I wouldn’t do.

4) Your startup is dumb: Unless your last name is Zuckerberg, Crowley, whatever Naveen’s last name is, the Tumblr people and a very few others – your startup is probably dumb.  So stop pitching your startup to every one and their mom.  It’s dumb.  You want to know the real reason that those names and start ups are successful – because they built something fucking cool.  The best thing you can do for your start up is to make it cool before you tell everyone about it. No, you can’t say you’re working on a secret startup.  That’s lame.  Furthermore, people will just assume you’re unemployed even if you really ARE working on a super secret startup.  Not good branding.  If you just try to connect with people, you’ll get further.  And then you can get what’s really cool. (but probably not because your startup is dumb).

5) The Person that wrote this is an asshole: Okay – what I wrote above may seem like it’s mean spirited, but that’s because I’m an asshole.  My entire point is that SXSWi should never be about you.  It’s about a community of people – all geeks – that get together and can make some great things happen.  The cream rises to the top and in a few weeks, we’ll have a new shiny toy/app/site to play with.  And that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t hustle – but learn to hustle with humility.  Learn to get people to ask you your passions instead of vomiting them all over every unsuspecting person that walks by.  You’ll find out the people that you engage with in real conversations will turn out to be your biggest advocates.  Except me.  I’m an asshole.  I give you carte blanche to punch me.

Syracuse Foursquare T-Shirt and Woot! Smores Math Equation Shirt

Alana gave me some great t-shirts. The Foursquare and Syracuse together? AWESOME!

If you want to see a better image of the S’more math – check out this image (h/t to Scott Beale at Laughing Squid for the image.

Great gift and really funny!

My BlogHer: in Pictures

BlogHer is sometimes best told in pictures. And, since I don’t take any pictures of my own, I will have to rely on a little help from my friends…

All that’s missing is a little video from me doing the Just Dance Game and we’ll have ourselves a nice recap.

I’m sure that’s coming. I’m pretty sure I saw a few people with their cameras out for that….

Random List of 5 Thoughts from this years BlogHer

I was talking to my friend Sugar Jones about how this year’s BlogHer was “different.” She smiled, started to bounce around to the music, and simply said – “We’re different. We’re older” and proceeded to dance her butt off. I smiled and realized that she was right. The first few days of BlogHer had me feeling slightly uncomfortable – something seemed off. But as Sugar bounced back on the dance floor, I knew that being different wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, after a few hours of recovering – I realized that this was a pretty great event. Below are some of the things that felt a bit “off” and some of the things I am excited to experience. In random order. I’ll probably have to write another recap too – but this is just what’s top of mind:

1) I cried. Here. And if you didn’t laugh more than you cried, well – then you weren’t listening. While I work in the internet, I always believed that it’s powered at its root by community. That’s what BlogHer is. And that’s what this panel was about – communities coming together to help those that are in need. While I’ve avoided real tragedy in my life, the internet has helped me more than once in coming to terms with that empty feeling of loneliness that comes with the mean reds. Big round of applause goes to Cecily Kellogg, Loralee Choate, Kim Trimble, Anissa Mayhew, and Peter Mayhew – who became the first man to appear on a BlogHer panel. And while he, without a doubt, would prefer that the circumstances that caused him to be up there never happened – he is also the only person I could think of deserving to break the gender barrier there.

The grieving session also made me miss Erin Kotecki Vest. While she was having BlogHer at home, she was in many people’s thoughts. I heard her named mentioned a lot. BlogHer missed you this year. Get better fast.

2) I missed my Ohio girls. I don’t have favorites in the Blogosphere. I work with a lot of different people. But sometimes you just miss people when they aren’t there. I missed Jenny and Emily. Amy. Katie. Andrea. Erin. and Tara (although I did see Tara this year already!) I’m sure I’m missing a few others. With my girlfriend being from Ohio, I do have to say that I have a soft spot for the Mid-West and missed all those Ohio women too cool to stop by. At least I did get to see Tricia from OnceaMonthMom.com – which made my day. I did drag her into the booth to make a video though:

3) I have great friends. Seriously – great friends. I was hugged by so many of my friends that “live in my iPhone.” Friends that I see once a year – if I’m lucky. Lori Falcon sat around with me for 5 hours on Wednesday while I did work and worked on final details for BlogHer. Christine Young took me to the Russian Tea Room after winning a gift certificate. Audrey McClelland made sure I was the best boyfriend by letting my girlfriend visit her Getting Gorgeous event. I saw some of my favorite Colorado people in Aimee and Bryan and, briefly, Tara. I had a great discussion about blogging/brand practices with Jessica Randazza, Christopher Barger, Bonin Bough, and a room full of attentive bloggers thanks to Lucretia Pruitt and Jenn Fowler. I saw so many people that I’m going to stop naming names because it will never be complete enough. All I’m saying is that the great people that I know – the people that make me happy – all come to things like this. It makes me energized and I am already looking forward to next year.

4) It was under control. The complaints from last year should vanish. No more repeating stories of blackmail, over zealous bloggers and swag, and brands hating babies. It was, in the end, a great conference with very little controversy (unless I missed something). Like Sugar said, BlogHer has grown up. So has the community. It’s a wonderful thing to see – especially since it still hasn’t lost the fun and there are still McDonald’s bag hats and Unicorns and Sparkles.

5) I can’t dance. Not that I didn’t already know this. I did a preview for “Just Dance 2″ three times. My scores progressively got worse. It’s horrible. As the sun set, it didn’t get any better. I tried twirling Sarah Pinnix a few times but only ended up looking stupid in the process. I tried dancing with Leah Segadie too. Nope. Not cool. Note to self: Don’t try dancing with people that get compared to Lady GaGa by the Huffington Post. Just don’t….

One Post Isn’t Enough – I mean, c’mon, most of the pictures haven’t even been uploaded yet. I will definitely write more soon.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Over the past few months, I have traveled too much.  I have traveled by plane, train, and automobile.  I have visited a foreign country (okay – it was Canada, but still…) and have gone coast to coast.  I have made layovers in Houston, Dallas, Chicago, Memphis, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Detroit, and probably a few other cities.  All in all…it’s been draining.

I sit at Gate C5 in the American Terminal at Laguardia airport heading down to a busy but eventful weekend in Arkansas.  When I get back, Internet Week will start in New York.  Life is kind of crazy – in some good and some bad ways.  I’ve been thinking about taking a vacation.  I’m not sure where.  Someplace relaxing.  Someplace adventurous.  Sarah is going to India.  I have friends going to Costa Rica.  I want to return to Paris.  By the end of the summer, I will plan a trip for me to take – a time when I can sit in an airport waiting area with a fun trip on the horizon.

Positively 47th Street: Brian Simpson and The Roger Smith Hotel

New York has always been a hub for people to gather and collect.  Neighborhoods formed based on ethnic and social realities.  Places are dubbed hot and cool often based on their cross streets.  So much of New York is about how and why people get together.  In the 1960′s, Greenwich Village erupted with the Folk Movement.  While Bob Dylan and a handful of others may be the names that people remember, it in fact drew from a cast of thousands – all coming together for reasons that centered around one idea:  folk music.  It’s a simple concept – give people a place to enjoy their passions, and they will congregate.  Yet, this simple concept is extremely hard to pull off.

The Roger Smith Hotel is pulling it off.  On Twitter the other day, I called Brian Simpson of the Roger Smith the David Van Ronk of the New York Social Media scene.  Van Ronk was dubbed the “Mayor of MacDougal street” and while “mayor” might have a different connotation in the social media world thanks to Foursquare, Brian has served many as a conventional one might.  Brian has helped cultivate the Roger Smith to be the Social Media haven.  The other night it culminated in having over 50+ people at the Roger Smith checking in on Foursquare.  Brian was there, somewhat in the shadows, watching as multiple events that centered around Social Media took place.  DigitalSomethings was upstairs.  A Tweetup downstairs.  Watching them mix and marry into an amorphous cloud of people, you can’t help but feel like something special is in the works.

Now, I’m new to town.  I haven’t known the regulars in the Social Media scene here for that much time.  I just know that the Roger Smith has a reputation from those in town, and a mythos to those out of town.  It probably feels like what places like the Gaslight, Gerde’s, Cafe Wha? and the Folklore Center must have felt like to the folk crowd.  As social media, mobile, and location based technology becomes motivation for offline events, what other venues and hubs will develop?  The Roger Smith is one of the first ones that I discovered.  I don’t need to keep track of check ins to see who is the “Mayor” of that place – and maybe even of this New York scene in general….

Delurker Day

Today is Delurker Day – which means that if you are reading this, you need to leave a comment below.  Judging by my Google Analytics – there are a bunch of you out there.  From random places around the country and some foreign ones.  It’s fun to see where everyone who is reading my blog comes from – so when you leave a comment, just say where you’re reading from.  I’m a firm believer that blogs are supposed to be communities – communities of friends, family, people with similar interests and passions – whatever it is, the most important thing is community.

So here we are – please leave a comment and let me know where you are.  I’ve been doing it on some of my favorite blogs that I lurk on….

Just Popping In

Tonight, I appeared on my friend Danielle’s MomTV show.  It was fun to just pop in and say to my blogging friends.