ItsFestive.com

Life is full of twists and turns, odds and ends, chance encounters and decisions that steer you in one direction over another. A split second decision to take a different route, to book a later flight, to meet a friend — or not.

Earlier this month I was all excited to get the new Palm Pre. But not too excited that I was going to stand in a ridiculously long line. When the morning came on Saturday, June 6th I called around to a few local Sprint stores to see if they had any phones. The Sprint Store in downtown Silver Spring had some left, with about 20 people in line. They said to come on down but no guarantees. So I did. I hopped in the car, and headed down Georgia Avenue.

On the way, I noticed there was a Sprint reseller location just south of Seminary Avenue. A quick glance didn’t seem to show a big line of people, so I pulled in. But a car was blocking the way, someone waiting for a space to open up even though there were quite a few spaces open just around the bend in the small parking lot.

So I waited. The car behind me backed out and parked in the gas station next door, then went into the Sprint Store. That person got the last Pre in stock. So, I was stuck in a line waiting to buy the phone and get it from a shipment coming later in the week. No problem, I was still fine … no big lines, good customer service. No problem.

During the hour or so I was in the store, about a half dozen or so customers bantered back and forth about the new phone. Some hadn’t decided to get it and were just checking out the demo. Others had pre-ordered and were coming in for their scheduled time to get the phone.

One of those pre-orderees got my attention. A woman in her late 30’s, early 40’s came in with four or five adorable kids in tow. You couldn’t help but notice — it was a small store, there was some waiting time, she was an attractive woman with a whole ton of precocious kids. She joined the group of customers who were talking about the phone, while her kids went through her purse and played with another phone. She said she had other daughters — six in total — but some were off playing sports. There couldn’t have been anyone in the store who didn’t remember that family.

After a while, the family left. Everyone went through the line, the order was processed and I went on my way. But the family stuck in my head, and I even mentioned it to my girlfriend. I mentioned how amazing it was this woman had all this energy, was taking care of business and running errands, dragging all these kids in tow. She made Jon and Kate Plus Eight (before all this recent sensationalism) look like amateurs.

And then I didn’t think about that family again, until Friday.

As some of you reading this know, back in the late 90’s I paid most of my way through college doing freelance reporting and photography. I was decent, even though I still don’t really know how to use a camera properly.  But since the early days of Firehouse.com and especially the last five or six years, I’ve hardly had any time (or need) to be quite the scanner chaser I once was. I did buy a new camera recently and have been toying around with it, and if something happened close by I thought maybe I’d go get some good shots. Otherwise, I’ve pretty much kept my photography in the past few months to personal stuff that I just post to Facebook and Flickr.

But Friday night was different. I had just walked in the door when I got a text message from one of these incident alert networks I’ve had for eons about an accident on Connecticut Avenue with a tree on a car with three trapped inside. A second page a few minutes later from a different service said the same. Both offered widely conflicting cross streets nearly five miles apart. Without a scanner or radio, I took a guess on which was right and off I went.

When I arrived, traffic was oddly clear despite a major thoroughfare like Connecticut Avenue being completely shut down. A few TV trucks were pulling up at the same time to the accident scene just north of East West Highway, and just down from the Chevy Chase fire station.

It was immediately clear this was an unusual scene, looking eerily familiar to scenes of a Microburst from years ago in my fire department response days at Hyattsville.

On Friday as I walked down Connecticut Avenue, the damage started to come into view slowly. A power pole was snapped, trees were down, some debris was in the road. And just beyond an ambulance from the Wheaton Rescue Squad, a minivan was under a tree. A few children, including what appeared to be an infant, were being put into an ambulance.

As I got closer, I saw the extent of the damage — the entire front passenger compartment was crushed by a massive tree limb. Bystanders had pulled several children out of the car right away. Other drivers appeared to have quickly driven up onto curbs and sidewalks to avoid the scene.

Then I did what I’d always done at accidents, fires, etc. I took some pictures. The Washington Post used a few to illustrate the story in its Saturday and Sunday editions. The Associated Press got a few, as did ABC World News Tonight. I felt like a real journalist again, which is frankly a good change of pace from the every day pressures and needs of running a business.

No names were released Friday night, only news confirming that a woman and child had been killed in the crash. Several other children, all girls, were injured. A horrendous tragedy for that family, for any family. Driving along … and in the blink of a flash of lighting and swirling of wind, just devastation.

After a day out on Saturday, I came home late and watched the news. That’s when it struck me. The Sprint store.

An initial picture of the victim flashed on the screen. She seemed familiar. Then I read the first edition of the Post’s story for Sunday online. A mother of six, a soccer coach, a woman her friends and neighbors talked about how friendly she was, and how she made connections with everyone she met. She was even described her as a “superwoman.” That I remembered, in the Sprint Store, one of the other shoppers specifically referred to the woman there as a “Supermom” since she was juggling all these kids.

Sunday morning I opened the paper. The picture of her little daughter made it abundantly clear — this was the same family. Then I watched the video report on Channel 9. A close up of the same adorable, precocious 7-year-old I remember sitting on the chair at the Sprint store playing with her mother’s pocketbook.

So I sit here now, thinking about all the things that somehow connected me to this family, the how and the why … and then some. I could only hope to have a mother of my children be as strong as she seemed to be in that store — just running an every day errand she seemed like an amazing person. She talked to strangers, she made jokes, her kids appeared to adore her — if there was a happier family that day I’d be shocked. And they were just living their daily lives.

As I think many of us do these days, I surfed the Web and found her Facebook page which was already filling with condolences. Just a week before her death, one of the mother’s Facebook status updates was “Spent the last 24 hours in Pittsburgh at a funeral while trying to remember to also celebrate life.” She mentioned in a follow-up how she was with her four oldest daughters on the trip, noting ” I had a nice 24 hours with my 4 oldest girls — bonding through sadness and a big adventure to Pittsburgh.”

Later this summer, I’m taking my own road trip to Pittsburgh for a concert. I think some good bonding will be in order.

I had already been thinking about the ‘what ifs’ earlier this week following the Metrorail disaster. My girlfriend rides the red line daily … she had just signed off to take the train home when I first heard about the crash. She mentioned something about a train stopped at Fort Totten so trains were slow. So while I was pretty sure she was safe … there was a little time where I couldn’t reach her to let her know the stopped train was actually a much larger disaster. What if she had taken an earlier train? Which direction were the trains going that had crashed? Luckily she was OK.

But others were not. Surely, there were people on that train who chose  to ride in the middle of the train that day instead of the first car. Maybe they had to hoof it up the escalator to make it. Maybe they were running late and had missed the earlier train — or got out of work earlier to make the one that crashed. It’s like those people you hear about who missed their flight — which then crashed. Even in the news today, its like pitchman Billy Mays being interviewed on TV last night about ‘bumping his head’ on a plane ride home but bragging he had a thick head … so no need to go the hospital. Then not waking up the next day.

Closer to home, it’s the stories of firefighters in recent years who tell of swapping shifts with someone so they can take the day off — only to have the person they switched with be killed in a fire.

Less dramatically, for me it was stopping in a random Sprint store, getting caught there longer than expected, and having a chance encounter with a happy family.

Moments like this really make you remember to treat every day like it is your last. You never know where these twists and turns may take you. The people you meet, even the ones you don’t really know, can impact your life — and make you think about how you live it.

In the past few weeks something has been awry with Twitter. I’m not talking about the random slowness or your friends over Tweeting every two minutes. And while I wish I could blame it on the big Ashton Kutcher/CNN drive to a million followers, the actual party to blame is a bit more typical — spammers, plain and simple.

Twitter is a great tool for publishers, communities, individuals and brands to connect to people interested in what they have to offer. And typically, for for-profit companies, this means letting your existing user base know that they can now follow you on Twitter. A novel idea of letting people make a conscious decision who to connect with. Plus you can follow others in your industry and get an inside track on the latest news, happenings, events, issues … and a lot more.

But recently, Twitter is starting to get known for something else, a darker side filled with sniveling weasels who are using the site to get free promotion and annoy the %$##N out of everyone. These wonderful companies find their victims by trolling users with certain interests and following them … and then following every freaking person they follow.

It’s easy to know these people are devils in no disguise. Their profile typically has only a few updates, all of which tell you how great their product is. You’ll notice when you view their profile that they are following hundreds of thousands of people, but only a small fraction are following them — so far. Those that are following probably were just confused or dazed, or just not really paying attention.

But today one just put me totally over the top. First they followed my personal account. Then both of the public safety sites’ Twitter accounts I manage. Here’s what I saw when I clicked the link:

Click to View the Full Size Image

So these folks went beyond just the normal spammers. They actually took advantage of the background image to make their own little Web page ad in Twitter. Pretty good deal if you can get it … don’t pay a CPC, don’t pay for ads, just follow everyone you can find who seems to be interested in the fire service and follow them. Boo-ya … click on your ad! Congrats. Oy. Are they breaking some obscure Twitter TOS? Probably not. There are no warnings about not putting big ad backgrounds up. Even the general terms don’t really put many limitations on commercial companies … probably because this is a relatively new but steadily increasing problem (see links below). But there are a few rules attempting to prevent spam here.

But do marketers think doing this really helps their brand? Or are they just counting on the teeny majority of uneducated consumers who will get suckered in? Maybe it’s like the Nigerian Scams, Viagara and Printer Ink eMail spams, where it only takes 0.00001% of the millions they annoy to click through for the spammer to cash in. They are probably targeting the same folks walking around wearing face masks inside their own homes and avoiding ham, bacon and pigs feet because of the Swine flu.

There are actually some smart companies who sell products and services using Twitter with a bit of smarts. They follow you, but their posts are informative about the industry, link to news articles, etc. And occasionally they mention some news about their own company. That isn’t quite as obnoxious, but …

For me, and a lot of people I know, I’m thinking I wasn’t creative enough anyway to get everything in my head down to 140 characters. So if every other follower on Twitter turns out to be spam a few months from now and scares us all away, so be it. So either I’ll just start keeping status updates on Facebook, or more likely something else to kill time and spread peace, love and joy online is probably just around the corner …

Thanks for continuing to ruin the internet you uneducated (or overly spam educated) marketers …

Here are some others talking about Twitter/Tweet Spam …

• Twitter Spam Not Likely to Kill Twitter
• Twitter Posts on Paint Projects, Ear Infections Annoy Users
• How Bad Is Marketing Spam On Twitter?
• Here Comes Twitter Spam And How To Fight It
• 6 things that could ruin Twitter (and 5 that won’t)
• Stop the tweet spam! Two ways to filter Twitter into Facebook

Here’s a parady video called ‘The Final Days’ by Bill Clinton on his final days in the White House. It came out in 2000 … but still gets a laugh. Think George Bush has something like this coming out?

So this month marks quite a few anniversaries of sorts, highs and lows … but proof that life just has those highs and lows and it’s all about taking them as they come and moving forward.

Ten years ago this week, Chris Hebert and I launched Firehouse.com from the friendly confines of my little spare bedroom on Indian Lane in College Park. The Firehouse Magazine people were not thrilled. Hate is perhaps too a strong word, but they sure as hell didn’t want a bunch of punk kids in their early 20’s taking their brand and doing who knows what with it online. Luckily for us (and the Firehouse brand), the leadership of parent company Cygnus (at the time) was comprised of two dynamic former Turner executives in Gerry Hogan and Blair Schmidt-Fellner.

I’ve relayed many times over the years how Chris and I walked into that conference room at the offices of Firehouse Magazine in the Fall of 1998 with this CRAZY idea for a Web site under the Firehouse.com brand. We talked about news, photos, training … all stuff Firehouse Magazine was infamous for. This was THE magazine we’d grown up reading as firefighters. I’d been to the Firehouse Expo a bunch of times by this point. And although I’d somehow managed to have a cover shot on Firehouse Magazine a bit before this, being in the ‘hub’ of the Firehouse brand was quite a bit imposing.

So needless to say, when the wise ole’ publisher of Firehouse Magazine at the time looked at us kids like we were crazy talking about making MONEY online (suggesting a few hundred grand a year in revenue … perhaps) followed by the long standing editors reminding us that photos and news is what the MAGAZINE did, so why replicate (or beat it) on the Web, well … we were about six feet under the table about to cry.

That’s when this guy at the end of the table asked us what research we had done to possibly prove this was a viable concept. I dramatically pulled this pile of printed-out surveys that we had lugged up to Long Island from Hyattsville where a few hundred users had happily indicated all the fun things they’d love to see on a Firehouse Web site. Ya know … news, photos, training — sound familiar?

This “guy” turned out to be the President of the company, Blair. He had to get a flight back to Atlanta shortly, but he basically said “OK, let’s be partners.”  And that was that. A bit of shock and disbelief on both sides of the table I can assure you.

A few months later, on Christmas Day 1998, Firehouse.com was born. A year later, the site was at the forefront of coverage from the Worcester Six tragedy in Massachusetts. The Emergency! Fest at the HVFD (sponsored by Firehouse.com) followed in 1999. Fire Grants and 9/11 followed, then Ladder 49 and just about every other cool thing in between — including a tornado hitting the office. The site was at the forefront of fire service information delivery online. (Check out this story about FH.com’s 5th Anniversary)

This was before blogs, before ‘competition’  … and really was one of the first models of a successful ‘magazine brand’ portal in B2B media. We didn’t quite get all the “stock options” we were originally assured of, and I made some dumb contractual decisions here and there … but really at the end of the day all those things helped us survive the “dot com” crash and thrive after it. We had fun, we made great friends and had some awesome people work for us. Our first nine full time employees stayed for the first five years. We met celebrities, we walked the red carpet — and we helped raise $50M for families of fallen 9/11 heroes.

So that gets us up to December 2006. That was when I managed to break up (putting it mildly) with my ex-wife (is that how you word that? was she technically the ex then?) AND stop working for Cygnus the same WEEK. Mildly life altering. I say “stop working” because that’s the P.C. way to say it. By that point in 2006, I was Vice President of Interactive and responsible for quite a bit more than Firehouse.com. And after Cygnus failed to sell in 2006, the new regime found a slew of new execs to run the place. And as Forrest Gump would say, “That’s about all I have to say about that.” Wait, has Cygnus sold yet? Anyway….

Needless to say the next few months that followed, well…sucked. You don’t really think about having to pay your mortgage until you don’t actually have a job. (You also don’t think about having a house in Baltimore for absolutely no reason until you don’t have a wife in Baltimore … and I’ve still got it if you know someone looking for an overpriced row house that won’t actually sell until 2011 … I digress.)

My old CEO at Cygnus and I toyed around with some new business ideas, but mostly I sat around in my pajama pants (or something) eating take out for a few months. To this day, I thank the movie Borat (and a few good friends) for getting me through that time. Hard to believe THAT was only two years ago.

By Spring of 2007, I was on my way to working at Red 7 … whose CEO is a firefighter. Coincidence or Karma, either way, things were turning back in the right direction. The divorce was no big thing and I even managed to find myself a nice lass along the way.  I launched FirefighterNation.com that Summer, exactly six months and a day after leaving Cygnus … and, well that gets us on the path back into public safety online.

Last month I started my own company, bringing Chris back into the fold and enticing Paul Andrews, our ole’ sales guru (I mean that as former, not old…) Paul back into the frey. We’re working with what used to be “the competition” with the JEMS and FireRescue brands. There’s great opportunity to create some cool things for first responders.

Plus, Red 7 Media is growing fast and my former CEO and CFO’s new company, HMP,  is in the frey keeping us on our toes in varying verticals. It’s publishing and event markets one minute (if you’re in magazine media, be sure to come to the FOLIO Growth Summit in Chicago this March, especially the eMedia Strategist Summit I helped program!), cardiology and dermatology the next (check out the CathLabLive.com beta site) … with public safety wrapping up the day (thankfully, Elseiver’s West Coast hours help keep us sane.) And we’re only in the first two months!

We’re doing the same types of things we did 10 years ago at Firehouse.com — helping turn great magazine (i.e. print) brands and transforming them into multi-platform offerings for dynamic markets. Only now we can do it faster, cheaper and a heck of a lot more efficiently in an environment that is complimentary and cooperatively — not competitively. BIG difference.

Not that I want to paint a picture that it was all about being competitive with print, but that WAS the culture at publishing companies in the 90’s and early this decade — everywhere, not just at the former company. Print and the Web would have separate staffs, openly compete for the same dollar and eyeball. Now, it’s all about the brand and deliverying content, community and commerce WHERE the user wants it — and letting that drive everything else. It’s super duper better. (I was a journalist….so that’s intentionally bad yet humorous English.)

So, 10 years later … I celebrate the 10th anniversary of Firehouse.com on the sidelines with Chris here too. It IS a bit odd. But at the same time, would I rather still be there doing what I had been doing those eight years? Not that there wasn’t more work to do, but … it would have always just been more of the same. Nothing new and certainly not our own company where we can choose great companies and partners to work with — and we’ve been blessed going into 2009 with both.

There are a few folks left who were there at Firehouse.com in the beginning — well, at least one anyway. Plus all of our peeps there who joined us over the years and have hung on and even tolerated us now as we’ve become competitors. (Well, at least for a few months … until we truly compete..lol). But here’s a tip of the hat (or helmet as the case may be) to that initial team who launched Firehouse.com and joined us in the first years after — Mike, Jenni, Heather, Tim, Brian, Pete M, Lon, Pete P … I’m forgetting some I’m sure.

We built something great that made a difference. And even as we’re all somewhere else doing all sorts of things, I think it’s definitely appropriate to take some time now to reflect on what, at the time, was truly one of a kind. We could no’t have done it without you guys (and gals). Firehouse.com was only a success because of a team of dedicated people, many of whom grew up around the fire service — which certainly didn’t hurt.

In an opening commentary on Christmas Day in 1998 by Firehouse Contributing Editor Charles Werner (now Chief of the Charlottesville, Va. FD), he quoted me saying: “Firehouse.com promises to be the most comprehensive website dedicated to the emergency service community.” And I hope we truly accomplished that — at the same time I hope to do it again!

Somewhere in between I’m managing to have a bit more of a personal life than I had those first few years at Firehouse. No sleeping at the office these days … ah, the dot com memories. I enjoy the weekends more, I don’t sweat the small stuff or get quite as carried away with things as I did in my younger years. I’m 34 and feel like I’ve lived a lifetime — with a few lifetimes to go thankfully (maybe more if I can lose like 30 pounds). Plus I’ve got time (and the resources) to take care of my ailing mother and her husband the way a good son should.

Life is all about moving forward. That’s a pretty good phrase when you have started a company called “Go Forward“  … because ain’t no one going to work with a company named “Go Backwards” unless you make back up alarms for ambulances. Life has ups and downs — it isn’t how you got as high as you could — or ended up at the absolute bottom. It’s all about how you react to both, and especially how you take the downturns in stride, learn your lessons and recover to be better than before.

And isn’t that what going forward is all about?

Anyway, my next blog may be of my last true Emergency! experiences. On my way from L.A. to Disneyland next weekend I’m planning to stop by L.A. County Station 127 in Carson — the firehouse that served as ‘Station 51′ in the TV series. Maybe then I’ll finally burn myself out again from the show … I would have met the cast, drove in Squad 51 and been in Station 51. The only other thing I could do at this point is write a remake of the show. And believe me, I’ve already gotten shot down there by an exec from the Weinstein Company, so … doubtful.

So to sum up … always Go Forward and Have a Great Holiday!

Here’s an exciting press release from Elsevier Public Safety regarding a new partnership with our company. It goes a bit with the ‘Putting the Band Back Together’ post

San Diego, December 2, 2008 - Elsevier Public Safety (EPS), publisher of JEMS, FireRescue, Law Officer and Public Safety Communications magazines, and a division of Elsevier Inc., today announces the addition of an eMedia strategy and operations leadership team comprised of three of the leading innovators in the industry. The trio of public safety veterans from Go Forward Media will lead a fully integrated approach to online content, marketing, sales and operations, enabling the development of a wide array of new and enhanced Web products across the fire, EMS, law enforcement and communications universe.

Dave J. Iannone, who launched Firehouse.com 10 years ago and oversaw its tremendous growth, joins as Managing Director of eMedia Strategy. Iannone was formerly the Vice President of Interactive at Cygnus Business Media and was most recently Director of Interactive Strategy at FOLIO: Magazine parent company Red 7 Media, now a GFM client.

Interactive sales expert Paul Andrews will serve as Director of eMedia Sales, leading the EPS sales and marketing team in creating products and services with high impact ROI for advertisers and sponsors. Andrews was formerly the Vice President of Interactive Sales at Cygnus and Firehouse.com. He most recently led eMedia sales teams in the real estate and public safety sectors. Chris Hebert will serve as Director of eMedia Content, focusing on expansion of Web-based editorial, features, services and project management. Hebert co-founded Firehouse.com with Iannone and was most recently Publisher of Cygnus Public Safety Interactive.