johnwilker.com

Dear Gov’t please fix existing problems first

I worked on the title of this post for a while, and it’s often tough to be clear and succinct at the same time. I think it works. Take a minute and click the bar over my top banner or this link. It’s definitely important. I don’t think anyone (well maybe the 1%) would argue [...]

Tips for Travelers. To Make MY Travels easier

This isn’t a ‘help others’ post, so much as it’s a ‘help me’ post. By that I mean if I can get your in and out of the airport faster and more efficiently, well that helps me!  Travel season is rapidly approaching, and in fact I’m traveling soon. I thought I’d share some tips for [...]

We’re all busy, stop saying it and do something

I see this on twitter, and in real life face-to-face conversations a lot, “blah blah, working on something awesome, super super busy” or some other fairly douchey version of that sentence. Typically said by the same people over and over, as if saying something like that makes you cool, as if repeating it somehow makes [...]

HAPPY NATIONAL COMIC SANS DAY

Hope everyone takes a few minutes, updates your CSS, and takes a day to not take ourselves so seriously!

It’s a font folks! Just a font!

Reminder! National Comic Sans Day is Friday 10/1

Last year several folks updated the CSS for their blogs to participate in National Comic Sans Day. I’m hoping more will do it this year!

Why? You ask. That easy, we take ourselves too seriously. If folks directed their Anti Comic Sans energy into something productive, we’d probably have cures for Cancer and the Common Cold. And really it’s just a font. And it’s just one day.

We need to lighten up, laugh at ourselves, and take a day to have some fun at our own expense.

Do it, you know you want to! It’s simple, just create a second style sheet of all comic sans and drop it in on Friday. Take it out Saturday morning.

Be bold!

Social Media – The new ‘Internet’, hello 1998

Anyhoo. history aside, I was struck the other day at a MHSMC meeting that social media is the new ‘internet’. Mainly this relates to my love of all things Cluetrain Manifesto. One of the of the primary things I took away from Cluetrain in my first reading as a lowly Software developer at a mortgage company where marketing outnumbered IT (as well as my many subsequent readings), was that it’s important, and beneficial for enterprises to let their people be people. Lower the walls, don’t raise them. I thought we were making progress here.

It seems that social media is moving away from that if MHSMC is any indicator. The presentation this month was on Corporate use of Social Media.

twitter lists and why I’m not playing

The nonconformist in me hates lists for the simple reason that everyone else is ga ga over them. ditto for google wave.

But for lists there’s a bigger reason, and Chris Brogan hits the nail on the head, They’re exclusionary. They’re the new “hottest kid in school” list posted in the locker bay. Those on it feel more self important, and those not on it, feel like less than people, and in the end, they’re completely meaningless and 100% arbitrary.

There’s few things I hate more than internet popularity contests.

National Comic Sans day October 1

So we have CSS Naked day (apr 9), and talk like a pirate day (Sept 19) and even Zombie Crawl day (Props to Danny!) and just to show that we need to not take ourselves so seriously all the time, I’m starting national Comic Sans day.

Yup, damn straight, National. Comic. Sans. Day.

IgniteDenver October 14th

I’m back again with Ignite Denver. We’re rocking Casselman’s again! October 14th! For the most up to date info, make sure you follow the Ignite Denver blog, that’s where speaker and sponsor announcements are made, etc. We’re looking for help! Ignite Denver is looking to grow from a 2 people operation, to a committee run [...]

I thought I’d hate Four Square

What really keeps me interested in Four Square, and even brightkite is the awesome outside the phone potential. I want my starbucks to give the mayor a free coffee (Frapaccino please). I want my neighborhood bar (where Dave and I are in a cold war for mayorship) half off drinks, or a free drink, something.In the brighkite world, I want to check in and see that where I am is running a Brightkite special, or maybe not where I am, but the place next door.

Where FS excels is that it identifies the losers (cough) people who frequent a place. Rewards them for doing so with points and meaningless badges, that can’t even be printed out! What if they got a burger instead!

keep looking »