brewery33

An awkward moment

Residents of undeveloped nations would scoff at my personal journey. The fact that I am at such an odds with myself, that the focus of my life at this point is to regain a focus, is a metaphor of excess for the gluttony that has entangled the world’s perception of our “culture”. I ridicule myself for having such a paltry outlook. People are dying from disease, famine and violence and I am sitting here pretty in my upper middle class tax bracket with a loving wife, cute daughter, expensive PC’s (that’s right multiple computers), newish car, and job (yes I even have a job) that allows me flexibility in my personal endeavors (blogging, civic involvement, philanthropy). What the fuck do I have to complain about? I feel like such a pussy and a dick at the same time for even exercising my mental ineptitude as a real problem.

Whether you agree with my judgment of myself, or care to add to the findings, I could really give a flying you know what. My goal is focus and innovation. Without imagination, innovation is impossible. In order to find my wayward imagination, I must focus. Focus requires concentration. Hallways as noisy as my social media outlets diffuse focus.

Riding with my Dad the other day, on our way to get ashes I vocalized my issue with him. We had an awkward father/son moment where we weren’t sure how to deal with the emotions, and then after some added forced conversation I happened upon a possible obstacle that could be the first clue in locating my imagination.

Since the death of my mother I have found that the dynamic of my family has changed. Before you face palm and close the tab that you are viewing my stupid writing on, the statement deserves merit. You see with the death of my mother, I basically have become an orphan. My dad being a man from an all boy family and me being the oldest boy of yet another all boy family, emotional fortitude is not really our strongest characteristic. With that said, I always had two parents, but recently had one exit this dimension and move on to whatever lies on the other side. The other, my dad for those of you keeping score, is reeling from the sudden shock of a 35+ year mate vanishing. In his plight of a now upside down life, the role of a father has been displaced with the rest of his displaced existence.

As I sat and pondered the direction that this revelation had the potential to take me I listened to the message of the ashes, which was suffer silently. Great, so now that I have made the decision to go to social media rehab, which we will call my blog, I get an M. Night Shyamalan plot twist thrown at me. Here I think that I am having a complete epiphany, only to find that once again the location of my imagination has eluded me.

Suffer in silence for the world doesn’t hold the answer to your toils. Kind of makes my blog useless.

I’ve lost something

In the past few weeks I have noticed something happening. The subtle nuance of this wretched annoyance has been gaining momentum and advancing upon our community with the grace of an ogre pillaging a rural Swedish community. The white elephant in the room has taken its place on the stage and announced that he is present. Everyone at the party has been empowered to acknowledge the subject that we all spoke of indiscreetly.

University of the Pacific is an institution that is quite honestly one of the most immaculate grounds in the City of Stockton. A short stroll through the meticulously pruned rose garden to admire the art of maintaining these visually delicate yet astonishingly resilient plants allows escape. A saunter into the small forum of columns that is easily recognizable as you have seen the image in a coveted family portrait that takes proud residence in the living room of a beloved friend or family member. These and many more monuments of visual expression are valuable to the atmosphere of experimental and free thought, as well as the surrounding community.

Stockton Beautiful is an organization of concerned individuals that have a mission to beautify their community. The board and membership of the philanthropic group from the young and energetic to the wise and accomplished infuse each other with the notion of beauty. Beauty goes further than its superficial stereotype. Beauty creates a culture. Pride comes from beauty. Stockton Beautiful is no stranger to efforts of invigorating a community of individuals to accomplish unthinkable feats of excellence. We can see the fruits of their work in the collaborative spectacle made possible through driven community philanthropic exertion, in the Rose Garden that resides in Victory Park on the north side of the Haggin Museum.

Greg Bahr is a citizen of Stockton. If you have spent any time on the Miracle Mile enjoying a sunny walk on Sunday, or patronizing one of the loving merchants, you have probably come across Greg. He is responsible for community events in the district such as the wildly successful Miracle Mile Night through his interaction with a group of focused individuals that serve on the little known, highly experimental, yet overwhelmingly effective Neighborhood Renaissance Committee. This group is of the mind that if neighborhood events are present the fabric of the community will be strengthened. Communities with strong fabric tend to employ a lighter outlook on the grim offerings that life brings. My opinion of Greg is rather skewed, due to my respect for his efforts, but I am fairly confident that if you stop and listen to his pleas for a cohesive effort in the infinite quest for betterment, we will most definitely agree.

These three groups evidence the presence of positive movement in our City. People are working to create the nirvana of community. As we spoke of earlier, a white elephant that has come from the shadows of civic conversation in Stockton. His presence has been embraced. It is all too easy to make fun, stay cynical and ignore our emotions. The perception of mediocrity and ignorance is lavished upon us by our national media publications. Our local media has become snarky and arrogant to the population of new media consumers. I have found myself embroiled in passion fueled discourse that is not contributing to the solution but rather of symptom of the white elephant. This is the most troubling to me.

It is through my faith that I have weathered the stormy waters of loss. I am no person to preach and ladle my ideological rhetoric upon you. My only mention of this is to make apparent of my plans to regain my imagination and focus my efforts. In my loss of imagination I plan to embark upon a spiritual journey in search of the treasure that has befallen me.

The white elephant’s message is a dangerous path. His call to acceptance is my cue to reboot my operating system. With the Lenten season upon us and the coming of Ash Wednesday, I will be disconnecting from the matrix of chatter, and focus on real efforts. I will leave the acoustically challenged halls of Twitter to find the voice that I have lost. I plan to engage the philanthropy that is meaningful to me and shed the cynicism that has polluted my mind. I plan to detoxify my spirit in an effort to return with the child like wonder that I desire.

Words are not meaningful if not built upon action. My grand plans of success through philanthropy are on trial and it is my turn to stand in front of the judge and plea our case for freedom. I will not be participating in any form of social media other than blogging. I will not be Twitter alerting my blog. My reason for this is that the core of my answer lies in personal discovery. Vanity and narcissism are the foes in which I am at battle with. It is the constant quest for the laugh, that I have lost the ability to entertain myself.

Easter will be the day in which I emerge back to the scene with a hopefully fresh look and box of hustle. I will look to the people that are fixtures in my life for support and share the journey through this little piece of real estate on the internet I call brewery33 aka my stupid writing.

I leave you with a quote that hopefully bounces around your cranium and ferments for a while. I actually don’t know who said it, but it is in no way my work. I hope that works for citing purposes.

“In this media-drenched, data-rich, channel-surfing, computer-gaming age, we have lost the art of doing nothing, of shutting out the background noise and distractions, of slowing down and simply being alone with our thoughts.”

Stockton will win.

St. Baldrick’s Day Massacre

Today was potentially a big day for philanthropy in Stockton. During my daily lurk of the Siders blog I came across the young Lincoln high school student that stood before City Council offering the opportunity to help children that have cancer merely by shaving your head. The poor student got the political treatment and walked away with a meager offer from vice mayor Kathy Miller to hold the clippers, rather than get scalped for charity.

This event gave me the idea to ask my current favorite City Council member (due to her presence in the playground we nerds know as Twitter) @susanEggman if she was game to shave her head. My initial tweet to her was in complete jest and I actually was waiting for some of the faithful to say that I was acting like a bully again and to stop being so rude. Side note, I have found that sarcasm and jokes tend to not translate so well in the written word.

Much to my surprise @susanEggman accepted the challenge but added a caveat, raise 5 thousand dollars. It’s basically a political trump card. It puts me in a position, which began as a common chide, of now becoming a fund raiser for a cause that while is very worthy, doesn’t really fire me up enough to take even more of what little precious time that I have with my family, away from them.

I have received a lot of support from the Twitter community from Stockton and abroad encouraging the pursuit of the goal (thank you by the way), but much to the displeasure of the crowd I will have to bow out. Let’s say politics have won this round. While in a perfect world I would love to drop everything and raise the 5 thousand dollars that it would take to have @susanEggman shave her head, not only embarrass her, but more importantly provide the funds to whatever children’s cancer society that Lincoln High school is benefitting, I must swallow my pride and accept defeat.

I am still game to get my head shaved, and invite fellow Stockton Tweeps to do the same, as long as it doesn’t cost any money. With my stupid start up and educational pilgrimage, I really have very little cash to spare. The only tangible thing of value that I could give to benefit the research of children’s cancer at this point is my dignity by allowing my locks to taken.

Feel free if you are a philanthropist in search of a cause, to take this episode of Parks and Recreation and run with it. It will not be considered poaching and you will be assured run in the paper and possibly TV coverage. It has some legs, but will take a lot of energy to meet the goal, especially in this recession. I hate pussing out, but through many battles and wild stunts I have learned to fold my hand. Thank you Kenny Rogers. Now excuse me while I go to write a check that the City Council is making me do, because I do business in an Enterprise Zone.

Politics 1, @brewery33 -100, Lincoln High School St. Baldrick’s Day complete win, because lots of people are talking about your event. Keep it philanthropic.

Why doesn’t Twitter work for me?

Twitter, just like any other communication medium, relies upon conversation. Anyone can open an account and start yelling into a hole about all of the things they are doing or products they are offering. They will soon tire and join the crowd of people that say Twitter just doesn’t work, because they didn’t realize any monetary or brand building gain. They have neglected to identify that the Twitter medium is two way and multi-dimensional. With that said, when was the last time that you showed up to a party where you knew nobody and expected everyone to take you seriously without any sort of background or initial conversation? So many people have the “get rich quick” bug and with Twitter being the flavor of the moment, is no stranger to its “marketing geniuses” that have “proven” methods of monetizing your presence. My short and swift advice, Twitter is a marathon. Talk to people. Find people that are interested in the same things you are and join their conversation by utilizing the search function of Twitter and replying to people you don’t know. You might find you make some friends.

Twitter is not the endgame, but it definitely makes people more accessible. Now go make some friends.

Drinking beer with a purpose, a civic purpose that is

Lot’s of talk regarding this little issue of the public servant sector moving forward with utilizing a more social web. Where I think we lose ground is by attaching the proprietary names of Twitter and Facebook. Try to think concepts and not solutions just yet. I hate when peeps try to force the square block through the circle hole. Just getting on Facebook is not the answer. In fact I don’t even think that Facebook has any real relevance within politics or public service.

The social web movement is a much deeper concept than it seems on the surface.

Here is a little video that will give you some sort of idea of just how intense this whole dissemination of information really is. That is if you aren’t one of the 10 million nerds that have already watched it.

While we talk a lot about our ideas of how we would do it better, and how they don’t utilize the power of the tools put before them, we don’t really act. So here is my challenge. All three of you that have read this post, head on over to the Stocktoberfest on the Miracle Mile. I will be attending, God willing, and we should meet, drink a beer (or a hundred) and put a face to this little digital revolution. Without practicing the art of conversation we will not succeed. Our dribble will be reduced to that of the trolls that lurk on the web espousing their genius solutions to the world’s problems while never taking that walk up the steps that lead out of their parent’s basement and into the real world.

Doesn’t it suck that just because I happen to be able to use a computer good, that I am socially deemed a basement dweller? Well stereotypes will always plague us. It doesn’t bother me, because I get mine.

Hope to see all of my fellow basement dwellers at the Stocktoberfest this Thursday October 1, 2009, if you want to change the world that is.

I will be the guy in the red Polo shirt with a beer in my hand.

Innovate and stay fresh.

~andy

Where is the conversation?

First and foremost, a shout to my fellow blogging gang homey, @slickdiaz, who shouted out the brewery33 voice over on his turf. He fights the good fight of intellectualism while staying fresh with brevity. If I am giving props to one of the Stockton peeps then I can’t leave out the one and only @podcaststockton. Matt puts an actual voice to the plight of “most miserable” City in the United States and shows you that you can’t believe everything you read (especially anything here). If you are interested in either one of these guys I have placed some links over on the right hand side of the blog for you enlighten your Stockton mind. .

And now the news………..

Amongst all of the hubbub surrounding the latest uprising of the 6 people in Stockton that use social media, I have tried to find clarity within the questions of new media tactics implemented by our public sector. Of course, me being the geek that I am, I would love to see them make use of this brand new and shiny technology that currently is the object of my desire, besides my wife and daughter naturally. Just look at the success that I have realized within the space, I can now “talk” to 6 other techno-weenies just like myself and we can go on and on about the latest client application’s strengths and weaknesses.

I hope that my sarcasm present in the above text has jumped off the page and punched you out. I have been told to successfully use sarcasm in text form is the mark of a master. Since I am only a hack blogger, I must make you aware of my futile attempts at using the advanced literary tool.

I think that it is in the best interest of the establishment to at least attempt to create a conversation regarding the new media issue. That is all this whole thing we call the social web, or web 2.0, or new media, is, a conversation. We have evolved from the static web of the ‘90’s to the interactive web of today. Our browsing habits are changing as information is aggregated. Gone are the days of copy and pasting links to yourself in emails to read it later, now we can bookmark. Remember when you used to have check in on a site every day to see if your favorite portal posted any new nugget of information that you could then ravenously consume? Yep that is gone too with the advent of RSS.

The means of communication are in the midst of an awkward growth spurt that is akin the adolescent male battle with puberty. The change is discomfited. We are uneasy. We don’t understand why we are growing hair in strange spots. OK, except for that last descriptor, the similarities are uncanny. But think of this, the State of California thinks that the pubescent changes that your body experiences are so confusing that curriculum has been conceived to educate our grammar and middle school brood. So why do we shy away from the use or implementation of the uncomfortable yet inevitable change in transmission of information.

The implementation of this new dimension of discourse that is available to our communities can only heighten the awareness of our issues. This use of the shiny new technological toy can only be useful upon educating ourselves about the capabilities and limitations of the medium. In order to educate a community of people regarding the power of new conversation, is to do just that converse. Along with that conversation we should do a little experimentation.

I don’t claim to have the answer to the quandary, but I will say that I have at least recognized that there is opportunity to be realized. Another thing, if I decided that my way was right, wouldn’t that be the antithesis of my concern? I invite the critics. I want to hear the concerns surrounding this nary talked about issue.

So I invite all the Stockton Tweeps to blog, tweet, hell if you want to get out from in front that 22” widescreen monitor and talk to some actual people then have at it. Stockton has the potential to lead a informational revolution, as we are one of the most diverse cities in the good old US of A. What if we had an actual intelligent conversation regarding the use of new media?

Excuse the curt ending to this post, as my mind was just blown.

Stay searchable in 2009 

Think of Twitter as a loud room where a bunch of self centered people are incessantly updating us about the trials and tribulations of their otherwise boring lives. As we have all read, the Twitter community has the doors wide open and people are filling the room at a break neck pace. With more people filing into the already acoustically challenged space, the conversation becomes muffled and borders on becoming insignificant.

The caveat of Twitter is that it is a conversation, and lots of good information is passed from one person to the next. However there remains a “dead zone”, if you will, of potentially interesting figures espousing useful information nuggets that you will never see because of your non-existent standing relationship, aka “follow”. Or on the other hand, you might be attending an event that you would like to separate the conversation of the attendees from the lifestyle tweeters.

This conundrum has plagued the Twitter faithful. The only real solution to this problem has been to include a hash tag in your tweet (example: #brewery33isthebest). Now this is a fairly solid answer to the quandary of filtering the conversation. The catch however is the education of the people that will be joining your conversation. The guys at Techcrunch were successful in this venture by instructing their potential conversation team members to tweet a #TC50 at the end of their tweet to be included in the stream. This sounds easy, but trust me, getting people to comply with a rule en mass is no small feat.

What this hash tag will do is make the conversation a searchable item. I know that you are saying, “I can search any term from the Twitter servers and come up with relevant results”. While you may be able to return some relevant results, you will also find that you will return some not so relevant results as well.

For instance, if I want to know what is going on with the Stockton Restaurant week, I could go ahead and type in the search bar, Stockton Restaurant Week. Now my results are going to search those three key terms in any order within the tweets that are present on the Twitter server. I could place quotation marks around the search term, but then too, I leave out the people that choose to just talk about their lunch at Centrale (one of the participating restaurants) while neglecting to mention anything about Stockton Restaurant Week.

Now enter the hash tag, #SRW09. Short and sweet, so as to not steal much of your all too important tweet. This hash tag, properly implemented by the managing authority (listen up Stockton CVB) will filter the conversation to the people that are only talking about Stockton Restaurant Week. . Then once implemented our all powerful managing authority of the event, that we are pumped enough about to care about the conversation that will be taking place by its patrons, will place a little piece of code on their site to display the conversation. Not only will this be useful to the nerds like me that are actually interested in what people are saying on a digital medium full of narcissism sprinkled with information, but this will also be a valuable chunk of information to pass along to the participating restaurants.

As we move forward in this social media landscape these tools will become commonplace, but as we are in the infancy of this movement, we must blaze the trail. Rome was not built in a day, and we cannot expect this first attempt from a community that is not so quick to embrace tech, to go over with flying colors. A success would be if we flew like an injured duck. At least we flew. Techcrunch probably will be more successful than most at accomplishing a successful Twitter conversation filter, as their community does not know much else outside of a keyboard and monitor with a handheld device thrown in for good measure. Trust me, I know, because well, I could possibly be a member of their audience. This does not mean that we should throw our hands in the air and give up on the notion. Give it a try, the good old college try.

No one said blazing trails was easy, just ask Captain Weber. He had to convince people to settle in Stockton, while his middle name was Maria.