I’ve had a busy travel year, between speaking engagements, conference attendance and a new job. I traveled to many parts of North Carolina, 9 different states, including California 3 times, Texas 3 times, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Arizona, Connecticut, Florida and Wisconsin, as well as Washington DC. I also visited 3 different cities in 2 Canadian provinces. Below are some photo highlights. There seems to be a preponderance of water and lighthouses.

Capitol Dome, Austin TX

The perfect place for a brat sampler, Milwaukee WI

The US Capitol, Washington DC

Abraham Lincoln, Washington DC

George Washington in Bruins Jersey before the Stanley Cup victory, Boston MA

Transamerica Building, San Francisco CA

Waterfront, Halifax NS

Lighthouse, Saint John NB

Lighthouse, Fredericton NB

Riverwalk, San Antonio TX

Terraces, Los Angeles CA

City Hall, Los Angeles CA

Market Street, Philadelphia PA

Reflection, Estero FL

Sunrise on Waterfront, Halifax NS

Bird and the Bay Bridge, San Francisco CA

Napa Valley Wine Train, Napa CA

Bodie Island Lighthouse, Outer Banks NC

I have been involved in social media, both personally and professionally, for over six years. While that pales in comparison to my more than 20 years of marketing experience, it is a long time to be involved with such a new area of marketing and communications. My career path has taken me from client-side marketer to agency to social media consultant to social media at an agency. And now it is time for another step. If you will allow me to paraphrase, “One small step for Radian6, one giant leap for Jeff.”

That’s right, I have started at Radian6 as a social strategist. If you are interested in what I will be doing, you can read about it on their social strategy blog. I am excited to be working with Dave Thomas, someone I began stalking when he was social media manager at SAS software. Well, stalking in a social media way, and we even did an interview with him for SocialMediaB2B.com. I was there, as evidenced by this photo.

So onto to the important part of this post, my mom. For years my mom has told me that she doesn’t understand what I do. No matter how many times I have explained, she claims not to understand. But every time there is an article in her local paper about a local company using social media, she is tempted to cut it out and send it to me. Just like I told her not to send jokes by email, or urban legend warnings that were disproven by Snopes.com years before, I had to tell her not to send me the newspaper clippings.

Now that I am working for a social media company, she can go to their website and try to figure out what they do. Frankly, I think she is just happy that I am progressing in my career “in these troubled economic times” and that I picked a growing field to be in.

I also think she is actually a bigger fan of salesforce.com, Radian6′s parent company. She can understand what they do because she used to be in radio sales. A sales-based CRM system is something that makes sense to her. A company monitoring the social web for mentions of their brand doesn’t really makes sense to her because she can’t imagine why anyone would talk about a brand online. Salesforce.com is a company that her friends have heard of and is talked about on tv. She is also excited that I get to go to Dreamforce, their huge tradeshow next week in San Francisco (Here’s a link to a free pass to the keynotes and the expo if you are around). But she a bit freaked out by the re-targeted salesforce.com ads that have started following her on the web.

This position is a great fit with my experience and skills and I am looking forward to working with enterprise companies that understand the value of social media and are looking to improve their adoption of it. If you have any questions about social media monitoring or Radian6, just let me know. I’ll be in the thick of it soon enough.

I took a quick business trip to New York City yesterday, and I had some wander time in the middle of the day. I was at the edge of SOHO and the Village and I took a few pictures with my iPhone. I was in an Instagram mood, so I shot the photos with Instragram cropping in mind. Here are few of the photos. Follow this link to Flickr to see more.

Tonight we ate at Uchiko, a Japanese Farmhouse Dining restaurant. It is the alternate version of Uchi, which is a more traditional Japanese sushi restaurant. Kipp and I went without a reservation, and were seated immediately at the sushi bar. This meant that during our meal, we interacted with one of the sushi chefs who prepared some of our food.

Here is my tweet from after we finished. Photos and descriptions of the food follow.

buri – winter yellowtail mint, green tea oil, garlic chips

sunchoke dashi spring vegetables, arugula, noble sherry, bottarga

baby artichokes lardo, thyme, saffron

yokai berry atlantic salmon, dinosaur kale, asian pear, yuzu

countryside farms rabbit nam thai chili, mustard, fennel, breakfast radish

sushi sampler

pork jowl brussel sprout kimchee, preserved lemon crème fraiche, romaine

bbq scallop sashimi kaffir lime, cilantro stems, breakfast radish

jar jar duck countryside farms duck, kumquat confit, rosemary smoke

fried milk choco­late milk, toasted milk, iced milk sherbet

Last year while at the South By Southwest Interactive (SXSW) Festival in Austin Kipp Bodnar, Dave Thomas and I had dinner at Uchi. It was an amazing meal, and Kipp and I are definitely going back this year. I had an annotated menu that listed what we ate, and I figured this was the best way to make sure we had the list when we went back.

The meal was made up of a series of small plates, and we each selected a number of plates. Our server determined the order of the food, which really made the meal spectacular.

uchiviche salmon, striped bass, vine-ripened tomatoes, yellow bell peppers, garlic and cilantro

maguro sashimi and goat cheese with cracked pepper, fuji apple and pumpkin seed oil

brie ringo tempura fried brie with apple chutney and crisps

hot rock “sear it yourself” wagyu beef with ponzu sauce on a japanese river rock

tomato katsu panko-fried green tomatoes

kona kanpachi pacific amberjack sashimi with crispy koshi hikari rice, ringger farm egg and sweet soy broth

bacon sen roasted pork belly with granny smith apple puree, cilantro, sherry vinegar and shaved fennel

ao ebi poached blue prawns, lavender, spring truffle and kinshu mandarin

We also tried all four desserts that were available, but the only one listed on the menu pages I have was from the nightly specials: okashi corn sorbet, polenta custard, corn soil and lemon gel

Today I tweeted that I put on a pot of chili and I was asked for the recipe by Matt. The easiest way to share the recipe was to share it here. I usually cook by feel, and recipes are never quite the same each time, but I’ll try to standardize it here. It will probably be more like a blog post than a recipe, but that’s how I think.

1 bag of black beans
Oil
3-4 cloves of garlic
1 onion
1 green pepper
1 lb of beef, cubed (you can also use chicken or turkey, but use cubed, not ground. It’s a texture thing)
1 large can of whole tomatoes
Salt
Pepper
Cumin
Cayenne Pepper
Oregano
1 bottle of dark beer (optional, if you need more liquid)

I always start with dry beans. This means you need to plan ahead, as they need to soak overnight. Rinse the black beans in a colander. Add the beans to a stock pot and cover with water. Keep in mind that the beans will absorb two to three times the volume of water, so there needs to be plenty of water to cook the beans. Cover and let sit overnight.

Finely chop the garlic and saute in a small amount of oil. Coarsely chop the green pepper and onion add to the pan, occasionally stirring. If you are using fresh chilis or jalapenos for spice instead of cayenne pepper, you can finely chop them and saute them with the rest of the vegetables. When everything is cooked tender, or caramelized in the case of the onions, dump contents of the pan into the stock pot.

Cube the beef and cook in the pan you just used for the onions, peppers and garlic. Add a touch more oil if needed. Add some salt, pepper and cumin to the meat as you are sauteing it. When the meat is fully brown, add it to the stock pot. Pour entire can of whole tomatoes into the pot, including the liquid. If there is not enough liquid, you can add a bottle of dark beer.

Add some salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, cumin and oregano to the pot. Since this is by taste, after the chili is cooked, you can fine tune these spices by taste. None of these spices cook in the chili, but the cumin will make it smell like you are cooking chili.

Turn on the heat to bring water to a boil. Once it reaches a boil, turn down the heat to simmer, stirring occasionally. Simmer uncovered for at least 2 hours. The longer you can simmer, the better it will be. Cook until the beans are tender, the tomatoes have cooked down and the liquid has been reduced. Taste and fine tune the spices, especially the salt and the cayenne pepper.

Serve over rice or with cornbread. Cube sharp cheddar cheese to put on top.

To support Movember and raise funds and awareness for Men’s Cancer Health, my friend Greg Ng, the Frozen Food Master, hosted a 24-hour live version of his web show, Freezerburns, to support the cause. He offered up an hour slot for a donation to Movember and each co-host picked a food to review. Grace and I appeared at on a 4am slot and reviewed Boston Market Salisbury. Watch the video above.

Watch my previous appearance on Freezerburns and an interview I did with Greg about the show.

If you would like to donate to Movember and support the cause, here’s a link to my Movember page.

Photo by Ash Crowe

According Jason Isbell, former member of Drive-by Truckers, the real reason performers don’t like flash photography is not because it freaks them out, but because it makes them look like they’re performing in cousin Stevie’s basement.

I found this comic on savagechickens.com. All are drawn on sticky notes, and most feature chickens. This one does not.

Normally the kids and I take our summer vacation and go to the beach. Since the coast of North Carolina is only a couple hours away, this is a convenient place to spend a week as the summer winds down. This year, they asked to go to New York City instead. We had been there a few years ago, but only for about two days. As my son said, We didn’t get to do much and there’s so much to do. After some convincing, I agreed and we booked our trip.

It was fun acting like a tourist in a city I have lived in, and taking the kids to all the popular spots. We stayed on the Eastside in the Beekman Tower Hotel, near the UN building. Not only am I an Eastside person, but it was nice to be in a non-touristy, residential area. We stayed near Times Square before and there was just too much hustle and bustle of tourists. The best way to see the city is to get a City Pass, which gives you access to six attractions, and in many cases lets you bypass the lines. Below are the highlights of our trip.

Museum of Modern Art

This was the first of several museums we went to, but if you take a very laid back approach to museums, kids will enjoy them. We focused on pieces that the kids were familiar with, like Monet’s Water Lilies (above) and Van Gogh’s Starry Night. These museums are just too big to stop at every work, read the card and go to the next one. Even for adults. I focused on these important pieces and the reality of what you can see by standing in front of them. Things like how much of Starry Night is created by the brushstrokes and the layers of paint. This is never really conveyed in a book.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Grace is a big fan of the Percy Jackson series of books, which brings Greek mythology into the modern day. The museum had a great guide highlighting select pieces based on the characters in the book. The first book also begins in the museum itself. Grace enjoyed finding these works with her special guide. We also enjoyed the Knights in Armor (one of my favorites as a kid) and the Egyptian artifacts, including the Temple of Dendur.

Statue of Liberty

A boat ride in New York Harbor on a hot sunny day led us to the famous statue. We learned a little bit about its history from a Park Ranger and did not go inside, as all tours must be pre-booked and were not included with our passes. After a few pictures, we were back on the boat.

Ellis Island

The Immigration Museum on Ellis Island was more interesting to me, than to the kids, but we did talk about all the people who came through Ellis Island. We talked about the strength it must have taken to pack all your belongings and travel across the ocean to a place where you don’t speak the language. While I have family members whose name was changed when they arrived in the US, I don’t know any specific relatives who came through Ellis Island.

Mac N Cheese

We went to an all Mac N Cheese restaurant called S’mac and Grace reviewed it for her web show.

Museum of Natural History

No kid trip to New York is complete without a stop at the Museum of Natural History. We used their iPhone app to find the big Blue Whale and the Dinosaurs. While some things have not changed since I was a kind, the Hayden Planetarium and Space Center are brand new. The planetarium (which is the device that projects the stars, not the curved dome) is long gone and replaced with a digital projection system.

Empire State Building

And we ended our trip with a view of the city from the 86th floor observatory at the Empire State Building.

We also met my sister for dinner, which was great since the kids haven’t seen her since the last time we were in New York three years ago. Here are more photos from the trip.