In case you don’t know, I’m a very social guy and love Portland, so it was tough for me to work remotely. I also want to focus on a single client to really see what kind of a program and results I’m capable of. So it’s time for the next chapter in my life. I don’t have any announcements just yet on what I’ll be doing next, but I have some discussions going that should lead to an announcement next week. I can say that one thing I’m really looking forward to is spending more time at local events supporting the groups my friends organize.

Lifestream

As I have become more integrated with communities locally and afar, the types of interaction I have are much more diverse than blog posts. Over the Holidays, I set up Sweetcron to aggregate my online activity into my lifestream.

Blogging

I’ve learned a ton about how and why I blog since I set up my first blog. When I started, I owned my own company and I was blogging about topics that I thought would increase traffic for landing new business; in other words for marketing. Well, I don’t own my own business anymore and I help a ton of people with blogging these days, so I’m not feeling passionate about writing blog posts to be link bait for potential customers anymore. That doesn’t mean I’m not still interested in blogging about my industry, in fact I’m going to write those posts for the business I support now, Voce Nation. On this blog, I’m going to talk more about the things I care about like Portland, the Ducks, RC helicopters, tequila and such.

Home page

I am planning to make my home page more of a gateway to my online presence—links to the various places I have accounts online, my lifestream feed, and some basic “about me” info. I’m planning to move my blog to http://www.justinkistner.com/blog/ as blogging becomes a part of my activity rather than all of my activity.

Beer & Blog

I ended up pulling out of the Legion of Tech elections for their Board of Directors to focus more on Beer and Blog. I didn’t feel like I was going to be able to give them the time commitment they deserve to get from someone else. LoT rocks and I will still help them get sponsorships, attend their events, and help in every way I can because I think what they are doing for Portland is unique and special. I attribute them with the reawakening of the Portland tech scene!

Beer and Blog is hoping to bring that same DIY community spirit to more cities throughout 2009. We’re also planning to do more workshops to bring additional people into the community.

Ok, I uploaded my slides to SlideShare and have embedded them in this post for reference. Bram Pitoyo did a thorough job of taking notes on my session, for which I am much obliged! Thanks, man! Nate DiNiro was kind enough to video record my talk, so I’ll be posting that soonly here as well.

About WordCamp Portland

I really enjoyed WordCamp Portland and was honored to be a part of it. The night before was a great time at Beer and Blog getting the festivities rolling. I’ll post an update on Beer and Blog shortly with some pics from that party. It was really nice to meet Lorelle and Jane, who both helped make the event special. Last night, I browsed around Flickr and Twitter enjoying some good photos and commentary. I also have a good number of business cards from people I met and more folks that have added me on various services. I’m looking forward to following up on all of these fresh opportunities over the next week.

Acknowledgements

Seriously, great work everyone. I’m still buzzing today. I had no idea the WordPress community had come to mean so much to me.

• Aaron Hockley and crew for pulling it together!!
• Lorelle and Jane for making us more popular than Matt did Utah
• Nate DiNiro for recording my talk
• CubeSpace was an excellent host as always
• The sponsors rule for making the event possible! I’m proud that my company, Voce, was a top sponsor!
• All the attendees! I look forward to talking more with the folks I met and to catch up online with those I didn’t.