Rockfish Day #0

Yeah man, this is my kinda place. Reminds me of the breakneck pace of all the technology start-ups that I've worked for; same pros and same cons. On one hand, a high-energy team of motivated, dedicated, family-like individuals working and playing hard, and on the other hand, a great volume of opportunity, which presents resource decisions and demands a willy-nilly environment of decision-making on the fly... I wouldn't have it any other way, neither would the Rockstars at Rockfish Interactive.

I was fortunate to be present for the All-Staff meeting today, where the leadership team did a fine job of kicking off 2010 goals, delineated down to actual, measurable tasks (Dr. Rapaille would be proud!). I could see the passion on each and every face that sat listening, eager to start contributing to the organization's goals in their own ways, and cognizant of the bright future that they have in front of them.

We discussed my joining the team to help them tell fish stories... real ones... true ones... that are real BIG ones because they are doing such tremendous work and getting fantastic recognition for it!

I like what I saw and the conversations I had. Ay yup. Dusting off my rod and reel...

Evolution of Blog

I archived my blog posts the other night, backing them up in word documents that serve as storage for poetry, -isms, dreams, and quips. Someday, should I want to turn them into books, they will be much easier to work on from those docs. While doing so, I noticed that it has undergone quite a change from my first post, which took place on March 18, 2004. It said:

"Aces in the world, but sometimes difficult to find and sometimes the ace you find is 'The Bullet.'"

At the time, it was an anomaly, most of the posts following it were funny things on the web, marketing articles, or thoughts about ad campaigns that I saw in the world. Now, I'm actually writing, not pointing at other places.

My new passion, not my old passion.

And, I must say, I like it this way--thoughts on life and love--so much more than the old way.

Thank you for your continued reading!

Life Status: Exploratory

As you've read in previous posts, I've buried my head into this book that I'm writing (No Darce, I'm not going to write the WHOLE story until after the New Year) with the plan to get the first phase of it done by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, I've started to explore employment options in Kansas City. It's a challenging region for me because I'm so used to being in San Diego, Silicon Valley or DC, where start-ups and venture capital firms are on every street corner. This is the land of some large corporations, lots of big advertising firms and several sizes of non-profits.

I've recently made friends at a couple of the ad agencies and their work is enticing. I've never done the agency thing, but being able to switch gears on a handful of clients would mesh with the way that my mind likes to operate. It loves to have a project in the foreground to occupy it while processing other projects in the background.

I've also been talking to some of the non-profits in town. In fact, I had lunch today with some fantastic women from CFCA, which brings in about $100 Million a year to bridge the gap between sponsors and children/elderly that need help in 25 different countries. Sponsorship helps them to attend school or get health care, respectively. The sentence that stuck with me the most from our conversation, "We're about the relationship."

I harp on this all of the time... how the content doesn't matter, it's the structure between the pieces of content that matters. It's the verbs and the emotion, not the nouns and the features.

"It's about the relationship." Awesome.
"It's about who you want to be in this world." Double awesome.

So, I sponsored lunch for two women who are doing good things in the world. ;-) Keep up the good work!