Know this: there’s a really good chance I’m going to grossly overuse these.

I haven’t done this in the past. Why start now?  Well, in whatever writing I’ve done² whether its a business email, a message to my friends about the current state of the Red Sox³, or a letter to my grandmother, I’ve find that my mind wanders as I write.  Make that as I type⁴. I go off on brief tangents which I would often include in parentheses.  And it really broke up what I was writing into this distorted flow. Lots of sentences would start with stuff like, “But anyway, as I was saying…”

But there were a couple recent external influences in my current reading materials.  First, there’s John Gruber’s FANTASTIC blog, Daring Fireball.  I’m really enjoying his deep analyisis and long-form writing.  Most recently, his coverage of the iPad and the Apple vs. Adobe WWF cagefight.⁵.  I’m getting close to saying with full confidence that John Gruber is to tech blogging as Peter Gammons is to baseball writing. 

The second element is that I’ve started reading Bill Simmons’ Book of Basketball.  In the foreward, Malcolm Gladwell of all people shines light on SImmons’ use of footnotes, mentioning “Oh, and read the footnotes.  Simmons is the master of the footnote.”  He’s right.  The footnotes are a must read in this book.  If you don’t read them, you’re going to miss out.

Ok, so we’re at word count of around 330 and I’ve got 5 footnotes.  See?  Told you I was going to overuse these.

Last thing.  Wondering how I’m generating the footnotes in my posts?  It’s a plugin called WP-Footnotes and more information can be found here.

1. See? here’s a footnote now!
2. And to be clear: I am NOT a writer
3. current state: not too good, but it’s only April
4. I gave up handwriting pretty much anything other than my signature a few years ago.  Even letters to my grandmother.  The art of handwriting is being a sacrificed in the computing age.  But that’s probably another post
5. one of these companies has to be The Iron Sheik, I just haven’t figured out which yet

Ticketfly calls themselves “live music marketers.”  They’re interested in working with independent music venues and event (mostly music concerts) promoters to help them sell tickets to their events.  There are a couple components to making this happen.

First, there’s a ticketing platform that helps venues manage their ticket inventory and allows consumers to make online purchases of those tickets.  This is really not much different than what Ticketmaster or Live Nation provides. 

But what differentiates Ticketfly is its focus on helping venues actually move these tickets into the hands of customers. The ticketing platform will take advantage of social web marketing and communication capabilities.  An obvious example is that when a venue adds an event to the platform and make tickets available for purchase, a Facebook event page is created so the event can spread from social graph to social graph.  Many other social web features will be built into the system.  Anything that might help a venue sell out a show.

So what I’m doing for TIcketfly is helping them wrap their hands around all of the capabilities and technologies that make up the social web.  I’m spending my days up to my neck in the Facebook Connect platform and Twitter API’s.  I’m also filling out the features and functionality of a venue marketing web site solution with WordPress MU.  In many ways, my role is a perfect match for me.  I’m working with the technologies that fascinate me and with subject matter that I love.

The folks at Ticketfly at top notch.  They’ve really made me feel welcome as part of the team.  And I’m still giddy over going to work in downtown San Francisco on a regular basis.  SOMA sure has evolved since Keturah moved away from there in 2005. 

Fast forward to Memorial Day weekend 2007.  Keturah’s Treo was completely done for so we headed over to the Sprint store to get her an updated Treo 755p.  And of course while we were there, I couldn’t resist the temptation to upgrade myself.  But doing so meant locking myself into another two year commitment with Sprint PCS.  Looking back on it, it was probably a mistake.  The Apple iPhone had been announced and was about a month from being available for purchase.  But I had convinced myself that the first generation iPhone would be a mistake.  That it would be full of shortcomings and bugs.  Like being a new car model, I figured wait for the second generation.  After all the kinks are worked out of the system.

I was partially correct.  The original iPhone had plenty of shortcomings.  Slow network and no MMS to name just two.  But it was an incredible interface advancement.  I was also incorrect at the rate of advancement.  I never thought that two years later we’d be days away from a third generation iPhone.  I would be lying if I said I haven’t been suffering from gadget envy for the last 2 years. 

In fact, I’ve resisted the temptations to spend a lot of time playing around with the iPhones my friends have (and they pretty much all have them).  I know what a compelling device it is.  I know that it will unlock my realtime access to information and, equally if not more importantly, allow me to carry around one less device.

I made it.  Two years in a Sprint contract while the iPhone and the App Store have been leaving my Treo 755p sucking in its wake.  And in less than an day, I’ll be out of the mobile device dark ages with the fastest iPhone yet. 

Another Coastside Tweetup.  This one takes place on Tuesday, July 22 at 7 pm at Half Moon Bay Brewing Company – 390 Capistrano Rd. Half Moon Bay, CA 94019

NEW PLAN!  New time and new location.

New time is Tuesday, July 22 at 5:45 pm

New location is at the Ritz Carlton in Half Moon Bay, near the firepits in the back.

Blame it all on Scoble. 

This tweetup includes Twitter superstar Pistachio – who’s visiting from the eastern coast and just might be given a chance to sign my high school yearbook . (It’s a long story)

Thanks to Francine Hardaway for once again stoking the fires on this.  Everyone is invited.

Helpful hint: If you’re at a loss for how to spot the Tweetup gang once you’re there, just shout out “Does anyone have an iPhone?” If 50% of a circle raises their hand, thats probably the group you’re looking for.

The purpose of this site has always been to share what what was happening in my life with my friends and family. Naturally, after Keturah and I got married the site began to center on what the two of us were up to.  And when Mason, was born…well, for a while things making it to this blog – especially the stuff coming via Flickr -  was almost entirely about Mason.  Now that Jude will be here in a matter of weeks, we expect another wave of “here’s what our baby is up to” posts.  What can I say, when your primary audience is your friends and family, that’s what they want to hear. 

But right around the time that I deployed WordPress here, blogging began to seriously take off.  If you are working in the web industry, like I do, It didn’t take long for it to become practically a requirement.  In many ways, your blog has replaced your resume.

So to show my expertise on the professional subject areas I found interesting and to share my knowledge, I began posting some content on web development and design.  But it never really worked.  Posts about cool WordPress plugins and themes along side posts about my infant son and a backpacking trip to Yosemite just didn’t work right.  They were polarizing the people who read my blog.  It soon became clear to me that I needed to keep the focus here on the less professional parts of my life but find another outlet to share my knowledge of the interweb and trends I’ve been noticing.

Just a few days ago, I launched that other outlet with my interweb partner-in-crime, Holly Hagen.  So if you’re curious about what I’m advising folks to do with social media, trends I’m noticing online, and general thoughts about web technology…then you need to take the red pill.