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EP:024 – The Cotton Club Podcast

July 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment

After a brief hiatus The Cotton Club was back online this evening w/ Keith Crawford, Tyler Presley, Steven Trotter, Chris Spencer, and Mike Fraietta to discuss Google+. Being that Google+ is fairly new, this was the first chance for me to really connect w/ some of my friends to get their take on the new product. It was also very cool to have Mike Fraietta on the show this evening, he is the enterprise community manager at NewsCorp, you may have heard of them before… Fox News, Wall Street Journal, etc. Anyway, having Mike on the show was great, his input was awesome!

A few days ago I blogged about my first impression of Google+ after having used the product for a few days. I still think the future is very bright for this product if Google stays on track w/ what they have going right now. During the show we each shared some of the things that we liked and disliked about the network as well as some thoughts as to how we envisioned various aspects evolving over time…

This was a fun show, definitely great getting the gang together again to talk tech! I promise not to neglect the podcast and will be sure to post new shows from time to time, and thanks to the handful of you who have stayed on me to bring the show back!

The Cotton Club Podcast - Episode 24 / Google+ Social Network Play Now | Play in Popup
Filed Under: Podcasts, Social Media / Web 2.0 Tagged With: , ,

EP:023 – The Cotton Club Podcast

July 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment

This evening I had the opportunity to chat w/ Keith Crawford, Steven Trotter, and Christopher Spencer about this years Wordcamp Fayetteville. During the show Chris, who is heading up the event, went over the 4 tracks for the event as well as touching on some of the content that would be covered this year. As a sidenote, I will be speaking during one of the sessions this year on WordPress profitability for agencies and freelancers, you can see my blog post about my discussion here…

If you haven’t registered for Wordcamp Fayetteville yet you had better get on the ball, I think there are 20+ spots available for the conference. To register online, click here…

The Cotton Club Podcast - Episode 23 / Wordcamp Fayetteville 2011 Play Now | Play in Popup
Filed Under: Podcasts, Wordpress™ Tagged With: , ,

My #WCFAY Presentation Slides

July 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment
WordPress Profitability for Agencies, Firms, and Freelancers
FYI, the formatting is not good in these slides for some reason…
Filed Under: Wordpress™

Thoughts on Google+

July 23, 2011 By 7 Comments

I have had a Google+ account for a while now and aside from a few chat sessions, or hangouts, the week it was launched, I pretty much just got around to checking it out this evening.  I must say I am pretty impressed so far w/ the level of engagement I see as well as the clean design that Google has brought to the table.

One key feature that I really like about Google+ is that I have the ability to organize my stream into circles that contain various people or connections I have. For instance, I have a circle made up entirely of friends from Central Arkansas. I also have a ministry circle that I have included just people that I go to church with. These are just two examples, I actually have several other circles that I use, one that I can see being beneficial from a business perspective is my Pleth circle. In this circle I just have my co-workers included. So, let’s say I want to post something that I just want my team members to see, I simply share it with only that group.

There are several good resources online to get you up and running w/ Google+, here are a few to get you started:

By the way, if you are not on Google+ yet and would like an invitation, I have a handful of them left. Just drop me a comment below and I will send you one…

Also, in the next week or so I am planning on recording another edition of The Cotton Club Podcast and one of the topics for the show will be Google+, if you are interested in being on the show, be sure to leave a comment below…

Filed Under: Social Media / Web 2.0 Tagged With:

Presentation Preview for #WCFay

July 15, 2011 By 1 Comment

I will be doing a presentation titled ‘Making WordPress Profitable for Agencies / Design Firms‘ during Wordcamp Fayetteville this year, which is taking place on July 30, 2011 in Fayetteville, at the Donald W. Reynolds Center for Enterprise Development. If you haven’t registered already, there is still time, the price for general admission is $35 and you can click here to register online.

The people in charge at #WCFay asked me to do a short blog post or teaser so that those attending the conference will have a heads up as to what my talk will be about. In short, it’s all about making money. I could just leave it at that and feel pretty confident that I have proposed a topic that will be of interest to everyone there, but I will take it a step further. This discussion is going to more or less look at our industry from a business owners perspective and why I feel like WordPress is the most powerful tool we have in our arsenal today. I will also share some tips that can help your agency or firm become more profitable during a down economy…

I am looking forward to this discussion. Here’s a few teaser slides from my presentation…

This should be a fun presentation, hope to see you there!!

Filed Under: Presentations, Wordpress™ Tagged With: , , , ,

Current Projects: Rosewood Cremations

July 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

We completed a project for Rosewood Classic Coach a few months ago and they were so happy w/ the way the project turned out they asked us to take a look at their Rosewood Cremation website and convert it to WordPress for them. In addition they also wanted to add a small amount of e-commerce to the site as well as converting some of their forms to interactive PDF’s.   I haven’t completed the project yet but can share a screenshot. The entire project was build upon the Genesis framework in WordPress.

Filed Under: Current Projects, Wordpress™ Tagged With: , ,

Current Projects: Detco, Inc.

July 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I was recently contacted by long-time client, Detco Industries, Inc. about developing two small projects for them. Each of these micro websites will contain product information such as MSDS, TDS, and DTS (product label) information. In the future they also wanted to ability to post additional information about their products such as YouTube videos, etc. I elected to use WordPress w/ the Genesis Framework to develop each of these projects instead of building a custom database driven application and my development time wasn’t consumed w/ writing code. I absolutely love Genesis framework, both of these projects were designed using the Genesis Child Theme as the starting point.  Since neither site is live right now I can’t post any links, but here are a few screengrabs…

 

 

Filed Under: Current Projects, Wordpress™

DNA Evidence Clears WM3!

July 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

A few years ago I spent the better part of a weekend researching the 1993 murder convictions of Damien, Jason, and Jessie and after everything I was able to gather online I left w/ the impression that these kids were wrongfully convicted. Not only did I walk away thinking they were innocent but I also felt that a lot of evidence pointed toward another person closely involved with the case, and I wondered why more time wasn’t spent investigating him. There were basically so many holes in the trial transcripts and the way that investigators handled the case that there’s no way I can list all of them in this post, some good places to get up to speed on the case are YouTube and the official WM3 website.

I just saw where a friend, Keith Crawford, shared a link a few minutes ago to the report that excludes these three men by DNA from being involved in the case. You can read that report here. I sincerely hope it won’t be long until these guys are finally released! I am curious to hear back from some of  you that have followed this case and see what your thoughts are on it. I haven’t ran into anyone in a long time that thinks these guys are guilty…

 

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With: , ,

Current Projects: Arkansas Adoption

July 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

This is a project that my wife and I are partnering with a local attorney, Shane Henry, to bring online that serves as a tool to recruit pregnant mothers that might be looking to either have an abortion or put their children up for adoption. Please be in prayer w/ Donna and I that we are able to locate a child through this effort…

This website will contain a lot of answers to frequently asked questions regarding adoption, adoption in Arkansas, and hopefully serve as a useful resource for it’s users. The website hasn’t launched yet but will hopefully have it ready to go live by the end of this month, in the meantime, here’s a screenshot of what the website will look like…

 

Filed Under: Current Projects, Wordpress™ Tagged With: ,

Current Projects: The One, Inc.

July 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Many of you that know me are probably already aware that I am a founding member of The One, Inc. and serve on the board of directors. In case you are not familiar w/ The One, Inc. and what we do, we are a 501c3 non-profit organization servicing the needs of the growing homeless community in Central Arkansas by providing food, clothing, hygiene products, and the basic necessities they need to survive. Being a part of this mission and vision is something I take extremely serious.

Well, long story short, we have been in need of a website for a while now so that we could communicate our needs to our many supporters and donors (imagine that, I am on the board of an organization that is in need of a website, go figure). Well, long story short, I have been working on our initial website, www.theoneinc.org, for several weeks now and have just about concluded the design / development phase of the project. I will be passing the ball to our co-founder, Aaron Reddin, to complete the content on the website over the next few days & weeks.  Since the website is not complete I won’t post a link just yet, but will share a screenshot w/ you…

Filed Under: Current Projects, Homelessness Tagged With: , ,
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