Recently a friend moved to Appleton, Wisconsin, the city where I live. Like me he is in the tech industry, so I started forwarding him links to Web sites and other resources in the community to help him get acclimated in his new community. I also logged them and am sharing this list here to a greater audience.

By no means do I believe this is the be-all, end-all of what is out there and going on in Willem Dafoe’s hometown – if I left something out, please leave a comment to this post. I have organized these into community and the tech industry, and they are in no particular order. Though many of these outlets have a social media presence, here I have listed the traditional ways of how to reach them, highlighting their Web sites, email lists and RSS feeds.

Community Resources

All Things Appleton – In the last year or so this site came onto the scene and is dedicated to the finer details of the inner workings of city government you can’t find elsewhere. It is frequently updated and has an email list and RSS feed.

Appleton Post Crescent – The local newspaper is among most all major papers in Wisconsin that are owned by Gannett and fall under the USA Today banner. Where the changes in the newspaper industry are evident in its publications, it does encompass most of what is going on. They offer email lists and RSS feeds, and much content is available without paying for a subscription.

Appleton Magazine – This is a monthly lifestyle magazine covering the greater Fox Valley and features people, dining and entertainment. Much of the content is available on their Web site and it has an RSS feed, and you can pick it up the paper version in stores and restaurants or subscribe by mail for a nominal cost.

GB News Network – GB stands for Green Bay, which is a short 30-minute drive north from Appleton. This is a news and events site for the Green Bay area. You can also subscribe to their weekly email for the latest information leading into the weekend.

Appleton Public Library – The city’s one and only library is in the midst of a metamorphosis, where the current building will be expanded and reimagined, and in the interim the library will be temporarily in a former Best Buy store. Their email list is a great way to keep up with the comings and goings over the next few years and beyond.

Go Valley Kids – As a parent of young kids this Web site is a go-to resource for family-friendly activities in the area. Their Web site lists current activities and events, but what I find the best is their robust archive of evergreen places both indoors and outdoors, especially for those times when you can’t think of what to do with the kiddos. Subscribe to their email newsletter for the latest news and events plus they have recently launched a podcast.

Fox Cities Magazine – It’s nice that there’s more than one monthly lifestyle magazine in the area, and this is another. You can read entertainment and activities listings on their Web site, though their RSS feed is infrequently published to You can also pick up the paper version at restaurants and stores or subscribe by mail for a low cost.

Appleton Downtown, Inc. – The business association for the downtown/College Avenue area, their site offers events and business profiles for that area. In addition to their Web site they offer an email newsletter and RSS feed.

Fox Cities Chamber of Commerce – This is the largest Chamber in the area and features events plus business listings (hint: restaurants are a business!) in the area.

Appleton Historical Society – If you want to dive deeper into the history of the city, this is a place to visit. What looks like an old house has a wealth of displays and photos of the city over the years and hosts events on various aspects of that history.

History Museum at the Castle – Formerly a Masonic temple (thus the name “castle”), the museum has a mix of historic displays of the area as well as traveling exhibits. A must-see is the permanent exhibit on Harry Houdini, who lived in Appleton in his younger years, and tells the secrets of many of his magic tricks.

TGVG – The Greater Valley Guide – This printed publication and Web site is primarily focused around sports activities but also includes a variety of other kid-related events and things to do around the area. They offer separate RSS feeds for their blog and events.

The Wheeler Report – This is a Web site that aggregates news stories from across the state of Wisconsin and is centered on state and local government. They used to have an email newsletter but stopped it for some reason, but this is a site to bookmark and visit daily.

Mile of Music – As the photo above mentions to singing, it’s likely referring to the beginning of August for this week-long music festival. Artists from around the country and the world converge on Appleton for this music festival which some compare to the SXSW music festival in Austin, Texas. They offer a mobile app during the festival to set your entertainment schedule.

Flag Lowering Orders – A little outside from the others here... but if you have seen a flag at half-staff around Dairyland and wondered why, subscribe to the email and text alerts and be in the know. Alerts cover all orders that pertain to the state, including from the federal level. This is useful as Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers seems to issue an order almost weekly if not more often.

Tech Industry Resources

Insight on Business Magazine – This is a monthly business magazine that covers all business in Northeast Wisconsin. You can subscribe to its print version, read online and subscribe to their email newsletter.

IOM – A sibling publication of Insight on Business, it focuses on – you guessed it – manufacturing in the area. As well, you can subscribe to its print version, read online and subscribe to their email newsletter.

BizTimes – Out of Milwaukee, a state-wide business magazine that also covers news from the Appleton area. They offer a paid subscription to their paid version, free email newsletters and a subscription to their Web site.

New North – This is an economic development organization focused on Northeast Wisconsin. They offer an email newsletter and have a wealth of resources on their Web site, including a section targeting people to move to the area.

NEW Digital Alliance – This organization focuses on the technology sector in the area. They offer a monthly email newsletter and listing of tech-centered events in the area.

Women In Technology Wisconsin Inc. – Started locally, WIT now has chapters statewide and offers live and virtual events throughout the state and has an email list. Though the organization started to foster the community of women in the tech sector, men are also welcome at their quality events.

Meetups in NEW – Here you can find local tech events on the global event listing platform.

WisBusiness – There is a wealth of business news and information on this statewide site, featuring an email list, podcasts and an RSS feed.

Greater Green Bay Chamber – The Green Bay area has a vibrant tech sector, and the Chamber there offers a number of events there, especially at their own co-working incubator, UrbanHub.

Start In Northeast Wisconsin – Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, WEDC, is the state’s economic development agency and this section of their site lists some events in the area. They also offer an RSS feed.

Fox Cities Founders – This is a group consisting of tech founders in the Fox Valley. You must be either referred or apply to be in it.

Editors Note: Modified on 4/7/2022 to add Fox Cities Founders - thanks for letting me know Andrew!

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

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With no apologies to The Righteous Brothers, I may have lost that learning feelin’, I want to bring it back but I am conflicted as to how I want to bring it back.

Throughout the lockdowns, people around the world were doing new and different things, and one of them was online learning. Some of it was forced, namely when schools closed their doors and moved to virtual. Then there were people like myself, who purposely sought out online learning. Where this was a global movement of sorts, it didn’t start out that way for me, as I would like to share before I go on.

At First, Forced Into It

My first online course was not by choice. I was signed up to take Certified ScrumMaster training in mid-April, 2020 in person. The course was a 2-day program offered at a hotel outside of Milwaukee, and I was planning to stay the night there to get the most out of it.

Without needing to completely restate that painful time, I was later informed the class was going to be offered online instead. Really? How? You couldn’t take any Scrum classes online up to that point, as they were highly engaging with whiteboards and Post-it notes all over the walls. To compound things the company that offered the course wouldn’t allow me to postpone it and said I (ok, my employer) would lose the registration fee if I didn’t show up virtually. As I wrote about shortly after I took the course and passed the exam to be a Certified ScrumMaster I ended up having a great instructor, great classmates and it turned out to be a great overall experience.

So The Graduations Hang On The Wall

After that first class, it felt like everywhere I turned there were online courses being offered – both at work and from learning platforms for free or reduced prices. Some of these platforms offered free weekends, who couldn’t pass that up? As it was alluring I took many courses online, certainly many more than I had in the past.

At the conclusion of most classes, you could download a certificate of completion in PDF format. Where I knew many people who simply ignored them, I collected them like Happy Gilmore did large checks and printed them out, hanging them inside the cabinet doors of my work desk. As the doors only held 6 certs, I would replace older ones with newer ones, keeping the “major” ones up all the time and replacing them all at the end of the year. The picture above is of the certs I just took down that I earned in 2021.

Is The Feelin’ As Intense Now?

Now we are a month into 2022 as I write this, entering year 3 of restrictions that vary depending on where you are in the world. As I worked from home years before it was, um, trendy, my situation is different, coupled with where I live in Northeast Wisconsin. In short, I am out more than shut-in, have more options and with that normalcy I am not seeking out other things to keep me occupied. Towards the end of 2021 I didn’t end up taking many online courses.

When I took down the above-pictured certs, I started thinking more about learning in general, part of which was the catalyst for me writing what you are reading right now. To try to get some of that learning feelin’ back, I recently took a couple of courses offered on LinkedIn Learning. One was on having a more positive workweek, the other on NFTs. As you may guess, I have the certificates from these hanging on the inside of my desk cabinet doors.

Planning To Bring Back The Feelin’

Even with the few nuggets I learned from those 2 most recent courses I tool, they were not really fulfilling to me. Why? I pondered this and realized there was nothing really driving me to take them. I scrolled through the list of courses on LinkedIn Learning and said, hey, this may be interesting. Early on, motivations like maintaining a shrunken amygdala drove me to take courses. Now I need more than them being a simple prop to occupy my time.

So I am working on a plan. The elements of the plan will include what I “need” to learn and what I “want” to learn.

For what I need, it will include video presentations and books on Scrum, as I need to complete education hours in order to maintain my certification. There is also the software and services I will be using in my work to either get ahead on or for just-in-time training.

For what I want, a few are obvious, but I need to put more time into what else I will take. I want to learn more about livestreaming in general, and specifically around the software and hardware needed to take the basics I know to the next level. I also want to learn more about soccer. As a relatively astute swim Dad, I am lacking in soccer, a sport one of my kiddos has switched to and is doing amazingly well at. However I don’t always see where there’s an offsides on the field, and don’t know a lot of the rules and strategy on the sport. Beyond these 2, I am not sure if I want to take on a new hobby or interest, and am open to suggestions from anyone out there in the peanut gallery.

Deconstructing That Learning Feelin’

We should always be learning ... something, whether in formal courses or from real-life experiences. For the former, there’s an investment required, and with any investment it must be done wisely. Even with different motivations and time schedules, I am excited on bringing back that learning feelin’ and want to make sure I approach it with a purpose-driven plan I have the ability to complete. Do you agree?

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

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I wonder how often domain names are taught at the university level.

This thought was in the back of my mind as I developed and gave a guest lecture in the Fall of 2020 to students of Dr. Sara Steffes Hanses at the University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh on consulting. I have had the honor to present to her classes in the past to share my wisdom and lessons learned over the years as a consultant – and how I think as a consultant even when I work for a firm. Where this lecture was virtual, my plan was to deliver it with the same enthusiasm as I have in the past.

The class I gave the guest lecture to is part of a program called Interactive Web Management, or IWM. It is a unique hybrid of business, technology, marketing and journalism, and students in the IWM program get a well-rounded education and experience across all that encompasses a Web site today. Especially in today’s world of hyper-specialization I see this program as a great way to offer the big picture, and allow graduates to choose their specialty or specialties.

Timing for my class was around the first meeting students have with their “clients,” non-profit or university organizations for whom they will consult to, which is the basis of their semester work. As I have given this guest lecture before, there are many elements that are continued. That being said, I fully re-evaluate it based on my own experience and the marketplace since the last lecture.

This is also why I introduced “extras” a few years ago – topics that were not core to the lecture but related and important nonetheless. For one of my extras this time, I chose domain names. If you have read anything else I have written here at The Hot Iron, you know I work a lot with domain names and have opinions and advice on them. I decided to cover domain names as an “extra” as many may have some familiarity with them, but not all aspects.

Two slides were dedicated to domain names, as you can see from the presentation linked and embedded. Where the bullet points were brief, there was a lot of substance I spoke to. As an introduction, I reaffirmed likely to all what a domain name is and how you can use it. I also talked about the selection of a name, giving an example of how one friend and former client, Foresight Childproofing, came up with their primary domain name, ChildProofHome.com. I then concluded this with talking about the various top-level domains, or TLDs, available, and recommended people have a great experience with working with domain names at Name.com.

As the first slide focused on registering a new, available domain name, I could have stopped there and felt good about the knowledge I shared. However I decided to go deeper and explore with them the world of the domain name aftermarket – when a domain name you desire is already registered and is available for registration at a premium price from a broker. I feel if people know very little about domain names in general, they are completely clueless about the aftermarket. Here I described what it is, and shared stories of how I acquired domain names from the aftermarket for clients in the past. I also recommended they explore DomainMarket.com, a larger and reputable marketplace.

I have shared the slides to my guest lecture here for all to review and “leverage” for their own use on SlideShare, whether for work, academia or personal use.

Deconstructing Educating on Domain Names

There’s no time like the present for a teaching moment. As a guest lecturer, it is your role to contribute something unique to the class – whether it’s a unique topic or point-of-view. Bringing a heightened awareness of domain names to this class was my way of offering both. Did it resonate with the students? I can’t say for sure, as most had their cameras off.

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

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One thing that drove me to work on the Web, gladly leaving behind a career of mainframe and client-server systems behind me, was the ability to create highly visible applications and projects that could be easily shared and used by the masses. Armed with this skillset, it was easy for me to imagine a system from any random idea that came to mind. If I had the proverbial nickel for every idea I had, I would be too busy sunning myself on a tropical beach to be writing what I am right now.

Along the way I actually executed on some of my project ideas, one being the very blog you are reading. The others, well, came to an unfortunate but necessary demise. Though I have written about some of these in the past, I haven’t brought them together until now, in My Project Graveyard. Inspired by similar collections by others, I am sharing projects that started with good intentions, and ended for various reasons.

Phenom – This was my personal Web site and the first I created using a domain name. Though I created my first personal Web site as early as 1993, it was using the domain name of the combined dial-up Internet / shared Web hosting providers. In 1996, I registered my first domain name – monehp.com. Why that? It is “phenom” spelled backwards. Again you are likely asking, why that? I sent out an email to the few dozen people I knew who had email back then asking them to help suggest a domain name for me. Two people came up with this one – my license plate on my car then was PHENOM, which was a take on my college radio show, the Madman Phenomenon, from the late 1980’s. Why did I call my radio show that? Now that I don’t completely remember.

This site was also my first development sandbox where I tried several ideas, including a surfing Web site where my friend RJ provided the content (trust me, I am no surfer!). It was also the first home of what became GoPats.com. The Wayback Machine at archive.org has the oldest record of what was on the site going back to 1997. I maintained this site until better homes for my projects came along. I kept it as a separate site for about 10 years, then I set the domain name, which I still own, to redirect here to The Hot Iron.

GoPats.com – This site, as mentioned above, started as a sub-site of Phenom, that I initially called it Patriots Unofficial. It then took on a life of its own within a year with its own domain name (complete credit to my friend Clint, who wrote a weekly column for the site, for the idea to register it) and went on for another 21 years, until it was “retired” which means the site wasn’t updated for years and it was time to move on. During its run not only did it serve Patriots fans but myself as well as it was a showcase of the type of Web development work I could do.

I wrote a fairly complete story about GoPats.com a few years ago and the domain name now redirects to that blog post.

Boston Jaycees – This was the first Web site I built for a greater cause. I got involved with the Jaycees (also known as Junior Chamber outside of the US) and, recognizing they didn’t have a Web site, I offered to build one. It was also the first time I worked with someone who is now referred to as a digital marketing professional; it was another Jaycees member who worked for an ad agency who was developing a digital practice.

The site evolved both as my technical skills did, along with higher user expectations as more people were using the Web. What started as a “static” site – one that had to be hand-coded – evolved to one “dynamic” – one that had what is now called a content management system or CMS. A lot of the functionality was similar to what I built for GoPats.com, and often I would design elements to be used across many of my sites. At the point I became president of the chapter, I handed the reigns of the site to another emerging digital marketing guru John Wall, who discontinued the paper newsletter we had and evolved the Web site even more.

Within a few years of leaving the organization and the Boston area, the site went dark as the chapter ceased operations. For a time I “rescued” the domain name but eventually I dropped it. For another time it was pointing to the last Jaycees chapter in Massachusetts, but now it is once again available for registration. You can see the last version of the Boston Jaycees Web site as I had built it here.

Control – In the course of running my former Web consulting business, I was tracking more and more information, from domain names to project elements to billable time and everything else I could possibly track. I was fairly organized with multiple spreadsheets, but over time they became too much to manage. I then decided to build an application to manage it all, and I aptly called it Control.

I don’t want to brag too much, but I was able to easily manage and control all of items I needed to with this platform. I even impressed myself when I brought on a bookkeeper at one point, and with creating a few simple reports she was able to generate invoices rather easily using the system. When I decided to shutter the business and return to the working world, this application was shut down as well.

tasklogr – When I first heard of Twitter I wasn’t immediately drawn to using it, but the idea of a short-messaging system did inspire me in how I keep track of bits of information, as I wrote about back in the day. That inspiration led to me creating tasklogr, a system of capturing short messages. The interface to enter these messages was Web pages – one that was a top bar frame on my browser’s home page, and another that would fit nicely on a mobile device. Notes I entered were captured within my Control system, and from there I could manage a straight task list or convert to other actionable information for my business.

This solution served me well for a while, but eventually I found other note-taking apps like BugMe that I still use to this day.

GoPats.com Report – Bitten by the podcasting bug, I decided I wanted to create one. But about what? That question seemed to be the only thing I should be concerned with creating a podcast. Little did I know how wrong I would be.

I came up with the idea for a podcast on the New England Patriots, an audio companion to GoPats.com. As both my own and my friend Clint’s activity on the site had been waning, I thought this would be a good way to breathe life into it. There I go thinking again. The podcast lasted exactly 1 episode. In short, it took too much work for me to edit and produce it, and in the end wasn’t something I was interested in doing on a regular basis.

Flagship CMS – As I mentioned earlier, I was developing code for GoPats.com and the Boston Jaycees Web site, and in some cases leveraging code from one for the other. This came in handy as I grew my Web consulting business and I used this code as the foundation for the CMS for client sites. This worked well for many years, and I eventually gave these tools a name – Flagship CMS. This was solely an internal name and I never really developed it as a branded product. The timing of the name was actually at the tail-end of using it as I was pivoting to commercial CMS applications for sites. This decision was based on many factors, including the proliferation of such tools in addition to reevaluating where I should focus my time on. Eventually all of the sites running Flagship CMS were taken over by others firms who deployed their own technical solution to the Web sites, which coincided with the winding down of my former business.

Looptopia Memories – In 2007 and 2008 a weekend arts festival in the Chicago Loop called Looptopia took place. At the time I was living in the Loop and decided to create a Web site about it, featuring photos and videos from the event. All of that content was uploaded to Flickr, with whom I have since deleted my account. Where I kept the Web site around for a few years I didn’t update it much. The last state of Looptopia Memories can be seen here.

sourcegate – As any good technician should I keep notes of code, services, procedures, etc. that I have used or think I would use at some point. And lots of them. Like any burgeoning collection of information, it needs to be managed to be effective. After several systems didn’t quite do the job I decided to try a public blog, where each item would be its own post. That way I would not only be curating the information but sharing it with the greater community. Eventually I decided to shutdown this additional blog as I wasn’t actually referencing much of the information I was posting. An early version of this tech tips blog can be seen here.

What’s interesting is the domain name I gave the site – sourcegate.com. I acquired the domain name several years after I worked for SourceGate Systems, a dot-com start-up in the Boston area. I had placed the name with a backorder domain name system and eventually the name was available and I was able to register it. At this point I have owned the domain name longer than the company was in existence, and certainly longer than the six months, five days I worked there.

psURL – This one isn’t as much a site demise as one reimagined. I decided to build my own short URL service, one where I could take a ginormous URL and have a short one that I could easily pass along in a message or even speak it for someone to easily remember and access. For example, https://psurl.com/mike links you to a longer URL for a PDF of my resume.

Using Flagship CMS as a base, I built my own system. As an addon I built the ability for a short URL to display a Web page with a text message on it. There were similar services out there like this that were inspired by the desire to workaround the then-120 character limit of a tweet on Twitter. Several years after I built this I found YOURLS an open source short URL application, and decided to move to that. Where I liked the Twitter workaround, I didn’t really use it much, and in its place I gained a system I didn’t have to maintain much at all.

dMorning – This is one that is out there, lost, wandering around the streets of northeast Wisconsin. After moving here a few years ago and not finding a tech/creative networking venue, I decided to create one, and called it dMorning. Well, I tried to at least. For some reason it never took off, and I tried twice to do so. The Web site is still out there in hopes that a third time is the charm. Though it will have to wait until in-person network resumes in general. What does the name mean you ask? Look at the dMorning site to find out.

Domain Names – Ah, domain names. I never kept a log of all of the domain names I no longer own. Most of them I simply dropped by not renewing them, and a few I sold off over the years. I would likely have to irritate my friends at Name.com for a history of all of the domain names I once registered with them. The fact that I don’t have that exhaustive list is probably a good thing, as I am guessing it would be rather long and a reminder of many, many more fleeting ideas.

Deconstructing My Project Graveyard

There’s a saying in business today to “fail fast” whereby we move on quickly from something that different work. Where I basically agree with this, we must also recognize the good and bad from these failings or things we simply decided to no longer do. Burying them in a project graveyard is a good way to acknowledge them, and move on to the next big thing.

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

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With the New Year upon us, a lot of annual thoughts are swirling through my head, and one of them is regarding professional training. Last year I became a Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) through the Scrum Alliance. As I am thinking of what to take to continue my Scrum training, I am also thinking of where to take it, as the world of Scrum training changed in 2020.

In a departure from my typical posts of offering advice, this time I am seeking it. Please read on and I welcome your thoughts on my training journey.

That Was Then

My decision on the CSM course I did take was relatively straightforward. In discussion with colleagues I was advised the courses and certification from the Scrum Alliance were the most recognized. The other factor was location – I chose the closest course to me, and that was one being offered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I signed up for the April course in February, not knowing what was coming down the pike.

Shortly after the state shutdown order happened in Wisconsin, I got an email from the vendor offering the course that it would still be happening, and they would provide more details. As the date of course drew closer on the horizon, I was concerned with taking what could be a virtual course – no Scrum training to that point was offered online and was always in-person, and that was my preference. Several emails to the vendor went unanswered until I finally got a terse response – the course would be offered virtually, and as it was within the no-refund cancellation window I had no option to change it whatsoever. Cancellation windows were not a consideration when I signed up for it – I was going to take it no matter what, and that included driving the hour from home to the venue.

In the end, it was a great course. The instructor Mike Stuedemann of agilityIRL (a firm separate from the vendor) was very knowledgeable and ran a great virtual 2-day session. The class was composed mostly of people from Wisconsin, plus one from New York and another from Paris, France, which added nicely to the mix. I was well armed to take the certification exam, which I passed and gained the CSM title. Though my preference was still to take the course in a live setting, this was a perfect Plan B.

This is Now

Today most all Scrum training courses continue to be offered virtually. As well, my knowledge of the Scrum community has broadened since I became a member of it, and have learned of other organizations offering the courses, all virtually. Needless to say this opens up a whole potential for taking courses, including ones from Scrum Inc. taught by none other than Dr. Jeff Sutherland, the co-creator of Scrum.

How to Proceed?

With all of these opportunities, I am curious how to proceed. Should I continue taking courses through Scrum Alliance? I have no issues per se with the training I received or the organization as a whole. Or should I look to other organizations that offer the training, like Sutherland’s Scrum Inc. or Scrum.org, a firm led by Ken Schwaber, the other co-creator of Scrum? There are also other firms offering courses and certifications as well.

Does continuing with one firm make more sense? Is looking to other firms a good or bad thing? Are there approaches to the instruction of one better than the other, overall or course-by-course?

The answers to these questions I don’t have, and I am putting this out to the greater community for advice. Where I have seen comparisons of various firms and their courses, I am also interested in the experience of people who have first-hand knowledge.

I welcome your thoughts here in the comments of this blog post, and I thank you in advance.

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

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