There are no shortage of books, blogs and articles out there offering career advice. In fact, you are reading something from one of them right now! If anything, they all have something in common – long narratives, loaded with stories and real-life examples, explaining in great detail the author’s point-of-view.

The new book, Things Are What You Make of Them – Life Advice for Creatives by Adam J. Kurtz, is a book that, as you can guess by the title, is in the above-mentioned genre, but its format and structures breaks the above-mentioned mold. Where it offers career advice, its format is unique – there are just over a dozen “chapters” – each beginning with a description, then a hand-written list of 8 points, followed by 8 pages, also hand-written, corresponding to each point on pages no more than 4 inches by 6 inches.

As I said, this book is unique, and refreshing. The advice is written with a mix of Kurtz’s sense of humor and his brutal honesty. It’s a short read, which you can finish in less than an hour, but gives you a lot to think about for a long time and easy to remember – each page has a colored border by chapter, and all pages are perforated for easy removal and hanging up in a prominent place.

As you can guess, this book gave many things to takeaway from it.

Define creative – As the book’s subtitle is “Life Advice for Creatives,” some of you reading this may think, this book is not for me as I am not “creative” in the sense of a designer or artist, as the author is. To borrow a phrase, bollocks! Many of us, where we may be in a corporate job that is not defined with words such as “artistic” are actually creative in nature – we are using our brains and imagination to find creative solutions for our employers or clients. To borrow another phrase, this one by from Kurtz’s own definition of “creative” in the book, it is “… a person who defines themselves, in some way, by their creative passion or profession.” I love this description and feel it suits myself, and it may suit you as well – think about it.

Take away what works for you, literally – In any book, you can find yourself liking and disliking various parts of it. This is in fact why I write takeaways from books rather than reviews of them. With this book if something resonates with you, you can then literally and easily remove it as all pages of the book are perforated, then post it someplace as a reminder or inspiration.

More books are needed in this format – From its small size to its vibrant colors to perforated pages to its concise advice, more books should be crafted this way. It reminds me of the book 52 Motivational Quotations for Salespeople by my good friend Tom Cruz, which has each quote on a separate page so they can be removed and displayed prominently. Especially in our fast-paced digital world, it allows us to take a brief time out, read and reflect.

When I heard about Things Are What You Make of Them, I preordered it right away. I learn about Kurtz and his creative work from his book 1 Page at a Time, which I bought and am still using as an (almost) daily creative outlet. His light-hearted approach has drawn me to his work, and it makes me smile and think at the same time.

After finishing this book, I decided to give it to someone who is a very creative person, and am eager to hear their thoughts on it as they read through it.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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With great anticipation I am pleased to announce a networking event for people who work in the tech and creative fields in Northeast Wisconsin. Introducing dMorning.

So what is dMorning?

The idea behind dMorning is relatively simple - informal networking before the busy workday starts, with no set rules and no agenda. Since I moved to the Fox Valley of Wisconsin this past summer, I have been looking for something like this, as I work in the Web and I am looking to meet people who work in similar fields in my new home area.

In the past I have hosted a variety of meetups where I used to live in Chicago – some specific and some general – and I have found the latter to be more interesting. A casual gathering of people to talk about what they are working on, sharing stories and bouncing ideas off each other… this is something I have wanted to restart for a while, and why not here? My plan is for this to be a monthly event.

The first dMorning will be on Friday, November 17 at 7:30 am at All Seasons Coffeehouse in Appleton, which is conveniently located off I-41 at Wisconsin Avenue. I only say it goes until 9:30 am as that is likely as long as I will be there. There is no cost for dMorning, you only have to pay for any beverages or food you purchase from this locally-owned business.

What’s in a name?

You may be wondering about the name, dMorning. As I sought out a name for this, I didn’t want to pick something limiting. On the Web site at dMorning.com there are some ideas of what the “d” could stand for.

Hope to see you there!

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Announcements • Business • Mobile Technology • Technology • Thrive • Web Design • Web Development • (0) Comments • Permalink

Whether you are new to Twitter or have been using it for years, having a list of followers has always been, and continues to be, important to the social network. Where all public tweets are readable by all, most people engage with those who they follow and who follow them. This engagement makes using Twitter worthwhile.

Like with anything, quality engagement is better than quantity engagement. This is measured directly by likes and retweets of what you post, as well as replies and conversations with others. Indirectly, it can be measured in traffic to your Web site and offline in, for example, new customers or increased sales.

People often asked me, how do you get followers? “Getting” followers – real human beings, that is – is a process, as ideally you want people to want to follow you. In some cases though, people may simply not be aware of who you are. This is why I present these 3 steps to expand your base of followers. Of course, there are no guarantees your list of followers will balloon overnight, but these are geared towards getting people’s attention to you.

1. Decide who you would like to follow you – This offline strategizing is you thinking about who you would like to follow you. For people who have businesses or are in business, they will relate to this as it is similar to who their target audience or customer or other demographic information is. For some, that is a great place to start, and for others it can be who you would like to read your blog or those who work in the same industry as you.

Write this down – your target followers. Keep this by you as you go through the following steps.

2. Follow those who you want to follow you – Now that you have defined who, look for them, and follow them. Many times when people think of social media engagement, they purely look at it from their own vantage point. However, take a 360-degree approach – would the people who you want to follow you actually want to?

By following them, you are expressing interest in them, and in most cases, letting them know who you are. The hope is they will see you following them, look at your profile and what you have tweeted, and then follow you back.

So how do you find them? By searching – either for specific people or terms, words hashtags – for whatever ways you can think of to find people, businesses, organizations, whomever that you want to follow, and to follow you back.

3. Follow those who follow those you want to follow you – Apologies for the mouthful there… as you are targeting people to follow, why not check out who they follow as well as who follows them? This is a great wat to expand the scope beyond merely searching, as many times potential targets for your following may not come up in a search for a variety of reasons, including their profile not matching what you have been searching on.

Everything in moderation

One consideration to make when you follow people is there are limits imposed by Twitter to the number of people you can follow, and you can read more on these limits on Twitter’s help site. To start, you can follow up to 5,000 people. After that, you need to have more followers in order to follow more that that number. There is a ratio to this, though Twitter does not specifically disclose it. Of course if you hit the limit but want to follow others, you can always unfollow accounts to make room.

Deconstructing Twitter Followers

Wouldn’t it be great to have tons of Twitter followers? But if you think of it from the point-of-view of real life, it’s a similar approach to friends in real life – they are relationships you establish and maintain. Sometimes you are the one initiating it, and this is where following others you want to follow you comes into play.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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After 21 seasons of serving the fans of the NFL’s New England Patriots, GoPats.com announces its retirement, according to its co-founders Mike Maddaloni and Clint Mills.

At the time of its launch in the mid-1990’s, GoPats.com was one of only a handful of Patriots fan sites worldwide. In these early days of the Web, with copyright laws still murky for online content, the site, originally called Patriots Unofficial, focused on original content, including its flagship column, Clint’s Corner. Even when the NFL and the Patriots encouraged fair-use of its logo and branding, the site remained true to its origins, even with the number of fan sites increasing.

The site first launched in “beta” in the fall of 1995, when Mike created one of his first Web sites as a way of learning the emerging Web technologies. Upon showing the Patriots page to Clint – whom he met at work and they became fast friends over the team, as Clint was a second-generation season ticket holder and Mike was a new one – he expressed his dismay that it was not worthy of the team.

Miffed at this, Mike told Clint to put his money where his mouth was and provide content to the site. An extremely loyal and knowledgeable fan of the Pats and all of football, Clint wrote an off-season article on March 13, 1996, and this date is considered the official launch of the site. The eponymous domain name was added in 1997 at Clint’s insistence, trailblazing in the trend of personal Web sites being branded with their own domain name.

From its humble beginnings just prior to the Pats second Super Bowl appearance – and loss – to winning its first in New Orleans in 2002, Clint’s Corner was published in 129 editions. Additionally, guest contributors including Frank Moore, Ralph Ingrassia and others made their mark on the site, all with original content. This made GoPats.com the go-to destination for reporting and opinion on the team long before the term “dynasty” was even considered. The site and his involvement was cited when Clint won the 1998 Patriots Fan of the Year Joseph Mastrangelo Trophy, which was presented to him by team owner Robert Kraft.

A bonus, if you will, of running one of the original fan Web sites to serve Patriots Nation was the engagement with fans, across New England and around the world. This included Pats fans and fans of other teams, and where the occasional exchange out of bounds, most all connections were positive. Sporting GoPats.com t-shirts and a large banner during tailgating and other events, including New Orleans’ Bourbon Street, helped Clint and Mike engage with fans from all corners of the globe.

From a technology point of view, GoPats.com was a groundbreaking media platform. It was a content management system (CMS) and blogging platform long before those terms became mainstream. The site could be updated from home or the parking lot right after the game. Its integrated email list informed hundreds of fans of new content to the site and incorporated leading-edge design and functional features to remain a current platform and offer the ultimate user experience for Patriots Nation.

That was then, and this is now. As time went on and as Mike and Clint went from single guys with plenty of disposable time to family men, it impacted the frequency of publishing and overall updates. A short-lived news blog, Out In The Loop, was added in the mid-2000’s but it didn’t keep up with the fandom landscape, which evolved ahead with more advanced Web sites, mobile apps, social media as well as cross-media business ventures. In recent years the site design was updated to keep it as an archive site, but the demand for knowledge on Bill Parcells “buying the groceries” during the 1996 season waned. Even the above-shown tailgating van is no longer in service, however one of its “PAT VAN” license plates is on display at the official Patriots Hall of Fame at Gillette Stadium.

In its retirement, the domain name GoPats.com will redirect to the very post you are reading now, which lives on Mike’s blog, The Hot Iron, which itself has been publishing for over a decade. Could GoPats.com ever come out of retirement or serve another purpose? Any reasonable offers starting at 7-figures will certainly be considered!

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Announcements • Blogging • Domain Names • Technology • Thrive • Web Design • (2) Comments • Permalink

It is with much enthusiasm that I announce my family and I have relocated to Appleton, Wisconsin. After the last few months of logistical planning, packing, purging, running back and forth with a minivan and U-Hauls and the overall stress that goes with a move, we have finally arrived in northeast Wisconsin in the area known as the Fox Valley.

Some of you are probably asking, why? Why is a Patriots fan moving into the heart of Packerland? Interestingly visiting teams who play in Green Bay stay in Appleton, as I have educated my kids when I pointed out the hotel, telling them, “Tom Brady slept here,” but I digress.

The short answer to why the move? Family, more space and less noise.

With any move, the next logical question is, where are you working? This is an easy question to answer, as I am not changing jobs. Thanks to the magic of working remotely, I am able to do the same job I have had for the last 2 years. Special thanks to the people at this great place to work, including my CTO, Director and colleagues.

As I get settled into my new surroundings, I am planning to get back out there and connect with the local tech community. This aspect of working in technology is something I have always done, and where I may not see people on the job on a day-to-day basis, I hope to make up for it with meeting new friendly faces and learning from others.

When You Move To You Also Move From

As I say hello to Appleton I am also saying goodbye to Chicago, a city I have called home for the last 13 years. The time there was a whirlwind of many highs and lows, where I went from newly married and launching a business to a husband and Dad of 2 amazing kids and working for a well-established and acclaimed organization. The friends and relationships I made over those years in the Windy City are and will remain important to me. Plus, I am still a Cook County taxpayer there as a property owner, so I still have some skin in that game. There are many things I will not miss about Chicago, and that will be the topic of future writing.

An important part of this transition is the focus of my social media engagement. As I still don’t have cable TV or an antenna, the Web and Twitter are still vital sources of news. I have been unfollowing many media outlets and sources of information for Chicago and Illinois as I subscribe to the same for Appleton and Wisconsin. Where I am cutting ties with publications and media outlets in Chicago I am still following many journalists and columnists whose opinion and what they share are of value to me. Again, it’s all about the people.

For now, I will get back to work… both to my job and to unpacking.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Announcements • Strategize • Technology • Thrive • (2) Comments • Permalink