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Improving Ads

This site is currently on target to make $100 in Google advertising by March 2015, which will be about 25 months after my last Google advertising payout. This seems like a challenge to me: I’m going to leverage my technical and social networking skills to see if I can cut this time in half or better. And I’m going to blog about my tactics, and the overall results.

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GFIRST 2013 Canceled!

Citing sequestration and the need for financial tightening, the Department of Homeland Security just canceled GFIRST 2013, a major cyber security conference that I was scheduled to speak at. They may also have had some concerns about the scrutiny to which the IRS is currently being subjected.

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Blip.tv Goes to 1.5 GB

I’m so glad Blip.tv raised their video size limit to 1.5 GB. Previously, it was 1 GB, and I had a devil of a time meeting that size limit with 45-minute RubyNation conference videos.

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Crazy Public Speaking Stat

In the past 6 years, I have stood up and given a prepared speech in front of an audience 57 times, including conferences, user groups and other types of meetings.

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Working On a New SOLR Talk

I’m working with Jonathan Quigg on a new talk, “Security Strategies With SOLR and Rails.” We last spoke together at the GFIRST Cyber Security Conference in Atlanta, GA. This topic seems like a good follow-up to my “Rails and the Apache SOLR Search Engine’ talk from RubyNation 2012.

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Toastmasters 2012 Fall Conference

The Toastmasters District 29 Fall Conference was very successful. It was an interesting event to organize and run because it has a lot more moving parts than technical conferences such as RubyNation or DevIgnition. It featured an opening ceremony, a political keynote (the mayor of Herndon, VA), two speaking competitions, a variety contest, educational sessions, a leadership luncheon, a district business meeting, a raffle, fund-raising activities and a book sale.