Dive into the archives.
- What’s So Great About Your Comfort Zone?
This week is an exciting one for me and my family. On Sunday, July 4th, Independence Day, we are driving out of Tallahassee, FL, with our belongings in a U-Haul trailer to begin the three-and-a-half-day journey across the country to our new residence in San Francisco. That amazing, unique city is where I grew up, where my wife and I lived for the first 3 years of our marriage, where my eldest daughter was born, and where our hearts are. Although we spent many years in SF Bay Area, we have not lived within the city limits for years, and we are anxiously anticipating our return.
In some ways the City by the Bay could be misinterpreted as our “comfort zone”, the place we feel the most at ease and safe. Yet anyone who knows us and knows our relationship with the city would make the distinction that we seldom ever make the choice for what is safe.
In the McDaniel philosophy of living, safe is equivalent to boring. Safe is for those who are satisfied with the status quo and have little or no desire to experience the adventure that is an intricate element of the potential within every breath we take. Safe may be fine for others, but it reeks of stagnancy, boredom and insufficiency to me and my family.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure we have our own comfort zones, and this writing is not an attempt to put our approach to life on a pedestal high above your own. It is, however, rich with the hope that by sharing our story you too might be inspired to examine your comfort zone and maybe, just maybe, step outside of it to experience all that you have been missing.
- My Birthday Thanks and Wish For You [Video]
Today – May 7th – is my birthday. Here’s a video with a small thank you to all my friends for this past year, and my birthday wish for each and every one of you.
- All 550+ Links I Tweeted This Week (3/13 – 19)
Here again is my weekly list of all the links I tweeted in the past week for those who may have missed some or are looking for some weekend reading. Everything from social media, design, SEO and technology can be found here, so have at it! If you would like to receive these weekly lists in your RSS reader or in your email inbox, please sign up to subscribe HERE or fill in the simple form in the top right of this page. If you find this list useful, please leave a comment so I can know it’s worthwhile to continue the weekly postings. Enjoy!
- Should Social Media Relationship Rules Be Different Than Real Life?
My answer is no. But then, that’s just me. I truly believe you are free to answer differently, and even better, we can co-exist with our differences of opinion and practices. The world is full of people with distinctly differing opinions, belief systems, methodologies and more, and while this can sometimes cause tension, anger and even war, the human race is still here. I see that as proof that we don’t have to all believe and live our lives in exactly the same way in order for society to continue moving forward, online or off. In fact, I believe that society benefits from our differences, as long as we allow and even embrace each other’s freedom to be an individual.
There. I said it. You know where I stand and hopefully have an idea how you personally would answer the question in the title of this post. Now why am I asking it?
- Pro Bono and Free Services: Is It Possible To Give Too Much?
Last Thursday I was taking part in a weekly discussion among designers called DCTH (Design Community Twitter Hours) and this question came up: When do you draw the line between pro-bono & just helping for free? A very interesting discussion followed and it got me thinking about my own experience with offering my design services pro bono or for free. In this post I want to share some of those experiences with you and how they have influenced my business approach as well as the impact this has had when I began applying it to my social media interaction.
- Don’t Let Your Bad Attitude Or Ethics Ruin It For The Rest Of Us!
The other night my wife and I went to our eldest daughter’s high school basketball game to cheer her on. We took our regular spot up at the top of the bleachers so we could lean back against the wall rather than slouching on the hard wood for the entire game. As we settled in, we noticed a few parents from the other team had the same idea and were setting up camp about 15 feet away. We commenced with the standard smile and nod acknowledgements and then turned our attention to the beginning of the contest. What transpired over the next hour inspired a range of emotions, from anger to frustration to disappointment. And I’m not talking about what happened on the court.
- State of the bkmacdaddy designs Blog (After A Whirlwind Week)
Wow! Where did this last week go?!?
I just wanted to write a quick update to let those of you who are wondering know that I have NOT abandoned this blog. It has been a CRAZY week for me and something had to give. I even tweeted less than normal!
Rest assured knowing that I plan to return to my normal 2-3 posts per week within the next couple of days. Here’s a quick rundown of where we’ve been and what’s coming up…
- 190+ Links For October 09: Freelance, Web Design, Social Media and SEO!
One of the primary services I try to provide on Twitter is a seemingly endless supply of resource and news links in subjects that I am interested in. Primarily these include freelancing, web and graphic design, social media and search engine optimization (SEO). So today I have gathered some of the top links i have shared over the past month and organized them for you to bookmark and sort through at your leisure.
- I Ain’t No Followback Girl (or Boy)
Just the other day I saw this tweet in my @replies column on Tweetdeck. I have to admit that right at first I was a little angry, offended and irritated. Not because this person chose to stop following me, but because they thought it was necessary to make a public statement about it. It felt a little bit like an attack on me and all because I had not automatically followed this person back after they followed me. Of course, in a matter of seconds my emotions came back to reality and I replied with an apology, explaining that I was weeks behind on going through people’s profiles to determine if I was going to follow them. I have explained my process in further detail in a previous post, but in a nutshell it goes like this: whenever I have time I go through the list of people who are following me and check out their profiles, looking at their bio, background, avatar and recent tweets. If it seems we have something in common, or they seem funny or engaging or interesting in some other way, then I will follow them back. But I don’t automatically follow people simply because they chose to follow me.
I ain’t no followback boy.
- Google Wave: Interviews of Real People’s 1st Impressions (Not “Experts”)!
Yes, I was one of the lucky few who happened to know someone who was willing to send me an invite to preview Google Wave last week. You can read more about my experience and thoughts in an article I just wrote for Thoughtpick.com which will be published shortly (check back later today for the direct link). Once I added a few contacts I decided it would be a cool way to test out the collaborative functionality of Wave by conducting a small interview asking my contacts about their first impressions of the new technology. More about the process and experience is in the Thoughtpick article, but I wanted to share the interview transcripts here with you. Each of the users had some similar and some unique contributions, so I think you will find it beneficial as we all voyeuristically anticipate the widespread release of this phenomenal new tool, platform or whatever you want to call it.
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