Joshua Ness

I made an interesting move in May: I relocated from Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn to the neighborhood of Cobble Hill in the same borough. The two areas have almost nothing in common.

Both neighborhoods are dangerous, albeit in different ways. In Bed-Stuy, you have to be aware of your surroundings. I was never mugged or bothered (except for one instance when a kid lacked the confidence to demand my smartphone in a big-boy voice; if you can’t sound like a man when you’re trying to rob me, I’m not even going to acknowledge you), but those blocks don’t strike one as the safest of areas.

Smith and Court Streets in Cobble Hill are dangerous because I could easily go broke and find myself out on the curb without a dime to my name. There is SO much stuff to do around here! The apartment I’m now sharing with my college friend Umair overlooks a burger joint, a classy sit-down restaurant, an artisan cheese shop, a Dominican diner, and we sit above a 24-hour deli and a swanky Thai spot. And this is just what’s outside my window!

In short, I’m going to need to stick to a budget. My hobby (or weakness, depending on how you see it) is trying out new places. It was inaccurately pointed out earlier this week that my definition of “places” generally refers to bars.

I disagree.

I like going to and seeing new places and establishments, in general. I just happen to think that the way a person or culture manifests itself through food and drink says a lot about them. Ergo, I spend lots of time trying new foods and relaxing in new pubs. I also enjoy seeing other places like theaters, museums, or new parts of the city, but food and drink are easier (and usually cheaper) to do.

So… my tips on how to stay alive in the midst of choice-overload:

• Pay your bills early
• Decide on specific nights to try new sit-down restaurants
• Have a dollar limit when pub-hopping
• Seek out the cheap alternatives (they’re usually better, anyway)
• Take time to stop and appreciate where you are

This is my game plan. I’ll keep you posted as to its success.

I forgot how fun this is.

Before I get started, I need to disclose that I’m getting back into Coheed and Cambria. My roommate makes fun of me for listening to angsty middle-school girl music, but I ignore her. Their latest album, The Aftermath: Descension, was released last week. Go check it out. (If you don’t have Spotify, welcome to the Internets. Go get Spotify.)

The trick to getting out there is to GET OUT THERE. You’re always going to be tired when the work-day is over, but nut up and power through it and go to the event you put on your calendar earlier in the week when you were feeling inspired to try new things and meet new people. Don’t, however, drink an entire Monster Energy Drink at 6pm for that added boost. You won’t sleep well.

Growth Hacking is a movement that combines marketing, analytics, and product development to acquire users and encourage startup growth. There’s a Meetup group for enthusiasts, and they hand out free beer. Hashtag sold. I met a cool dude named Peter who convinced me to sign up for a Strategy Hack competition where growth-hacky marketers will compete to create a sustainable marketing strategy for new startups ready to jump on that boat. These types of events have traditionally be reserved for developers through “hackathons,” so I’m excited to see how this works out.

 

The New York City transit system is a work of art. Subways, trains, buses, and ferries all work in (relative) harmony to move 8.3 million people around the 5 boroughs. Benjamin Kabak of Second Avenue Sagas hosted a conversation with Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign to discuss fare increases and the complex web of transit funding. Let me tell you, I don’t have a dog in this fight. My transportation costs are fixed at $112 per month, and that’s better than anyone I know back home. With public transportation, I can get literally anywhere in this city with minimal frustration and cost. But this event was at the New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn, and I’m a sucker for informational gatherings in historical environments. I learned a lot about MTA funding, and I enjoyed the discussion even though Ben didn’t choose my written question as one for Gene to answer.

When you put a bunch of Texans in a room and give them tequila and Shiner Bock beer, hijinks ensue. The monthly Texpats happy hour was at the Rodeo Bar in midtown this week, and it was a great time as usual. Everyone met someone new, and business cards were exchanged with the promise of follow-ups in the days to come. Everything from new jobs to Broadway performances to operatic karaoke were discussed at length. I’m really excited to see where the Texpats go this year. Our membership has been growing, and our meetings are getting bigger as more displaced Texans flock together to lament the long winter and drown their sorrows with southern camaraderie.

These events, combined with a few one-off meetings with people over coffee or drinks, made this week pretty great. A few new friends have moved to the city, and it’s a lot of fun introducing them to networking events and local resources to help them find jobs and achieve what they came here to do.

I love this town.

I just got home from a crazy long business trip. My travels took me to San Diego for the Microsoft Lync Conference, Dallas and Austin for the wedding of my friends Mike and Shana, and to Portland and Seattle for work. My Delta Sky Miles account is bulging.

Here are a few things I learned while I was away:

In San Diego:

• The weather in Southern California isn’t always sunny and nice.
• Putting motion sensor lights in a hotel that is rumored to be haunted is a bad idea.
• I missed New York and the people in it.

 

 

In Dallas and Austin:

• Taco Casa is just as good as I remember.
• If you think your car is about to throw a rod, it probably is.
• Loitering at Walmart isn’t allowed. Loitering at Subway is.
• Bourbon in swanky Texas hotels costs as much as bourbon in regular NYC bars.
• I missed New York and the people in it.

 

 

In Portland and Seattle:

• Websites are fun to make when you have a professional graphic designer helping you.
• Microsoft offices are either really fun or really boring.
• I must resist the urge to talk about my umbrella-phobia when filling out submissions to speak at national events.
• I’m a horrible bowler, but apparently I’m good enough to win an award.
• I missed New York and the people in it.

 

I also learned that flying first class is pretty rad. Thanks for the upgrade, Delta!

 

 

After all of this, I’m very happy to be home. I think I have a few quick trips to Austin planned in the near future to prepare for an upcoming conference, but I’m hopefully here for a good while now. I’m likely moving out of Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn this summer, and I’m excited to get ready for that.

With any luck, I’ll get back on this blogging pogo stick and update with some regularity! It probably won’t be anything like my famous 30 Days of Content, but it’ll be more than I’ve been doing lately.

We’re two weeks in, and I’ve stuck to a few of my more important resolutions.

After SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas, I experienced a phenomenon called “showdown.” It’s what happens to event organizers when they complete a large event and suddenly no longer receive 50 emails per hour or have one-hour emergency deadlines that pop up out of nowhere.

Having so much free time should have been good for me since I’m also responsible for all of our internal marketing for the technology products we make and sell. It should have meant a break from madness to focus on deployment strategy and content creation. But it didn’t.

I got back to Brooklyn and realized I hadn’t been to Manhattan in over a month. Work travel combined with Sandy combined with SharePoint Conference meant I had been away from the hustle and bustle of New York City for a lengthy amount of time. So I spent a few days rediscovering my city, and then promptly settled back into a routine of sticking around the house, feeling bummed that the event was over, and wondering how to get started on my new projects.

This lasted through Christmas and New Year’s. By that time, I had become irritable and unproductive. I was in a funk that needed to end if I was going to accomplish anything I’d set out to do for work. So I resolved to get out of the house during the work week. My Bed-Stuy apartment was sucking the life out of me day-by-day. This goal isn’t as easy as it used to be with the dissolution of Loosecubes, my favorite co-working startup. Now it’s harder to find new work spaces on a daily basis, and I find myself exploring the Brooklyn coffee shop culture. This has turned out to have its own benefits, and I’ve been introduced to some very cool people and some equally intriguing cafés.

Additionally, I decided to take some advice I got from AppSumo. There have been so many tasks assaulting my daily routine that it’s been hard to stay productive. So I implemented a to-do list hack. See below:

I’ve been using this method for a week, and I have accomplished a ton of work! It’s worked wonders for keeping me organized. The only thing it doesn’t do is help me prioritize. I’ve been talking with my boss the past few days, and I have some good ideas on that, though. I think I’m going to assign various tasks a priority number based on the potential consequences if they aren’t accomplished on schedule. The most pressing will be worked on first, and so on. I’ll let you know how it works out.

So this is how I’m working to stay productive, efficient, and happy in 2013. I’m having some work done on my leg next month, and then I’ll be able to adopt the more cliché resolution of getting back into CrossFit. I’m looking forward to that, too.

What methods are you using to stay on top of your game in the New Year? Let me know. Maybe we can trade some ideas.

I’ve never been one for airline trouble. I’ve never been stuck on the tarmac, and I haven’t even been bumped from a plane. But I’m working on going oh-for-two when it comes to me versus New York City weather.

I was stuck in the city during Hurricane Sandy when I should have been in Chicago for the Meetings Technology Expo. I sat at home and talked to my new sales & tech manager on the phone as he demo’d our software alone at the show. Tomorrow, I’m supposed to fly to Las Vegas for our crowning achievement of the year: the Microsoft SharePoint Conference. Lucky for me, here’s what we have on the radar for the next 24 hours!

I have a ton of work to do once I arrive (late) in Sin City, and I’m hoping against hope that I don’t get delayed or canceled again. Cross your fingers for me.

Or Portland. Or Las Vegas. Or Orlando. It’s been a busy month.

I’ve been traveling a lot for work, and I’m getting a chance to see a lot of things I didn’t think I’d be exposed to when I moved to New York. None of it has changed the fact, though, that I live in the greatest city in the country.

Lucky for me, heavy travel doesn’t really bother my body. I feel like I’ve been able to remain young and vigorous throughout my thirty-something years. I still love getting on planes and seeing new cities. Even though I don’t always sleep well, I get up and am excited to be where I am.

Today I’m in Chicago for the Motivation Show, an “annual event for all segments of the incentive, recognition, loyalty, and motivational meetings industry.” That doesn’t sound too terribly exciting, but there are a few sessions I’m interested in attending:

• Attracting New Customers Through Social Networking
• How to Attract Your Target Market and Maximize Exposure Using Blogs
• Leveraging LinkedIn for Sales Impact

Two of the three instructors have Twitter handles, so hopefully they know what they’re talking about. Is it weird that I think so much less of people who claim to be “social media experts” who don’t even have active social media profiles?

I’m off to Washington State tonight, then a cross-country trip home on Saturday. A weekend win if I ever saw one!

It’s Friday, October 19. If you were paying attention, you noticed the 30 Days of Content Challenge, while it produced some great content, resulted in only small spurts of activity. It also ended a week before the final post was scheduled. Not quite the raging success I had imagined.

But I’m back! I’m back with a vengeance and a new strategy for keeping my musings in line and organized. I think blogging at night is what kills me. I enjoy a dram of bourbon and an episode of Big Bang Theory at night, not funneling thoughts and emotions onto my blog. And so it shall be: now I’ll do my writing in the morning!

I’m off to a good start. No work emails, no conference calls. A cup of coffee, some music, and a chance to do some real communication. I think this will be good. I’m inspired lately by a few blogs I’ve been reading, namely Socially Overworked and a couple others. There’s no reason any of us shouldn’t be able to produce some quality content once or twice per week.

This is my starting pistol. I learned a lot from the 30 Days of Content Challenge, and hopefully you did too. I’ll be re-designing my site soon, so hopefully you’ll come back and check it out from time to time. Until then, stay classy.

By analyzing my site stats, I’m finding that people really enjoy reading about how to do things in New York City. They really don’t enjoy reading about my job.

Whatever.

So it appears I need some more interesting content. That’s fine, I can do that. I present to you: How to Eat in New York City

Being a New York foodie is really easy. You don’t need to be uppity to get some good gastro entertainment. There’s one secret you need to follow, and I’m going to share it with you. Are you ready?

Eat at different places.

That’s it! No other work is required besides a little get-off-your-ass motivation.

All you do is go to a restaurant or a food truck or a churro vendor you’ve never been to before, and you order something. You walk home a different way and go down a street you don’t normally traverse, and you find a restaurant and EAT THERE.

Soon you will develop a palate for the different foods to be procured in this fantastic city. Today, I had an amazing hamburger with goat cheese and caramelized onions at a new restaurant called Borough. I never would have seen this new spot if Kelli and I hadn’t decided to walk down Franklin Avenue to get home instead of a more usual route.

You can also browse reviews on mobile sites like Foursquare or Yelp to see what’s good and close to you. Additionally, you can join a community like Foodspotting and explore the best foods around you with others in your area. Or just lose those useless inhibitions and try food you always said you don’t like. Chances are you’re just being difficult and you’ll actually enjoy whatever is put in front of you.

And if you don’t like it, eat it anyway. No one likes a snob.

This week has been VERY exciting so far. I’ve had several meetings in Brooklyn and in the city, and my company is about to embark on a series of partnerships for our technology products. This is all in addition to creating a content plan and reviving our social engagement schedule. Not to mention creating a new webpage on the fly due to an accelerated logistics schedule.

So, guess what I didn’t do.

That’s right, I didn’t meet the bar. I promised a content-driven post on the variations found in Content Marketing and Inbound Marketing, and it didn’t happen. But the good news is this: I’ve been thinking about it! And I’ve come to a conclusion.

There really aren’t any variations between Content Marketing and Inbound Marketing. Some people will argue that one is more comprehensive than the other, but I think those arguments are truly about protecting their own branding. The thesis of inbound marketing advocates is that it incorporates:

1. Content creation
2. SEO
3. Social media engagement

This is all good and well. Content marketing champions will say effective marketing must also include:

1. Specific content to drive leads through the sales funnel
2. Segmented content focusing on satisfaction, retention, and upselling
3. Website optimization beyond SEO to improve the user experience

This is also good and well. I think the two concepts have more in common than people will argue. Anyone who is paying attention to an inbound marketing strategy, when used as part of a comprehensive sales and marketing plan, will define content themes, topics, and goals in their content creation calender in the context of respective target markets and specific points in the lead conversion process.

What all that gobbledygook means is that marketers should pay attention to what they’re creating and why they’re creating it. Inbound marketing and content marketing are, in my opinion, the same thing.

What do you think? Do you subscribe to one belief over the other? What do you feel these schools of thought are lacking (besides an effective outbound strategy)?

I’d like to thank both HubSpot and the Content Marketing Institute for inspiring this post. They both do an excellent job and should keep up the good work.

I’m back from my business trip slash vacation in Washington. The work portion was extremely productive, and the family time was great, too.

I achieved a buy-in from my company and our leadership team to plan and execute a brand new marketing plan. I’m ready to get to work, and these next few weeks will be very interesting.

I was about to write a post about Inbound Marketing versus Content Marketing, but I don’t have the energy to do a proper analysis. I’ll write it tomorrow. The content will be good (bazinga!), and the ending may surprise you.

See what I did there? I set a bar. Now I get to meet it. I also need to reformat my blog theme. Remind me to do that this week.

We’re entering the home stretch of the 30 Days of Content Challenge. Now we get serious.