So my life in 2011, looking at it as a whole I can’t really make a judgement on whether it was a good or bad year. It had some positive aspects and some negative aspects. I guess I can say that it’s been a year of growth and personal understanding more than anything else.Ending off from 2010 I came in from a point of uncertainty. I didn’t end the year off with a bam … maybe more so a little bit of a whimper so coming into 2011 I didn’t know where I was going. I think I’ve been fortunate enough that moving forward from that rough patch others saw particular talents and set me on a course for personal success (hat tip to those involved).

Moving forward with this shift in focus I would say that 2011 became more so about learning the business of social than just being elbows deep in data. While previously I was doing a lot of behind the scenes analytics work I started to see the whole picture. I dealt with client, client/project managers and whomever else was along the way in delivering the end project. While 2010 was very much the year of ‘the quant’ where I learned  quantitative analysis and technologies, 2011 was the year of ‘the business man’ for learning client needs and what it would take to properly deliver them.

This past year I think I also came out of my shell a bit and took some risks. Something I pat myself on the back for is signing up for a mixed martial arts gym. Going in I was anxious as hell. This was something I didn’t know the first thing about and I felt  out of my element. I had a bit of experience with Kick Boxing so striking I nervously did but being involved in the first few times of grappling classes (where the goal is taking down and pinning the other person) I felt like I was going to break myself. What was the result in the end? I stuck it out, had a lot of fun and continued going to classes. While I haven’t been going as much as I’d like to, my goal for 2012 (or early 2013) is to get my white level shorts demonstrating my seriousness to learning about the sport.

OK so this was a Halloween picture (and I never get bloody) but this is me in my MMA wraps. Picture credit: @vivve

Additionally I think I brought something out of myself that I had a feeling for but with the proper actions it  became much more evident. After hitting a few work projects “out of the park”  an opportunity came up where while I was considered a junior for, with the support of people I respected I dived into. Without going into massive detail, my task was to put together a presentation with my own discretion for direction in what became a one night marathon session. The end result was a bit rough in presentation style and content but overall came out solidly and became something I was proud of.  It demonstrated skills I didn’t normally get to exercise and showed an area for personal growth which I enjoyed but had not kept on my radar until recently.

Positivity unfortunately comes with negative aspects and at times this year I had some ‘bumpy’ parts. One of the things I look back on for this year that I didn’t follow through with as part of my goals from 2010  is the building and maintaining of relationships. Especially when things got less than ideal I did find myself  less likely to reach out to people or be as socially active as I normally have been. Note to friends: if you’re feeling like I haven’t been in contact with you in a long time feel free to ping me and call me out on it!

My attempt at Movember. While it was an awesome mustache, without superior campaign implementation (something I potentially could have done) I would have fund-raised a lot more for the cause.

When times in life got rough I also regretted that  I sometimes didn’t stick to my guns and instead became more  passive. Staying true to your values has always been something I’ve respected of people around me. I feel it says something about your strength of character and presents true leadership abilities. Anyone with some knowledge of political history knows that the truly memorable leaders were those who held what they valued close to their hearts (Trudeau is one of my idols). I really felt like I reverted back to old habits and let things pass over me with just a whimper rather than speak out about things. I definitely need to take note that this is not where I want to let things go to moving forward.

A year consists of 365 days so while my post is long it definitely didn’t cover everything, like how my weight ballooned a bit… *sigh* As I’m getting older I’m finding while things don’t immediately seem to match together, looking back at things as a whole events seem to somehow become pieced together and make more sense. This year I feel I got a bit deeper of an understanding of myself and knowledge of changes I hope to put in place in regards to what I do and how I operate. While some predict 2012 as the ‘end of the world’ my prediction is that 2012 is a year where things get serious and more so where we’re going to see people jump into action.

To Do Something Interesting: Inspired by a Zen Habits post called Do Interesting Things I want to do at least one thing that is noteworthy or interesting this year. Something where I can say “Yes I did that! “. I find I’m in constant contact with so many interesting people but when it comes to sharing my story I feel boring and ordinary. I want to find a hobby or even just a one time activity that can have a story about it.  ( If you have any ideas what this could be feel free to post in the comments or let me know!)

Live More the The Moment: Looking back on the past decade I unfortunately saw  a pattern that needs to stop. I found that instead of pursuing things that I wanted to do, I let barriers or challenges  get in the way and told myself as soon as these are out of the way I can do it. Problem with this frame of thought is that it then never happens because there is always something that will get in the way.

@mynameisguygal told me something recently that stuck with me  “You can never find time, you can only make it.” and its very true. There will always be a barrier or situation in life that will prevent you from doing something. Instead you have to make the situation yourself that will make your plans work! The goal will be to create a habit out of this. Instead of postponing  and saying it has to happen later I need to just go ahead and do it!

Define the “kevrichard” brand: Not in a business or selling sense but in a life sense. Being in school and being part of a military family made things very structured and planned. This goal fits with my goal of  living more in the moment as with focusing on school and being prepared for the next move I put a lot of things off and didn’t take much time in developing myself as a person.

Being free of all of that,  its now  time to determine what makes me tick! Am I a foodie? Am I into extreme sports?  Or am I a culture explorer? Unlike the rest of my goals for this year this will be a longer term process. ‘Discovering yourself’ isn’t an overnight process  its going to be a  lot of trial and error but it will  also be  an exciting process!

AND the returning resolution…. Become more healthy!  : This didn’t happen as well as I would have liked last year. For the first half it just didn’t happen with early mornings and late nights of working hard  in school while also pursuing events that made this learning even more concrete. And then the second half  it just fell to the side in my attempts in settling my life post graduation.

So the goal this year is to get it done. Luckily (or unluckily) I’m being pushed on a diet for the time being and I’m going to try a more communal approach in being an active participant of the Reddit Health Project and Reddit Fitness (yes I’m a huge fanboy) . I’m hoping by doing this along with other that my motivation will keep up and I’ll feel guilty if I begin to fall behind.

As I stated in my last post my big goal is to get to get myself to 160 pounds of lean mass ( Update on this to come in the summer!)

Well there is my strategy for 2010! This year is going to be pretty big, especially as its a start to a new decade. I hope to you and your family ( and really everyone else!) this year is a great one!

Got to put in a LOL Cat for good measure!

Have any questions/comments ? Contact me at kevin@kevrichard.com or send me a twitter message .

So  here we go…..

1. Becoming More Passionate: So I think I wrote this with a bit of an expectation that I would suddenly be hit on the head and determine that I would be completely passionate and happy go lucky about a certain job or aspect of my life. Well, it didn’t happen.If you do a quick search on the net you can find a lot of articles and postings on “Finding your Passion” but from what I’m realizing is that it isn’t a fast and immediate process. I made some progress but I would say that I’m still not close enough to choosing a passion and committing myself 100% to it.

Developing passion takes a bit of work- At Social Media Mastermind

That isn’t to say that I failed at my goal, I think as time went by I re purposed it and made it more realistic. Over the year I feel I discovered I really enjoy learning and exploring topics and that I couldn’t be passionate about something that stayed constantly the same.  I also think that as a whole it has to be people related but in a more analytical sense. Reflecting back on school my favorite topics often related to how people interacted (be it Consumer Behavior, Psychology, Communications or Market Research ). Right now in my current work I’m exploring net communications and social media which may or may not be the same in the next few years. Overall I think I’ve laid out a bit more of a path for myself but there is still more work to do going forward.

2. Spending time on the right people: I think this has been the area of biggest improvement for myself , but an area that I still need to consistently work on. I made in my opinion 2 huge achievements: Setting my own boundaries and Getting out and meeting with/interacting with new people.

On Setting Boundaries: Looking backwards on 2008, a big downfall for me was not setting my own boundaries. So this meant going along with the group and not looking  out for my goals and priorities. In 2009 while this was definitely a bumpy ride ( as some of my friends can attest to) I learned to protect my own interests and refocused on friendships that were really important to me. Overall it was a pretty significant personal endeavor.

Interacting with New People: I think this is what I’m most proud and surprised by. Over the past year I’ve met a ton of new people and really pushed myself to be more outgoing. I’ve met a lot of great people ( many of them are on this list here) and really got to learn* and explore a side of business that I sort of knew about for a while but didn’t completely understand till this year. I’ve met a few great people who’ve really pushed me to be better in getting out there and improving myself. You know who you are, I really appreciate it.

One of the rainier Patio Fridays with Katie Boland and Philip Moreria (C/O Lee Dale)

The Challenge: In the latter half of 2009 I lost momentum in this area ( job search/moving up north were to blame) I definitely don’t want to see the relationships I started with people wither .There are many people I respect and admire and having lost contact with many people in the past I don’t wish for that to happen again. So moving forward with w/e path I end up taking ,  being more deliberate with meeting people  and perhaps just booking more 1 on 1 time is going to be important.

3. Taking Care of my Health: We can’t always get things 100% right? Alright so this was a fail on my part. While in some regards I was active in that if I was able to I would walk rather than take transit or drive overall the idea of moving towards less of a 1 pack didn’t exactly pan out. Well no excuses in ‘010,  at minimum mornings will be work out time and when I’m able to I’m also looking to snag a gym membership to be even more serious. To put it out there my goal is to bring myself up to 160 in lean mass (I’m right now at around 150). As a secondary benefit I think it would help me gain a much better mental focus.

All in all I think for what the year was, I ended it pretty strong. The external environment could have been better but then who’s to say everything I’ve experienced would have occurred if it had been different. I plan on making a 2010 strategy coming up  (its in the works). It will probably be posted closer to New Years.

*I’ve discussed some  great events on this blog but for anyone looking for future reference 2 great places to learn if you’re a business person learning about the web and entrepreneurship are at SproutUps and Refresh Events( a calendar of  events can be found here also) .

What was this? It was Net Change week described on their  website as a week to connect Toronto’s digital natives with the city’s social change organizations. Held at MaRs discovery district with the backing of both for and non profit organizations the week looked like it was a great success. Now where did I come in? I had the pleasure of volunteering my time as one of the social media ‘experts’ in  a one day session  with a charity to analyze their current operations and develop strategies to implement social media in their work.

I had the opportunity to work with a good friend of mine  Dan Hocking a partner in a digital agency. We were paired with Pencils for Kids a small charity based out of Markham who’s goal is to see all children with the tools needed to have an education. Currently they have projects in a community in Niger where they have worked to  help provide the school supplies and facilities needed for an education. Overall an organization that despite only having one full time (unpaid) staff  person has been doing great things to create social change.

While Pencils for Kids is doing some great things offline, Dan and I felt that building a stronger social media presence would work well in expanding their fund-raising efforts.  Here’s a bit of what we were able to discuss in our meeting:

Telling their story: The founder of this organization , Robin Mednic  who is in the thick of things when it comes to this organization’s projects has  an uncanny  ability to just grab you into the cause. By telling her experience with the organization and the changes Pencils for Kids has made  she almost immediately sold me on the charity.  We felt this strong message needed to be found on their website as well.  By better integrating the photos they already had on flickr and placing the content amassed  in her travels on the site in either blog or in web page form we felt Pencils for Kids could represent themselves as the amazing change creating organization that they are.

Fund-raising: We also got into the development of a fund-raising campaign with a strong on line component. Focused around the idea of providing every child in the community they support with text books Pencils for Kids would actively engage supporters in this campaign . Relying heavily on visual imagery ( X amount of money = X% of a child’s text books) Pencils for kids through its offline work could drive on line donations to its site. Through this campaign they would be able to directly demonstrate the effect an individual ‘s donation  would have to the cause and they would appeal to literacy groups, schools and the general public in reaching their goal.

Awareness: Pencils are a strong source of imagery for the organization and Pencils for Kids uses it as a initial topic for discussion about their organization. To build stronger feelings for this organization it was felt that Pencils for Kids could engage the public by encouraging them to  create content around this key item.  Some suggested mediums were photos, drawings, and videos and these would be posted on the Pencils for Kids website where viewers could vote and comment on these pieces of work  potentially with prizing to follow for  the most votes.

Overall this was a great experience and I was happy to have been brought aboard. I think I took away something from this experience as well. In the social media realm a lot of people with knowledge feel that organizations should be on all the major tools and they will then seem to have this major success.  I’ve learned that  certain tools aren’t for every organization.  Really I think that goes back to basic marketing. What tools will meet the organizations needs and goals? We didn’t go very heavy on a social media tool set in our ideas during the session because we knew that the volunteers of Pencils for Kids would be overwhelmed or not put in the  large  amount of effort needed to see  what would probably  be limited success. Instead we stuck to basics and worked on Pencils for Kids strengths.

PS: Remember how I said I was sold on this organization, after the session Dan and I  put our names down for working with Pencils for Kids in the future.

Have any questions/comments? Contact me at kevin.richard@ryerson.ca or send me a twitter message .

(thanks!).  The first convention I attended in 2009 , I walked away with some great learning and experience. Although there were 3 streams (Design,Programing, Management) as a marketer I’m more experienced in the organizational portions of business so I opted to stick with the management stream for the day. Here is a brief run down of all the sessions I attended and a few of the key learning points I gained:

1. Finding and Keeping Startup People, Daniel Debow (Rypple) :

For anyone not involved in HR the first knee jerk reaction to this is to zone out, but the key insight from this session  is in a start up EVERYONE needs to be involved in getting great people on board. Looking at my notebook I have a lot of little points written down but the key things are that everyone should be actively seeking great people to bring into the organization ( the idea that great people bring more great people) and that firms should build a company culture where people will want to be ‘friends’ with the company. Through this they may take an active role in seeing how the company is progressing and eventually feel passionate about signing on with them if asked.

As well, getting great people doesn’t happen overnight. The process needs to be as transparent as possible clearly stating the risks of joining the company. In the end both you and the candidate are investing a lot into this relationship and it needs to be developed not smashed together.

2. Selling Agile Development , Dominic Bortulussi (The Working Group):

For someone who isn’t a web developer/programmer I had a bit of difficult time getting my head around this but by applying the topic in a more general business/client sense it became a lot more understandable. To think about a regular client/business relationship you have one side who has a task that needs to be done and specifies a price that they are willing to pay. Then on the other side there is a company who approaches the  client and provides the service for them.Very simple. But thinking deeper its not.

Like all things in life not all projects go out with out experiencing problems or delays.There can also be the case where a client suddenly wants additional specifications added. Very often either the company or the client suffers having to take a loss on the project or not getting everything they wanted.  That’s where the flexible project practice the “Target/Scope Model” comes in:

• The client sits down with the company to determine a set price and key project needs. Additional optional features are discussed and priced out.
• As the project continues the client removes and adds scope to the project  depending on how ahead/behind progress the project is.
• Any scope added/removed from the project is discounted at 50% of the price ( ex: a new feature is added because the project is running ahead of schedule, an optional feature is added for half its price)

There are some criticisms in terms of it being very meeting heavy (between 15%-30% of the project is spent in client/provider meetings) but especially in the consulting field the idea of flexible pricing and  having a project be more realistic to the needs of both the client and producer is a really interesting idea.

For more info check out the powerpoint from the presentation

http://docs.google.com/Present?docid=dn7623p_7pdc5b7cd

3.Lessons learned: How I founded, bootstrapped, grew and sold my web startup,Carl Mercier ( Defensio) :

Very often startups feel that they can’t survive without having venture capital funding. Attending this session I learned that you can go it on your own and perhaps be even more likely to walk away profitable. Rather than having an investor who will have first go at your profits you control the revenues and can sell at lower thresholds in comparison.

In part Carl Mercier spoke about having an effective marketing plan (Digg doesn’t work!) and a strong business strategy from the start(neither does an advertising revenue model!). Compared to a funded start up,  a bootstrapped start up needs to be making money fast and  must also do away with all of the niceties they could have had being funded (must have  cheaper offices, used equipment, less flash). Important to all companies but especially to bootstrapped startups is the connection the firm has with their customers especially the early adopters.  These are the people who will be selling your company to their friends,family and everyone else around them. Treat them right!

4.Segmentation, Positioning and Storytelling: How a Smart Market Strategy Can Drive Growth, April Dunford ( Rocket Launch Marketing)

As someone studying marketing I was really excited for this session, and I wasn’t disappointed. While there was a lot of no brainer marketing things (for me anyways) like segmenting your market (you can’t target everyone!)  there were some good points made in terms of selling your company/product:

• Creating a strong value proposition: Tell up front why your customer should buy your product and what makes you different from your competition ( customers don’t want to think!)
• Create a personal story of your company to tell to customers, it builds a stronger connection and is more effective than listing off facts. They come in 3 forms: Customer Success ( how has the product/service positively affected a customers business) , Competitive Win ( how did you one up your competitor) and Company creation ( such as how Youtube was supposedly started in someones garage *Wrong*) .
• Communications is VERY important. For whatever initiative you do be it a website, using social media , all the way down to your corporate culture , companies need to have a clear and targeted message. Don’t make it too formal or generic , every piece of messaging should be targeted towards the customer and leave an impression. Another key to this is to remain consistent, everyone should be on board saying the exact same thing even when it may seem repetitive as this is how your company is being portrayed to the public.

5. Boiling the frog: how to get everyone else as excited about your idea as you are, Jason Oke

( Juniper Park) :

I think this presentation complimented well with April Dunford’s presentation.  This presentation furthered the idea of effectively communicating yourself to clients. Lets face it when faced with change most people try to resist it ( interesting enough I learned from this presentation that the ipod was at first rejected)   but by being passionate and targeted with your presentations you can defeat objections and win over people.

Again the idea of telling a story was presented. People need to be sold on the process as well as the product. Often times we are too modest or self defeating of ourselves , we need to stop this as sometimes we can actually kill good ideas. While a strong business case is always important, demonstrating your passion to others and how this came about is  important as well. Jason Oke presented the idea of going beyond the old powerpoint or boring report for the idea of being  multimodal : present some of the tools or inspirations that your team worked off of, bring in a customer to use and demonstrate this product and tell your customer what they think, or go a completely different route  and give them something like  a book  describing the story of your product. To get your customer on board you need to make them part of the process, allow them to give input and take an active part of your presentation  so they feel a stronger connection with your company and what you’re trying to sell!

Have any Questions/Comments? Contact me at kevin.richard@ryerson.ca or send me a twitter message.

Podcamp Toronto : Ryerson needs to hold more of this type of event! I think the school really demonstrated what it was about and showed how they can excel above the rest. This ‘unconference’ while initially rooted in the realm of podcasting expanded into blogging, social media, and overall just business/interaction on the net. Some of the sessions I attended included :

-Building Relationships with Word of Mouth and PR Practitioners While Maintaining Credibility with Your Audience .Panel Discussion included :  Anita Clarke,David Jones, Eden Spodek andMatthew Stradiotto, moderated by Keith McArthur.
-I Got the Job because of Social Media by Daniel Patricio 
– Web Metrics Suck, (Or: How to Use Metrics to Get Sh*t Done) by Jeremy Wright of B5 Media 

PodCamp Toronto

PodCamp Toronto

Overall A+ conference! Really enjoyed it! I haven’t had time to check things out yet but as a bonus all sessions were posted to the web : http://podcamptoronto.pbwiki.com/MediaArchive2009

Facebook Camp at MaRs: Held only for a night, and quite a different set up but still was a very useful and informative event! Just to share some interesting Facebook insights did you know that 70% of toronto residents are on Facebook? Or on average that Canadians use this site 29.6 minutes a day and 2.7 times! Canada is a major Facebook nation.

Some key highlights from this event included:

Facebook Connect: Looking at the Facebook platform that allows companies to connect Facebook profiles and import that information directly to their website allowing users to bring their friends and login with them. Not only does this create an easier process for the user but through interconnectiveness at facebook it can encourage users to add more content and drive more traffic to a person’s website.

Whopper Sacrifice: I’ve personally experienced the site when it was up and running but it was great to see the marketing statistics and effectiveness of this campaign. Done by Refresh Partners ( located in Toronto!) this campaign was amazing! A user of the site was given the ability to sacrifice 10 friends for a free whopper, where the friend would be sent up in a flame and burned to ash digitally. This program achieved amazing results!

-233,906 friends sacrificed
-high virolocity: for every one user of the site, they sent 2 more.
-After 10 days the coupons ran out and Burger king happy with the results shut down the site!

Democamp19: Another great event, but again very different from the other 2 I attended. In comparison this event was about web entreprenuers demonstrating their latest projects to the net community. So many great projects to discuss, rather than blather on I’ll post all of the sites:

-Akoha
-Backtype
-Dex
-foodea
-Imagespark
-Kontaigent
-Hackerspaces.org
-N8R text : text your location to N8R text at 416-662-3408 and get a haiku of the location
-Communitie

Something I found interesting at this event was the idea of Ignites presentations which means 20 slides at an auto setting of 15 seconds per slide. It forces the presenter to be on task, well practiced and succinct I think I’d like to try doing it in the near future.

US Now

Us Now Movie Screening: This was at Bloor Cinema, the movie was about the idea of a colabortive world using web tools and how government and organizations can use this to bi-pass barriers and have a more involved organization. Most of the people I were with were there to see Don Tapscott ( which I was too, his book “Grown Up Digital” is a must read!) but I was really excited by the ideas presented in the movie. One interesting segment included a British football team owned and run by the fans. By collaboration they decided which players to purchase, the starting positions of the players and other tasks that a regular owner would do and I was amazed that such a system was sustainable. Unfortunately Don Tapscott didn’t have much time to speak, but he did share some insights in the end and overall yet another good learning experience.

Premier of "Toronto in 6 Words" Care of MSovie via Flickr

GenYto/Canlit at CSI: Not a direct learning experience but still an interesting event to attend.Involving many of the people I’ve been speaking with over the last while I thought it was really interesting to see how this group is made up ( from marketers/ photographers/ PR People/Webdesigners and the list goes on….) despite everyone coming from different backgrounds/experience levels everyone was still able to come together have a good time and share experiences. Following the theme of all of the events it was about collaborating , sharing and bettering each other as a group. While this was more of a winding down and having fun event its not something one would normally see  happening very often  in my opinion.

Closer to end of the night at Canlit.... I think we're all entitled to a few bad pictures :S Care of Rannie Turingan Photography

Whats on tap for the weeks to come, well in the near term its going to be “Passion” on March 23rd by Refresh Events and then FAILcamp coming up in July….. but I sense there will be many more in between as well. Stay tuned! 

Have any Questions/Comments? Contact me at kevin.richard@ryerson.ca or send me a twitter message.

http://kevrichard.podbean.com/

Along with hearing some of the insights from  members of this elite ( or L33T) group, the theme of the night was ‘The Kickass Green Event’ talking about green business, and the Canadian environment. All in all really good speakers:

-Leslie Domenico from Green Enterprise Toronto spoke about sustainable and green business within Toronto ( big focus on local sourcing and equitable business) 

-Linda Mortsch from Environment Canada gave an intense wake up call about the state of global warming and how its going to affect our planet.

-Andy Thomson blew me away twice, first with his amazing presentation skills ( when you can tear 50+ business people from conversation to pay attention to you, thats what I call having  presence!) and after with his presentation on green homes with  the interesting idea of a green trailer park which was less trailer trash and more loft living in a forest. 

I unfortunately had to dash to another meeting I had, but  afterwards there was a presentation from Bikes without Borders which probably rocked as well, they sound like an inovative not for profit organization which I look forward to reading more about, perhaps getting involved sometime in the future(Linkage).

Overall, it was a good night even despite having to cut it short. I’m really exited to  become more involved in the LOKBP ( for more about what they are  check out here! )  this is definitely a group  that while making me feel insignificant because I’m not fully kick ass (yet!)  it also makes me want to learn and expand  myself  and  bring myself to that level.

 If you perhaps are a kick as business person who just happened to stumble upon my blog twitter @SeanMoffitt as not only is he the ‘big kahuna’ of the group , I’m sure he’d be happy to have you aboard.   The next  LOKBP event  Kick ass Design, will be happening March 4th ( so far away!) and  Sean is also begining to get together a group of Under 30 years  KBP group as well!  Pretty exciting stuff.                                          

Thats it for me, back to my chill friday night! Got any  Questions/Comments? Contact me at kevin.richard@ryerson.ca or send me a twitter message.

Walks: either with the headphones in listening to the latest music I have or with a friend talking about everything  and anything I enjoy experiencing the streets of toronto ( or anywhere really) and looking at all of the sights and sounds. A lot of the time I find I just zoom by things  and miss all the details, but by slowing down and making yourself more conscious you notice all of the new changes  and goings on around you. 

Books:  It can be  through school reading a sometimes long winded text book or  turning every suspense filled page of the the newest Koontz book ( right now reading Odd Hours!)  reading is something I’ve enjoyed for a long time. My family has always been pretty big on reading and I’ve always enjoyed learning about someones new idea or creative story line. Sitting down with a good book seems to just make everything fade away and places you  in the moment with every word on the page. 

Reddit.com: I came upon this website 2 years ago and come back to it on a daily basis. To best describe it ,its basically a collection of stuff and just randomness. There are always links on this site that make me laugh, or links about a  current events that make me think. Oh and I can’t forget about the crazy marketing campaign they had last year called Drankkit World Tour! Overall a site that doesn’t take itself too seriously. 

Electronic Gaming: Ok I admit it, I’m a bit of a nerd…. I can’t help it! As soon as I had my hands on Super Mario Bros for the orignal Nintendo I was pretty hooked. While I don’t have the time/money to enjoy much of this current generations games ( althought Guitar Hero rocks!) I do from time to time pick up one of the old titles I have such as Halo or SSX snowboarding. Lately I’ve been getting my electronic gaming  fix at Newgrounds and for 2009 I’m looking forward to the release of StarCraft 2!

New Experiences:  from learning a new topic, exploring a new area of town or hanging out with a new friend I find experiencing something new or different exciting. I guess I can blame it on not staying in one place for too long, that gave  me a strong curiousity for things . 

Sleep!:  This is not to say I’m a slacker or anything but I always thought it was a good end to the day. The feeling of the blanket surrounding me, a  pitch black room and a soft pillow under my head , I always thought it a great place to be alone with my thoughts . I actually find I do some of my best  thinking/problem solving directly before and after I go to sleep. 

Questions/Comments?: contact me at kevin.richard@ryerson.ca or send me a twitter message.

I’ve had a lot of thought about it and I thought it would be important to create a strategy for myself in 2009 to ensure that I have a set direction of where I want to go with things. I think in general its also something that everyone should consider moving into the new year ( 3 more days!). Here are my 3 priorities for 2009:

1. Becoming more passionate: I’ve noticed that when I have a strong interest in a task or invest a lot of myself into something I’m much more effective and feel more strongly about it. As well I’ve been noticing that being passionate at what you do is a major success factor, I’ve seen a few cases where people just ooze passion and they are definitely at the top of their game.

So What?* On my part this is going to take 2 tactics. On the one hand I’m going to have to build passion and enthusiasim into the work I do, that means changing my attitude , having more in depth planning and building stronger focus.

My second tactic is going to be building my passion. I find exploring and experiencing new things has been something that’s always energized me, and I haven’t been doing that a lot lately. My goal for the year is going to be every week to go out and spend a few hours and try something new, maybe I’ll even build some long term interests.

2. Spend time on the right people : Something that I think was a bit of a downfall for me in 2008 was that I started the bad habit of trying to keep the people around me happy and ignoring what I needed. Despite my efforts to impress, things were very often onsided. On the other side of things, there were relationships that I really valued and never made the time to invest in them.

So What? Prority #1 for this goal is going to be reconnecting and spending time with the people I care about and value. Its going to be about breaking from the regular cycle and taking the time to be present. A side goal I would like to explore is also being with new people, seeing some new perspectives on things.

3. Taking care of my health: Being a student sitting at a desk for hours on end I’ve found that while I’m not gaining any wieght, I’m not getting any more fit either. Something I also need to watch for is a recently learned family history of heart disease.

So What? For me its going to be about setting the time and getting a routine together. This past term I bought a school gym membership and used it twice! This year I’ve got to get out of my bed ( despite how comfortable it is) and drag myself to get some exercise done. Its also going to mean building a bit more incentive in as well, my plan is to become a much better squash player in the coming year !

* Its pointless to have goals without strategies to get there, something my prof often commented on in assignments is the “So What” aspect of ones work. You can write something done but in the end what does it mean!