As one of the biggest projects I’ve worked on in some time makes early steps, I find myself revisiting my old friend Joomla. First, a little history.
Mid year, 2005 I was introduced to Joomla, then Mambo by my good friend Pat. I was in need of an easier way to build multiple sites with user profiles and managed content among other things. Rather than go to code school, spend 10 years practicing, then reinvent the wheel Pat suggested I try out Mambo. The system was fairly simple to set up and use. The bugs where well documented and the fixes weren’t typically that difficult.
To make things even better, there were thousands of developers world-wide that were active on forums for when you really hit a wall. I took up my post in the open source world contributing to front-end development and posting fix reports to the forums I came across. Spring turned to summer, Mambo to Joomla and tonight, almost five years later, I find myself setting up and modifying the latest version of Joomla to build a community.
I won’t bore with the technical details but I will give kudos to the developers for making the transition to Joomla 1.5 relatively intuitive and keeping the overall user experience decent. To this point it seems that the latest versions of several of my old friends (Community Builder & Fireboard to name a few) are more stable and harder to break than previous versions. Overall I’m pleased.
Next steps include full integration, custom user profile setup, and social media integration. I’m also bug-checking a Facebook connect plugin that I think will complete the overnight masterpiece. So to this point, that’s all I’ve got. Anyone have any recent experience with these systems?
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Some of you might know that when I’m not working as creative director at Collective Bias, entertaining wife, kids, & dogs, or hiding in the woods, I’m working with the Social Media Club, Northwest Arkansas chapter. Yes, even my hobbies include social media… it’s an addiction, I know. This little volunteer job allows me the opportunity to network and hang out with some of the more entertaining people in my area as well as make valuable business connections and grow the impact of social media all over Northwest Arkansas. Recently I’ve had the honor of being included in two other local networking groups of equally motivated and fun people.
As most of you know, the past few months have been at best, bedlam. With all the traveling, changing jobs, oh, and that wedding I had, I’m pretty much devoid of any sliver of what I used to do or be. Now the question is how to get back into the groove… or better yet, how do I make a new groove? Lets start there… and yes, I have a plan.
For anyone living under rocks, Friday, September 18th, 2009 I got married to the most wonderful, hottest awesome girl out there. Needless to say the past few months have been out of control. Follow the wedding planning with a weekend in the woods then a fairly unique trip to Mexico and I’m about 15 blog posts behind… and that’s not even considering all I’ve got to catch up on with work, which oddly enough, is why I’m writing this. Welcome to my brain lube.
Who else had a great time this weekend? As many know and some were in attendance for, this weekend was the last hoorah for FMT and my self and I might have to concede defeat to the girls. My night out was actually an overnighter to my favorite woods and the girls did Dickson Street. Exact details on the Bachelorette party will have to come from Ryann but I am led to believe that there was a hospital visit made. Sorry Kim.
I know, we’ve been talking about it for a while but it’s finally done. After hours of editing and countless video clips, Collective Bias, GNO, and One to One Network bring you the 2009 Bowlher video.
Truth be told it feels like it’s speeding up. We’ve got roughly 28 days until the wedding and we’re both weeded to no end. We’re getting things ironed out every day but the reality of our timeline is setting in. There are just a few little things that would be noticeable if we didn’t get to them. Like the cakes, do you think that anyone would really miss having cake at the wedding? I mean, we will have booze, isn’t that enough? No? Alright, it’s still on the list.
In light of all of the hubbub around my new twitter image, I ask this question. Is your icon you or vice-versa? I like to see my image as an extension of myself. I think it’s important to show face on twitter to prove you’re real. I think it was Yale that discovered that those with professional/airbrushed images were considered pompous or not trustworthy to a sample-representative group and those without actual pictures tend to make people feel like they’re talking to the man. Not like “hey, you’re the man” but more like “the man is keeping us down.”
Let’s start with that statement. What do you mean by “doing” social media. Are you looking to engage with potential customers on a daily basis and build trust through conversation and lifestyle or do you just want to set up a facebook page for people to find? Have you searched for your customers through the various social media outlets? Do you even know the options available out there? The questions can tear apart the best of intentions… even to the greatest among us.
