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.

On the other hand,  some parts – particularly the end and some of the biographical background – drag on for too long and seem repetitious. And the “renegade” designation – that isn’t just used in the title – seemed like hyperbole. Obama comes off as a thoughtful and pragmatic, and only radical insofar as he doesn’t approach issues with the perspective of a beltway insider. The overstatement makes Wolffe come off a bit too deferential.

If you’re looking for a political thrills, The Audacity to Win, which is next on my political playlist, seems much more promising. If you’re looking for a thoughtful, more ponderous insight into the psychology of a campaign and candidate, you’ll probably enjoy Renegade.