Work, Peace and Nerdiness

Rule #1 to Blogging Success: Never stop blogging.

Whoops.

To the fans I earned off the strength of this site, I'm sorry. It's been way too long since I've updated. While I know it's too late to win you back, and I'm not sure I'm in a place where I want to put as much effort into this site as I used to, I still wanted to at least explain where I've been since I supposedly fell off the face of the Earth.


I've been concentrating on work

This site was meant to act as a quasi-portfolio for me. As a student coming out of school, I felt like I needed something to demonstrate my understanding of the business and my ability to succeed. Ultimately, it worked. When interview time came at 58Ninety, this was one of the resources they used to judge me and it worked in my favour. I've been with 58Ninety since April 2010.

In the last year-and-a-half, I've grown tremendously as an interactive advertising industry professional. I was promoted to Client Engagement Manager a few months ago, and along the way I've had a chance to refine my skills in account management, project management, new business development, content entry, information architecture and most recently, strategic planning. I've also been fortunate enough to work with an amazing team that have helped me grow and made the experience enjoyable. I hope that I'm leaving as positive an impact on the rest of the team as they have on me. I'm forever thankful to 58Ninety for the opportunity they've given me and I'll continue to do my best to get better to the benefit of everyone around.

With that said, maintaining this blog fell on the priority list. I'm proving my worth every day with the work I contribute to 58Ninety and the experience I gain during that process. Those will hold more weight to my overall worth than my writings about "ad campaign X" ever could.


I've been concentrating on In Third Person

What was once a passion project has grown much bigger than I could have ever imagined. Ever since In Third Person was featured on the Wordpress.com home page, the trajectory of that site changed dramatically. That event affected In Third Person in two ways:

Short-Term Win: It brought thousands of new readers to my site for a few days

Long-Term Win: It significantly improved my placement in the Google search rankings

Recognizing the opportunity at hand, I put in the extra effort to building on that success, which has paid off so far. What was once a pet project that got 100 visits a month if I was lucky has grown to a site that serves thousands of monthly visitors. Though it may not tie into interactive advertising in terms of subject matter, you could make a strong case for In Third Person being a stronger 'portfolio piece' than this site ever was. It's still hard for me to believe that the site gets that many eyes on it and that I've gained loyal fans around the world who care about my perspective on video games.

The best part of this experience is that In Third Person has never felt like work. I was doing this for for fun a year before this success, and I would have continued writing for it regardless of the outcome. As long as it's still fun, I'll keep regularly updating it.


I've been concentrating on life

Much of my adult life to-date has been spent working assorted part-time jobs to pay the bills. I've worked a ton of nights and weekends making close to minimum wage, and because of that, I had to make sacrifices to other parts of my life. I understood that these were the steps I needed to take to get to the next level, but they're tough steps to take.

Now that I'm working a mostly 9-5 gig, that opens up things that many people take for granted, such as evenings, weekends and holidays. There's a life outside of work, too, and now I have more opportunities to enjoy that. The most exciting thing lined up for is a trip to England with my girlfriend Steff. I've never really had the opportunity in my life to travel for the sake of traveling up until now, so this trip is going to be special for all sorts of reasons.

That's where I'm at. Life is good, and I'm hoping life is going well for you, too. Thank you for still checking this page out after all of this time. I'm still not sure where to take this site from here, but I'll at least check in more than once a year. If you'd like to follow my more frequent works, check out In Third Person.

READ MORE

Do You Enjoy The Go?

Image from Brackiswater

(I'm going to try and write this with as few toilet jokes as possible)

If you're looking for your first or next corporate blogging gig, Charmin might have the job for you. Well, Charmin is looking for people to handle their business while you "handle your business" (sorry, I couldn't help it). They're looking for 5 bloggers to staff Times Square bathrooms and blog about it. Tryouts for this position are at the New York Hilton at 53rd Street and 6th Avenue. If you're planning on doing it, don't forget to bring your resume, a photo as well as an explanation for why you "enjoy the go".

As bizarre as this may seem, I think it would be hilarious to have this on your resume. It also pays handsomely. At $10,000 for 5 weeks of work, that's almost an insane amount of money to for the work they're asking you to do. If you're planning on going for this, good luck!


Original story from Ad Age

READ MORE

The End of Blogger Payola

Image from Taxpayers Against Fraud

Remember the old days of radio payola? Or heck, even the more recent days of radio payola? To this day, people still question on a regular basis the legitimacy of the songs they hear on the radio. Having worked in the radio business for a number of years, I can't say I've personally seen it happen, but heard the skeptics on a regular basis. While I haven't heard the same type of criticism and cynicism aimed towards bloggers, the Federal Trade Commission nonetheless have taken major steps towards curbing blogger Payola.

Is it too late for me to tell you how AMAZING the Sham-Wow is? I'll be right back, right after I...make a deposit :P

All jokes aside, Ad Age does a pretty good job outlining the consequences and reasoning for the Federal Trade Commission to crack down on bloggers getting paid to say nice things about products or services without full disclosure. At $11,000 per violation, that's a whole lot of money to lose as an individual blogger. However, is that enough to curb a major corporation from rolling the dice?

Nevertheless, I think it's a good move on the FTC is taking steps to curbing such shady tactics online.

READ MORE

Leaders of the New Gets Recognized

This really caught me by surprise. My brother was Google searching our family name when he found this article from Marketing And Advertising Internships.com about my website and Leaders of the New.

One word: "Awesome!"

Marketing and Advertising Internships is a great resource for students looking for an internship or employers looking for the best new talent to join their team. It's definitely worth your time.

As I've said since the beginning of Leaders of the New, my hope for the initiative was to help fellow fresh advertising and marketing professionals get their name out there. This is a good start.

Thank you to Marketing And Advertising Internships.com for the shout out. Much appreciated.

READ MORE

Perez Makes Jerk Comments About Michael Jackson, Everyone Gets Mad

Image originally from perezhilton.com

While the world still wasn't sure of the fate of Michael Jackson, Perez Hilton of celebrity blogging and more recently, getting punched in the face fame, was quick to judge the early reports of MJ's condition and...I'll just let you read what he had to say.

The original post:

We knew something like this would happen!!

Michael Jackson was taken by ambulance from his Holmby Hills home to a nearby Los Angeles hospital on Thursday afternoon!!

Supposedly, the singer went into cardiac arrest and the paramedics had to administer CPR!!!

His mother is even on the way to visit him!!!

We are dubious!!

Jacko pulled a similar stunt when he was getting ready for his big HBO special in '95 when he "collapsed" at rehearsal!

He was dragging his heels on that just like his upcoming 50 date London residency at the 02 Arena, of which he already postponed the first few dates!!!

Either he's lying or making himself sick, but we're curious to see if he's able to go on!!!

Get your money back, ticket holders!!!!

If you look for it now (which you can read here) it's been edited with no acknowledgement of being edited. As someone who just got punched in the face for being insensitive, this type of commentary really didn't help his cause for the world to feel bad for him. Even though he soon edited the post, the message of the original entry wasn't let go by the readers of his site, lashing out with a ton of negativity towards him.

Here's just a sampling of the almost 300 hateful comments they had to say on his blog:

What if he's dying?

Seriously, I sort of get your point, but atleast wait with saying stuff like that until we know what the hell is going on…

- Shuyinda

I thought maybe you would have turned over a new leaf after all the negativity directed at you for your recent idiocy, but it appears as you are just the same old fat idiot. Making fun of someone that has had a serious medical emergency.

You are not worthy of being a human being…good thing you look like a pig, cause in the pen is the only place you will be accepted soon.

- KCP1967

Perez, for Christ sake, if he suffered cardiac arrest it means his heart stopped beating. If someone has a cardiac arrest and doctors don't administer whatever needed to restart the heart beating again, the person is DEAD.
My father had a heart arrest, the doctors worked and worked on resuscitation and brought him back to life. Next day in the hospital bed he looked better, and suddenly his heart arrested again, the line on the heart monitor went flat, and the doctors worked and worked on him, but he was dead.

- soccer mom

What happened to your original post on him Perez?!? You know, the one where you were "dubious" and thought he was faking this to get out of his concert tickets? The one where you told ticket holders to get their $$ back? It was mysteriously edited after you posted that he DIED.

YOU COWARD!!! I hope you feel disgusted and ashamed of yourself, you deserve nothing less.

- LOLA BB

What should have Perez done? Well first, not jump to conclusions. He made some very insesitive comments that angered many people, and they all called for him to edit what he said. Second, he shouldn't have tried to edit his post without any sort of apology or acknowledgement that it was edited. You can't sweep anything under the rug on the Internet, and for Perez to think all he had to do was edit the original post and act like nothing happened was really shady and unprofessional.

Once you've gone that far in, I think the only thing left for him to do is to clearly state that he edited the post and apologize for the original comments. He has yet to make it clear that he edited what he said and I don't expect him to now.

I know he's a celebrity tabloid style blogger, but he went too far this time. And the lack of any acknowledgement of his editing makes it even shadier. I hope we as bloggers and posters on the Internet can learn a lesson from this.

READ MORE

PS22 Chorus = Coolest Choir Ever?

Last night, I saw the PS22 Chorus rendition of "Eye of the Tiger" on CNN and thought, "Wow! This is cool! I wish I had a music class as cool as this!" Today, I check into YouTube and their rendition of Lady Gaga's "Just Dance" is currently the second-most popular video on YouTube. They've made fans out of Perez Hilton, Tori Amos, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and more. And the PS22 isn't some special music school...just an ever-changing group of grade 5 NYC public school kids.

I love this whole initiative primarily for two reasons:

1) The implementation of more "popular" and "contemporary" music into its curriculum and

2) The leveraging of social media such as the PS22 Chorus blog and YouTube videos to not only keep the kids interested, but spread the word about what it is they're doing.

Personally, I've had a very weird and informal path discovering, learning and creating music. Little to none of which occured in school. A lot of that unsatisfactory feeling towards my school music experience came from not being able to sing and learn the songs we wanted to learn. It was always the by-the-book kiddie stuff or music we students couldn't connect with.

Why not work some work some "cooler" music into the curriculum?

I know school will never be the place for choirs to sing Crank That by Soulja Boy Tell 'Em, but is there any less musical merit in a Miley Cyrus song? A Fleetwood Mac song? Heck, "Eye of the Tiger" is almost 30 years old, but the choir sang that song because the lead singer loved that song in Guitar Hero. If part of your job as a music teacher is to get the kids to enjoy music, why not work with more songs that the kids like?

Also, can't let these boys and girls go without talking about their social media implementation. Their teacher has created a blog and a YouTube channel to document their performances and major accomplishments to add an extra level of legitimacy to what these kids are doing. Even if they weren't discovered by Perez Hilton or Ashton Kutcher, just being able to show my parents and my friends what I'm doing at school is super cool. Not only that, knowing that the whole world could be watching, I'd try a little bit harder to make a lasting impression too.

Great job everyone at PS22 Chorus. Can't wait to here more music from you!

READ MORE

Google Analytics Makes Numbers Fun, Maybe Overly Personal

image from Blogoscoped

Back when I first started blogging, I was naive enough to believe that literally nobody on the Internet would ever read my blog, let alone find it. Maybe if I had access to analytics back then and was able to see that people actually did read what I had to say, I would have been a lot more conscious about the things I wrote.

A few nights ago, while trying to find a new design, I found a guide on how to configure Google Analytics to my Blogger blog. If you're on a Wordpress account, it's even easier. I just got in my first round of numbers, and the level of information I can get kind of freaks me out.

I'm used to not having any real reference of how people use any site I've ever made. I just put it out there, make some content and people do what they do. The thoroughness of Google Analytics is almost too much information to me.

Now there's so much more to scrutinize. I get mad if my unique visitor count drops from one day to the next, or a less than desired number of people read a specific post. I sit here and wonder how could anybody find my site when they searched "Cundari Toronto" when I don't think I've ever mentioned them on my blog. I can see how much time people spend on my site to the second how long people spend reading my page. I can even tell how effective my tweets are in driving traffic to my blog.

The most heartbreaking thing I've discovered about my blog to date: I started this blog so that when someone Google searches my name, this blog shows up. When I looked at my numbers, then tried searching for my name on Google, I realized that my blog didn't appear anywhere. My profile did, but nothing I wrote showed up. Since then, I've played with some of my tags to try and shake things up. We'll see how that goes.

It's nothing new if you've played with analytics before. I did for the first time a few weeks ago using Compete for my internship. But when it's your blog, you might take all the numbers a bit personally, for better or for worse.

image from sheremembers

I almost feel like I've opened Pandora's box. All I wanted to know was roughly how many people look at my blog, but now I could tell you all sorts of weird facts and figures about it. And based on those weird facts, trying to come up with strategies to boost my "stickiness" or drive users to a specific part of my blog. Knowing the type of person that I am, I might even just sit here analyzing numbers more than writing content, which is what I started this blog for in the first place.

For most people, tracking your blog this intricately is probably not on your radar. However, if you've ever wondered how your site or blog is performing, there are free tools out there to do so. You never know what you might find, or know how deeply you'll get into it.

In the meantime, I'll be hitting "refresh" on my browser until the next set of numbers rolls in.

READ MORE

Hate Me Now

When you look at that face and watch this video, do you instantly think "#2 most viewed director on YouTube Canada this week"? Do you think "#11 most subscribed to of all-time on YouTube Canada"?

I doubt it.

Regardless of what you or I think (and regardless of how most of his videos are rated lower than 3 stars), Pruane2Forever is one of the hottest people on YouTube right now. 148 videos deep, he's ranted about everything from fights at his school to 50 Cent's..."product-line expansion".

Why?

I've seen this guy's videos pop up on a variety of message boards, usually under the context of, "LOL look at this loser!" I saw one or two, didn't get it, and moved on. I thought that was it. Before this, I had no idea this guy (who lists himself as having the name "sexman") had 148 videos, over 30,000 subscribers and had a YouTube channel that had been viewed almost 2 million times. So what makes this kid so popular? Is he just popular because people like to laugh at him?

It's too easy to say he's popular because he captures the essence of what society deems as "nerdy". The "Revenge of the Nerds" caliber nerdy. The pale skin. The braces. The whiny voice. The barely intelligent ranting about whatever he feels like talking about. But is that really it? I dug a bit deeper. I watched a variety of videos of him sitting in his bedroom, talking up a storm about a variety of topics as well as watching a few of his skits. I don't get the appeal at all. I don't even find them funny in an ironic way.

Do people really see value in this guy's opinion? Or has the Internet made this guy an Internet celebrity for all the wrong reasons? I don't think this kid is going out of his way to be humourous. The look isn't intentionally there to make us laugh at him. The voice I don't think he's putting on for show. I get the feeling that he's just a kid that takes his opinion very seriously, and while he has the eyes and ears of the world on him, they don't really care about anything he has to say.

Maybe he has us all fooled (or at least me). Maybe it is all an act. Maybe he's another Lonelygirl15 and has actually been collecting cheques from Eminem's record label to hype up his latest single. In any case, Pruane2Forever's standing at the top of YouTube is further proof of the expression below holds true today. Or something like that.

image from uniquities.co.uk

READ MORE

Jett, This Is Your Life

It is with a heavy heart that I find myself at the account status section of my old blog. I think it's time to pull the plug on an old friend.

Back in 2003, I was blogging before I even knew the word "blog" existed. To me, it was an online diary, and I treated it as such. Well, I treated it more like a personal diary, with the caveat that maybe someone else in the universe would find it.

As a teenager with a lot of pent up thoughts and emotions, having that extra outlet to vent worked wonders. Whether I was writing a happy or sad post, I could express that feeling and hit that "Post" button for closure. It was really weird going back and reading those old entries. It stirred up a lot of weird feelings in me. It also made me realize that I've matured a lot from the days of writing about lost love or random moments in life.

Writing that blog made me realize how powerful a blog could be. I thought nobody would ever care about what I had to say, but apparently a lot of people did. Many of my friends said they were active followers of my blog. Every now and then, I would receive random comments from people all over the world. What really freaked me out was the fact that I was ranked within the top million at one point on Technorati. To me, what I was writing was strictly for myself. The world thought otherwise.

From there, I decided to start a podcast to reach out to the world a bit more. Over 1,000 people subscribed to that before it had to end. It's still crazy to me to see the power you possess when you have an idea and an outlet on the Internet. It was through those "trial runs" that made me realize that I could achieve so much more if I structure it for a larger target audience while keeping the personality that made my old blog worth following.

Through that blog, I became a stronger person, found my voice in life and established a life plan. Ultimately, part of that life plan included starting a new blog that featured a new coat of professionalism and maturity. Since school ended, jettlandicho.com has been great as a tool with a much broader scope than my original blog. It's more than just a place to express my emotions. It's a place to create and build on career opportunities not only for myself, but for The Leaders of the New as well.

I'll forever cherish my old blog. I put in over 6 years of my life into it, with over 600 entries. It's hard to see it go, but it's for the best. The entire thing is backed up, should I ever choose to publish it or something. But it's time to move on, and I'd feel more comfortable removing it from public view than abandoning it for the cyber-squatters to tarnish.


Goodbye, old friend. Thanks for the memories. I'll do you proud on this one.

"I can't predict the future, but I can place myself in a position today where I'll be better off tomorrow."

- Me, "Coming of Age", September 28, 2004

READ MORE

Allow Me to Reintroduce Myself

Welcome to my blog!

While this is my first post under this name, I'm far from a newbie when it comes to blogging or creating content for the Internet. I've been blogging personally since 2003, with hundreds of entries under another alias, along with some experience corporate blogging. Check out of one of my entries I did for the radio station Z103.5 here.

So why am I here starting yet another blog?

Well, I have a few reasons:

1) I have to for a school assignment.
2) I want to help my professor and fellow blogger Anthony Kalamut properly format his blog and I couldn't recommend any solutions without using the Blogger interface myself.
3) I want to build a more professional web presence for myself.

Back when I started blogging, my mindset towards the medium was different. I treated it as a personal diary that just so happened to be on the Internet. I never thought anybody else would ever find it.

Then I found out that some of my friends were regularly checking it out to see what I would write about next. Then I started getting comments from people around the world. Then I found my blog on Technorati, and saw that my blog was ranked within the top 1 million in the world.

Normally, it's not that impressive to know that there are close to a million people more popular than you. However, in a blogosphere that has well over 100 million bloggers, it was a cause for pause.

"Wait a minute," I said to myself. "People are actually reading what I have to say?"

For better or worse, there were people that did care about the musings of a high-school-turned-college student venting about his day-to-day drama. It got me really conscious as to the contents of my "online footprint", to the point where I almost went cold turkey. I didn't want to jeopardize myself by posting something on the Internet that I shouldn't. So, I just stopped posting.

The problem with that mindset is, I'm striving for a career in advertising, with aspirations of someday specializing in online, interactive and social media. I'll gladly work with traditional media; I've spent the last 4 years of my life working in the radio business and got into advertising in the first place to further explore roles I could do within the traditional media realm. But my knowledge and passion for online, interactive and social media are arguably the biggest assets I can provide to a company and the assets that set me apart from the rest.

So lets bring it back a bit. How then, do I then sell myself as someone in touch with the online world without anything online to show for it? The answer I came up with: start fresh.

"With great power comes great responsibility."

Yes, it's corny that I pulled out the Spiderman quote, but it's very fitting in this case. A blog is an extremely powerful tool of communication that can change the world. I want to continue using it, but more wisely. No more "hacker aliases". No more muttering under my breath online when I really want to shout out loud. No more trying to hide from accountability. There's nothing wrong with shouting out loud. It's just a matter of making sure I can stand behind everything I shout.

This is my blog, in my name, for the world to see. My goal for this blog is that I want this to be valuable to everyone; from my friends, to my family, to teachers, to future employers. I want this to be the culmination of my writing ability, my creativity, my thought process and my skills working with online tools. I want to be in a situation where anybody that searches my name on Google will find this blog and see the best I have to offer.

Is my answer the right answer? I don't know. But I guess we'll find out soon enough.

Over the course of time, I'll be posting about a variety of different subject matter using different media to help me express myself, such as video and possibly a podcast. Hope you stick along for the ride.

READ MORE