I got sent a like to this today on YouTube. , it’s the game highlights of the Boxing day fixture of Woking hosting Farnborough Town. It’s not the beautiful game at it’s finest, but pretty typical of non-league football in England.

I got sent a link to Joshua Mayers Sounders FC blog (excelent reading by the way) and this video. It was done at Century Link Field (also known as Royal Brougham Park) by Bodega Studios. I thought it was rather cool and interesting.

The high res version is here at Bodega Studios

It all started a few days ago, the plan was that would meet in a little town up in the mountains at 8 for breakfast and we would go from there. Of course Carey could not remember the name of the restaurant. But Gold Bar is a little town, how tough was it going to be to spot a place with a bunch of Land Rovers parked outside.

Turned out to be pretty obvious, with us there were a dozen Land Rovers of various types. Series II, Series III, Defenders, selection of Discos and even a Series II Lightweight that still had the British Army number plates on it.

After breakfast, a little looking at each others cars and a quick briefing we drove towards Stevens Pass and up into the snow. Mine is an almost totally stock Discovery II, the only modification was putting the right tires on for the snow and that was it.

One thing I found today, it’s a very capable car. I grounded the chassis rails (hard) a couple or times going over fallen tree trunks, but it kept on going and never missed a beat.

On the trails the surface was hard packed snow, this was as wide as the tracks of the car in front. Off the track there was 3-4 feet of snow, a hard ice crust with powder under it, I sank up to my thighs a few times.

A new LR4 got really stuck, the Lightweight grounded and the single-track road got really slippery. This was a very fun way to spend a day, the scenery was beautiful, the laughs plentiful and new respect for what my car can do.
Tweet

It’s no secret the last three years has seen some quite astounding emotional churn and coming out the other side I’ve done so much to help myself. Some of what I did turned out to be a great idea, getting the courage to leave a bad relationship tops that list. While others… Let’s just say they were not so brilliant. I’ll be talking about both the highs and lows, and some of the people involved some time soon.

If we talk about the journey then it’s been remarkable. Rediscovering deep and meaningful friendships with some very important people in my life, understanding just who I really am and how I got to my low points.

I think it’s been a remarkable journey. I’m not going to be as twee as saying I found myself, I knew who I was and believe that experiences drive us to evolve as we move through this wonderful life. Part of that change has been doing more reading. I created a couple of comfortable places in my house that I can quietly sit, often with a cat hanging out with me.

If you spend time in bookshops you’ll know is that there shelves of books that claim to provide shortcuts to great knowledge, unlimited happiness and deep wisdom. I’m not a huge believer in self help books, and very skeptical of the giant claims, I discovered there was a lot of nonsense talked and finding great books really is something of a lottery.

One of the thing to note was that every book except one on this list was recommended to me, or given to me by someone I trust. Only “The case for Working With Your hands” was picked up off the shelf, and that was in the “Transport” shelf.

Some books have allowed me to understand my actions and why. Others have maybe inspired me. Certainly one or two have helped me reach my goals, while a couple have allowed me a little escape when I needed it.

My reading list has been eclectic and wide, on purpose, I did not know what (if anything) I was looking for and made some wonderful discoveries. The subject matter in some of these books are a little controversial and I understand not for everyone, but each one was difficult to put down.
Tweet

So this is what the view from the kitchen looks like after another 6 or 7 inches of snow…

Tweet

Not only would that be a good foodie blog title, but this is what Snowmagedon 2012 looks like from my kitchen window after an additional couple of inches of snow. It’s been fun, power sliding the Land Rover was a blast (“just a dab of oppo”), but it can melt now…

I know that for my friends in Vermont this is but a slight dusting, in Snohomish it’s taken very seriously.

Tweet

2011 was a good year for F1, the stats are excelent, more over taking thanks to a combination of aero changes, the Drag-Reduction-System (DRS), the Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) and the tires that gave tremendous grip, for a while.

But it could have been more competitive. Perhaps we were just spoiled by maybe the best championship in the history of the sport in 2010. With Kimi Raikkonon returning for 2012 (admittedly with Lotus) there are 6 world champions on the grid, and that’s got to be good.

Lets be clear, Vettel won his second world championship in style. It became little predicable and was wrapped up with four races to go. But such was the speed of Vettel and the Red Bull that there was little real doubt after Valencia. The constructor’s championship (which is what the teams get paid by) was tied up one race later.

Vettels ability in the first couple of laps to pull out a significant lead over everyone was astounding. That first lap was critical and made it clear that baring a mistake, everyone else was running for second.

I’ve talked a couple of times about the small insight I’ve had into the whole “social media thing”, really as an outsider getting peak behind the curtain.

Part of tonight’s dinner discussion turned into the use of location services. It seems only about a quarter of smart phone regularly use a location based application (Yelp, Google, Vegas Mate and so on) to get recommendations based on their location. I found that number surprisingly low, it’s one of the things I find most useful about my iPhone.

The next logical step is to turn it into more of a push rather than pull system. Enter check-in apps such as Foursquare. At the moment only a tiny fraction of smartphone users, something like 3-4%, use check-in apps to broadcast their location.

While I don’t use Foursquare or any of the similar services, I’m just not that interesting, but location broadcasts regularly show up in my twitter feed. And lets not forget, I’m in geek central today and this group is not a particularly representative it comes to these things.

So, what does a push location application like Foursquare give you? It connects you people you know in the same general area and gives you a chance to connect.

Tonight a couple of people who joined us found out about what was happening at Mesa when someone they follow checked in on Foursquare. This led to a Tweet and they changed their plans to join us. There is a lot of enthusiasm for that sort of location-based app and finding out more about them is on my CES to do list.

Within the social media community the use of location checking in is fairly high, and I think this brings us to one of the issues, people who consider themselves “Social Media Insiders” forget that not everyone does it their way.

It’s this navel gazing I talked about here.

There are significant differences between how people inside and outside SM (and as I said, I consider myself outside, being allowed to peek behind the curtain) use the tools that are available.

Facebook is primarily a network of your friends, people come to it with different interests. I don’t do Facebook much, but I’m getting that puts me in a minority. The reasons I don’t really do Facebook are almost all around intellectual property ownership.

Twitter on the other hand is something I do use and find very useful. It fills a slightly different role. It’s more about sharing subjects with people that interest us, rather than Facebook where the same level of news amalgamation does not happen.

The third thing is blogs, clearly I blog, and I blog in more than one place. I subscribe to both Social Media and non-SM blogs, and the way people outside SM use blogs is different. The best way I can put it is less information sharing and more story telling. A close friend used his blog to record his year long cycle adventure across the US and North Africa.

It’s about how people use the Internet, the differences between people using it to connect and people who are trying to make an impact or perhaps even a living out of it. Inside the Social Media world people get wrapped up in how it’s used by the industry (navel gazing), rather than how the real world uses it.

And the real world is where the majority of people, and therefore a majority of the customers are.

I’ve been thinking about this, and have some thoughts that are not fully formed yet. Tonight helped put some of them into some order, but I’ve along way to go until they are really coherent.

The real answer lies in asking other people. My first step in this was setting up a meeting with the head of social media at work next week, it promises to be interesting. I’m intrigued as to how return on the Social Media investment is being measured and the effectiveness of certain campaigns.

There has been a lot of talk of brand loyalty being reinforced through social media, but what does that mean in the real world?

Does my local Thai restaurant look at their Yelp ratings? (I just did they are pretty good, and I agree). I’ve no idea if the local coffee hut has a Facebook page, but if they do has it been worth the effort? When I go to the vineyard to pick up my wine selection next month I’ll ask what value they get from their rather active twitter feed.

The bottom line from these incomplete thoughts is Social Media has to have an off-line real world impact if it’s to provide any value to real world customers.

With out adding this value it really is a bunch of people telling each other how awesome this all is. No added value for the customer means they don’t need it and that makes it really difficult to monetize anything.  Maybe I’m just too cynical in the cold light of day.
Tweet

Related articles

• Foursquare – we know where you are (russellimrie.wordpress.com)
• Wondering about Social Media? (relylocalnewbritainberlinct.wordpress.com)
• Watch Out for Social Media Potholes (socialmediatoday.com)

The 2012 MLS schedule was published this morning. A couple of nice surprises, a little disappointment, but over all I think it’s a good schedule for Seattle.

Prior to the MLS schedule we have the Champions League quarter final home and away legs. That has the potential to really open the season up in a big way. Win over the two games and it’s into the last four and that is a big deal. additionally, in August through October there is the group stages for the 2012-2013 Champions League that the Sounders have already qualified for, no play-in game this year. and somewhere in this there will be open cup. A fourth US Open cup in a row would be tough, but they are holders until someone knocks them out.

The league has given us a schedule that supports Seattle being successful in this competition, and that’s huge. They have a bye weekend between the two quarter final legs, and no east coast travel after the NYRB game in July.

What else do I see as good.

• Midweek games: I love big midweek games under the lights, it creates a special atmosphere.
• We host LA and Salt Lake twice, and only play at their place once each. Will this finally be the year we give LA the spanking they deserve?
• The three opening league games are Toronto, Houston and San Jose at home. Three winnable games and a chance to banish the slow start we’ve seen for each of the last two seasons.
• Then next home game is Colorado, I hope it’s a Seattle team that’s on a roll and a loud building that welcomes Brian Mullan (if he makes the trip this time) to Seattle.
• In May there is a series of tough home games. LA on a Wednesday night, Philadelphia three days later and then Salt Lake the following weekend. By the time we get to the middle of that month we will see what this Sounders team is made of, if they really are the contenders we believe.
• Final two games of the regular season are doozies, hosting Dallas and then away at LA. I assume the league hopes this could be for the Supporters Shield, dare we dream?

Disappointments are few.

• The obvious one is playing Vancouver and Portscum twice away, but only once at home. I’m interested to see how the supporters groups determine what counts for the Cascadia Cup this year, all games or just one home and one away.

A few games got circled on the calendar today and other than the Cascadia games, I think this is a great schedule for Seattle.

• Sat. March 17 Toronto FC
• Fri. March 23 Houston
• Sat. March 31 San Jose
• Sat. April 14 Colorado Rapids
• Wed. May 2 L.A. Galaxy
• Sat. May 5 Philadelphia Union
• Sat. May 12 Real Salt Lake
• Wed. May 23 Columbus
• Wed. June 20 Kansas City
• Sat. July 7 Colorado Rapids
• Wed. July 18 Real Salt Lake
• Sun. Aug. 5 L.A. Galaxy
• Sat. Aug. 18 Vancouver Whitecaps
• Sat. Sept. 8 Chivas
• Sun. Sept. 23 San Jose
• Sun. October 7 Portland Timbers
• Sun. October 21 FC Dallas
• Sun. October 28 at L.A.

Tweet

Related articles

• Here is your Sounders FC schedule for the 2012 MLS season (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• 2012 MLS Schedule Released: Sounders, Toronto FC Get First Week Byes (sbnation.com)
• 2012 New Year’s resolutions for each of the 19 MLS teams (goal.com)
• Some quick thoughts on the 2012 schedule (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

At this time of the year people look forwards, take stock on where they are, think about what the future holds and the direction they would like to go. I’ve been going through this process over the last couple of years and have made some huge, positive changes in my life.

This year I did something different, rather than my plans for next year, I’d rather talk about what I learned, or has been reinforced over the last year. This helps me relax with what I want, rather than become consumed by it.

• It’s never too late to start – I’ve blogged for a while, but really starting to understand social media, publishing and researching are new skills to me. Mentoring with people who really do get it has been invaluable.

• Don’t take yourself too seriously. How can I take it too seriously? I’d probably be depressed, stressed out and unable to function. A little levity is good for the soul, I look at my life today and I feel really fortunate, but I also know it can all change tomorrow.

• You don’t choose a passion, it chooses you. I’ve discovered I like writing, again having people who have really honed their craft help me has been huge. I have friends that want me to succeed, see I have a really good story to tell and are encouraging me to push my own personal envelope.

• Have great people in your life. And I do. I’ve made considerable positive changes and the impetus for that has come from people. These re friends and professionals I trust, who have sat me down and told me what they see. I’ve listened to them, and today am in a far better place for it.

• Be yourself. I like good beer, great tasting food and I am comfortable with my mistakes. I have a strong point of view and that’s part of the appeal. My sarcastic and dark humour does not come across very well, but I try. I am distinctive, have flaws, vulnerability, and embracing that is important.

• Be open to new experiences. It’s what makes life so very, very special. I have a number of wonderful, eclectic close friends, each have their own stories to share. Together they create a wonderful, tapestry of experiences, laughs and lessons that give me so much inspiration, support and a reality check.

So no big end-of-year-new dawn” post from me, just a quick exercise in what I’ve learned and those lessons have driven so many positive things in my life, and will continue to do so.

Thank you to so many people for their support in 2011, 2012 is going to be wonderful. So to Min, Rob, Rob, Mathew, Thom, Lisa, Bill, Carl, Tracy, Steve, Anna Marie, Stephen, Tina, Robert, Ben, Matt, Tony and all the rest of you, thank you so very, very much.

Tweet