the last post?

i’m not blogging anymore. but i may return to it. i wanted to do one last post, but it wasn’t until a meeting i had today that i really decided how to do it. i had a great meeting this morning with a local entrepreneur; i wish i did more of these. i’m going to have to if i stay in northeast ohio. if i stay in NEO i want to have an impact. i want to get involved. i want there to be a higher profile tech community. this will take some effort, but i’m willing to help the effort. there’s a lot of great talent in the area… but it’s an area that isn’t connected well. the way we work in NEO is wrong. the community owes it to itself to do more. it wouldn’t be hard to make this a blossoming area - it would just take openness to ideas and the right people to implement the ideas. when i see things about NEO for the most part i think ’stone age.’ NEO is a community with good ideas that lack implementation and bad ideas with implementation. it’s a community with the wrong leaders listening to the wrong things. what do i mean by that? we have numerous efforts to revitalize or fund technologies - but the effort is put in the wrong places. it’s a community where people say things that they heard without any substance behind them. for example, i used to work for a company that recently decided they’d like to consider blogging. how did this come about? someone high in the company said, ‘ i heard blogs are good for marketing, we should do that if we’re not.’ what a perfect illustration of NEO - late action with little substance or reasoning. so how is this problem fixed? action. the problem with communities (and politics) is that it is only those that act that get to determine what happens. if you sit back and watch and complain about bad ideas you’re not doing anything to advance the good ideas that you have. if anything you’re perpetuating the implementation of bad ideas. it’s not about having prominent figures and ideas it’s about the right figures and ideas. i believe i’m one of the people that should be more prominent in the community. my problem has been inaction. this has largely come from the fact that i’ve been in law school for the past three years and haven’t had much opportunity for anything other than law school… but if i stay in the area i’m going to do my best to change that. what’s confusing to me about the state of affairs in NEO is all the talk about how bad it is that NEO is loosing all of its young talent… yet their is little done to promote the efforts of the young that remain. so… what will it take for me to stay in the area? first let’s think of why i’d want to leave. there are a number of reasons: 1. Attitude. the attitude of the region is wrong. it’s self loathing and only serves to perpetuate its negative image. 2. Opportunity. i don’t know if i will be able to stay in the area. i’d like to, but the field i want to be involved in isn’t prominent enough in the area. that’s not to say that there aren’t great companies in the area… it’s just that they don’t get the attention they deserve, which in turn makes them less successful than they could be. 3. Age. i’d like to leave the area now, because i’m 25. there really won’t be a better time for me to try to pick up and leave. i recently ended a 4 year relationship, which left family as more or less my only tie to the area (ok there is a new girlfriend now… but that will work itself out). 4. Age. not only am i 25, but the region is old. old in the sense that i don’t feel like i can get the respect i feel i deserve because the area, despite its claims, doesn’t respect its youth. 5. weather. ok nothing can be done to change this, but it’s april and there’s snow on the ground. so what will it take for me to stay? opportunity for impact. is this available to me? i don’t know, and i don’t know if i’ll be here long enough to find out.

this has been sort of a stream of consciousness post, and if it was someone that i was helping with their blog i’d tell them that it was too long… but hey this is the end… i’m not worried about trying to drive traffic, i’m not worried about click-throughs to Lopico, i just want to write. of course, the whole point of the first part was to say that there are a lot of things i’m considering right now… and i’d like to blog them.. but i’m not going to. not until i figure out what’s next for Josh Amer will i blog again.

it’s an interesting time in the web, obviously that’s where i’d like to continue my career, it’s just a matter of opportunity. the web is great right now. web2.0 is just about over. web3.0 will never be (if we’re lucky). there will just be the continual connectivity and the full integration (content anywhere, structure irrelevant) that web2.0 has been hinting at. we’re about to reach the point in which we are connected at every point in every way from whichever source we choose. is that scary? is that exiting? will it be a good thing? i’m not sure yet. but i’m glad that i was a small part of it at least for awhile, and i hope i can be a bigger part of it for years to come.

thanks for reading. - JDA.