For the past year, I've been involved with a new venture called Ministry of Awesome (MoA). This nonprofit exists to water the seeds of awesome in our local community: bringing people together and providing inspiration and support to turn awesome ideas into reality. Our Facebook strategy has been simple. We post links to things we think are awesome (in our local area and around the world), as well as relevant updates or notices from MoA. We try to post reasonably regularly, but only when we actually have something to share that we feel good about. We haven't invited a single …

I guess I was called a "Second Life booster" back in the day -- and guess what, I was OK with that. I still am. As an early adopter (professionally) in the virtual world of Second Life, I witnessed firsthand the highs and lows; how the press initially went gaga over it, and then turned their back, to the point of making it their personal vindictive mission to destroy evidence of any self-created hype.

n my house, we spend random conversations speaking in British accents, talking about and acting like we're characters in "Harry Potter." I know -- this might sound strange to you, especially when you realize I'm not from London; I'm from upstate New York. My boys like it, though. They can't wait to be old enough to read the books and watch the movies! What doesn't seem to work as of yet is the magic and wizardry behind attribution. Is there a chance that attribution will sometime soon become the realm of muggle science, or will it always be a fantastical …

My uncle died a few years ago from prostate cancer, which appeared out of nowhere. That's why one of my favorite "viral" Internet sensations is Movember, a global campaign to raise funds and awareness for male cancer research. Each year, millions participate in support of daring men who start clean-shaven on Nov.1 and dedicate the rest of the month to growing a moustache and getting others involved in this good cause.

Agencies, ad tech firms, and start-ups tend to be staffed by younger people. The hours are long, the problems are complex and the technology is constantly changing. As a result, high growth companies are now mostly comprised of Millennials, the massive generation of Americans born after the year 1980.

Can you endorse me? One of the most enjoyable developments in recent digital history is the arrival of a new feature on LinkedIn where you can be "endorsed" by your colleagues for various skill sets.LinkedIn scans your profile to identify "skills" you may have and then asks your colleagues to endorse you when they log in to their page. I think this could be really accurate if used correctly.

When I worked at a large communications agency early in my career, I found it odd when heralded "creatives" were automatically assigned to generate ideas for client challenges. Conversely, I also thought it odd that some clients had a knee-jerk reaction to outsource so much creative thinking to an agency in the first place, when the client organization was filled with incredibly smart and creative people.

Over the past year I've met with dozens of advertising agencies, media companies and ad tech firms to discuss their challenges in human resources technology. Since the solution that my company is building needs to work with all this tech stuff, I've become something of an expert on the HR tech landscape. Like Terry Kawaja's ad tech LUMAscape, it's a complicated picture. Here's some of what I've learned:

There are some conversations you just have to have over and over, and somehow this seems particularly true with social media. Take, for example, the idea that companies have to be on social media simply because everyone else is. I have had that conversation a hundred times -- including in this very column -- and I can always tell when I'm in a losing battle: my customer's eyes glaze over, she starts nodding, and then she says, "Right, right, right... So when can we get started?"

This has been an unusually busy conference week, even for me. On Sunday and Monday, I was at Techonomy in Tucson. Tuesday, I was at Comcast Venture's first media and tech symposium in San Francisco. And since Wednesday evening, I've been at the Monaco Media Forum. Over the past five days, I've heard inventor Ray Kurzweil speak about the future, magazine publisher Steve Forbes talk about the election, Weather Company CEO David Kenny talk about superstorm Sandy, and Monaco's Prince Albert talk about better aligning media and education. It's going to take me a while to fully digest what I've …