The origin of the series actually dated back to January’s WordCamp Boston, where Jeff moderated a panel I organized called “Monetization in a Free World”, intended to help the audience understand the commercial WordPress themes, plug-ins, and SaaS businesses. Jeff ended up being in an impossible position, with 40 minutes to cover all 3 models and incorporate Automattic’s perspective, visa vi Jane Wells. Jeff and I decided it was worth doing justice to the idea; and so the April series of podcast episodes came to life.

The first episode (WordPress Weekly #94) was focused on commercial themes, and was a great kick off. Over 2 hours long, we interviewed Brian Gardner, founder of StudioPress, Cory Miller of iThemes (who had a newer commercial theme developer in the room with him), and Jason Schuller of Press75. All three had strong opinions, clear passion, and a memorable fondness for one another. WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg made a surprise appearance late in the show with a few questions of his own. The feedback was terrific, which really inspired us going into the following episodes.

The second episode (WP Weekly #95) explored commercial plug-ins. The panel featured the outspoken Carl Hancock of GravityForms, the articulate and passionate Jonathan Davis of Shopp, and Ronald Huereca of AJAX Edit Comments. This one lasted nearly 2 1/2 hours, and felt a bit more rounded out, in part due to Ronald’s candor about his challenges.

Part three (WP Weekly #96) turned to Software as a Service (or SaaS) business models, and was a little over 2 hours. I found myself challenged to weave the narrative of the three very different businesses together, and I think the episode felt a little less cohesive as a result. On the positive side, I think there was some good give and take with Automattic’s Raanan Bar-Cohen about the nature of Automattic’s position in the community.

WP Weekly episode #97 wrapped up the series with a “short” 1 hour wrap up and reflection episode. Jeff and I reviewed feedback from the earlier episodes, shared what we learned and what surprised us during during the series, and analyzed how two big pieces of news in the open platform (but not open source!) world influenced our reactions. Despite my concerns, I think there was a lot of meat in the latter half of the wrap episode, including a “meta-discussion” about the consulting model, and some words about the “meaning” of Automattic’s and WordPress’ unique position in the community.

Inspired by a few WordCamps that built themselves up from local WordPress meet ups, I finally got a few locals together at the beginning of April (Ken DeBlois of Brown and Suzanne McDonald, a freelance writer) to help organize a Providence Meetup. A couple of planning meetings, a new website, a Twitter account, and some local marketing later, we had our first meet up on April 26th.

I’ll be blogging over at the WordPress Providence website, so I won’t say too much about it in this forum, but the headline is that I was thrilled by the turn out and energy at our first event. We had about 30 attendees, a lot of buzz during the hour of networking, a nice and short presentation by DandyID (a local firm with a popular plug-in), and a great after-presentation brainstorming / discussion session.

The feedback has been positive, and we organizers are jazzed to keep the momentum going. On top of our base from the first meet up, I know at least a handful of people who wanted to come but had conflicts, and we already have a couple of RSVPs for our next meet up who were not at at our inaugural event.

In addition to the official website I scraped together, be sure to check out my guest post on RI Nexus, and some photographs of our first meet up over on Flickr. And if you’re in the Rhode Island area, come to our next meet up on May 25th!

Superfreakonomics

For some, economics is merely a “dismal”, mathematical study of the economy, and there are undoubtedly academics and intellectuals who treat is as such, ruining a fascinating study for college freshman and sophomores everywhere. Levitt and Dubner, however, remind – or reveal to – us that economics is really a study of human psychology and behavior within the context of markets and market behavior (often, in it’s most popular applications, extrapolated to provide insight and forecasts). Although, in one my favorite short anecdote in Superfreakonomics, they suggest market behavior might not be unique to humans.

The authors begin the sequel by assuring readers that they waited until they collected enough data and anecdotes to live up to the first book. The bad news is that they don’t really succeed. The good news is that it’s still a thought provoking and enjoyable read.

There are certainly memorable, fascinating insights, but they are generally less provocative and surprising than the first go around. Often, they rely on provocative subject matter and amusing comparisons rather than provocative findings; the lengthy prostitution segment is a prime example. The terrorist profiling chapter, while genuinely fascinating, was distinguished more by the picayune and quirky comparison they define at the outset to hook the reader then any really shocking conclusions.

The book does seem to be more “solution” centric than it’s predecessor, offering prescriptions for many of the problems defined in the book (though that could just be a poor memory of the first book). But – especially in the case of the deservedly infamous global warming chapter – their confidence in their proposed solutions has an air of hubris and over simplification of non-economic trades.

The global warming chapter, generally panned and even challenged by their central human subject, diminishes the book the most. The cost / benefit  analysis of geoengineering and further manipulating the environment as a potentially cost effective means to address a costly problem is a worthwhile consideration, even if there is – again – an air of hubris to their solutions. But the very worthwhile discussion of geoengineering is mired in thinly veiled climate changed denialism, or at least, dismissal of those who demonstrate serious concern about the subject. They begin by suggesting there was once a big fear of global cooling; except it was never a widely held view or fear. Economist Paul Krugman pointed this (and other errors) out in a review; the authors responded by saying they never really said it was an equal fear. They even rehash the “environmentalism as a religion” nonsense I’ve only heard on right wing talk radio before reading the book.

I’m focusing a lot on the negatives, which is easy to do given the high bar set by the first book, and one chapter that generated the most controversy. I enjoyed Superfreakonomics, and recommend it. Just take the climate change chapter with a grain of salt,  and don’t expect the book to match its predecessor.

They used my remarks concerning small businesses benefiting from joining larger pools, and my general comment about no one favoring tax increases but taxes being secondary to fixing the overall cost curve (this was in response to the reporter pressing on taxes). They cropped a comment I made about the benefits of remaining a parent’s healthcare plan after school until the age of 26. That would have benefited me for about 2 months during my transition period after graduation, and I believe would have benefited my sister for a period of time too.

WordCamp Miami. Never a big fan of winter, I’m definitely looking forward to a breather in sunny Miami, Florida. I’m flying down the evening before (this Friday, the 19th) and returning the following Tuesday. It’s actually more economic to stay a couple of extra days at the hotel as compared with taking a Sunday flight back. In any case, I’ll be speaking at Miami’s WordCamp, which takes place on Saturday the 20th at the University of Miami. I’ll be presenting a revised version of Themes 101, which “premiered” at WordCamp Boston. It will incorporate new information on the upcoming “default” theme, along with some feedback from Boston. If you’re in the area and interested in meeting up on Sunday or Monday, send me a note.

Boston North Shore Web Geeks’ “Great CMS Debate”. I’ll be representing WordPress on a panel debating the merits of a few popular web content management systems (CMS). Other panelists include Boston Web Studio’s Marc Amos (Expression Engine), Jay Batson (co-founder of Acquia, a widely known Drupal consultancy), and Fidelity’s Tom Herer (representing Kentico). My friend, founder of WordCamp Boston, and strategy guru at Optaros, John Eckman, moderates. It takes place on February 25th, at 7 ,pm in Newburyport, Massachusetts.

On a side note, I’ve been waiting for my WordCamp Boston sessions to get the video treatment before posting anything here. It’s taking a while, which is fine, better to get it right. If you’re interested, I contributed a few thoughts to a company blog post, which includes a photo of me presenting Themes 101.

One of the sessions I attended was Ramil Teodosio’s WordPress Powered-Intranets. I’ve done a few Intranet implementations of my own and Ramil’s seminar was a bit more focused on SharePoint-like substitution than I expected. My own experience gave me an opportunity to pipe up a couple of times to offer suggestions and, among other things, plug my free Restricted Site Access plug-in, which was born out of an Intranet project, and I thought might be of interest to the audience. Judging by the post-presentation follow-up with a handful of attendees, at least a few found my comments useful.

That session has been posted on WordPress.tv. While I don’t have that much that’s interesting to say (and audio is iffy), you can see my chime in at about the 24:30 and 30:00 marks.

Speaking of Restricted Site Access, I need to get around to incorporating the fork / changes added by Eric Buth who contacted me recently. It’s always great to see others build on your own open-source projects!

Topics included:

• General WordPress consulting services
• WordPress value perception as compared to other major CMS platforms
• Exciting developer features coming in WordPress 2.9 (RC1 out today!)
• What the near future holds for WordPress, with the MU merge and growth of BuddyPress, bbPress, et al
• My latest Smashing Magazine article
• WordCamp Boston (which I’m helping organize)

I really enjoyed participating in the podcast, and hope to participate again in the near future.

The story follows the same general formula Brown used in the other two Robert Langdon stories, The DaVinci Code and Angles & Demons – two favorites. Few authors can put me on the edge of my seat with the written (or spoken) word: certainly Stephen King tops that list, but Brown is not too far behind. Less terrifying, but nearly as riveting. Like its predecessors, the research apparent in the book is immensely impressive. I love the entire idea of Professor Langdon: a charismatic “hero” built on brains; a more authentic, believable Indiana Jones. And like all great fiction, the book sustains a feel of believability, and mixes it within enough smarts to leave the reader thinking.

A few other personal observations / reactions (avoiding spoilers):

• The book has many acts with very distinct textures. They all work, and the transitions are mostly smooth. In many ways, the range of emotions Brown shifts between is impressive.
• The latter acts have a considerably more epic feel that the earlier chapters, which felt a bit more Brown formulaic.
• The pop culture references – notably the iPhone and Twitter – made me smile. In one sense, they ground the book in “our” world and add to the story’s authenticity. On the other hand, they felt a bit forced, I worry they’ll date the book quickly.
• I predicted – or at least hypothesized – two major twists fairly early on (one involving a character’s identity, the other involving the true location of a mystery). The surprises were still “executed” brilliantly, and there were plenty I didn’t see coming.
• If I have any serious critique, it suffers a little from what I’ll coin 24 syndrome. The number of traumas the characters experience in a very short time frame detracts a bit from the believability. As I mentioned, Brown generally transition deftly between acts, but when you step back, the characters bounce back a bit too quickly from their experiences.

Despite my minor critiques, I enjoyed almost every moment of The Lost Symbol, and hope that I don’t have to wait 5 more years for my next Langdon adventure!

The migration wasn’t spawned by my love affair with WordPress, but by overdue necessity. That I was able to cobble together this new version (including new content) in about 4 hours with 98% of what I envisioned, however, does speak to the nature of my love affair.

An isolated blog about “me” in an age of decentralized content no longer made sense. As the web progressed and my free time compressed, my “presence” became increasingly concentrated on social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter where micro-updates not only worked, but were enforced. Since joining C. Murray Consulting, I’ve done most of my traditional blogging there. It seemed to me – a self proclaimed web strategist – that my website should reflect this reality and serve to curate public content rather than stand alone.

To this end, the new site aggregates my Twitter tweets, items I share in Google Reader courtesy of my very own plug-in, lists my last three posts on my company blog (only on the home page), and even has a page dedicated to finding me “around the web.”

Additionally, as a public face of a small business involved in marketing, networking, client engagement, and public relations, it has become increasingly important that I consider my own presence on the web. While there was nothing offensive on the old site, it was no longer representative of me, and did contain a number of old personal and political entries that – as I increase my public visibility – I’d prefer to leave behind.

So does all of this mean I’ll blog here more often? Probably not. I’ve thrown together a couple of other posts to prevent the site from feeling too bare, and I’m going to try and write quickies like those at least every so often.

I do, however, intend to post new entries a regular basis towards that curation goal. That means as I contribute new articles to places like Smashing Magazine, guest blog for others (a few of those on the horizon), or involve myself as a public face for events like WordCamp Boston, I’ll be mentioning / linking to them here.