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An open letter to Evelyn
What can I say my dear, but it has been a brilliant three years.
When you came into our lives we had no idea how much fun our world would become; your light, your smile, your sense of humor, and your sparkling personality make everything better. In fact, despite being quite the threenager already I find it difficult not to smile when you are around.
In just one year the trip from two to three years of age has seemed as dramatic a leap as if I attempted to Evel Knievel across the Grand Canyon of time. Watching you discover the world, explore, and investigate all that is around you is both exciting and frightening. Exciting because your ability to observe and turn that into knowledge amazes me, frightening because it is hard to let go and not want to protect you like I did when you were six months old. But now is the time to learn and enforce that learning even if it results in bumps or bruises. That is a trust in myself I promise I will work on.
I did want to take a moment to discuss food, as you have firmly landed into toddlerhood it seems the ideal time to let you know there is more to life than eggs + cupcakes. I understand when you are 32 you will once again return to this diet and likely add Merlot - but for now let's try some new things like parsnips or sushi? 2015 should be a year of food adventures and not like when you tried to put gum into ice cream, that is just ridiculous.
Lastly I want to let you know very few animals are like the ones you have fallen in love with in Disney movies. Most shocking to discover there isn't actually a labrador retriever that can play basketball, football, volleyball, baseball, or hockey - let alone all of them. You have asked enough of them to play volleyball with you I thought it was time you knew the truth.
Have a brilliant birthday and may the next 12 months be filled with running, playing, that wild imagination of yours, and of course your favorite the lollypop! I love you and have learned more from you already than I could ever want to show you - but that won't stop me from trying to repay that debt.
Happy Birthday EGH.
See UFC 185 with the crew of Way of the Warrior
We are live this weekend out at Celebration Cinema for UFC 185! To see if Anthony Pettis really is the Floyd Mayweather of MMA. We would love to hang out with you and get you into the theater for free. Just sign up below and we will contact the winners on Thursday.
Main Card (on Pay-Per-View)
Anthony Pettis (18-2) vs. Rafael dos Anjos (23-7)
Carla Esparza (10-2) vs. Joanna Jedrzejczyk (8-0)
Johny Hendricks (16-3) vs. Matt Brown (19-12)
Roy Nelson (20-10) vs. Alistair Overeem (38-14)
Chris Cariaso (17-6) vs. Henry Cejudo (7-0)
The Day I Stopped Everything for Meerkat
I used to love to play videogames. In fact, I would play Destiny as much as my schedule would allow. At night when my wife and daughter would sleep I would play for a couple of hours to unwind. However, in the past month or so, my XBOX One has gone unused as I continue to blog, podcast, and create while they sleep.
All of this changed 14 days ago when Meerkat launched.
Meerkat is an app that allows a user to stream live video via Twitter to create ephemeral moments in one’s life. While streaming video is nothing new I have not seen the sorts of people on the app excited to talk about it, social media + tech luminaries, since I joined Twitter in 2006. Back then I really didn’t get Twitter and in radio it wasn’t “a thing” so I gave up before I learned it which is a shame because today it is my favorite app. I feel the commuity there is richer, more open to conversation, and more apt to share — thus a more social experience.
Now if Twitter were a Mogwai and you fed it after midnight while giving it a bath, that is what Meerkat is right now.
The monster running amok in the social space that lots of people are playing with, breaking, hoping to understand, and testing. On Meerkat you can see people driving to work, touring their workplaces and pitching open jobs, doing AMAs about everything from venture capital, to social media, to sex, to NFL free agency, and everything inbetween.
I cannot get enough of what is happening here.
The community that is building around this app is something I want everyone to experience. Watching people build shows or broadcasts about topics they are passionate about is, for me, what the web (not the Internet they are different things) was built for.
It is VERY early in the lifecycle of Meerkat and with Twitter threatening tolaunch Periscope as a rival streaming service there is the threat that Twitter may do to Meerkat what they did to Instagram — which would be a shame.
Because Twitter should use this momentum to their advantage. Let’s remember that Twitter has a native video function that I don’t see ANYONE using and the Gary Vaynerchuk rule of first one in might hold true here and Periscope might be what Twitter wants to do, but if they don’t get it up and running by tomorrow — the critical mass of SXSW will kill any chance that Periscope has to catch on.
Remember SocialCam? Neither do I.
I cannot get enough of Meerkat and experimenting with what works on the app and I hope that you spend some time doing the same. We live in amazing times and when things like Meerkat happen it is fun to be in the thick of it.
The CWDA Recruitment Presentation
I had the honor of talking to a great group of folks about recruitment in 2015 and how you might want to move from active recruitment to passive and what that could do for your culture.