Marcus Hamaker

I wasn’t at home all weekend so I couldn’t immerse myself in Gnomedex and the Olympics. A cottage weekend with the family trumped geeking out, and it was awesome. I did have some time to reflect however on what I want to do with my blog, what goals I want to accomplish by blogging and sharing with the community.

I started to really concentrate on the blog on a daily rate back in May of this year, sometimes writing posts everyday and sometimes working on site design and layout. At the beginning the goal was to see if I could stick with it through the summer which would be the hardest months to do so. Aside from family trips up north on the weekends and some vacation, I have been keeping this up to date quite well. Now that the season is coming to an end, I only believe that my attention to the site will grow.

That brings me to a new goal that I have, “I would like to attend Gnomedex 2009.” I have been following what was going to happen at Gnomedex recently and I was interested in the conference from my first having heard of it. I like the idea that there are not ten thousand people attending, but more of a core group of like minded people who are going to experience the same itinerary as one group.

I have been involved with big conferences in the past. I was part of a group of people that went to E3 in 1999 and 2000 for Guillemot who was the parent company for Hercules and Thrustmaster. I had a great time at these conferences and learned a lot from attending them, but to host a Web 2.0 or social networking conference in that or a similar format wouldn’t be ideal in my eyes.

To have community members and leaders present to the whole group and then let the group meet socially sounds extremely more promising and I think that is what the goal is with Gnomedex.

If I am to attend the conference, it needs to be on the merit of my work however. I am not sure if I am telling you this or if it is more of a notice to myself. I didn’t set out to make The Sleepy Geek my primary source of income when I started this venture, in fact like I said before the goal was to keep going through the summer months. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t love to be doing this full-time, but that’s not on the front burner right now. So the goal is to continue to build readership and relationships through the site. I may expand my avenues of communication, possibly a podcast, more likely a video stream, but the goal is to raise enough funds to join the group at Gnomedex next year.

Chris if you read this, please don’t hold it in Hawaii… who knows if I would be able to make enough to cover that airfare

Cheers!

I have had my own blog for quite some time now and I am doing my best to post often and post good content. In an effort to generate traffic I think I took an over zealous approach today. Since the beginning of March, possibly end of February I have been writing at a pretty good pace and then also uploading my articles to what seems like a dead site. That would be undo.tv. The site has a really good setup allowing people to post their articles in a central location.

Today I started to upload my blog posts that I create for my own site to the Lockergnome site. Chris has done a really good job of turning the site into a community blogging mecca. I really like the way that the main page displays some of the most recent posts from its contributors. So I decided that I would add my link to the posts. After all I am “TheSleepyGeek” (I have intentionally left out the link… read on) and I want people to see my articles wherever they are posted. I am trying to build a name for myself, so why wouldn’t I add my link for people to come see me?

I think I missed the point of Chris’ website. Lockergnome is a place for people to come and post their blog, not for them to repost their blog. I will still post to my own blog and update to my Lockergnome profile but I will do so transparently.

Chris sent me a note on one of my posts letting me know nicely that there is no need for me to link to my site every time I post. To tell you the truth given the purpose of the site, I agree. My apologies

So be careful not to step on anyone else’s toes. I only write this article so that we can all learn from my mistake. Be careful how you try to generate traffic. If you build it, it will come. Be patient.

Okay, I admit it… my office is an absolute mess. Since my wife and I have lived together, I have always dedicated a room as an office in the house. I help friends and do some other repair work so I often need a place to work. Since we have had our second child, my office became the place for the guest bed to go. We had a guest room before that, now it’s an office with a guest. Or is it a guest room with a lot of junk in it? Not sure.

So my dilemma is how to maximize my space. I have half, if not less room than I used to and it seems that I end up with parts everywhere. The bed is all too convenient to put something on for “just a moment” while I do something. Something inevitably takes a long time and whatever was left there stays there.

Some of my problem is the fact that I have old furniture in the room that used to work when it was a dedicated office. I used to also host my own web space, run my own domain with a dedicated domain controller and run a computer based router instead of a Linksys router. Most of that was in a rack in the corner and all it holds now is the router and a laser printer.

I think it’s time for some spring cleaning. Going to throw out some of the old parts that are obsolete and get rid of the rack. Then maybe I can build myself a test bench to work on computers and store some stuff under it.

I am curious though; how do you set up your office? Is there something you couldn’t live without? Maybe I can steal your ideas