I remember growing up and learning what the internet was. I remember the gradual developments, from a dial-up modem where no one else in the house could be in the phone, to Ethernet that was way faster and seemingly always connected. And then came Wi-Fi in residential settings and man-oh-man was that a game changer. And then Wi-Fi became accessible and FREE in so many places. Then 4G and LTE came along, making it possible for us to load things and seemingly Wi-Fi speeds without even having Wi-Fi (let me go ahead and admit that I JUST got 4G in late 2014. I know. Late bloomer)! And, now, there are just options on options on how to access data and look something up quickly, ESPECIALLY if you own a smart phone.
Fun fact: my family primarily used CompuServe and not the classic AOL (although it is a subsidiary, now). THAT was a throw back. Netscape Navigator anyone?
So with the introduction of a revolutionary company and initial concept like Google, it’s safe to say that all of our lives were changed, and that Google was just the beginning. I am a firm believer in the use of technology, and I guess more specifically the internet, to change the world. Just yesterday I was reading an article all about how “fashion trends” are no longer a thing, one author wrote, because of the advert of social media and the elimination of boundaries to information flowing. I think using fashion as an example is a bit elementary (and unfortunately I couldn’t find the article for this blog) but I still completely agree!
More often than not, I come across articles on internet “publications” that are really just variations on the same old, same old. With the increasing popularity of sites like Elite Daily, Buzz Feed, Unworthy, and Thought Catalog, I think it’s particularly interesting in be a publisher in this digital age. Especially as a millennial, we engage in our fare share of instant nostalgia, and many times it’s not all that warranted.
And then this morning happened.
I was just minding my own business, you know, checking my Facebook newsfeed on the way to work when I saw an article that I thought might be kind of interesting. It was called, “20 signs you’re doing better than you think you are.” This article came to me at a very interesting time.
Having just moved out of my parent’s home – after moving back in – I”m constantly going back and forth with myself mentally. It’s a big change and it’s one that I like to think I am ready for, and that I couldn’t be more anxious/eager/prepared for (and yes I do realize that all of those are not synonyms). More than anything, having monthly bills to worry about isn’t really something new for me – but it is a little different at this scale.
I’m excited to move to that “next stage” of life. But this article also served as a very worthy reminder that I’ve come a very long way at my very young age. And no matter how nervous I am it is something to be proud of.
P.S., don’t be worried if you’re my age and you may be missing some of these on the list. I’m missing some but hey…isn’t that all just a part of the experience called life?
Short and sweet VT shout-out today. One of my favorite blogs to read on my morning commute into D.C., DC’s Streetwise (formerly known as In The Capital), ran a piece on Virginia Tech start-ups. I was just about to type “I can’t believe how entrepreneurship is truly alive, well, thriving, and BOOMING in the New River Valley,” but quite frankly: I can.
Just last month, I attended VFit by VirtualU’s DC Launch – amazing people, revolutionary product, and fantastic representation of a promising NRV start-up. If you’re a HESONWHEELS reader in the D.C. area, check out their location at Bodysmith Gym + Studio in D.C. You’ll be impressed. I guarantee it.
With the determined, passionate leaders and individuals I know throughout the community who are great “boots on the ground” champions of town and university entrepreneurial success alike, I’m happy it’s a place that I call home.
Check out some of my favorite Virginia Tech start-ups at their websites, linked via their logos within.
Whenever people ask me about my “passion job,” and what all it entails – I usually refer to motivational speaking and building the brand that is HESONWHEELS. My preferred way to build my brand is two-fold: through my daily behavior and through blogging.
In life, I believe one of the utmost important personal qualities to have and to hone is consistency. This is why the Justin that you encounter while he’s out with his friends on a Friday night is just about the same Justin that you’ll find Instagramming pictures of dinner on Tuesday night, alongside the Justin that is at work finalizing policies on Thursday afternoon. I try to be as consistent of a person as possible.
That consistency is what, I hope, translates to HESONWHEELS in a very real way. Some of the nicest things people ever say to me (and they also mean the most) is that they feel like they know me before we even have the opportunity to have a legitimate conversation. While transparency and social media are also tenants of my life, and those help; nothing is more important than consistency to me. There’s a great benefit in being in charge of my internet persona (also known as online identity or online reputation), which I frequently share in presentations.
But anyways, that’s why when I found this post by Seth Godin, it really spoke to me and I felt encouraged to reblog it. Just as I am now. Seth, one of my favorite bloggers, writes, “Your logo is a referent, a symbol, a reminder of your brand. But your brand is a story, a set of emotions and expectations and a stand-in for how we think and feel about what you do.”
Not sure the last time I read truer words about a personal brand and developing it.
In June 2014, I had one of the more transformative experiences of my entire life. I decided to attend the Firefly 2014 Music Festival. Thanks to Mauricio, a great Hokie friend of mine, my reservations about entering an environment where I would not be able to shower and also be rolling around in a giant dust bowl without super-convenient access to electricity were basically made non-existent. Check out the blog post about Firefly itself to learn more about that.
However, one of those main things is what we’ll zero-in on for this post: the lack of super-convenient access to electricity. At Firefly, they had cell phone charging tents on-grounds where … you can go to do exactly what it sounds like: charge your cell phone! While charging my phone, this particularly day I remember well becuase it was the same day as a big World Cup game for the U.S.A., I ran into a man named J.P. J.P. was my 1 new person that day.
As always, click the image to make it a bit larger if you’d like.
So as you can see there, J.P. sent a meaningful note about a blog named Farnam Street. Later that summer when I began to use the news-agreegating app Feedly, I made sure to keep perusing Farnam Street. Farnam Street’s focus on culture and reading interesting books really grabbed my attention – as those are two things that I’m constantly become more engaged with and familiar with myself. It just struck me as a great blog, almost immeadiately.
Now, fast forward this past week. Uber-popular entrepreneur and space advocate Elon Musk did a “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) session on Reddit, and while I didn’t catch it while it was active, it was all over my social media after the fact. I decided to scroll through it and catch some of the highlights, and ironically enough, all of the news coverage that I saw about the AMA session afterward were precisely my favorite parts about the entire session.
While I’m not too much a fan-boy of of Mr. Musk (admittedly I have not taken a ton of time to learn about him outside of the things that everyone knows about him: that he is from South Africa, is CEO of SpaceX, a co-founder of PayPal, a co-founder of Tesla Motors, and super innovative and risky in terms of his thoughts on transporatiton), I super-duper respect him because I know he care a lot about education. I think this one quote that he shared during his AMA session reflects that succinctly:
One bit of advice: it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.
Yesterday, Farnam Street posted a great three-and-done highlight of what they thought was most interesting from Musk’s AMA session and I agreed with every single one. You can find their post here. Really though. Check it out.
Shoutout to J.P. for showing me Farnam Street and shout out to Shane Parrish for the great work he’s doing over at Farnam Street. It’s websites like these that make me excited and happy to get push alerts on my phone. Because I know that there’s a change they aren’t going to be a pointless note from Twitter about things the people I follow are retweeting. I know that I might open my Feedly to be greeted with something thought-provoking, intellectual, and head-scratching. And I think THAT is what the internet is all about: information discovery and knowledge gathering.
At the end of the day, I always have thought the real question is: how do you manage all of that information…knowledge…and stuff?
With one of my many passions being education, I spend a ton of time interacting with students and their educators. While my day job doesn’t allow me to do it quite as much as I would like I use my personal time, including a ton of time on social media, to meet students “where they are” when it comes to trying to understand them and the challenges they face. And quite frankly, I use the term “they” kind of loosely…I’m in my mid-20’s officially, but it still doesn’t feel like quite that long ago that I was where they were, worrying about the same things they were, whether it was my first big-boy job, moving away to college, losing all of my high school friends…the worry list could go on…
This month, I’ll be working on quite a few new contracts and speaking engagements, focusing on high school graduations for this summer. In order to deliver meaningful messages and really connect with these audiences, I’ve realized that it’s always best to do a little “research.” I occasionally will do some internet-based research outside of the social interactions that I have with students, most of whom are in middle and high school. I always lean on the social interactions, and I hardly ever take what I find on the internet as the overall truth…but this time is different. This guy hit the nail on the freakin’ head.
That’s why this particular article really fascinated me. It’s a long-form article and truly sincere breakdown of what this particular teenager and his peer think about the various forms of social media.
It’s funny because, for example, with Facebook – that’s definitely my “generation’s” form of social media. One of my parents came on board last year, every single one of my college friends has it, and uses it in an engaged way. But most of the students that I worked with during my graduate school years (who are graduating college in the next year or 2) use Instagram , just as he described. On the other hand, many of the high school students I interact with use Snapchat with each other. They ALL use Tumblr in exactly the way he described – without a firm identity. We all use WhatsApp to communicate with friends while they are away in another country where cell phone service would be radically expensive.
And I’m over here like “Forget all that. Can’t you just iMessage me?” Social media sure can be inundating sometimes!
And finally, although not as relevant to youth, the video below is one of my annual favorites. Although the 2014 iteration, in my humble opinion, isn’t as great as past versions it still provides a great visual and very updated statistics on how we are all interacting with social media (with a slight focus on advertising and marketing) as we are smack dab in the middle of the digital age.
Read the article above and then check out the video below!
It was exactly 10 months ago that I made a very public declaration. I said … “I’m back.” Graduate school was winding down and I felt it was the right time to rededicate myself to blogging as often as I enjoy blogging. I had spent so much time working on my final exam for my graduate program, and preparing for graduation in May 2014, and that was finally winding down. “Here we go,” I told myself…the next piece of life was going to begin, and I was going to be able to re-focus on HESONWHEELS as much as I wanted to.
Only part of that was to be true.
Yes, the next part of life began. But at the same time, I found myself wanting to spend more and more time reflecting…in an inward direction. I had all of these blogs written up in the notes of my phone, and beautiful ideas to share with you all…but I decided not to post them. And I decided that one of my biggest goals – recording 1 second of my life everyday – I would wait until a different milestone.
I had blogged about this on April 1st, too. But then my birthday came and went – and I honestly was just stressed. I kept setting these goals for myself and I kept not meeting them. Other things would come up – job applications, demands for my time, personal time, other speaking engagements, the whole gamut – and I could just never find time to really do it.
Well, folks. There’s no motivation like a New Year to help you commit to something. And here. we. go. I really mean it this time.
If you’ve followed HOW for a while, you know that I don’t really believe in New Year’s Resolutions. But, I do believe in New Years goals And that is why I have finally, definitively and absolutely set a new goal for myself: I am going to set multiple reminders, and no matter what I am doing on any given day, I am finally going to execute one of the longest digital projects of my life: recording 1 second of my life everyday. Search for the idea’s originator, Cesar Kuriyama’s, TED talk on Google, and you’ll find the great inspiration behind that idea.
Just like I planned last time: I’m not going to post the one second every single day. But I WILL post it increments; culminating on Dec. 31, 2015.
