It came to mind that I toss around a handful of phrases with enough frequency and a long enough time that I feel they have sufficiently affected how I orient myself to what is around me.

Maybe some will have meaning to you.

1. Fifty percent of people are better off than you, and 50 percent are worse off — It’s one of the more powerful sentiments that my father instilled in me. While I am probably even more privileged than that, the value is limitless.
2. No judging in brainstorming — The worst thing for collaboration or friendship or teamwork or success or for anything is to question someone’s willingness to share an idea with condescension or criticism. Be kind to those who share their ideas and work with them.
3. Make a list and keep it — Keep yourself accountable by listing goals, resolutions, priorities and the like. And then stick to them. Promises made, forgotten and never kept are of no value.
4. Say ‘I don’t know’ and ask questions — If you don’t know something, admit it and ask the question that helps you find out.
5. In almost all cases, it’s not as serious as you think it is — Calm the Hell down.
6. Everything online is public — Yes, even e-mail or IM conversations. Consider anything you write or say today to be public. I picked up this logic in college and have tried to follow its underlying logic.
7. Relationships aren’t business, business is relationships — Get those priorities in order and treat people in a way that reflects this reality.
8. When you treat people like children, you get children’s work — It was my favorite take away from the very excellent workflow management book by 37signals and a concept I came to learn while working with high school journalism clubs, the members of whom I would treat as if they were professionals. Expect the work you want.
9. Never admit a big defeat when you can claim a smaller victory — Think creatively about what good can come of a situation, in lessons or experiences or something else.
10. Diversify everything: from your finances to your coverage — Don’t focus on one anything.
11. Lust isn’t about sex; it’s about how little we care about each other — It’s something I read somewhere, several years ago, and though I can’t remember the source, it has had a profound impact on my understanding of fidelity. That treatment goes far beyond the physical.
12. [Updated] Action is a virtue — There is always a reason to say no, so focus on why you ought to do something.
13. [Updated] Come with Solutions not  just questions — Creativity can flow with conversation, but when bringing up a problem, concern or idea, come with a solution, even if it isn’t the best, have a suggested direction whenever in a meeting, particularly when dealing with other leaders.
14. [Updated] Be the nicest to the secretaries, assistants, garbage men, janitors and postmen because they really make it happen — My father would be dismayed when people seemed to have a strictly hierarchical sense of who is important and who isn’t, particularly because, when it comes right down to it, the supposed leaders are most often not the ones who actually do the work.
15. [Updated] Our worst qualities are often our best ones too, just described differently — So whether you’re manipulative or strategic; lazy or relaxed; high-strung or detail orientated all depends on perspective and what the end result is.
16. [Updated] Luck and opportunity are both about 75 percent found and 25 percent created — Good luck and opportunity certainly come our way, but we still need to earn a healthy portion of it.
17. [Updated] The only person responsible for your happiness is you. — Take ownership of what you want in your life and when the details are beyond your reach, find what you can grab.
18. [Updated] “When you realize nothing is lacking/the whole world belongs to you” – Wise words from Lao Tzu
    
19. [Updated] Fail fast or succeed big — A lesson from the startup world that teaches it’s worth giving it your all or moving on.

And, yes, the old Golden Rule is a good one, just try to treat others close-enough as you might want to be treated.

Do you have any other rules to live by?

I’m always interested in workflow management. How can I, and the people around me, become more efficient, to get more and better work done in more condensed periods of time.

Real work flow is developed over time and with people whose work ethic you respect. But there are concepts to be had about getting that to work from the start. After moving into office space with Technically Media and working alongside my two colleagues so closely more often than ever before, I have been hunting for new ideas to bring to the process.

I came across a great TED talk from Jason Fried, one of the founders of web development firm 37signals, who was responsible for a great book with simple take aways on best business practices.

Three of his clearest points are ones that I like and have already played a role:

1. No talk Thursdays — Just pick one day a week or a month, or a portion of one day a week when no one can speak to anyone or ask any questions. Just get shit done.
2. Passive communication — Don’t forget the real power of email, that you can ping someone about something and he can get back to you on his schedule, not interrupt what he is doing. Talking is for creative development, not simple questions.
3. Cancel your meetings — Limit the time suck of meaningless meetings. Have an agenda, get through your points, assign relevance and move on.

Check out the video below.

An emblematic photo of a portion of my work with Back on My Feet, as taken early in the morning of the second day of the third annual Stroehmann Back on My Feet 20in24 race event, having coordinated an intervivew of Philadelphia chapter Executive Director Sera Snyder and Fox 29. For the 20in24, every major outlet in the region covered the event.

I am leaving my role as Media Director for Back on My Feet, the running-based program to combat homelessness.

I tendered my resignation last Thursday, Nov. 11 and our staff was alerted Monday. My last day will be Friday, Dec. 3, so I’ve offered a full three weeks to help the transition process at an organization with a mission that has come to mean a great deal to me since joining in January.

I’ll be sharing in greater detail here what exactly I will be doing, but, in short, I am taking a full-time opportunity with the media company I helped launch by way of starting in February 2009 technology news site Technically Philly.

Yes, things have been going well there since.

While there are lot of reasons why this is the right move for me, most simply:

1. I have completed a great deal of what I wanted to do at Back on My Feet, and this is a good time for a relatively smooth transition
2. My heart is with journalism, publishing, covering communities and all the conversations therein.

I will also be sharing here more reflections and takeaways from my year working for Back on My Feet, but, for now, I would like to quickly highlight how proud I am of the work I have accomplished in my short time there.

I want to thank the organization, its staff and founder Anne Mahlum for giving me the opportunity to come on to a startup and create from scratch a direction, mission and purpose for its media outreach.

I served five basic roles that were meant to circle my mission of growing awareness of the organization, all of which were mine, as I was a one-man department:

1. Traditional Media — relationship building, outreach, followup and organization of coverage by legacy media.
2. Social Media — Our conversation, push and interaction with social networks and their related communities.
3. Content and publishing — Our newsletters, email correspondence and managing our blog, which I launched, as noted below.
4. Website project management and IT — Managing our website, our relationship with our partner development company O3 World and other basic, related IT questions from staff.
5. Branding — Overseeing, approving and, at times, designing branding, marketing and event materials.

At the highest level, I feel as though I have established best practices and direction for my department and will offer easy-to-transition roles that still have direction and growth possibilities, all of which fits neatly into what I first pledged to do during my initial interview for this position.

I am so proud of these accomplishments for less than a year’s worth of work considering they span disciplines, which include, among many others, the following:

• Finalized an initial draft of a Media Department manual, detailing the responsibilities and goals of the work I’ve done in nearly 5,000 words and on 12 pages. This is the strongest asset I’ve offered to create institutional memory in my work. One of my favorite words: sustainability.
• Finalized an initial draft of an organization style guide — With the help of a colleague, that serves as the basis for our language, colors, logos and other branding basics. This started a conversation around using specific fonts, precise colors, branding and language.
• Launched and created staff work flow for a blog platform that, in fewer than six months of public operation, receives more than 10,000 page views and is on pace to surpass in 2011 our established website in daily traffic.
• Shared at least one member story a week for the near entirety of the blog’s existence and came to know the names and abbreviated stories of dozens of our members. In addition to sharing news around the issue of homelessness, I have set expectations that our blog will be a place for thought-provoking discourse and to find news about our mission, supplemented by organizational updates.
• Grew and matured our national monthly newsletter presence, in addition to training staff and creating systems for regularity, blasts and chapter independence.
• Prepared for, launched and created staff work flow for chapter-specific email lists and monthly blasts to grow independence of each individual city. When I first came on, we had one big pot of contacts, but I recognized the need and value of beginning to break out lists by geography.
• Designed draft national marketing materials that can be expanded upon and serve as the basis of such documents in the future. It’s nearly a dozen pages and, even if it’s a knock off of some pro bono work a designer did for one of our chapters, I am proud of the look. Download a copy here [PDF].
• Created spreadsheet of media contacts across all of our chapters and other national outlets that can further be developed in a concerted, targeted effort. Again, another step to maturing our media department.
• Developed a true conversation in our primary social media channels of Twitter and Facebook, the latter of which has also been delegated to newly-trained staff and represents an area that still warrants growth and attention. We started from nearly zero, so we went a long way, but there’s plenty more to do.
• Conceived of a direction for the utility of our existing website, developed the relationship with web development partner O3 World and helped move forward the possibilities.We’re planning to more than double in size next year, so some real forward-thinking was required.
• Wrote an organization profile that was anthologized by a major publisher in ‘the Ultimate Runner.’
• Created an initial version of a press kit to offer to media contacts to create base level knowledge about our organization. Find it here.
• Worked to manage expectations around traditional media coverage, which was no small feat for an organization that was on CNN, ABC World News and NBC Nightly News within its first two years. I pushed for us to focus on big, interesting stories and succeeded when we pushed, like, as depicted above, all major TV, newspaper and radio outlets in Philadelphia covered the third annual Stroehmann Back on My Feet 20in24 race event in July.
• Pushed for Stroehmann Back on My Feet 20in24 Race Event branding — While we still call our major fundraising event “the 4th Annual Stroehmann Back on My Feet 20in24 Relay Challenge, Lone Ranger Ultra Marathon, Midnight Madness Run & Pajama Loop,” I helped pushed into our lexicon the remarkably apparent necessity of a shorthand.
• Created organization shorthand — We were sensitive to being just a ‘homeless running club,’ which is what some newspaper writers had taken to calling us. I noted that we needed to offer a more descriptive nut to offer journalists. It required lots of approval and remains less universally accepted than I liked but, with the great help of a colleague: Back on My Feet is a “running-based program to combat homelessness.”
• Interfaced regularly with nearly each of our 30 staff members — I tried my best to fight bureaucracy and increase my dialogue with staff so I knew what interested them and what hurt or helped the work they did.

More than a year ago, I handled a half dozen interviews and a couple rewrites on a story for the Inquirer that covered what Philadelphia workplaces will look like in the future. As is sometimes the case, it never found its home in print.

The story’s primary timeliness has been lost, but I think it still has merit. So, with permission from my editor, I share it below, in addition to a slew of extras from the heavy lifting of reporting.

It was meant to be a localized version of a Time magazine cover story that caught my attention.

Below, read the story, see portions of my interviews that didn’t make it into the piece and watch some related video news pieces

*Please note that the facts, figures, quotations and assertions are fact-checked and correct as of June 2009.

THE FUTURE OF THE PHILADELPHIA WORK PLACE

Not that long ago, there was something of a stable existence in retail.

Sheldon Abba

Sheldon Abba worked in a variety of clothing stores, from independent storefronts to big players like Urban Outfitters. He had a marketing and design background and, he thought, a fairly good sense of his future.

And then the bottom fell out.

With the economy on the slide, he was let go from Walnut Street-retailer Stussy in February, and his perception of that future changed.

“When I was in school, I thought I’d get a steady job with a brand and get a regular paycheck,” Abba, 23, said. “When that job evaporated, I started thinking differently. Maybe I could pay bills doing something like it on my own.”

So, with a handful of friends, he launched S. Industries, an ethereal design and retail company that is based wherever Abba and his cohorts are at the moment. He’s finding steady work through word of mouth but will soon take the venture on the Web through an e-commerce site. It’s a far ride from clocking in as a retail day manager.

The U.S. recession has changed lots of plans, like Abba’s. While entrepreneurs, freelancers and telecommuters have long been part of the U.S. workforce, today’s economic climate seems to have put more people in those roles than in recent memory. So much so that some say independent, remote ventures like Abba’s S. Industries are part of a trend for the future of the nation’s workplace.

That trend may fast become a norm in Philadelphia and across the country in the next five years or more, said Thomas Malone, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology management professor and author of the 2004 book, The Future of Work. Those who do stick to cubicle life may find their offices becoming smaller, closer to home, more mobile and, believe it or not, more fun in coming years, other experts say — all thanks to advances in communication technologies and increasingly casual work environments.

“The key message here is that I think we are in the early stages of an increase in human freedom in work, and it just might be as important a change for business as democracy was for government,” Malone said.

Some worry that the expected continued decline in traditional office employees could leave the new worker short on camaraderie and political social skills.

To curb his isolation, though, Abba has launched his venture with friends. They hold their meetings in bedrooms with a computer and a hard drive, listening to music and laughing.

“That’s a different work environment than any work place,” Abba says. “What I’m doing — finding work and making a schedule — is really valuable learning.”

For those who work from home for established companies, there’s another trend in keeping the best of the office: co-working.

For more than four years, Lori Hylan-Cho worked for software companies in California from 2,800 miles away in her Logan Square home near the Philadelphia Art Museum. The software developer and mom, whose hair is not unknown to be dyed purple on occasion, relished the flexibility but lamented the solitude.

“I was going a little nutty,” she said.

So, after making “a New Year’s resolution to get out of the house,” Hylan-Cho rented out space at Independents Hall, a shared office in Old City that rents workplaces to self-employed or other independent workers.

“In the coming years, the place becomes less important than the tools, and managers become more comfortable with distribution,” said Alex Hillman, a freelance Web developer who in 2006 opened Indy Hall with University of the Arts professor Geoff DiMassi. “Companies that want to stay ahead of the curve — if they’re open-minded — will need to explore these options in the traditional worker-employer relationship.”

Hylan-Cho, 40, has worked in software development for 11 years and has watched more and more of her co-workers flee the office.

“Working from home let me put in a load of laundry, be home for packages and sometimes meet the kids for lunch,” she said. She kept in touch with work by way of regular video conferences and instant messaging, connecting with co-workers from California to Texas back to Philadelphia.

That extra freedom kept her loyal, one of the more valuable assets of an employee in the future.

“Businesses are quickly finding that one of the most expensive costs of business is turnover,” said Deanna Geddes, an assistant professor of human resource management at Temple University’s Fox School of Business. So, the Center City office of the future may increasingly be a more inviting place.

Geddes says we might see the rise of the campus workplace for those who, unlike Abba and Hylan-Cho, do stay in the office.

“What successful businesses like Google learned before a lot of others is that people like to hang out, where they can develop friends, and when you have friendships in the workplace, people want to stay,” she said. “The casual campus environment that is more open, with fewer doors and walls, more communal space, games and less restrictive hours, lets people come and go as they please and keeps them invested in the workplace.”

For those who have already left traditional work environments, voluntarily or because of a tightened economy, the recession seems to point work places in a new direction.

“It takes a special kind of person, someone who can separate time and get work done,” Abba said. “That isn’t everyone, but clearly even the old-style offices of the past are going to change.”

-30-

Professor Thomas Malone, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• “We’ll see the economic benefits of very large business, as the same time as the human benefit of very small organizations, the freedom and creativity.”
• “The reason, of course, is a completely new generation of technologies that are reducing the cost of communication to such a low level. A huge number of people can now make sensible decisions for themselves with access to enough information because of the Internet, instead of just following orders.
• “We’ll see more human freedom, more people making more decisions for themselves. We may see more small organizations, where you’re your own boss.”
• A lot of lessons about that future can be taken from the nation’s largest private employer and an online auction behemoth, Malone said. Increasingly, we won’t need or always be able to find a company to employ us.
  “The clerk in Walmart and that seller for eBay represent the difference in what is now and what may come: in how they work, in responsibilities and where and when they have to do them,” Malone said. “Seven hundred thousand people say they make their primary or secondary living on eBay. They are essentially independent store owners with a huge amount of freedom in what they do, what to sell and what prices to set. That’s the future.”
• “Even inside big companies, we’ll see more freedom inside the company, more command and control to coordinate and cultivate. In another meaning of freedom, there will be more choice of when or where they work, with telecommuting for example, we’ll see a decentralization of the workplace. Both of those results are enabled by cheap communication….
• One reason cities grew the way they did was that for many occupations you had to live in a city, near the office to the company you worked for. One of the important trends changed by cheap communication technology is that more and more kinds of work can be done essentially anywhere in the world. What that means, I think, is that people will choose where they live often for reasons other than where their company is because it won’t matter. What that means is the dynamics of cities, i think will change. There are a lot of nice things about living in cities other than just going to work there. So, some people will continue to want to work in cities even though their jobs don’t require them to do so. It’s hard to know what the net impact on a city like Philadelphia will be, but I expect the population of cities may lessen but that the quality of living will go up.
• “The key point is electronic communication is reducing the need to travel to work everyday. You can work at home or near home much of the time. Ten years ago, we used to think that more and more people would become telecommuters. I think that’s not nearly so black and white now. The vast majority of professionals will be telecommuters in the sense that they work some of the time from home or while traveling and surely the professionals who spend all the time working from the office are a minority, but we’ll see a hybrid of office and telecommuting time.
• “If you need an example of a future employee, look at an eBay seller. If those 700,000 people were employees, it would make eBay the second-largest private employer in the country, second only behind Walmart. Of course, they are not employees… That’s all the freedom of any small store owner. It’s on a scale unlike ever before, in any regional or global marketplace. It’s as if an auction company built a retailer — not eBay the company, but eBay the community.
• “In cities, there is a pretty strong division between business and residential neighborhoods. Maybe we’ll see more of a blurring of these distinctions,” Malone, the MIT professor, said. “I think when people don’t have to drive or commute all the way to a downtown of a city, that means they could stay at home. We’ll see more of something I call a neighborhood office building.”It would be a place, Malone said, where telecommuters and freelancers, whose numbers are expected to rise, can work together. It’s a trend called co-working that already has strong roots in Philadelphia.
• ; residential neighborhoods with one or two or more office floors

Professor, Deanna Geddes, human resource management at Temple’s Fox School of Business

• This is a time to play to our strengths as a region. research and biotech, biomedic
• Companies without the sophisticated IT for corporate to retain employees may suffer.
• We might see more choice, allowing younger people to come in at 10 a.m. and work through 8 or stay on to 9.
• Center City could become the place for more campus-orientated workplaces. It’s cheaper to build out of the existing city.
• Taking a mantra from education in 1990s, clicks not bricks. We don’t need all the institutions.
• Work flexibility will be key.
• More and more employees are looking for flexibility. work-life issues and boredom go even further.
• There’s nothing more valuable than a good idea.
• More people want a job that first their lifestyle,  not just someplace to punch a time card.”
• “There will always be a place for corporate headquarters. They may change, get smaller and more casual, but they won’t go away entirely.”
• “There will always be a place for the cubicle jungle,” Geddes, the Temple professor, said. “But we won’t go as much and might not have to travel as far.”

Web designer Alex Hillman, co-founder of Independents Hall

• “What happens when a company is based outside the city, and the employee lives outside the city, but they come to the city to work in a physical space, like a coffee shop or sitting in a park using Wi Fi?” Place starts to breakdown.
• “The risk is low, as it’s a fairly cheap big city. There are a lot of industries and for so long Philly has just been a good place to try new things. It’s in our city’s history.”
• “With some trust for telecommuting or greater freedom and be valuable to the long-term relationship.
• “People react to distractions differently, but ultimately being completely isolated can’t be healthy,” said Hillman. “A combination of factors affect the distribution of the workplace.”
• In 2006, Alex Hillman, a freelance Web developer who caught cabin fever from too many lonely work sessions at home, and Geoff DiMassi, a University of the Arts professor, opened Indy Hall.
• See Technically Philly coverage of Alex Hillman.

Software engineer Lori Hylan-Cho, telecommuter and Indy Hall member

• 
• “Ditching the commute is a big thing. It’s not just that you’re stuck in traffic or on a train, but you’re not with a family. could productive worrk time, but not family time.”
• It was awesome. But it puts a strain on communication. You have to be a very active communicator. You have to make sure you’re around.”
• “I’m used to working with a lot of men, certainly in technical positions,” she said.
• The worst recession in a generation or more has brought on a slew of attention to the future of business and our friendly workplace confines. In the view of some experts, the Web-literate telecommuter is a sign of things to come.
• It’s invaluable for life balance, as you have kids, your job can be more portable giving you a chance to be with your family.”
• “It was a great way to have a job that I love and live where I want to live,” Hylan-Cho, 40, said.
• So, if Hylan-Cho lands another gig that brings her to an office, she might meet with colleagues there for regular meetings, if not traditional full days. Still, she said it’ll be hard to give up the flexibility she’s had for the past few years.
• But, she now no longer telecommutes for that California company. In fact, she says she might look for another chance at the collaboration of a traditional office.
• “I don’t know if it’s the future,” Hylan-Cho said. “But it’s worked well for me.”

Helpful U.S. Census Bureau of Labor Statistics information for Philadelphia employment:

• BLS Mid-Atlantic Information Office
• Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH), 2008-09 Edition
• Employment Projections
• Regional Employment and Unemployment News
• Regional Employment Statistical Data
• Pennsylvania County Employment and Wages presser

It has gotten quite a bit of attention — and high praise from some noteworthy authors — so my reading it comes a bit late, so instead I wanted to share what I most took away from it.

Because of its comprehensible and digestible format, I tore through the fast and compelling book. While much of the book was either reinforcing or contained perspective I hope to take away, I thought enough of their rules were valuable enough that sharing my favorites here would be served well.

See my favorite items below as just a primer, go pick up the book. I can’t highlight enough that what I share below are but a small percentage of the insight offered in the book and even those I do share are just the skeletons of ideas.

CHAPTER: TAKEDOWNS

• Why grow? (hardcover page 22): We’re caught up in bigger numbers, more employees, but why. Focus on doing what you do better before taking it elsewhere.
• Workaholism (page 25) — Guilt-ing co-workers, creating unsustainable solutions and offering no balance or fresh perspective.

CHAPTER: GO

• Make a dent in the universe (p. 31) — Do great work by feeling like you’re doing some good. That keeps me going in my role at Back on My Feet.
• Outside money is Plan Z (p. 50) — How do you build your business on your own? Startup capital and outside investment can be used strategically, but shouldn’t be a necessity.
• Building to flip is building to flop (p. 59) — This reminded me of buying a home, not a house. If you’re looking to make a buck, it’s much easier to cut corners or find another way to fail. If you believe in what you’re doing, you’ll do it as well as you can — and yes, maybe you can make a dollar along the way.

CHAPTER: PROGRESS

• Ignore the details early on (p. 74) — It’s so easy to quibble over specifics, which slows progress to beginning at the start. Get movement, get excitement and find the details as you go.
• Sell your by-products (p. 90) — When I was freelancing full-time, I shared extra perspective, quotations and passages that didn’t make it into the final piece. The extras of what you do are probably worth something, depending on how they’re packaged — whether they’re physical goods or content to share. Get something out of every piece of the buffalo.
• Launch now (p. 93) — This reminded me of the lesson I’ve learned to just move forward. Get the project started, launched. Begin small, find the details and the pitfalls and develop. Pick a brand name that works and develop what that means.

CHAPTER: PRODUCTIVITY

• Meetings are toxic (p. 108) — Most of them are wastes of time. We at Technically Philly have developed a great meeting structure that tries to avoid a lot of these pitfalls, but be careful how and why and where you schedule meetings. They waste time, create needless distraction and fail in most ways they’re meant to succeed.
• Good enough is fine (p. 112) — Get the project done. Move. Develop and improve. Don’t fight for perfection when it’s not necessary.
• Go to sleep (p. 121) — It’s a related theme to workaholism, but mostly, sleep is good. It keeps you healthy, wealthy and wise. If you or your employees go long stretches having sleep affected, it’s bad news.

CHAPTER: COMPETITORS

• Underdo your competition (p. 144) — Don’t get into a Cold War-style pissing match. Do what you do best simply, efficiently and assertively. Sell you and allow you to be part of a stripped down, focused mission. Let others move on and learn to say no.

CHAPTER: EVOLUTION

• Say no by default (p. 153) — Yes, say no. Not in the negative, ‘that can’t happen’ way, but in trying to remain focused and on-task. This is surely something I need to work on.

CHAPTER: PROMOTION

This was easily my favorite chapter and while each entry reflected a single general concept of content-focused audience building, I would strongly suggest internalizing each item. Below, the best of the best.

• Press releases are spam (p. 185) — I think they can be a valuable format to hold all the necessary information for a pitch, an event or a concept, but the thought here is don’t ping hundreds of people who don’t care. Be focused on what you want and develop relationships.
• Forget about the Wall Street Journal (p. 188) — Niche media is more relevant. So get over the buzz of the big media and see the value of the small, focused hit.
• Everything is Marketing (p. 193) — Here’s the most important piece in the book, I’d say. Don’t relegate the idea of ‘marketing’ your company to a few chosen souls. Every staff member’s interaction is marketing. What’s more, everything is content to help build an audience to help handle marketing.

CHAPTER: HIRING

• Do it yourself first (p. 201) — It’s easy to criticize and fail to understand what a good project is if you haven’t done the work or did them under different circumstances.
• Test-drive employees (p. 227) — Give someone a freelance or part-time project before hiring full-time. Make sure they fit right.

CHAPTER: CULTURE

My second favorite chapter, and, again, I could list nearly every item here, but I’ll stick to best themes.

• They’re not thirteen (p. 235) — “When you treat people like children, you get children’s work.”
• Send people home at five (p. 258) — “The dream employee for a lot of companies is a twenty-something with as little of a life as possible outside of work — someone who’ll be fine working 14 hour days and sleeping under his desk… You shouldn’t expect the job to be someone’s entire life — at least not if you want to keep them around for a long time.”
• ASAP is poison (p. 268) — “And when everything is a high priority, then nothing is.”

Thanks for an inspiring and lucid account. None of the filler that comes with many business books. This was short and to the point. I strongly recommend anyone give it a read.

Back on My Feet founder Anne Mahlum and members of the organization in 2007.

I’ve decided to step away from self-employment.

I’ve spent the last year of my life freelancing, by some accounts, at perhaps the worst time to do so in my life and arguably the worst time in the history of journalism.

After a meeting of the most influential media leaders in the region made clear no drastic foundational investment would be made into niche news anytime soon, I knew I needed to secure my finances — as a new homeowner, especially — and take a more cautioned approach toward building News Inkubator, Technically Philly and NEast Philly.

A funny thing happened not a week or two after I made this decision. A friend made me aware of a job opportunity I actually wanted.

On Mon. Jan. 18, I walked into a Locust Street building in Center City Philadelphia and began defining what a media director should do for homeless advocacy nonprofit Back on My Feet.

I spent nearly three full semesters working with Philadelphia government oversight organization Committee of Seventy in the beginning of my college career, offering some policy research, the occasional graphic design tweak and other gap-filling. For almost all of it, I worked under the tutelage of a precocious, 25-year-old, workaholic, marathoner North Dakota native named Anne Mahlum.

She was fun and challenging, and I knew then that she had her sights set high.

We had two breakfasts in summer 2007. During one, she told me about telecommunications giant Comcast luring her to a high-paying lobbying gig. During the second, she told me that after accepting the job, she reconsidered and launched Back on My Feet, what started as a homeless running club and has now become an advocacy agency that creates a community around running and then connects participants with job training and job placement programs and will be in four cities by May.

Nearly three years later, her organization needed a 14th staff member and thought it should be someone to handle the group’s Web presence and develop relationships with traditional media.

I interviewed with Anne and others Monday Jan. 11, had a follow up by phone that Wednesday and accepted later that day. Told I was pitted against an older crop of more traditionally experienced marketing people, I pitched hard on my role extending to content creation around the issues of homelessness, job creation and other related social advocacy plots.

Back on My Feet had caught the attention of runners already, but to continue to grow they needed a world of people interested in social justice. To attract them to our site — and eventually bring them on as volunteers and donors — let me create a blog that chronicles the plights of the men and women with whom we work and the conversations that are happening around these issues.

It could prove to be more serious journalism than what I’ve done the past year as a full-time freelance reporter.

After I started, here’s what I more officially wrote out:

My five primary responsibilities now as I see them currently (I put them in order of time I think I’d spend on them, from most to least time):

1. *Our own content — I think this has the potential to be most important and involve the most time. The primary vehicle for this would be a blog placed highly and incorporated fully into BackonMyFeet.org. This would be the daily-updated stream of all BOMF content, including standard organization updates and offers, but buttressed with multimedia, interviews/day-in-the-life pieces on residential members, tracking of media coverage and perhaps a weekly/monthly podcast on homelessness and systemic joblessness.
2. Social media — Interject BOMF into the conversation, connect with people online and build branding (Twitter and Facebook to start)
3. Legacy media — Make traditional story pitches to established media, leveraging my existing relationships.
4. Partnerships and events — I think my role is natural to help develop, or at least highlight potential partners in content and in our mission (other nonprofits, academic and research institutions, etc.)
5. Independent media — Indie blogs, smaller niche publications and the like shouldn’t be ignored — smaller, more targeted audiences often mean they’ll take even more seriously the coverage

To start, I’ll have to trim down our existing bloated site and otherwise transition — introducing myself and finding my place. Beginning my third week, I’m quite pleased and look forward to tracking our progress.

I’m sure there will be updates to come.

Some measurable starting points:

1. Using internal analytics, but also a (perhaps very) rough guide can be seen publicly here, which shows about 3,700 unique visitors in December
2. Social media accounts: (Starting on my first Monday morning) Our Twitter account had 335 followers, 99 tweets and was listed 30 times, in addition to just about 35 @replies since April (I got nearly half that yesterday alone, including GPTMC); Our Facebook account had 727 friends and had fallen inactive; Our Youtube account had 10 uploads and 12 subscribers
3. We’ll also try to track the volunteers and donors who come over the transom of the Web.

Though certainly now only during nights and weekends, I will remain an active partner in Technically Philly and NEast.