shawn farner|*feeding* the social web obsession

Can you believe that I graduated high school five years ago?  I can’t.

Though we’ve put this much time in between then and now, I’ve tried my hardest to stay true to myself.  According to my yearbook, that is what people wanted me to do.  I’ve taken a few excerpts of cool things people wrote - words that are still able to make me laugh, smile and remember some good times.  If you happen to read this and remember writing it, thank you.

—

“Hey!  Some days I hate you.” (LOL!  It was mutual.)

“It was fun having you listen to me bitch in English.” (You were VERY good at it!)

“You’re an awesome guy and a great friend.” (Thanks!)

“Don’t eat tooooo much cream cheese.  And vote Democrat.” (It’s like she knew the future…)

“You’ve stuck with me and have stood up for me so many times and I’m really grateful for all of it.” (Always will.)

“Well we never followed through with that ‘plan’ we always talked about! LOL!” (Never say never!)

“Thanks for being an awesome friend to me.” (You’re welcome.  Thank you.)

“Don’t ever change.”  (I’ve tried not to.)

“You are going to go far in the future because you’re so upbeat, friendly and just all around a great guy!” (I’m blushing.)

“And I am not a lesbian!” (Still waiting to be proven wrong on that.)

“We have to stay in touch, move out to Hollywood and start our own talk show.” (I’m ready when you are.)

“Cokeapookie.” (I wish I remembered what that means!)

“Maybe we could go out on a date sometime if Marie and I ever break up.” (Well?)

—

Thanks to everyone again.

Three years ago today, I lost a close friend in an automobile accident.  Two days later, I lost another as a result of that same accident.  Looking at the calendar and realizing the significance of the date, I decided I would write this post.

Today, I’d like to honor not only their lives, but the lives of everyone we’ve lost.  For those of us who attended East Pennsboro anytime recently, you’ve undoubtedly lost a friend.  If you aren’t from East Pennsboro, you may have too.  We always keep the spirit of these people alive through memories, but just for today, let’s put them in the front of our minds.

For one day, forfeit senseless battles.  Put silly disagreements to the side.  Spill your guts and tell your secrets.  Handle every situation and interact with every person as though tomorrow wasn’t coming.  Would you do things differently?  I would.

And if you can do it today, why can’t you do it tomorrow, too?

Almost every summer, we take a journey down the Susquehanna River on suspect rafts and camp on a random island.  Since we do this almost annually, I’ve decided it should have a name.  Islandcamp it is.

I’ve also decided that I should try to chronicle our little adventure this year.  While uploading pictures and videos after the fact is fun, I like the idea of updating real time much better.  I’ve started a Tumblog to do the job, but I’ll also use this post as a hub by embedding the Tumblr code into the post itself.  Check below for updates!  (hopefully it works)

So, it seems we’re in a bit of trouble.

The Mu Chi chapter of Alpha Phi Omega is now, for all intensive purposes, broke.  We were sitting on a hefty sum of money at the beginning of the 2007-2008 school year, and we’re now in the red.  How did we get this way?  Reckless spending, failure to collect dues and little to no income from fundraising projects.

For the 2008-2009 year, there are new officers with totally different philosophies on how things should be done.  I am totally confident that each one realizes we’re in a bad situation at the moment and is doing their best to get us out of it.  In this post, I’m going to lay a little bit of my fundraising plan out.

1.  Ask Businesses for Donations

I am not above begging local businesses to donate to APO.  We do a lot of service projects in the community, probably the most out of any group on campus, and that is not cheap.  I have already drafted a letter I”ll send out which kindly asks for any donation, big or small.

2.  Sell Advertising

The Alpha Phi Omega web site is not even finished yet, but when it is, I plan on selling some ad spots to any business that will pay the price.  Paying for an ad might be more of a goodwill gesture by a business at the start, since we won’t have much traffic.  It will at least give a business something in return for contributing to us.

3.  Find a Sponsor for Everything We Do

I mean everything.  I will look into getting a sponsor for homecoming t-shirts, date auctions or whatever other ideas we come up with.  I want to spend as little of our own money as possible and I’m going to try my hardest to spend zero of it.

As we get closer to the beginning of the semester, things will begin to take shape.  By then, the web site should be complete and I will have hopefully heard from businesses regarding donations and advertising.  At that point, I’ll be able to judge how successful these tactics are going to be for the coming year.

Have ideas?  Drop me an email or leave a comment.

…the cover will look something like this.

Sometimes, we seem to think we know what life is. We try to encompass the vastness of it in inspirational quotes or in posters that we hang on our walls. We tag cute little sayings onto the ends of our emails or include them in our buddy info’s. Life is crazy. Life is beautiful. Life is good. Life is like a box of chocolates. Life is a highway. “Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can.” (Danny Kaye) Life is a lot of things to a lot of people.

For me, something a little more quirky makes a lot more sense.  Life is weird.

Some you rely on will come and go.  Some will stay.  Friends and loved ones live and die.  Mortal enemies can become some of the coolest and nicest people you’ve ever known.  Best friends can vanish into thin air.  Plans change.  Life can drag you down deeper than you ever thought possible and then throw you a lifesaver.  It could rain on the day of your picnic or it could be the most beautiful day of the year.

I don’t know if it all evens out.  I’m not sure if I believe in karma.  What I do know is that, throughout life, you are dealt both.  When the good comes along, whether it was expected or totally out of nowhere, appreciate it.

“When the door of happiness closes, another opens. But often times we look so long at the closed door that we don’t see the one which has been opened for us.”
-Unknown

I just started today at Ritter Insurance Marketing doing IT work, and I’ll just come right out and say it - I’m totally flabbergasted.  This company knows how to embrace technology.

They are equipping every employee with dual monitors, realizing that two workspaces ultimately allows work to be done more efficiently.  They are also hooking employees up with wireless keyboards and mice - less cords make a world of difference as far as I’m concerned.  They have a Jabber server installed and each employee has a Jabber client installed on their machine.  Every employee is on each other’s buddy list, allowing communication to be quick and silent.  This eliminates shouting across the office, buzzing through on speakerphone or actually interrupting someone in person.

If you are looking to make your office more efficient, take some notes from this company, but lend an ear to a few more of my suggestions.

1. Migrate from Exchange/Outlook to Google Apps for Domains. Email and calendars accessible absolutely anywhere, no VPN required.  Google hosts it for free.  How can you beat that?
2. Reach out to the world. Start a company blog, interact with your industry on social networking sites, take a video camera around your office and upload the video to YouTube.  It is undeniable that most people would rather deal with humans than with a faceless empire, given the choice.
3. 20% time. I’m a big fan of this Google idea.  Basically, one day out of a week, an employee can work on whatever they choose.  I know this is more useful to a software company, but there is a ton of upside to all kinds of businesses adopting it.  It is never a bad thing to get an employee brainstorming.  Great things can happen.

I doubt many companies will adopt 20% time, but hey, worth a shot.

Well, it’s Mixtape Friday again.  For those of you viewing this post in Facebook, I just noticed that you can’t actually see the tape itself.  Apparently Facebook does not like Flash.  You’ll have to click where it says “View original post” and listen to it on my site.  This might be true for some feed readers, as well.

A few days ago I wrote a post about why I’d rather be here than in Silicon Valley.  While people there are more apt to become early adopters, Central Pennsylvania’s rate of adoption for new technology is much slower.  This basically makes those of us blogging, tweeting and FriendFeeding here the Robert Scobles, Louis Grays and Darren Rowses of the area.

Pretty cool if you ask me.

Now we’ve taken another step forward.  blogHarrisburg has been online previously, but today received a sweet new redesign that takes it to a whole new level.  What is blogHarrisburg?  Basically, it’s a web site that aggregates all the posts made about the area by local bloggers and places them conveniently onto one site.  This will do worlds to promote blogging in the area and will put much deserved eyeballs on some of the great work that local bloggers are doing.

Speaking of local bloggers and Twitterers, you can meet some of them Thursday (5/22) at the blogHarrisburg/Twitter meetup!  It’ll be going down at Appalachian Brewing Company on Cameron Street in Harrisburg from 6-9 PM.  I usually play volleyball during that time, but I’m going to try to make it anyway.

Tomorrow I’ll be looking at a promising Central PA web site that hopes to be your one stop for event information - Spotobe.