Today’s the five year anniversary of my dad’s death, which always gets me thinking a bit too much.  It also gets me digging around what I have that was his, trying to learn some things about him or from him.  This time I dug up his old 1972 cruise book from his Navy days when he was stationed off Sicily.

It’s basically — almost exactly, actually – like a high school year book.

It chronicles the life and times of this group of guys as they spent their days going through the ups and downs of Navy life. 

I’ve looked at it before and always suffer the same disappointment: in a book full of photos, there are almost none of my dad.  That’s because he was part of the cruise book staff, so he took most of the photos (he’s the one on the left).

Today, though, I had another thought.  The book itself was something I could cherish and learn from, because it wasn’t a few photos of Pop, it was his work.  He put his time, creativity, skill, and determination into creating this book and making it engaging, funny, and rewarding.  He was motivated to make sure it turned out well because his name was going to be on it, his peers would be experiencing it, and it would be — in some small way — part of his legacy. 

Pop worked on this book before I was born, at about the same age I was when I helped start Viget.  It’s funny to think of us at the same age, working hard on something to make sure we could be proud of the result.   His project at that time in his life happened to be a cruise book as part of his military service, my project happened to be a company (and the many businesses we’ve worked with).

Pop used to say something like “if you’re going to take the time to do something, you might as well make sure you do it right.”

I don’t know that Pop enjoyed being on that cruise, so far from his young family, but the task at hand was to make a good cruise book, so that’s what he helped do.  Had Pop had the opportunity to start his own company then, I would think that mindset — and his creative approach — would have led him to success.

The lesson I’m taking from my dad this year is to do what you do, and do it well.  No matter what you’re doing — whether it’s decorating a cake, playing with your kids, or starting a business– do it your way, the best way you know how.  It might not lead to anything more than a little dusty book full of memories, but at least it will be a book you can be proud of.

We used to get a cake during Free Lunch Friday every time it was someone’s birthday.  Pretty soon, that became every week, and that was just too much cake.  Now, we just get a cake on the first Friday of each month for everyone in that month. 

Laura has a bit of a cake decorating hobby, and she made one for us today.

I, too, like to decorate cakes, so I plan to top her on this effort — but it will be very tough.  That could be one of my favorite cakes of all time!

It’s wild to think that it was almost exactly eight years ago that we got together in Boulder, Colorado and planned out what kind of company we wanted Viget to be.  Last Friday, everyone from both offices got together for an incredible afternoon out of the Lab at the Marriott Ranch.  We broke from tradition a bit and combined our Third Third Thursday event with our annual “Viget’s birthday” dinner.

The afternoon was spent horseback riding, skeet shooting, jeep driving, and generally having fun together outside of work.  We played our annual game of Vigetry (sorry, you’ll have to join us to learn more) and enjoyed a round of toasts that varied from hilarious to sentimental — all great.

As we reflected, I was reminded of all the hard work we’ve put in over the years to get to where we are today.  As I mentioned during the Refresh panel discussion last week, I’ll never be completely satisfied with what we accomplish at Viget — I’ll never say “we’ve made it” – but I will celebrate along the way. 

There were times years ago where you could have easily made the argument that we should have quit.  In fact, looking back, if I were advising me 5 five years ago, I’d probably tell myself to pack it in.  But we just kept working hard then like we still do now, and I’m proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish as a team.  We still have a lot of great work to do ahead of us, but I’m glad we have traditions like last Friday to remind us that hard work pays off and sticking is a good thing.

It’s an especially social week for me (having 3 small kids tends to limit your evenings out, assuming you like your kids). 

Tonight, I’ll be joining the panel discussion at Refresh DC’s April event along with Andrew Lee of Publi.us, Sean Greene of LaunchBox Digital, Eddie Frederick of Hungry Machine, and Eric Rupert of Odeo. 

Refresh DC April Meetup: Startups 101
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
7:00 PM - 8:00 PM
3601 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 600
Arlington, Virginia

Jackson’s moderating, and judging by the growing list of attendees, I’m looking forward to a lively discussion.

Tomorrow night is TECH Cocktail. 

Thursday, April 24, 2008
6:30pm - 9pm
MCCXXIII: 1223 Connecticut Avenue, NW - Washington, DC
techcocktaildc2.eventbrite.com

Viget’s one of the sponsors and a bunch of us will be down there.  Hope to see you out at both of these events!

When Mike wrote about James Karl Buck’s use of Twitter this week to alert his friends when he was arrested in Egypt for photographing a demonstration, I wondered if my little hometown paper would pick up the story.  Today, they did, with a good article by Mike Musgrove.  It’s another example of the benefit of being able to make your friends aware of what’s going on in your life right now whenever you want or need to. 

Then again, it also hints to some concerns about documenting your day to day life.  Does your company have a list of keywords it searches for in a Twitter feed before it makes a hiring decision?  If so, do they take things out of context or really try to understand the situation?

One of the things I love about Viget is working with clients who are really making a positive impact on the world, especially when it comes to kids.  Healthy Child Healthy World is one of them. 

Healthy Child Healthy World is a national non-profit dedicated to protecting the health and well-being of children and families through cleaner, greener, and safer lifestyle changes.

Today, CEO Christopher Gavigan released his book Healthy Child Healthy World: Creating a Cleaner, Greener, Safer Home on Amazon.  I’m just helping to spread the word.

While I’m in a book promotion kind of mood, I can’t help but join the rest of the universe and plug Gary V’s new book Gary Vaynerchuk’s 101 Wines: Guaranteed to Inspire, Delight, and Bring Thunder to Your World.  Gary’s not a client.  He’s also not yet our VP of Strategy, despite my best efforts to recruit him.

Nick at Web Designer Wall worked with our designers at Viget to tell the story of how our new blogs came to be.  Great post!

I find two things get me into a rut when it comes to writing blog posts:

1. Under-Consuming - if I’m not reading sites & other blogs, keeping up with twitter, and talking with co-workers about what’s going on, I don’t feel qualified / justified to produce my own posts.
2. Over-Consuming - if, on the other hand, I find myself consuming massive amounts of ideas and input from others, I tend to feel overwhelmed with thoughts and unable to keep up with consumption, much less able to process the ideas and provide appropriate added insights.

Recently, I’ve been doing both.  First, my new baby boy threw me off my normal consumption habits.  Then, at SXSW, I was pummeled with inspiring ideas and communication.  Throughout it all, of course, I’ve been busy as ever at work.  So now I’m inching my way back into a routine as best I can …

Late last year, we had the idea to launch a blog for each of the “Labs” at Viget – strategy, design, development, and marketing.  Early this year, as we sat down to do it, we decided we should relaunch viget.com as well, and put it all on ExpressionEngine.  Last week, we launched it all, just in time for SXSWi (I am writing this from Austin, in fact), and the response so far has been great (thanks, everyone!). 

I wrote a longer post about our blog plan on the redesign FourLabs (i.e., “all about Viget”) blog — I welcome any thoughts or feedback you have on the concept …

Last week, Brad wrote a post about why and how he passes on certain investment opportunities.  I’ve gotten to know Brad a bit over the past couple of years, and occasionally introduce start-ups to him that I think might be of interest.  I can confirm that in every case he’s quick to respond, very professional, and very frank.  He doesn’t just say “no” but also doesn’t pull punches or waste people’s time.

For him to take the time to write a post outlining his evaluation process shows how much he cares about the people he’s connecting with.  It’s invaluable — if not a bit intimidating (appropriately) — to any funds-seekers to understand how he looks at deals, especially because I would expect that it’s not all that unique among the top-tier investors in this space.

A dual post today on two great programs that all early-stage web start-up teams should know about: TechStars and LaunchBox. 

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My drive-the-other-kids-to-school duties had me out and about this morning, so I was able to swing by Viget to check out the beginning of DC Design Talks and welcome all of our guests to the Lab.  Turnout was great, and what I caught of the early talks by Samantha and Nathan was great too.  Some early photos:

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We all spend a lot of time working to be the best at whatever it is we do, as we well should, but days like yesterday remind me what I never forget when I think about it.  Everything else is small-time compared to being as good of a husband and dad as I can be.

Colin Deane Williams was born yesterday (which you know if you follow me on twitter).  He’s my second son and my third kid.  Most likely, my family is now complete, which is an odd feeling — it’s just making me try to soak up and enjoy every minute that much more.  I’m as proud of my family as a dad can be.

When Andrew and Micah were making fun of each other in Trident last weekend over Twitter, I felt like I was there with my old Startup Weekend pals.  Then, when Andrew revealed that they were talking about VC Wear, a new t-shirt site that sells $100 shirts — to “accredited investors only” — and is already for sale itself for $100k, I threw up in my mouth a bit.  Especially after reading their pitch deck (PDF).

There are some funny ideas, and even though it started as a joke cooked up over a plane ride, the story got press and blog coverage, but didn’t quite make TechCrunch (yet).  My favorite shirt so far:

So are they making money?  At $100 per shirt and enough buzz get it in front of a lot of people, I dare say they’ve covered whatever costs they had (if any?).  I like it because Andrew and Matt had an idea, put it together quickly, and didn’t waste any time getting it out there.  I’m sure they’d love to sell thousands of shirts, but it doesn’t matter — they’re having fun with it.

Speaking of Micah, he wants to be #1 in Google, but not for his name (he already has that … it’s a bit easier than Brian Williams).  For some reason Micah wants to be #1 for the search “douche bag.”  With that little link I’ve now done my part in making his dreams come true.  Good luck!

Aaron spoke last night at a Viget-hosted meeting of DC’s Social Media Club.  He covered a lot of blogging topics, with a focus on how engaging in social media effectively can impact a brand (for a company or an individual).  My favorite line was:

“Authenticity will always garner trust, even if you’re an ogre.”

Brand is “less about perception and more about trust.”  Building trust is what’s important, and that has nothing to do with who you are or what your message actually is — it just matters that you’re direct and transparent about it.  I find that a common concern among companies and individuals is that too much transparency will reveal the “warts” and be a detriment to establishing credibility. 

When the goal is not a perception of perfection, but in fact a real relationship rooted in trust, it changes the game.  The warts become a good thing (because they show it’s real) and a positive pressure is created to not just seem worthy of trust and respect, but to actually be worthy.  Everyone wins.

You can watch Aaron’s entire presentation here.  Thank you again to Aaron for speaking, attendees for attending, and Larissa / Livingston Communications for organizing.

Viget is hosting the DC Social Media Club event on the evening February 21st.  Aaron Brazell, Director of Technology at b5media will be giving a talk on “Blog Draft Day: Making it Into the Bigs” and he’ll be:

“sharing some of my own experiences as well as insight I’ve gained managing proverbial ‘A list’ blogs at b5media.”

Should be a good discussion.  I spoke on a panel with Aaron last year, so I can promise you first hand that he’ll be worth fighting the traffic for.

Compliments of Viget, there will be plenty of seats and soda (you’ll have to know the secret phrase to get an adult drink) as long as all of Aaron’s ~1,000 twitter friends don’t all show up at once.  To be sure you get your spot, contact Larissa at the Buzz Bin.

A big congrats to Samantha, the newest member of the Viget family (until Monday, when David starts).  It was just announced that she is a SXSW Web Awards Finalist for the Blog category.  Last year was my first SXSW experience, when Squidoo won for the Community category, and it was a blast.  The Blog award recognizes:

Sites that revolutionize the power of publishing by providing regularly updated content of a personal or professional nature.

Her blog, Bad Ass Ideas, is one that I followed well before she applied at Viget.  Of all her posts, this one is my favorite. 

Samantha’s recognition is much deserved, and I have a lot of respect for her commitment to sharing her knowledge and insights with the community.   It’s something we really believe in at Viget (which will be even more apparent in the coming weeks as our company-wide blogging plans are revealed).

Speaking of community, it will be great to have the DC web community represented (the Library of Congress blog is also a finalist) at SXSW.  We’ll have six folks from Viget there, and I know a lot of other local web people will be making the trip.  I dare say Samantha can count on some rowdy cheers at the awards ceremony …

This isn’t a post about politics, it’s about how creativity spreads.

When I was a kid, if I created something that I thought was cool I might show it to my friends and family — an audience of, say, a dozen (I didn’t have many friends). Even professionally-creative adults way back then, who were capable of making something that actually was cool, would have to go through a lot of effort to get that cool thing out to more than just their inner circle. Distribution was hard.

In case you haven’t seen this video, it’s another good example that times have changed.

will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas isn’t into politics, but he watched Barack Obama speak in New Hampshire on January 8th.

In a moment of inspiration he turned that speech into a song, then made a video with his friends. Even as recently as 2004, that probably would have been the end of it. But it’s 2008, so he put the video online and within a few days millions of people had watched it, potentially influencing the outcome of a Presidential election. The story in his (trimmed) words:

but that speech…
it inspired me…
I came up with the idea to turn his speech into a song…
so I called my friends…
and they called their friends…
in a matter of 2 days…
We made the song and video…

Usually this process would take months…
a bunch of record company people figuring out strategies and release dates…
but this time i took it in my own hands…
and we did it together in 48 hours…
and instead of putting it in the hands of profit we put it in the hands of inspiration…
then we put it on the net for the world to feel…

And the video:

When distribution is free and easy, creativity (with a flash of inspiration) goes a lot farther than is used to. So go do something creative, put it out there, and see what happens.

Jackson and Jason have been kicking around for awhile the idea of putting together a low-cost, one-day conference series targeting the DC web community.  After a very successful BarCamp and lots of Refresh meetings (and happy hours), I think they realized that the community is willing (dare I say asking) to participate in these kinds of events.  Enter the DC Talks series, and their first event on February 29th, DC Design Talks 2008.

The DC Talks are quarterly conferences for Washington, DC-area web professionals that feature some of the region’s best speakers and practitioners at a fraction of the cost of other conferences.

Unlike BarCamp, where anyone can talk and a lack of structure is part of the idea, DC Talks is more of a “real” conference in that speakers are pre-selected and probably a bit more prepared.  Unlike “real” conferences, though, no one is out to make any money (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and the cost to attend is just $35.  Viget is hosting at our new office, and I’m sure other sponsors will kick in to cover meal and swag costs.

They tout it as a “local” event, but based on the current speaker (and growing attendee) list, which includes a couple of guys from our second home, Durham, NC, and another from Boston (sort of), I’d say it’s worth traveling for. 

Darren recently posted about the SethGodin account on Twitter, which is run by someone who simply tweets every time Seth writes a blog post.  This morning, Seth (the real one) posted to explain why he’s not really using Twitter, even though “he” has almost 1,500 followers.

“In 1993, we installed a primitive form of chat on our network at work. I think it was called SnapMail. I discovered pretty quickly that I was spending three or four hours a day using it. I was really good at it. And I also didn’t get as much done as I needed to. So we ripped it out. Just because it was stimulating doesn’t meant it helped with our goal.”

Does Seth think that Twitter is just idol stimulation?  A meaningless distraction?  A worthless time-suck?  I don’t think he does.  He also says:

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