What Father’s Day is About
The kids and I went out for brunch for Father’s Day.
Peter Climbs Rocks
Last night Peter had a lock-in with his Scout troop at a local indoor rock climbing place. That means they got there around 9pm and were able to climb until 2am. After they were done climbing, Peter stayed up until about 4:30am. They got up at 7:00am to leave. I expect he will be a bit tired today, but he hasn’t shown signs of it yet.
Peter and Grace in Florida
Here are Peter and Grace on our Thanksgiving trip to Florida. I didn’t take too many pictures on the trip, but here’s a link to the ones I did take.
Three Goals, Shared Three Ways
In yesterday’s soccer game, my son Peter scored three goals. It was the second game of the season and his team lost 4-3. The impressive thing about this, as a proud soccer dad, is that he has not played organized soccer in 5 years. Soccer was his first organized sport at 4, and I was one of his coaches. He developed a love for football, and started playing when he was old enough (seven). Now that he has discovered he is more interested in watching football than getting pummeled in football, he’s back to soccer. And at the rec league level so he doesn’t humiliate himself. His words, not mine.
As a social media guy, I am armed with my iphone, ready to share his accomplishments with my online friends and followers. Who knew it would turn into a blog post about ways to share photos and updates? But isn’t everything in my life fodder for a blog post?
So the first thing I do when I arrive at a new place is to checkin on Brightkite. This way if I post any photos, they will be tagged to a location and distributed to my selected networks.
After Peter scored his goal, which was done at the far end of the field, he came out of the game and got some water. I took his picture with my iphone and posted it to Brightkite. Here’s how it shows up on the location-based service. And there is a place for people to leave comments. I have Brightkite set to post notes and photos to Twitter as well.
Here’s the post to Twitter, which includes a link back to Brightkite and an indication that this is a photo.
After he scored his second goal, again at the far end, I took a picture when he came out again to get some water. I asked him to raise his hands in celebration. He humored me. Since I take photos using the camera function of iphone, rather than within any application, I can take multiple shots and choose the best one, and even change how I want to share it. For this second photo, I chose to post it to Posterous. This site allows you to post by email, which is super easy. This is now my preferred method of posting photos, as it can function as a photo blog for my mobile photos, although you can post anything there. Here’s the photo. Again, a place for comments, and again it posts to Twitter.
Here’s the post on Twitter with a link back to Posterous.
When Peter scored his third goal, I did not have a picture to post, so I just sent an update to Twitter.
Additionally, when I post photos to either Brightkite or Posterous, I have them set to also post the photos to Flickr, my main online photo repository.
And, I have all Twitter posts set to update my Facebook status as well.
And finally, FriendFeed is set up to aggregate all my content, so this is what that looks like. Since my Posterous site is new, I need to link that here too.
So that’s one way the flow of sharing information that works for me. There are lots of other flows and connections as most sites can be integrated to others. My two comments are that you don’t want to overload people and connect everything to everything as that can create duplicate content, and don’t post updates to places where you never go and interact with people. You need to respond to comments or updates about your own updates.
Let me know if you have any questions, and happy sharing.
My Son on the News
During today’s speech by President Obama, a news reporter from NBC17 came to my son’s school to interview students and teachers for their reactions to the speech. My son is featured in the below video and it also aired on the 6:00 and 11:00 news.
From the MyNC.com site run by NBC17:
At Culbreth Middle School in Chapel Hill, a class of 6th graders sat quietly and watched the President’s speech from their desks.
Peter Cohen, 6th grader, said he listened carefully to what the President had to say.
“I think one of the things he really emphasized was that you make your own future and so if you want to be a doctor or lawyer, you have to make that happen. You can’t depend on other people your entire life ,” said Cohen.
Back to School, Again
Grace and Peter are looking tired after their first day back to school.
The Realities of Business Consulting
I told my son, Peter, that I had a meeting with a friend of mine and we were talking about how he can use social media to grow his business. This is a common topic these days, but especially in my life. Anyway, Peter asked. “Is he paying you money.” I said I don’t know yet. Why. Peter’s response was, “Because money pays for me.”
Spring Break
For the kids’ Spring Break this year, we went to Florida and had a jam-packed week. We were busy, but with plenty of time to relax. Our schedule included swimming, a kids museum called the Imaginarium, an amusement park, a little bit of shopping, a boat ride to the beach, mini-golf, lots of eating, Passover Seder and the kids’ favorite activity: riding in the golf cart.
Peter in a hurricane simulator with 45 mph winds, which is really a tropical storm simulator.
Grace with her head in an alligator’s mouth. She does look a little nervous.
Laughing on the Dragon Coaster. The kids rode this 10 times.
Grace on the beach with a bucket and shovel.
Here’s a link to all my photos from the trip.
Passover Seder
This year Passover coincided with Spring Break, so the kids and I were in Florida for the first night of this Jewish holiday. My mom’s community holds a large seder in their clubhouse with over 130 attendees. My mom is on the committee that plans the event, now in its 7th year, and she is responsible for working with the chef to pick the dishes for the dinner. She shares her recipes with him and he figures out how expand them from serving 8 to serving 130.
Traditionally, the youngest child asks the four questions, which are answered throughout the ceremonial service before dinner, but since they were the only two kids in attendance, they divided the questions between them. Watch the short video to see what a great job they did.
Part of the service involves putting a drop of wine on the plate for each of the plagues brought upon the Egyptians, and here are my 10 drops on the saucer.
The food was fabulous, and included turkey with cranberry sauce, brisket, potato kugel, tsimmis and broccoli.
And here’s a picture of Peter and Grace with my mom and stepdad, Bob.
First Night in Florida
Here are Peter and Grace on our first night in Florida.