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New Era, new focus

I haven’t mentioned my job search for a while, mostly because it didn’t seem very relevant to the world of AustinMash!, but also because it wasn’t the biggest thing in my life. What was bigger than finding a job? Well, working on this site, and everything related to it!. In fact, there were some points over the past couple of months where responding to recruiters and going to interviews was a tolerated distraction away from the much more entertaining and interesting stuff going on here. Now, don’t tell my wife, but I must admit I was secretly a little relieved a couple of times when I got word I was not chosen for a job. Not every time, though, as there were a few very interesting and compelling company stories I would have loved to be a part of. The good news is that one of them was a match, and I was offered a position at a software company a couple of weeks ago, and my first day was today.

This does not mean I’m abandoning this project - this fun, educational, enlightening, and empowering journey I’ve started. No way, it just means I’ll have to go about my business in a much more focused manner, and at the same time rely less on activities that require my physical presence.

Actually, when I look at the timing of everything, I can hardly believe my luck. I decided to proceed with this project when I still had a job, and I managed to build the bulk of the functionality in my free time and on weekends. Then, I got laid off, but with plenty of notice, so I knew it was coming. This removed all time constraints, and I was able to devote as much time as I wanted on AustinMash!, technically, and on the various marketing and networking activities I engaged in. Then, I finally did get a job offer, but with a start date two weeks out – so again I had plenty of time to plan – and take a little vacation to boot! (yes, I was out of cell phone range for 5 days. One word of advice: when the resort lists high-speed internet access, ask if it means wireless in the room, or if it means they have three PCs in a little “business center”, one of which is broken, and on which they limit your time to 15 minutes a day. I still haven’t decided if this was a good thing or not). So, now my week days are once again someone else’s, but that’s ok, since lately I’ve been thinking it was time to move on to the next phase of marketing, and start advertising the site. The real challenge, really, will be in continuing to develop AustinMania! while at the same time have some kind of a life.

Another change is that I am going to focus less on selling ads, and more on building a site that I and others will hopefully enjoy. I’ll work on my original goal of making an entertaining site, and I’ll let the traffic take care of itself (ok, I will be boosting it from time to time through advertising). Then the ad sales should take care of themselves too, once the traffic is there. The good part is that this is fun, so I can just keep working on it and see what happens. Do you want to see what happens? Stay tuned – same Mash-Channel, same Mash-time!

AustinMania! is now a blog, too, and you can post, too

The previous post describes my investigation into Ruby on Rails, as a framework I could use to rapidly build out the AustinMania! community portal. Alas, I was once again stymied by my web host, and for now, I cannot run RoR applications on this web site. This may change with further study, but luckily, I do not need to wait for that to significantly enhance the interactiveness of the site.

As I was pondering my next move, which included considering if I should switch web hosts, a sudden realization struck me – I already had all I needed to implement the beginnings of a user-generated community – a WordPress blog! All I had to do was to make a new, separate database, re-install WordPress with a new blog name, and presto, a new blog was created on the site! The main difference in functionality vs my regular blog is that when a new user registers, they are by default granted “contributor” level access, which means they can create new posts themselves (subject to approval by me before they are published). I also opened up commenting privileges so anyone can comment, and they appear right away without moderation. I can always go back and remove inappropriate comments if I need to, and since the initial goal is to encourage use, this should be ok for now.

I made a few changes to the sidebar from the one this blog is running to better fit the community aspect of AustinMania!, such as listing all the authors and removing the blogroll. Also, I tweaked the entire user registration and login process to “hide” the fact AustinMania! is really a blog, it’s supposed to look like just a community website. I added helpful instructions to the e-mail that sends the initial password, and to some of the registration pages, and removed certain pages or sections from the admin console to simplify it for people who have never blogged before. For example, the dashboard seemed fairly superfluous, so it’s gone. I will probably continue to tweak the admin pages over time so they better fit the theme of AustinMania!

The best part of this is that it is up and running, anyone can contribute, and I can continue to tweak it and add features. I still intend to bring to life my “grand vision” of what AustinMania! can be, but at this point I am not sure if it will evolve from this WordPress platform, or if I will build an entirely new RoR application. Perhaps in the end it will be a hybrid. Whatever the case, I am glad I was able to implement something that works today, and I didn’t let the bigger ideas get in the way of progress. I hate it when that happens, don’t you?

Lining up for Spam

My last post had everything to do with avoiding spam, and now I am here to tell you, this weekend I witnessed people actually line up and wait just to get their own portion of SPAM - the luncheon meat! Talk about keeping it weird, there was an entire festival in central Austin just to pay homage to that denigrated meal. Well, tongue-in-cheek homage, as SPAMARAMA! is really all about playing with the food, in every way imaginable!

Lining up for SPAM!

Appropriately enough, this “pandemonious potted pork festival” is held every year on April Fools day - I mean, who would believe you if you said you were headed to a SPAM cook-off? Well, I went, I witnessed, and I wondered - why here, why Austin? Oh sure, it’s cool and fun and wacky - SPAMALYMPICS, anyone? - but how did this start?

According to the web site, the initial impetus was to have an alternative to the all-too-common chili cook-offs. Only in Texas do you get tired of chili cook-offs, I suppose - and only in Austin does someone come up with an alternative crazy enough that their neighbors will voluntarily be a part of it - for 28 years and counting. Jeez, what’s the shelf life of SPAM anyway?

Now, the official SPAMARAMA site says nothing of this, but I discovered there is another linkage between Austin and SPAM – and no, I don’t mean we have an overabundance of lazy-assed porno pushers and medical miracle misfits. Did you know that SPAM is produced in Austin? Yep, there’s even a SPAM Museum, right there on SPAM Boulevard. No - I’m not kidding you! Of course, I’m not talking about Austin, Texas, but Austin, Minnesota, the corporate home of Hormel Foods . Talk about weird! Is this some kind of comedic karma? Or, more sinister-like, some machiavellian marketing?

Anyway, if you want to go ask someone at Hormel, just get on I-35, go north for oh, about 1100 miles, hang a right at Bancroft, MN, and wait another 20 miles. You’ll find yourself smack dab in SPAM heaven. Whoopee!

Keepin’ it Weird

The weather was pretty awesome this past Saturday afternoon, and in between dodging ham-hatted SPAMaholics and hog-nosed porky people, I had a pretty good time. I missed Nathan’s Stupid Drama , but I did get the CD, and yes - the rumors are true - this guy can play the acoustic! I’ll have to catch his act live sometime.

In a classic “if-someone-had-told-me” moment, I did enjoy the irony of watching contestants do all they could to hold on to the stuff as they ran the SPAM Can Relay – “Can’t spill the SPAM - Can’t spill the SPAM - Can’t spill the - DAMN, I spilled the SPAM!”

Spam SPam SPAm SPAM!

Mmmmmm…..

And then there was the obligatory SPAM eating contest, which was probably the most obvious Hormel-driven event that day. In one masterful stroke, conclusive proof was presented that not only is the stuff in the can edible, it really is filling - the contest lasted for several minutes! If SPAM meat was as insubstantial as we have come to believe, the contestants would have chowed down in no time. Instead, the assembled masses got to witness long, agonizing moments of chomping, chewing, and strained swallowing. “Better you than I”, they must have thought, “better you than I, to find SPAM’s not naught!”

Yes, spring has sprung in Austin. The weirdness blooms and the fun beckons, and it’s time to get out and enjoy all the town has to offer. What a cool place to be!

What happened to my office?

I set up an office in a spare bedroom in my house when I got laid off at the end of February. It was nice and tidy, and it felt good. I even splurged on a $25 speaker phone so I could feel that much more professional while in my sweat pants. Over the next couple of weeks, things even stayed fairly organized, and now, look at this place!

In my defense, I’ve been extremely busy this week, what with South By Southwest Interactive , job interviews, and tweaks to the web site all going on at once. So let’s see – Monday and Tuesday was wall-to-wall SXSW, between preparing to go (printing flyers, determining where I wanted to be when, etc), the actual conference, and the after-parties. For those of you who attend these kinds of shindigs, you know that the parties are a major portion of the value of the event. It is at the parties when you meet the most amazing people, and learn of the coolest stuff that people are actually doing, or about to do, or theorizing about. It’s a very energetic and encouraging environment, and what, it’s over already? When’s the next one?

Of course, it’s my own fault I missed half the festival. Last summer, I got it in my head that I really wanted to go see Spamalot on Broadway. The trip itself would not be a problem – one of the perks of being a traveling professional services consultant is the airline miles and hotel points you rack up over time, not to mention that if you consistently use the Amex card enough, you can get Broadway tickets free as well. No, the problem was that every single performance of that show was completely sold out for the next 9 months, and yes, you guessed it, the first tickets I could get were for March 11th. It was a bit ironic, booking a spur-of-the-moment whim so far in the future, and who would have thunk it then that it would mean missing some excellent discussions on the state of the web? Oh well, life is the convergence of paths already chosen.

By the way, the show itself was fantastic. To get an idea of just one moment of silliness, picture a spoof of Lord of the Dance done with coconuts. You Monty Python fans know what I mean. Even my non-Monty wife, who formally wouldn’t have known a Black Knight from a Knight That Says Ni, thoroughly enjoyed the show.

Anyway, back in reality, on Wed I had two job interviews to go to, with all the attendant preparation involved, and there was a ton of things to follow up on from SXSW. Like, for example, adding my blog to blog promotion services I learned about, which meant seeing for the first time how my posts look when they come through an RSS feed, which then meant a mad scramble to fix all the problems I found (which I am very sure are all deadly sins in the blogosphere), such as coding relative paths to images! Ouch! Owww! Hey, that HURTS! Yes, I know I deserve to be flogged, but come on, have some pity on the first time blogger!

Thursday was spent on the unfortunate need to redo some code I thought I was done with, and I’ll post more on that later, but for now, I think I’ll take a break and try to straighten up a little. Of course, I’ve been thinking that for two days, but I mean it this time! Really! Only, where do I start? Maybe I should have lunch first….

It’s working!

As John Travolta said in the movie "Broken Arrow":

I now know how his character felt when he said that, I felt it myself today!

In his case, he had just detonated his first nuclear bomb, and had experienced the electromagnetic and seismic shock waves from the blast. In my case, I had just sold my first AustinMash! ad, and had experienced the “Oh Shit, this is working!” shock wave after the meeting. Both experiences are of comparable potency, don’t you think?

Many, many thanks to Rodney Barkalow, general manager of Central Texas Harley-Davidson, for taking a chance on something new. Also, special thanks to Denny and Brad for supporting the idea, and to Bob and the rest of the CTHD crew for their hard work over the years.

As the first real customer, Rodney snagged the UT tower Skyline parcel (number 8), a whole 877 pixels in size. Wow, three days after official launch, and already AustinMash! is profitable. I say god-damn what a rush!

Ok, now I just need the image from CTHD so I can post the ad, and I also need to get the ads from the auction winners. Wow, actual customers! I guess this means I need a login page for them, and an account maintenance page, and I need to set up the weekly reports… and… and… time to get off the top of the mountain I’ve been shouting from, and back to work!