After a Twelve Year Arch, It All Comes Full Circle

By Greg Huntoon | November 7, 2009

When I graduated from college in 1997, I had a degree in Ecological Anthropology and Writing under one arm, and a driving passion to jump headlong into the publishing game. As editor-in-chief of my college’s weekly rag, I was sure I’d found my calling…the classifieds section just didn’t seem to agree with me.

break_logo-160square_plainI became a designer (which I had always been passionate about as well), because I figured it could be a way in the side door. After kicking around a couple of shops building up my skills and resume, I figured I’d be working in a publication’s layout department within a couple of years at most. But in reality, two years later I’d already forgotten about that passion, as I was hired to be Media Temple’s (a brand-new web design and hosting company at the time) first Creative Director.

Twelve years later, I’m now working for one of the bigger content companies in the game. I’m no longer designing (full-time, nor by title), and I’m not writing either. I’ve found my way right into a position that fits me quite snug.

October 1st (a day that’s held some pretty important events in my life, oddly), I started as the new Director of Social Media for Break Media (purveyors of Break.com, MadeMan.com, CagePotato.com, etc). My sixth week will start on Monday, and I’m having a blast. The last five weeks have been packed full learning the ins and outs of my new company, and getting accustomed to not working in Photoshop and Illustrator on a daily basis (which has not been the easiest transition).

As I said, this position fits me well. I’m a social person by nature. I love people. I thrive on communication. And most importantly, the last few years have shown me that I really enjoy digging into the strategies and bigger picture.

I’ve spent the better part of the last ten years building websites, corporate identities, and various ephemera for a wide range of clients. It’s been fun, but I’m keen to the idea of backing up a step and being able to implement concepts across the entire spectrum: websites, social networks, mobile devices, offline networks, etc.

I’ll do my best to document this adventure, and I’d love for you to be along for the ride. With that, I’m going to get back to some much needed rest, and I’ll leave you with this quote from the man who said most things the best:

“All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure.” - Mark Twain



Posted in Career, Social Media | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

This Blog Has Fallen Silent - It Needs Resurrection

By Greg Huntoon | August 16, 2009

These words are my first on this blog in well over two months. It geniunely is my hope to use this site as a way to connect with people on a variety of topics that are important and pertinent to me, but apparently, other things find higher priority right now. So, instead of just being completely quiet, I figured it might be best to show you what I’ve been doing, and where I’ve been doing it.

First and foremost, my beautiful wife and I gave birth to our third child, Ameenah Jane Ololade Huntoon in late April of this year. Without a doubt, she has been my primary focus. It’s an absolute joy and blessing to have such a wonderful family and incredible kids. It has always been the greatest goal of my life to be a father, and I’m a lucky guy to get to realize that dream each day.

In the past couple of months, things have been shook up on the work front as well. I left my job as Creative Director of Musicane (which recently launched a new homepage - my last site design work before leaving) in early July to jump back into the freelance world. While I enjoyed my time at Musicane, it was time to move on and get back into client work. Things are busy, but you know how freelancing goes. I’m still looking for the next right fit for me full-time, but for now, am quite happy and busy with the projects on my plate.

For those of you who don’t know, I also opened the doors of a new company, Humanity Snowboards, with my business partners Ryan Monson (also a childhood friend) and ex-Olympian snowboarder and champion, Tommy Czeschin. We’re just getting fired up, but this first season is looking to be a promising one. Ryan and I worked hard on hosting our first online contest on July 17th, which was met with great success. Check out the wrap-up.

Lastly, being a jock at heart, I’ve had the distinct pleasure of writing stories for fan-fueled sports channel BleacherReport.com over the course of the last year or so. In June, I was notified that I had been chosen to be a syndicated writer, and have been doing my best to cover my favorite teams: USC Football and LA Lakers, as well as a couple of articles about USA Soccer. But, as you’ll notice, my writing there has suffered too. Some days I really wish I could just write all day long.

I’m not sure how long it’s going to be until I’ll have the time to be constantly writing on this blog again, but I’m going to do my best to write as much as possible. Right now it has to take a backseat to family, deadlines, job searches, interviews, etc.



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Twitter, Please Stop Asking People What They’re Doing

By Greg Huntoon | June 2, 2009

Maybe I use Twitter differently than its intended purpose. I try to use Twitter as both a mass communication tool and also as a source of nearly instant conversion and chatter around a variety of topics, news and interesting/relevant links. Since very early on I’ve done my best not to update with “Eating a sandwich” or “starting the day with a cup of tea and inbox sorting” types of emails.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rsilfver/178134761/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rsilfver/178134761/

Unless I’m going to provide a link to the restaurant, the tea, or the GTD application that’s helping me achieve and maintain my inbox-zero status, I become one of the millions of people standing around yelling into this empty tunnel hoping someone hears me…or the reverberation of my nonsense. I have this visual of millions of people lined up with their heads stuck inside a big pipeline that stretches off into the horizon…and if you could see in, you’d see these million people just yelling things like:

  • “Just finished my coffee, off to class.”
  • “Loving this cake.”
  • “Think I’ll walk today.”
  • “I’m going home now. I’m bored, and hoping there’s something good on tv.”

Something tells me, if we could have something different next to the status update box, instead of “What are you doing?”, we might be able to reduce the amount of useless blabber. Maybe something along the lines of: “Anything interesting to add?”

I look down my list of tweets on my profile page from time to time to see how much red there is (red is my link color). The more tweets I have without any red…the more I’m one of those ostriches with my head in a tunnel.

Now, not everyone is going to find what I have to say relevant or interesting all of the time. I don’t presume to think that I’m that important. But I do know that there’s probably a reason that people follow me: either a) we’re friends in real life, b) know each other in the online space (or design arena), c) they’re following me because I follow them (in which case, they might not be listening at all), and/or d) they’re following me because they get something out of what I have to say.

So, in my mind, it’s my job to provide something of import or relevance when I tweet. A link. A picture. A reply to a question or conversation. Something.

But look, this is just my opinion. What do you think? How do you use Twitter? Do you try to provide added value to your stream and followers? What are you doing, if you’re not doing that?

Please jump in and get involved in the conversation. If you enjoyed this article, please consider leaving a comment below and sharing/bookmarking this article. Thank you kindly.


Posted in Community, Personal, Social Media, Web Apps | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments