2009 — The Highlight Reel

2009 was an amaz­ing year for me.  I decided I would end the year with a blog post ver­sion of my high­light reel for the year.   Life has its share of ups and downs, but I feel like I get a lot more good than bad every day.  For that I am grate­ful.  It seems like nearly every day had some serendip­ity.  Here are some of my favorites:

• I com­pleted my first 5k and then my first 1/2 marathon, doing both with my wife Colleen by my side.
• I helped my daugh­ter learn to ride her bike, and then rode with her in the 4^th of July bike parade.
• I made a lot of chalk draw­ings on the dri­ve­way with my son.
• Not only did I get to do a pod­cast with Chris Bro­gan and see him speak twice, I also got to have din­ner with him too.
• I pre­sented to thou­sands of peo­ple at dozens of events on top­ics rang­ing from social media and mar­ket­ing to data ana­lyt­ics, pre­sen­ta­tion skills and creativity.
• I was quoted in an arti­cle about social media that appeared on the CNN / For­tune Small Busi­ness web site.
• I was given the priv­i­lege of writ­ing a col­umn for the monthly pub­li­ca­tion Day­ton B2B.
• Twice last sum­mer, I per­formed orig­i­nal music at Canal Street Tav­ern with long­time friend and musi­cal col­lab­o­ra­tor Derek Wade.
• I also played gui­tar and sang a song I wrote to open a pre­sen­ta­tion on Pow­er­Point at a meet­ing of busi­ness pro­fes­sion­als in Cincin­nati — some­thing com­pletely new for me.
• I helped to plan and then got to emcee Sum­mitUp, a social media con­fer­ence here in Day­ton, Ohio.
• I shed some tears as my daugh­ter hopped on the school bus for the first time, and watched in amaze­ment as my son began spelling word after word at age 3.
• Seth Godin left a com­ment on my blog.
• I got to inter­view, among oth­ers, Kevin Dugan, Artie Isaac, Bob Gilbreath, and Peter Shankman.
• I saw The Day­ton Mar­ket­ing Com­mu­nity social net­work that I launched at the end of 2008 grow to over 350 mem­bers, and I orga­nized and led 3 suc­cess­ful Big Idea Break­fast events.
• I con­tin­ued to offer my time as a mem­ber of the board of the Epilepsy Foun­da­tion of West­ern Ohio, and attended my first Mud vol­ley­ball tour­na­ment — an event that raised nearly $80,000 for the organization.
• I drank approx­i­mately 2,000 cups of cof­fee, read about 40 books, took 2 trips to the beach, got my first bass gui­tar, and got my wife her first drum set.
• I won a flip cam from sharethis.com and a mul­ti­ple books from inbubblewrap.com — thanks!!
• I shook hands and said hello to smart guys John Bat­telle and Peter Kim.
• Just last week, while pick­ing up some last minute gro­ceries for Christ­mas Eve, the COO of Dorothy Lane Mar­ket rec­og­nized me from my blog, intro­duced him­self, and thanked me for writ­ing about how much I love shop­ping there — a very grat­i­fy­ing experience.
• On a sad note, my grand­mother died just a few years shy of 100. She was an amaz­ing woman, a huge influ­ence on me, and some­one who made every­day count. Thanks Grandma Peg for teach­ing me that play­ing it by ear beats the hell out of not play­ing at all. We should all be so lucky as to live life like she did.
• I helped to orga­nize the 2009 Mar­tin Luther King Jr. Day march in Day­ton, and a day later wit­nessed his­tory as Amer­ica inagu­rated our first African Amer­i­can President.
• My idea “User Gen­er­ated Health­care” was selected as a final­ist in the Cincin­nati Inno­vates con­test. Although the idea did not win, it was a huge honor to be a part of the whole thing.
• When my Black­berry finally gave out in Sep­tem­ber, I finally got an iPhone — how did I live with­out it for so long?
• I dis­cov­ered Nike+, became con­sumed with track­ing my every step, and learned a lot about where mar­ket­ing is headed.
• I got to meet Tim West­er­gren, founder of music site Pandora.com, and intro­duce him to the crowd at a Cincin­nati Social Media Break­fast event.
• Speak­ing of music, Wilco, Pearl Jam, Ben Harper, Jack John­son, and Phish all released music in 2009.  I spent a lot of time enjoy­ing the fruits of their labor.
• I made hun­dreds of new friends, and con­nected with hun­dreds of old ones.  How lucky I am to know so many great people.
• I spent a lot of time with my fam­ily, who never ceases to amaze me, always sup­ports me, and serves as the inspi­ra­tion for all I do.  I love you.

2009 was a year filled with amaz­ing adven­tures, excit­ing chal­lenges, and pleas­ant sur­prises.  Thank you to all who helped make it so great.