April 2010 Archives

As time passes you learn to appreciate time with family and friends. This weekend my beloved BTHS will have its annual homecoming. My graduation class and others will be honored in the festivities. I volunteered to be a class representative and took part in much of the planning. Working with this disparate group was very rewarding. Our team was spread across the country, with the largest contingency in the Tri-State area. Silver is quite precious indeed, so it is understandable that much detail and angst was required to prepare for this event.

In order help organize the thoughts of the planning committee, I build a wiki using tiki-wiki. The utility of the software was quite good and afforded everyone the opportunity to share information fairly seamlessly. Though much of the wiki activity has waned in final weeks leading up to the end of our project, I would submit that all of the planning has been archived for posterity sake. Perhaps over graduating classes could benefit from our hard work ;-)

Social media played larger role in the preparation for the Silver Reunion as compared to our 20th Reunion. Various classmates became part of our Facebook, LinkedIn and Classmates.com social networks. I would submit that securing this critical mass of people would not have been quite as easy 5yrs prior. I believe snail mail and phone calls were the methods used by our 20yr Reunion class representatives. Hell, we even had a viral video that we posted to YouTube to help with hyping the event.

We have secured our own paparazzi for this event. Basically we did a bit of crowd sourcing.. More on this later.

Tomorrow our school holds it's bi-annual seminar and Dan (black belt) testing. I am humbly honored to participate in the exam. I will be attempting to earn my 4th Dan. It has been three years since my last testing. Needless to say, I have been looking forward to this day for quite awhile. I still remember when I began studying this traditional Korean martial art of Tang Soo Do, roughly 11yrs ago.
My journey has been a blessing, as it has helped me balance humility with achievement. It is unlikely that I will test again in this system, as the cost of the exams at the senior Dan levels are quite expensive. Moreover, I do not believe that I will remain in SE MI. for another four years. I suppose time will tell.

I do expect a very long day, as the seminar begins at noon and will normally run 2.5 - 3hrs. After a 15min recess, the Dan examination commences. I do plan to take some photos and will share them at the usual places.

Tang Soo!

After years of educating people about the virtues of FOSS. The numerous condemnations of proprietary software. Campaigns against Cupertino and Redmond, I have decided to retreat and no longer unfurl the banner of Open Source. In fact, I have decided to purchase an iPhone and have also placed iPad on lay away. Lastly, I have also thought it wise to begin studying the art of SEO. Soon I will toss my hat into the very crowded marketplace of social media consultants.
I am ready to embark on a new era!