Is this it?!

I donated my 40th Birthday to Charity Water.

I injoy a glass of water every morning, right when I wake up.

Throughout the day, I have another 6 to 10 glasses.

At the 2012 #WDS conference this year, I saw the founder of Charity Water, Scott Harrison share his story about Water and access to clean versions of it around the world.

Bottom line, many folks around the globe still DON’T have access to clean water, even though the technology is available to help all get it.

Charity Water has a Birthday Campaign that I thought was a lot of fun, and instead of being narcissistic on my 40th, it’ll be fun to contribute and be a small part of helping folks all over the world get clean water.

So – instead of just saying Happy Birthday Sean – why not donate something?

Cheers and Happy New Year!

Sean

I am less than a year from turning 40 as of January 2012 and I’ve been thinking a lot about my time on this earth…

Been thinking:
– that I may be about 1/2 way through life (If life expectancy is 80)
– How do I want to spend the next 40 years. Is it any different than the first 40
– How can I make the biggest positive impact on the people who’s lives I come in touch with
– What do I need to change to keep my body in optimal health (versus the ease of staying healthy as a young person)
– Where do I want to spend the remaining time?

I don’t know the answers to the above, but I injoy thinking about them, and embracing the change in all of them.

I’ve been asking older people that I have met recently, what they think about being +40 – and any wisdom about it that I might learn from.

I think this was the Summer of 2005.

If they are are USA based, or general law/copyright abiding country (UK, Australia)
1) Contact them, ask to remove
2) If no, or no answer – contact ISP for removal.
3) Lawyers – last idea – most expensive – and most don’t know what they are doing online.

If they are based in countries like…Russia, Eastern Europe, Philippines, China
1) Contact them, ask to remove
2) If no, or no answer – contact ISP for removal.
3) No lawyers – barking up the wrong tree that will cost you tonnes of money, and get you nowhere

We have had to just “live with it” sometimes. Gotta figure out the time vs reward on this. Can be very time consuming!

There are also content tracking services like http://www.copyscape.com/ that can help. We don’t use them, but it’s pretty easy to find dup/copied content using search engines.

More in depth steps on what todo at WMW.

I’ve really slacked off on the blog lately. I’ve been blogging of sorts since 2000 or so and it’s funny to see it is so mainstream now. A girl at the gym today came up to and told me she wanted to start a blog on beauty stuff. I said, “Go for it!”

Been a bit more active on micro blogging stuff. SEKeener Twitter if you want to follow me over there.

Some interesting articles on all the USA economy stuff happening this week:

• Why the Stock Market keeps melting down
• Making sense of the Brokerage Bust

Travel Market
It’s fair to say that things are slowing down. This is the time that I start getting excited. All the bubble boyz will have a harder time in a slowing market no doubt and it gives us more room to continue to work on things that make us unique. We are still super excited at BootsnAll about the future of travel and travel information services online and are going full speed ahead. It’ll be interesting to see what companies in our space that get 5 to 15 million in capital:

– do with that money? BootsnAll can build all that technology for waaaaaaaaaaay cheaper…so I am guessing it’s for marketing?
– how will they give there investors a ROI on that money. I’m guessing they’d want 10x on that.
– what are they gonna do that is unique, folks understand and provide actual value for travelers, and that they will use.

Travel Blogging
We were one of the 1st to get into it, so many folks are into it now – there is a lot of noise. Sometimes we are adding to that noise – but I reckon overall, we are building great content and products that travelers want. Have a look at our Amsterdam Travel Guide. I was talking with Roger (the writer of that guide) today and looking really deep into that site and it is frickin’ amazing. So much depth, so much quality content, and so many reasons for folks that are visiting that town to want to read that – it blew me away. Yes – we could use a better design etc, but it is really on the right track for a site that is 1 year old this month.

Other stuff

• My Cubbies are cruising along, hopefully into the playoffs. If so, see you in Chicago in October
• I reckon we will pull out of this economic stuff at some point and am not gonna panic. You shouldn’t either. Tell your friend, family member, colleague that you love ’em and chill. The world and economies go through cycles and always has. Stressing about it won’t make it go away or help.
• Thinking I might re-design this thing to better reflect the microblogging stuff that is really easier for me todo

Cheers and Happy Northern Hemisphere Fall.

Imported this into iMovie and got this editted in about 10 minutes. Never used the program before. Pretty damn easy. I reckon I could do it in 1 minute now since I won’t have to fiddle around next time. Hello to the boyz from TMBC.

I’ve been doing and running BootsnAll for 9 full years once November hits. Hard to believe it. I’m 34 years old now. That makes it 26.4% of my life that I have been building this travel website with great friends and passionate colleagues.

Many of you know that we don’t just do travel websites anymore. We have tried a few things over the years, and the community that has grown the most is the World Cup Blog community. We recently re-launched it in preparation for South Africa 2010. New team blogs for the teams that were not part of the final 32 in 2006. We use a version of WordPress MU for this site. For Germany 2006, MU was a platform that was just not ready for what we needed, so we took a standard WordPress install and hacked the crap out of it to make it work. I am glad to see MU mature.

Someone asked me the other day, “Keener, where is your next trip planned for” – and besides some stuff around the states, I don’t have anything planned. This may be the 1st time in 9 years that I was not planning/hankering to get away. Been exploring the USA and Canada a bit more the past few years after neglecting it for overseas stuff. I feel lucky to live in a place that has just about every type of environment form Mountains to oceans, deserts to rain forest. It’s all here! I have 2 more trips to Vegas this year (to make it 5 for the year) – but that just doesn’t feel like travel to me – more like an amusement park that gets you there cuz every conference is there as well.

Check out Alex Bainbridge’s Blog on Travel Industry. Well done sir.

Introduction and biography bits
http://sean.keener.org/about/

Who are you? What do you care about?
What grade? What kinda stuff career wise is on your mind?

Who am I?
Business Owner –
I have been a journalist/reporter and do/have hired dozens of them.
Computer Engineer– I helped build BootsnAll’s website for the first 5+ years and can still “build websites”
Graphic Artist – I have done a bit of this, have 2 that work for me – and work with many of them.

Why am I here.
Mr. G asked me to come in and speak with y’all and I like hearing from younger folks about what is up.

Why should you care
The #1 reason you should care is because no matter what your situation is. If you think you are smart/not so smart. Strong/not as strong – you CAN do just about whatever you want with your life at this point.

Things going for you:
1) Young – you are still learning and no matter how good/bad you have done to this point, you can decided to improve and start to being better and following your passions
2) You are in school today: This one is huge. No matter how much you hate it or love it, we do have an excellent education system compared to the majority of the world.
3) Clubs – join the ones that interest you. get involved in things that interest you.
4) Classes – find some topic in high school/ college that you like and go for it hard. Like you life depends on it.
5) Passion and follow-through at this point in your life can help you do what you want todo.
6) Connection to the world – things like the internet open up a tonne of possibilities

I figured out about 15 years ago that I can do whatever I want. It might be difficult to get there, but I never give up when I want to do something.

Benefits of owning a business:

Discuss

How do you do this?

Don’t be afraid to fail/make mistakes.

#1 thing to take away from today if you can’t remember anything else. BE POSITIVE. Think that you can do it even if you can’t now. Having a positive attitude will take you soooooooooooo muuuuuuccchhhhh farther in life than the negative nellie stuff. Train yourself to be positive.

Powerball winner broke.

I pretty sure that he is not the only lottery winner to be broke. From my standpoint, I wonder how this happened.

Regards to my old Lincoln Hall Classmate, Peter Axelrad…DJAxel. Check out his mash-ups.

(Click here for proper formatting)

I’ve been thinking a lot about what Mika posted about today. Life is stressful as anything at times for me as well and I think I know what he is talking about. Same wavelength mate.

Some things I am stressed about are:

1. World Cup (getting it right)
2. Woman
3. Living situation (I live in my office)

All stress levels going up and down at various times much like Mika mentioned. All in all, the more work I put into ’em, the better I usually feel about ’em. The stress just hits me at certain moments – not all the time.

Simplifying Life (Is this part of the answer?)

I am not sure if I am romanticizing it, but when I took the greyhound bus into Eugene, Oregon to move there with nothing more than a backpack to my name…that was simple. No shit, no worries. Of course, I am sure there was…but more shit typically = more worries.

Today, still living in my office, I travel a tonne…I feel like I am in transition and am not sure if life is that simple right now. Sometimes I think of Nick in Bali, and wonder how simple things seem there…of course, with a wife and child, it might not be as simply as I remember it….I guess I always think of Nick as a guy that keeps things simple. He will be in Berlin, helping us produce World Cup Blog. Being around him helps remind me of the simple stuff in life. I love that stuff.

Angela mentioned this weekend that she thought it’d be nice to have a piece of land and live off of it. Another bloke I met recently said his day is “living off the grid” and he might like to join ’em. Just thinking, What exactly does it mean to simplify life?

• Get rid of shit you don’t need
• Get rid of excess debt
• Have time where nothing is planned so that you can read, write, paint, run, talk – but it ain’t planned

What else can be done to simplify life? Google Search on Simplifying Life.