Ensight - Jeremy Wright
A Personal Blog
Football? Me? Erm… No Comment…
Nov 3rd
To any of my friends, it’s no secret that I’ve never liked football. Hell, I’ve publicly mocked it on stage, on Twitter and in conversations. Even to professional football players. I’m classy like that. Classy, I tell ya!
However recently I decided to give football (NFL, not CFL!) a real shot and watch a full game. Why isn’t important. Neither is it important why I chose the New Orleans Saints to cheer for. But I did. Not a bad team to pick, they were 5-0 going into last week’s game against the Dolphins, and having been to NOLA in the recent past, I felt it was a good game/team/time to give the sport a serious shot.
This had to hurt…So what happened? What did I think of America’s pastime? Is it still on par with baseball in my mind, or is it a real sport?
If you aren’t sure, I highly suggest reviewing my Twitter stream from last night’s Saints/Falcons game. Cause, erm, I was clearly into it. I’ve now watched 2 games in a row, both highly emotional, highly charged games, and I think I’ve realized why I didn’t give football it’s due before:
- I didn’t grow up in the states: this should go without saying, but the reality is Canadians don’t get excited about football. We’ve never been to a tailgater. We probably can’t even name 3 QBs (hell, half of us probably think you’re talking about a certain smelly province of ours).
- Football is a social game: now, most sports are best watched with others. But watching a NEW sport alone? Not so hawt. Twitter changes this. Being able to chat with Aaron and jam with other Saints fans during the game is a whole nother expeirence!
- I had no emotional ties to the teams: I’m a Leafs fan. Always will be. Even this year when they’re playing like the farking Ducks. I’m a Leafs fan cause I AM CANADIAN and I AM TORONTONIAN. It’s what we do. How we roll. Why we’re idjuts. I had no emotional connection to any NFL teams or cities, so there was no emotional investment in the game – which always makes the game 10x better. Don’t believe me? Try watching women’s lacrosse.
Since I’ve now watched a game, have folk I can talk to during games and have a team/city I care about… well, football is a very different experience. And, as much as it pains me to say it: it’s an experience I actually enjoy.
I can’t say I’ll watch every Saints game. I won’t. I can’t even say I’ll follow the stats religiously, cause I won’t. But, like the Leafs, if a game’s on, or a friend invites me over, or I snag tickets: I’ll be there and prepared. I won’t become a football freak like Aaron, but I will no longer mock the sport. Specially when the saints are playing.
Got Twitchy Finger? Vote for SxSW Panels (Toronto, Friends & Mine)
Sep 2nd
Image by dpstyles™ via Flickr
Every year, the panel submissions and voting for SxSW sneak up on me. Normally I don’t have time to submit a panel idea, so I’ve only really been able to speak once when I was selected last-minute. This year, I decided to be different, and proactively reached out to some folk well before the deadline to put together panels that:
- I’d go to even if I wasn’t speaking (which is saying something, cause I only go to about 3 panels per conference)
- Were different from the “normal” panels you see at conferences
- Have people I respect/admire/care about on the panels
- Challenge assumptions
- Provide value
Most of the normal things I’d speak on, were taken out by point 1/2. And most of the fluffy ideas that I’d normal brainstorm on were taken out by points 4-5. But point 3 is ultimately what drove the discussions.
My Panels
When I pinged Lu, Patrick and Dave about doing panels with them individually (or vice versa on Dave, maybe), as well as a few others, it was because I ultimately wanted to be on panels with them. And what we talked about, I felt, should be a meshing of our experiences.
Image via WikipediaAs a result, the opening call with Lu was basically shooting the shit for half an hour, before realizing we were going through similar types of transitions. Both from different extremes, but both basically looking to find balance, bliss. And so Ditch the Old to Build Your Dream Life was born. It was deadsimple to brainstorm Chris and Erin would be perfect. Both people I love, respect, admire, look up to, etc.
Similar discussions happened with Dave, leading to F#$% Keeping it Simple. Being a mobile guy, Dave wanted to talk about how too simple in mobile was limiting the potential of the device. I wanted to focus on how simplicity in startups is as much a curse as a helper. It’s a crutch people use to put ideas down, instead of thinking outside the box and trying to do stuff right.
That said, I’ll freely admit that much of the brainstorming for the session with Patrick around How to Recover from a Brand Collapsee was Patrick’s idea. Patrick’s been running communities for ages, is wicked smart and I’ve known him since before either of us could just say the name of our company and not have to go into elevator pitches everytime we introduced ourselves. Patrick’s recent post on How to Recover from Social Media Failure (paraphrased) is a great example of his thought leadership in this space.
And, well, the last panel I submitted is still quasi confidential. Some folk are aware my wife and I split awhile ago, and that I now have a girlfriend. Very few folk know who she is because we’re being fairly incognito about the whole thing. But the interesting thing that folk always love when we tell our story in person is that we met on Twitter. So we found a few other folk who had as well and put together Twitter and Dating in 140 Characters or Less.
So those are the panels I’m hoping to land this year. Each of these is unique for me, and challenging, and I know that I’ll learn.
Toronto Panels
Image by Cliph via FlickrIn addition to my panels, I want to encourage folk from Toronto to vote for panels from folk from Toronto. The Canadian invasion last year (powered by #canLIT) was in full force last year, but we weren’t organized enough to have a significant number of panels. That should change. While there are lots of high profile wicked smart people like David Crow, Joey DeVilla, Saul Colt, etc in Toronto, there are way more wicked smart people who don’t yet have the profile they deserve. So, hop up and vote for your local talent!
Kev Richard (a fellow mobster) put together an amazing list of Toronto panels. Click through and send him a thanks, follow him on Twitter, etc. Here’s his list:
- F#$% Keeping it Simple presented by Dave Coleman, Saul Colt and Jeremy Wright
- Community Management : Future Skills You’ll Need to Know presented by Saul Colt
- Tweet Your Way to Your Next Job presented by Saul Colt
- Putting a Fork in The 30 Second Spot with panelist Andrew Lane
- Life After Wii Fit: Geeks On Fitness presented by Wesley Hodgson
- Make Me a Damn Good Manager! presented by Andre Gaulin
- Millionaire or Artist? How About Both? with panelist Amrita Chandra
- Distributed Micro-Patronage: The Future of Getting Paid: presented by Josh Newman
- Building Blocks of a New Economy For Music: presented by David Dufresne
- Colour Trends -Palettes to Pick for 2010 presented by Paige Dzenis
- Brilliant Second Acts You Must Steal Tricks From presented by Jaime Woo
- How to Recover From a Brand Collapse panelist Jeremy Wright
- Twitter and Dating in 140 Characters or Less presented by Jeremy Wright and special guest!
- Ditch the Old to Build Your Dream Life with panelist Jeremy Wright
- Gaming’s Final Frontier- Moving Towards Monetization & Improving Experience presented by Troy Ross
- Passionate People: The Key Ingredient to Social Media Success: with panelists Meghan Warby , James Topham and Ryan Taylor
- A Different Documentary : Online Story Telling and Social Change presented by Boyd Niel
- Documentary Games: Playing with the Truth presented by Tony Walsh
- Multi-Platform Storytelling with panelist Andrew Lane
- SXSW SARS with panelist Jay Goldman
- We are Family: Web Applications Band Together Now! presented by Sunir Shah
- How to be a Customer Support Rockstar presented by Grace Antonio
- Experimental Design:Your User Interface is Your Laboratory presented by Mike McDerment
- Exploiting Chaos– How to Spark Innovation During Times of Change presented by Jeremy Gutsche
- News 2.0 – How Old Media Companies Are Inventing New Models presented by Maggie Fox with panelists Laura Conway, Mathew Ingram, and Candice Faktor.
Friends
In addition, I’d like to highlight Brandon Eley’s panel ideas, and encourage you to vote for him as well:
- Marketing By Design: Practical Advice For Better Conversions
- How To Pitch Social Media To Your Clients
So There
SxSW Panel Voting ends on Friday, so if you’re interested in voting, don’t put it off. Vote now. For mine, for local ones, for your friends. Hell, search for great terms and support the wide base of submissions that are in for this year.
A Diary of My Workcation / Life
Aug 31st
This is a reflective post. No real content, so if you aren’t a friend or don’t really care what’s going on in my life feel free to move on. I’m a blogger, I’m allowed a narcissistic post once in awhile! What follows is a fictitious timeline of some of the things that’ve been going on in my head over the last few weeks.
25 July, 2009
Woke up. Realized I was about to leave my baby, my team and my family behind. Panicked. Ate poutine. Panicked. Ate ice cream. Passed out. Panicked. Wrote emails to team, bloggers, partners, etc. Scheduled to send out on 27th. Felt like shit. Ate more ice cream.
26 July, 2009
Didn’t sleep last night. Probably won’t sleep tonight. Oddly feeling okay with that. Feeling like maybe I deserved to be punished, and not in a good way. Flying out to begin my “workcation” before shit hits the fan with my quitting. Want to be “on the ground” and away from Toronto when it happens.
27 July, 2009
Image via CrunchBaseWow, okay, wow. My two biggest fears were that a) nobody would notice I’d left and b) that I’d get absolutely lambasted. Given TechCrunch/WSJ/NYT coverage (and lots more besides), clearly A wasn’t an issue. And outside of a douchebag or two and a few disgruntled ex-employees B wasn’t an issue either. Spent about 4 hours dealing with the swell of coverage.
Then I walked away from the computer for the afternoon. Figure I might as well practice this workcation thing sooner than later. When I came back, there was stuff to respond to, but what had to be said had been said.
30 July, 2009
Image by Laurie :: Liquid Paper via FlickrCame back online to find hundreds of emails, tweets, DMs, etc either offering support, jobs or saying “we should meet”. When pressed on what we should meet about, response is invariably “no, really, we should meet”. Wondering if folk actually think I’m in the mob due to new branding around the consulting agency.
3 August, 2009
Head to visit best friend in Raleigh for a week. Manage to “catch” epic allergies. Like 6 drugs and still doing 2 boxes of kleenex a day type of allergies. Don’t sleep much. Spend no more than 3 hours a day online. 1 hour catching up on client stuff, 1 hour on leaving b5 stuff and 1 hour trying to figure out whattf I actually want to do!
5 August, 2009
As is a 10-year tradition, I continue to beat my best friend senseless at football video games. This despite the fact that he nearly went pro and feels football in his bones and that I actually have no clue how football even works. I mean, come on, they’re running … why can’t a touchdown be called a home run? Geeeeze.
Realize that it might be easier to figure out things I don’t want to do than things I do. Ponder this over the world’s best burger and fries. Come out with the fact that I don’t want to:
- Become a hairdresser (my hands shake)
- Start another bootstrapped startup (a revenue generating or funded startup is fine… and I’ll also almost certainly do a from-scratch startup at some point in the future… just not now)
- Move to LA
7 August, 2009
After getting plastered with best friend’s buddy (who spent most of the night trying to explain to me how to make a coke-can bong), head back to best friend’s apartment, with new buddy, to play more football. Lose a game to best friend. Kick buddy’s ass in ways that won’t be repeated. Realize I also don’t want to move to Dubai to lead the “North American Strategy” for a major UAE media holding company. As insanely cool as that’d be (if for no other reason than regularly being able to fly in one of those wicked tricked out planes, first class), I’d be too far from my boys, which I’ve decided totally ain’t cool.
Image by Anirudh Koul via Flickr9 August, 2009
On plane on the way to London, UK, to visit friends, realize I also don’t want to join a big media company in a “strategic” role (big paycheque = nice; politics all day long = not so much… I’d rather Get Shit Done). That said, there is a very large, very strategic role, in a media company that I’m holding out for.
11 August, 2009
Much drinking, much relaxing, much curry make me realize I’m gaining weight. Decide I won’t care until I’m back. Entered workcation at 225 pounds. Currently over 230. Realizing that I do need everything in moderation, including weight-loss. At least right now.
12 August, 2009
Wake up for the first time without any stress at all. It’s taken me 2+
Image by bitzcelt via Flickrweeks to let all the stress from b5 and changes and stuff wash off of me. Realize that 2 weeks isn’t really that bad given marriage failing, taking 60%+ pay cut, leaving job, handing baby over to new CEO, new girlfriend, boys getting older way too fast… This sense of “relaxing” (new word to me) comes and goes over the next two weeks.
Some days I hyperventilate with stress, some I don’t even get out of bed. It takes until the 18th of August for me to actually stop this cycle of up/down-ness. My therapist (how weird is that to say) is confident I’m coming out of the “valley”.
16th August, 2009
Last night in London, and I decide not to get drunk. Realize I often used to get drunk to destress. But since I’m not stressed, I can just go chill with friends. We catch a movie, chill, and just “hang” (a foreign concept to me) until the very wee hours of the morning. I get lost on the way back to my hotel, confusing Leicester Square with Covington Gardens. Thankfully a bum is more than happy to walk me to my hotel in exchange for my watch. Very kind of him. Joke’s on him, it’s just a spiderman watch.
Image by Eneas via Flickr22 August, 2009
Preparing to head home, after more workcationing while landing a new client, gaining weight (232 at last check) and starting to book meetings. As I book meetings and figure out what excites me, I realize they all have a few key things in common. They all:
- Involved being entrepreneurial, even if it was inside a larger company or an agency
- Involved Getting Shit Done, whether by leading products/projects or by helping clients get Big Wins
- Had freedom and flexibility to do conferences and such, assuming they add value and that I’m continuing to Get Shit Done
- Had me learning something I’d never done before
- Were local (ie: no further than NYC/Montreal/Ottawa). I have 2 boys, and don’t want to be any further than that from them
24 August, 2009
Image via WikipediaArrive home in Toronto after hellacious travel home, involving missing bus. Missing another bus. Then paying 200$ for a cab ride home cause I just didn’t fucking care anymore. Intend to sleep. Can’t sleep. Intend to clean. Don’t clean. Decide to go out to local party to actually show my pretty face. Am honestly unsure if anyone will care. If they do, should they? If they don’t, should they? Decide to just hang with friends, not let the stress creep up on me and not get drunk. Cause, y’know, I don’t need to cause I’m not stressing.
Party starts slowly, but picks up once I steal @verneho’s nametag and wear it around for an hour. He doesn’t realize I have his nametag, even after we go “searching” for it together. Even after taking pic with him and I in it, me wearing his nametag. Pic is epicly good. I’m gonna have it bronzed. He still claims he knew the entier time. Riiiight ;-)
Night was great. Folk seemed happy I was back. Convos with friends were great. Ended the night when someone convined random chick it was my birthday. Also convinced her my name was Jorge. Pronounced “Whoregy”. She sang “Happy Birthday Dear Whoooooregyyyyy” twice too often.
27 August, 2009
After nearly 20 meetings last week, and half a dozen offers, I was able to trim my list down to 5 positions. Each of these are exciting in some way or another, each of them are more than just “a job” that I’d take for a year, and each of them are with companies and teams that I could invest myself in in a real way.
The positions are everything from EIR in a VC firm to leading a digital media agency to taking the helm of a startup that’s about to raise funding and that I really believe in, in a space I love.
Now
So why write this post? Mostly because I’ve talked to a half dozen people over the last two weeks that are stuck on the “what do I really want to do?” question. So I thought I’d share some of my ruminations. Because while blogging’s matured and become less freeform over the last few years, I figure as an “old timer” I’m allowed to occasionally just freestyle it. Maybe no value to anyone but me, but yeah.
Lessons I Learned While Gone
But, seeinng as how blogging HAS become more polished, I figured I’d share some lessons I learned while I was away on workcation:
- Figure out what makes you smile, and do more of that
- Figure out what makes you stress, and do less of that
- Don’t be afraid to fail (I used to live by this, but sometime in the last year I lost it)
- Sleep
- Friends and family matter
I figure if I can’t do/have those 5 things in a job, it’s not really worth doing.
I also learned that girls in New Orleans still flash their boobs, even if it’s not Mardi Gras. And it’s generally not worth seeing. Girls Gone Wild has skewed the number of hawt chicks flashing in New Orleans. It’s fiction! Fiction I tell you!
Anyways, it’s great to be back. This week will be a week of decisions. But more importantly, this week is a great week to practice balance.
Cleaning Out My Domain Portfolio (7 Domains for Sale)
Aug 26th
Image via Wikipedia
Okay, I’ll admit it, I’m an addict. I buy domains for any idea. Even expensive .it ones ($75 for a domain?!!). But while I’m an addict, I’m not a complete packrat, so I figure it’s time to look at selling some of the domains I had plans for, but no longer plan to use anytime soon.
So, in the spirit of both spring cleaning (a bit late) and, y’know, letting friends/family get first crack at stuff before putting them up for public sale, here are the domains I’m currently looking at selling:
- blogbacker.com
- blogbackers.com
- blog-consultant.com
- blog-consutlants.com
- bloggerlunch.com
- cellephony.com
- geekrank.com
If you’re interested, feel free to email me an offer and we’ll get it done :)
Best Out of Office Replies Evar
Aug 24th
Image by Yogi via Flickr
I wonder what’d happen if I actually did one of these…
1. I am currently out at a job interview and will reply to you if I fail to get the position. Be prepared for my mood.
2. You are receiving this automatic notification because I am out of the office. If I was in, chances are you wouldn’t have received anything at all.
3. I will be unable to delete all the unread, worthless emails you send me until I return from holiday on 4 April. Please be patient and your mail will be deleted in the order it was received.
4. Thank you for your email. Your credit card has been charged £5.99 for the first ten words and £1.99 for each additional word in your message.
5. The e-mail server is unable to verify your server connection and is unable to deliver this message. Please restart your computer and trysending again. (The beauty of this is that when you return, you can see how many in-duh-viduals did this over and over).
6. Thank you for your message, which has been adde d to a queuing system… You are currently in 352nd place, and can expect to receive a reply in approximately 19 weeks.
7. I’ve run away to join a different circus.
8. I will be out of the office for the next 2 weeks for medical reasons… When I return, please refer to me as “Margaret” instead of “Steve”.
