Front Row (L-R):

• Ian Siegel – Chief Product Officer at MyLife.com
• Jim Moloshok – Executive Chairman at GoFish
• Greg ? – Manager, Creative Services at Vantage Media

2nd Row:

• Barbara Bagwell
• Kelly Goto – Principal, founder at gotomedia, inc
• ?
• Bob Martinez-Diamond

Third Row:

• Don Lipper – Content Director at GlobWorld
• Rikk Galvan – Principal at ShareYourself Media, Principal at BIG Games
• Anna Smith
• Anne Hart – Theatrical Legal Affairs -  20th Century Fox
• ?
• Joy Marrs – Senior Director, E-Commerce at Kor Hotel Group

Fourth Row:

• Matt Angorn – VP Creative, American Greetings Interactive
• Julian Forniss – Owner, Studio 43 1/2
• Brad Scherick – Executive Director, KorAge.Us Inc.
• Robert Gonzalez – President Artaste Inc., former VP, Production Operations Disney Online
• Julie Noiman – Chief Operating Officer at createthe group
• Troy Rutter – Senior Developer at Captain Jack Communications, LLC
• Sam Smith – Director Technology, Walt Disney Internet Group
• Tony Masciola
• Rod Su
• Steven Pena – Owner, Steven J. Pena, A Professional Corporation

Fifth Row:

• David Dotson
• Julie Crane(?)
• Suzanne Abramson – SVP, Operations at Schematic
• Jeremy Berg – Executive Producer, Firstborn Multimedia

Back Row:

• Brian Coleman – Director of Mechanical Design at eSolar, Inc.
• Dave Urban
• Tony Rogers – Manager of Data Center Systems at Digital Insight
• Jim Banister – CEO Spectrum, DNA

If you know any of the missing people, or any of the missing info, please let me know.  Thanks! It’s fun to see where everybody is.

Troy

From 1995-2001 I helped form the Internet.   I can say that with confidence and a bit of humility, but I know that somehow I had an effect on how the Internet grew – and then broke.   You see, during that time I made web pages and web sites because they were FUN.   Remember fun?

You like a certain band – put up a fan site for it.  A certain actor or actress?  I’ll do a page on them too.   TV show?  Movie?   I’ll do a web site for that too.   Hundreds of thousands of hours I spent making web sites just because I liked a particular subject.   And it was fun.

Then the dot com crash.  Suddenly, the web wasn’t fun anymore.  Oh sure, I had created web sites for the #1 online entertainment destination Warner Bros. such as Babylon 5, Third Watch, Drew Carey, Friends, Lois & Clark, La Femme Nikita, Rosie O’Donnell, and others.   But suddenly the landscape changed, and I lost that spark.

Until recently.

A few months ago I put up a fan site for a music group, well more of a show, and it currently ranks in Google higher than their official site so i get a good number of visitors a day without even doing anything.  A month or so ago I dared to put a few Google ads on it, and my earnings sky-rocketed.

It was something I enjoyed, and was a fun distraction from the sites I “have” to work on.

I resurrected a site I had started back in 1996, recoded it to css (it used tables at the time!) and it is again an OK site traffic wise, and I sprinkled a few ads in there which bring in a couple of dollars a day.

Over the past several years I have been reading ebooks after ebooks trying to find the right “pattern” for making money on the Internet via adsense.   Some say “write what you know” and some say “write what’s profitable” and some say “write a little about everything.”   After years of trying everything under the sun, I believe I have finally decided on the definitive answer:

You HAVE to write about what you enjoy or have an interest in.

Credit card consolidation or cancer lawsuits may have high click-through revenue, but you will never gain the trust of your visitors if you don’t have a sincere interest in the subject.

Now all I need is for my hero, Joel Comm, to suggest a real-live mentor for me to continue my adsense learning.   If I don’t hear from him soon, a singing gorilla telegram may just show up at his door.

From this moment on I will continue to do web sites that I need to do, but also will try and do more web sites that I “WANT” to do and that I will have fun doing.   Perhaps that is the magic I have been looking for.

But there is another feeling that can be equally as troubling – imposter syndrome.

I may be naive, but I first learned of imposter syndrome about a month ago when a co-worker brought it to my attention after one of my tweets.   I googled the phrase and came u p with a definition that really made sense:

From wikipedia:

The Impostor Syndrome, sometimes called Impostor Phenomenon or Fraud Syndrome, is a syndrome where sufferers are unable to internalize their accomplishments. It is not an officially recognized psychological disorder but has been the subject of numerous books and articles by psychologists and educators.

Regardless of what level of success they may have achieved in their chosen field of work or study or what external proof they may have of their competence, those with the syndrome remain convinced internally they do not deserve the success they have achieved and are actually frauds. Proof of success is dismissed as luck, timing, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they were more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to be.

For the past couple of years, despite my success as a programmer at the web site company I work for, I have been plagued by a feeling of being a fake.  That sure, I do the high-profile projects and complicated things, but I’m just faking it.  After all, PHP and mySQL programming is always “a lot of the same” and code is reused here and there.  Anybody can do it.   If I’m ever found out, I’ll be fired.

This fear caused ups and downs in my mood, resulting in a lack of self-confidence, even in the midst of extreme accomplishments.

It is also a part of baggage I have been carrying since being laid off as a result of the AOL Time-Warner merger in 2001.  Up until the layoff, I had left jobs on my own terms, now suddenly I was told to go.  The dot com bubble had burst, and I limped back to Iowa where I got a job doing tech support at an ISP, answering phone calls.

I’ve also come to realize, thanks to reading an article on The New York Times Web Site that people exhibiting imposter syndrome:

adopt self-deprecation as a social strategy, consciously or not, and are secretly more confident than they let on.

“Particularly when people think that they might not be able to live up to others’ views of them, they may maintain that they are not as good as other people think,” Dr. Mark Leary, the lead author, wrote in an e-mail message. “In this way, they lower others’ expectations — and get credit for being humble.”

Not taking credit for my accomplishments now makes sense.  I can now fully realize that yes, this is exactly what I have been battling the last few years.   Overcoming this is will be difficult and it won’t happen overnight, I just need to realize what I have accomplished in my short career:

• Got a job at Warner Bros. studios while still a senior in college at Iowa State
• Worked on some of my favorite TV shows like Babylon 5, Friends, Third Watch, Drew Carey, 7th Heaven, and others
• Worked my way up the ladder at Warner Bros. and eventually started and managed the community division of the company.
• Worked on the original Harry Potter web site
• Was a senior programmer for the Warner portal Entertaindom
• Attended several movie premieres, walking the red carpet
• Worked with several young actors, actresses and musicians who are now adults and in their prime
• Earned my Screen Actor’s Guild card
• Went back to college while working full time and finished my degree
• Wrote and published a book on helping kids get started in the TV/Film industry
• Became 1st Vice President of a community theater and directed 2 productions
• Worked my way up the ladder again at a web development company, going from tech support to lead programmer
• Became known in podcasting circles due to a “Troy Needs an iPod” publicity stunt
• Helped build the Des Moines Renaissance Faire into a great festival
• Programmed the back end of two high-profile web sites for the company

Overcoming imposter syndrome will take some time, and although I recognize it, it is still affecting me, even making me question myself more about my label printer.   But knowing this about myself can only help me to realize that I really CAN be a leader in my industry again.   I get hard on myself because of all the “notoriety” I lost.

Being a leader in your field has to start with yourself, you a) have to WANT to be a leader and b) have to think that you ARE a leader.  If you think for one moment you can’t do something, you’ve already lost.

So to you, my new friends with shiny label printers…  I say let’s do this.   Take something that you have been terrified to start and do it.   Buy your label printer, unpack it, set it on your desk and get to work printing out the best damn labels you can.  It can get sticky, but let’s do it together.

Technorati Tags: importer syndrome, AOL, Time Warner, Warner Bros. label printers, self-confidence

This was only my second time using screencasting software, so the audio is almost that of a telephone line, but due to YouTube size guidelines, I had to make it small.

Click here to view the embedded video.

For written instructions, just scroll down, or click here for a written tutorial on running Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 at the same time.

Technorati Tags: firefox 3, firefox 2, video tutorial

Believe it or not, after installing Firefox 3, at least one of the web sites I had designed using CSS broke. I’m not sure if it is because Firefox 3 is more strict or less strict with the CSS, but it didn’t really matter – it was broken. So I fixed it in Firefox 3, then it was broken again in 2. The dilemna was suddenly upon me. Yes, just like IE… I had to run 2 instances of Firefox.

But it wasn’t that easy.

NOTE: This references paths for Windows, but Mac users can perform a similar task using the same commands/techniques.

Profiles

Firefox uses Profiles to contain your favorites and settings. Most people never see these profiles since they just start it up and use the Default User profile. This is usually adequate for most users but some, like me, need more than one profile.

So, first I had to make a new profile. Since I already had Firefox 3 installed and over-wrote my Firefox 2, I was going to create a new profile and use the new one for Firefox 3.

To create a new profile, I had to exit Firefox and then click on Start, Run and browsed to the location that Firefox3 was in. Then, I had to type in -profilemanager to launch the manager. so, the run command looked something like:

c:\program files\mozilla.org\firefox3\firefox.exe -profilemanager

This brought up a Profile selection screen, where I clicked on Create Profile and created the new profile. Then I double clicked that new profile, and Firefox3 launched with that profile.

Downloading Firefox 2 Again

The next task was to redownload Firefox2, which you can find at ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/2.0.0.14/

I then installed it into a separate directory than Firefox 3.

when you double click it the firefox icon, you will now get the OLD Firefox (since it tells Windows that Firefox is now in the Firefox2 directory.

Create Shortcut

Create a new shortcut that you want to use for your Firefox3 icon, right click on it and choose properties so you can change the location of the executable. Make it point to your Firefox3 directory. You might also want to rename the shortcut “Firefox 3″ instead of just plain Firefox too.

There is one little thing you have to do to the Firefox3 icon.  You need to specify the profile.

For instance the shortcut should look like:

shortcut_to_firefox.exe -P profilename -no-remote

or

"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -P profilename -no-remote

Voila! You should be able to run both Firefox2 and Firefox3 side by side. You can even import your bookmarks if you want.

Technorati Tags: firefox 2, firefox 3

Minutes later, iowaflood.com was born.

Hours later, it had teen angst -  as over 15,000 people visited the site within 24 hours, and over 30,000 different people logged into the site within 24 hours, causing Brudtkuhl to have to change where the site was hosted due to the increased number of visitors.

News of the site was communicated to other bloggers and even The Des Moines Register through a computer service called Twitter, which allows users to send short messages to other users who subscribe to another person’s updates.   Soon, stories, photos, videos and updates were appearing on the iowaflood.com web site automatically thanks to new technologies available on the Internet.

As the week continued, the front page of the site changed often, with requests for help sand-bagging appearing first on the page, followed by the most recent photos from the Iowa City flooding and notices of what bridges are underwater throughout the state.

Local residents aren’t the only ones tuning in to the new web site, either.   Brudtkuhl says he has done an interview for WNYC, a New York City public radio station about the web site and flooding in Des Moines.  There is no accurate way of telling how many radio and television stations are currently monitoring the site for news, since anybody can subscribe to the site’s news feed and be automatically notified of new photos and videos.

As threats of more flooding continue in Des Moines and around the state, the web site will continue to automatically update with the latest information, almost by itself.  For the most up-to-date “Floods of 08″ coverage, you will be hard-pressed to find a better source than iowaflood.com.

Technorati Tags: Iowa flood, #iowaflood, social networking, twitter, flooding

I was in the market for a new laptop when Wal-Mart announced their pre-Black Friday “super” special on an Acer 5315 laptop at a mere price of $350. I previously purchased a Compaq laptop back in 1999 that served me well, but by now was quite antiquated. The Acer 5315 specs looked promising except for one teensy weensy detail that I was sure I could overlook – Windows Vista.

Over the past several months I haven’t used the laptop as much as I thought I would, and I attribute much of that to the installation of Vista. Even after installing the maximum 2 gigs of memory, the machine was slow to boot up, slow to play Starcraft (although now I think I know why…), and slow to do almost anything. Even running a copy of Castblaster (a podcasting program) was painful. An experience trying to run a video editing program on it last week was the last straw, it was time to “upgrade” it to Windiows XP.

The Problem

In doing a Google search for installing Windows XP on the laptop, it became clear that this wasn’t going to be easy. It would seem that Acer had zero Windows XP drivers for the laptops, and the settings for booting up were confusing for those who were not familiar with installing Windows XP.

Now I had reinstalled Windows about a billion times over the years, but even for me the instructions seemed daunting. That is until I found a web site that offered step by step instructions for installing Windows XP on the Acer 5315. Here.

The Process

I followed the instructions carefully, but when I rebooted for the final time I was greeted with a wonderful blue screen of death. I then remembered something about the boot drive type that I read on a separate web site (which was not explained on the instructions I linked to above) that said I needed to change the type of the boot drive from SATA to IDE in the bios. Once I did that. Voila! Windows XP!

I went through the rest of the install, chose my initial username, and happily reinstalled Castblaster and the trial version of Goldwave… the important programs. I rebooted to make sure the installation really was successful and it auto-logged into my main account. I didn’t like that – I wanted the username/password screen, so I went into the control panel, changed the startup sequence to show the login screen and shut down the computer while I had lunch.

I Can’t Log In

A couple of hours later I decide I want to reinstall some more productivity software so I turn on the laptop, get to the login screen, type in my password and … I can’t log in. What the heck? I try the password over and over, which I set during installation, but nothing happens. Finally, I search on my other computer for ways to recover a lost password and give it a try. It doesn’t work and instead installs another copy of Windows on the computer. Not what I wanted.

Just as the computer is booting up after installing the second copy of the operating system, it hit me. I was stupid.

The Final Solution

What I did was so stupid, I hesitated to blog about it. When I set the startup sequence to ask for a username/password… I never actually set a password for the user account I was using. That is why I couldn’t log in. I then remembered what the password I did set was for – the Administrator user. So as soon as the Windows login screen appeared for installation #2, I rebooted and chose installation #1, logged in with the Administrator account, set the password for my main user account, logged off, logged back in with my user account and ta-da! Im back in business. And of course I promptly removed installation #2 from the boot menu, and deleted it from the computer.

Frustrating, yes. But after using it for half the weekend … oh so worth it.

Technorati Tags: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Acer 5315, Troy Rutter

After Reading Joseph Jaffe’s first book, “Life after the 30 Second Spot” and subsequently subscribing to his blog at www.jaffejuice.com, I jumped on the chance to review his latest book “Join the Conversation” under a system called UNMTPNM, or “Use New Marketing to Prove New Marketing.” In the experiment, Jaffe sent out review copies of his book to several bloggers in turn for a review… and also a promise to pay the book forward when they were done.

Like his first book, Jaffe writes a lot like I think… with parentheticals and sometimes off-the wall references. In addition, many of the references are “in your face” such as when he talks about getting a “rod shoved up” a certain part of the anatomy. All in good fun of course.

The main question I had throughout the book is for whom it was written. It contains numerous examples of ways corporations have “missed the conversation” and in turn had public relations nightmares. An example being a man who built his entire living room furniture out of FedEx boxes, and was consequently sued by FedEx instead of supported. If I were take a guess, I would say the book is directed towards advertising/marketing/promotions CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, rather than new media people such as myself.

I was particular interested in the case studies since I had sort of a “join the conversation” moment myself 2 years ago with Adam Curry of PodShow. I had a problem – I wanted an iPod. I had a second problem – I didn’t want to pay the $300 for the video iPod. Now most people would have just sucked it up and saved up to buy something they wanted, but through a series of events, a web site called troyneedsanipod.com was born. When Adam Curry heard of it through a podcast comment to his show, The Daily Source Code, he immediately saw the opportunity to plug GoDaddy’s domain registration company, and launched a contest of his own “Who needs an iPod more than Troy?” The catch – you head to register a domain name through GoDaddy. The promotion was a success. (Plus I got an iPod!)

Jaffe’s book is full of the opposite kind of story – the companies who missed the boat. The points he brings up help the reader learn to recognize opportunities to leverage new media into good PR, based on oftentimes negative reviews or customer comments.

The book’s chapters stand alone nicely, so it is easy to pick up, read a chapter, and then pick it up again in a couple of days. One of the things that I think could have used a little more consideration is starting a conversation. Too many of the examples mentioned were reactionary stories. ie: Joe Blow posts a blog post and Youtube video about company X and company X does (or in most case doesn’t) respond. In this case the consumer/user (sorry Joseph) initiates the communication. But there has to be example of corporate initiated conversation out there, someplace. (besides the make your own commercials)

One place I felt myself slump at was when he talks about the 6 C’s. Long ago, when the Internet started, my friend and mentor Jim Moloshok of Warner Bros. Online would talk to me about Content, Community and Commerce. This was ingrained in my so much that I even just started a blog called contentcommunitycommerce.com .

Oh great, there goes all of my credibility, Jaffe says it is no longer completely accurate. Is my blog done before it even began? I don’t think so. No matter how many more C’s you add on, Content, Community and Commerce will continue to be the “ring leaders” in successful web sites and media.

Would I recommend this book? Definitely. There are a lot of great ideas on how to take a potentially bad situation and turn it around. I intend to “pay it forward” to a member of the Des Moines Bloganostra at the next meeting.

Technorati Tags: joseph jaffe, join the conversation, book review, Troy Rutter, Jaffe Juice, bloganostra

For the past, almost 7 years since I have returned to Iowa from Los Angeles, I have found myself volunteering for things in the community.  From Boy Scouts to the community theater, I’ve managed to devote a tremendously large amount of time to the causes that I believe in.    So much so that NOT devoting that time is a foreign concept.

Over the past couple of weeks, a series of events have begun unfolding that have me questioning the time I am giving to others, and not keeping for myself.  One in particular had me in tears, and another one close by.  I care about both, but it was surprisingly the “restructuring” of one that had me give a resignation.   While I am still a member in the overall organization, I am  questioning more and more about even that involvement, as the leaders of the organization have, in my opinion, lost its way.

And the other organization I am involved with has been the subject of even more personal stress and emotion, as I am constantly having to try and manage a balance of incredible sensitive egos and personalities, while still trying to move things forward.

This all comes at a point where I am finally getting together my “dream” part time business.  Things are picking up steam, and I am actually kind of excited to be realizing things that I had only thought out on paper.  Part of me is excited for the new opportunity, and part of me knows that in order for it to succeed, the effort I was putting into community volunteering will have to be diverted into more “selfish” pursuits such as the building of the business.

I think I’ve earned it.

Sometimes I look over all of my efforts, and wonder what will be said of me when I’m gone.  A morbid thought, I know – but its one that drives me to give my best in everything I do.  I want people to remember me as someone who took the time to give them what they needed, whether it was someone to talk to, someone to build something, or whatever.  I want to have known that I made a difference.

So it pains me when I must resign or divert attention away from “giving back.”  But I really think it’s time to be selfish for once, and do things for me.  And maybe by doing things for me, maybe I will end up doing more than I even thought possible for others.

I’m glad you are with me on the journey.

I only have a couple right now, but I have uploaded them to Flickr and they appear below. I hope to be able to add CC Chapman’s to my list at some point (nudge nudge, CC!) – but I think I’m off to a good start with these two.