In All Reality

I spend a lot of time reading through things on the interwebs. I’ve decided to compile the things I’ve found useful into weekly lists for the benefit of all (or possibly just my memory). For the acronym-savvy, I’m going to call these LUTs.

A brief recap of the recent months and the gap in posting. Life marches on to an interesting beat.

We all have moments when we come to the realization that our heroes in life are, in fact, human. I’d recently experienced this sensation in regard to a professional idol. But it made me realize that I’ve grown enough in my career that I’m able to look at someone who was previously infallible in a more objective sense, and that is an emboldening feeling.

With the amount of time I seem to spend lately plugged into the cloud, I decided to reflect a bit on the tangible sources of information and creativity: books. Unsearchable, vulnerable to wear and tear, bulky, and prone to fading – what sustains hard copy books in the face of so much digitization?

After some shameless critiquing of the less-admirable speakers at BigOmaha, it’s time to give some props to those presenters that really made the conference worthwhile. Exemplary businessmen, social activists, straight-talkers, community advocates, and wine-lovers; an inspirational collective to say the least.

BigOmaha was really good overall, but like any major event it had its downsides. These came in the form of some presenters who seemed to be lacking in drive and focus in their talks. In this article, we’ll do a rundown of those speakers that were not-so-hot.

I thought it appropriate to give a general overview of the recent BigOmaha conference (May 7-8) with some impressions of the demographics, organization, and vibe from the crowd. I think the conference was a success overall (especially for this being its first year). Dunno if it was worth having to drive through Iowa though…

I made the journey up to Nebraska this weekend for the BigOmaha conference, fighting storms, weird directions, and Iowa roads.

There’s been a lot happening on the Web lately. Twitter is constantly in the news. There’s a guy using Craigslist to kill people. “Social Media” is now the newest trigger-happy member of the buzzword family. It raises a lot of interesting questions and observations about how our culture is being changed by this giant connecting force, and what some of the impacts of those changes may be.

Part 4 in the continuing series of collaborative conversation involving observations about the Internet, humanity, and influencing factors. Is this segment, Paul Ryser pontificates about his observations of the Web, its culture… and his cat.