Education
John Lennon said it was only natural for him to make rock music because he was born right into the medium.
I'm not saying I'm John Lennon Jr., but rather I'm glad that I was born right on the cusp of the information age. And I'm thankful that my interactive marketing passion is a lot more practical than being an actual rock star.
My Launch
One of my earliest childhood memories is watching the first Space Shuttle launch at Cape Canaveral. A couple years after that, I remember sitting on Santa’s lap and hitting him up for a Commodore 64 computer.
In elementary and middle school I was an excitable member of my school's Academic Games team (read: nerd). I won several of the regional competitions in social sciences, earned scholarships to the nationals. At the 1988 National Championships, I won first place at Propaganda, a game about unraveling the methods of influence and persuasion used in advertising and the spoken word.
I started posting online in the summer of 1989 and made a name for myself on early BBS communities. I first logged into the internet in 1992 via MIT’s Terminus server , and I felt my skin tingle with excitement. I used the text-only Lynx browser and the first-generation search engine Archie.
For high school, I was accepted into the Communications Arts program at an extended-day magnet school in West Palm Beach, Florida. I was trained in creative writing, script writing, public relations, publishing, and speech & debate. My high school instructors were some of the most thoroughly professional, influential mentors I've ever had.
In 1999, I graduated from the University of Florida with a BA, summa cum laude (highest honors). I majored in sociology, a statistical social psychology that is sometimes under appreciated by non-marketers. They wonder, "What does that have to do with marketing and copywriting?" Well... it means I have studied trends, subcultures, behaviors, and group psychology & the factors that influence them - in depth. My thesis was interview research, followed by statistical analysis of how increased campus housing security measures affected students’ social interactions.
After college, I was selected for the JET Program (Japanese Exchange and Teaching) and went to work for the Board of Education office in Miyakonojo, Japan. Working as an English teacher and trying to explain the mysteries and intricacies of our language, while struggling to become bilingual myself, greatly increased my overall language and communication ability.
Following Japan, I went for my lifelong dream of traveling around the world. I’m only half-joking when say that I earned my unofficial “Master’s in international relations” during the four years I spent living, working, and traveling overseas.
Wanting to take my computer skills to a truly professional level, I enrolled full-time at Southern Oregon University for the Interactive Marketing and E-commerce Certificate program. In addition to the 32 required credit hours of upper-level multimedia, computer science and marketing coursework... I’ve hacked my way through a grueling stack of intensive, interactive video courses for literally thousands of hours.
I enjoy keeping on the edge of the latest trends, research and speculation in the interactive marketing, copywriting and SEO and social media worlds. Just as a stockbroker has to read The Economist and The Wall Street Jorurnal or else be left in the dust, I am a committed reader and participant in top-tier internet marketing blogs such as:
SEOmoz, MarketingSherpa , Copyblogger , PR Squared, Pronet Advertising ,
HitByTraffic , Clickz , JenSense , Shoemoney
I also publish my own internet marketing blog, PseudoMarketing
