Sit By Us →
Totally enjoying using this app to stay on top of my schedule at SXSW.
See You at SXSW 2010
South by Southwest Interactive starts later this week, and it is shaping up to be a really nice event. Excitement is in the air as everybody at the office is packing and planning for Cogaoke, our yearly Karaoke party that we host at SXSW. In addition to that, there will be healthy representation from Happy Cog folk at panels too.
We F*cked Up: Happy Cog and Friends, Exploring Failures, Together hosted by Happy Cog elites Greg Storey, Greg Hoy, Kevin Hoffman as well as Wil Reynolds and Tracey Halvorsen.
ExpressionEngine 2.0: Total Domination hosted by, count them, four Happy Cog folk, including myself, Jenn Lukas, Mark Huot, and Ryan Irelan, alone with some handsome fella named Kenny Meyers who works at Virb.
Some other SXSW events I’m looking forward to are the Found Type Photo Walk and I hope to make it to the Kick-Ass premiere.
Best-laid plans aside, just like every year, I’m most looking forward to spending some quality time with people, having coffee and pints with friends, new and old. I hope to see you at SXSW Interactive 2010. It should be a really, really fun time.
New Boots (via Brian Warren)
After over ten years of faithful service, I retired my Vasques and bought a new pair. In that time, Vasque moved their production to China, but it seems like they’re still doing a great job of making boots. My new pair feels stiff and needs a few miles under them before they feel comfortable, but I know they’ll get there.
Happy Cog’aoke 2 →
My week was almost entirely devoted to working on this teaser site for Cogaoke. There were lots of fun little challenges in building it which were rewarding enough to work through, but the most rewarding thing is seeing how excited people are about this event. People really seem to take ownership of it and that makes it extra special.
Rethinking
I started 2009 extremely optimistic. It felt like the world was just out there, ready to be gotten. Looking back, I can say 2009, while surprising in many ways, was a fantastic year.
In a lot of ways, 2009 was a lot about rethinking. I found myself rethinking how to run my business, what my professional goals were, and also what my personal plans were. I had lots of new things come my way that I didn’t really plan on. I got to speak at three different events, edit a book, work on some of the most interesting and fun projects of my career, and watch my daughter turn 2 (I saw that one coming but wow, she’s changed a lot in a year.)
There were some bigger things too:
In the first few months of the year, Be Good Not Bad grew a little bit as I brought Derek on to work part time. It was a welcome relief from the very busy workload, but it was a huge adjustment to my thinking in how to approach the business and interact with clients. Little did I know how everything was about to be much different.
The biggest change of the year, of course, came a few months later. In August, I accepted the job of Senior Designer/Developer at Happy Cog. Moving to Philadelphia has been both rewarding and challenging. The work at Happy Cog has been fun, and the people have made it especially awesome. I am also adjusting to more time spent home with the family, which is extra great.
One more surprise that came our way was finding out that we’re expecting another baby come June. This will be a big and wonderful adjustment. I think Bridget will make a delightful big sister.
These are big changes, but definitely good ones, and so I must say 2009 taught me to be ready to alter my routine a bit. On the heels of all these changes, I figured, why not change a bit more, and so I’m redesinging my site and trying out Tumblr as a tool for blogging. We will see how this goes.
I know lots of people had a pretty rough 2009, but I’m feeling as thankful as I ever have. I cannot wait to see what 2010 brings.
