Lets start with this: Congratulations to all the time and effort put into Ignite Lansing by the volunteers. It was a fun and wonderful night. It was so much better than I expected, as this was my first time to one of these Ignites. I look forward to the next event, and ideas have been mulling around in my head to even submit a speech idea or two next time.

But what about my question. Are we burning up? I don’t think so just yet, but it seems a good pyre has been assembled. What needs to be done? We need to break out of the echo chamber. Echo Chamber? Yes. It seems to be that people there are just patting one another on the back, and it seems that very little good information is escaping from the event into the general population. I have seen only the article from the LSJ about the event, nothing on twitter or Google. The presenters need feedback, so we can all grow to be more effective for the future and igniting that pyre. Read more…

A post where I say Freelance Ad Guy a lot!

Over on Twitter I decided partly as an experiment and mostly just for fun to create a sub character to my already very decidedly caricature of myself.. I created Freelance Ad Guy and since his wisdom would be sporadic at best he became a sub character instead of having a whole new account. I like to think of my Twitter account as a sitcom with an ensemble cast. Why would there be a need for Freelance Ad Guy? Well he takes all that goes wrong behind the scenes not only in Advertising and Marketing but the whole creative workplace and then relates it in an entertaining manner. Now in doing this I have offended some people because he does hit a little too close to home for some and.. well… I get to see Freelance Ad Guy as an acronym.. some people are just not very nice. The more fun ones are when I get accused of giving out “trade secrets” sure sometimes Freelance Ad Guy gives acceptable wisdom but for the most part its a joke, not to be taken seriously. I wouldn’t hire Freelance Ad Guy and I would hope you wouldn’t either. Obviously people out there are because I would’ve ran out of material before I started if Freelance Ad Guy wasn’t getting work. I look at this little Twitter show of mine as an extension of what I try to do with my interns, I don’t so much focus on teaching them how to use particular software because they should already know that, I focus on trying to impart all the things I learned the hard way doing this for almost twenty plus years. Now if they listen I don’t know but I can at least say I tried…