This is my little corner of the web.
And, contrary to the opinions of my family and friends, I am not an early adapter to technology or the internet. In fact, I find blogging and most self-publishing to be quite self-indulgent (Two hyphenated words in one sentence? It’s obnoxious, right? I’m an ass. You’ll be fine. Let’s move on.) I typically loathe anyone who references their blog or mentions anything about their “most recent” blog post. Seriously? “MOST RECENT”? Have I been waiting in anticipation for your next inane rambling? Ugh! To be completely honest, blogging bothers me to the point that I will dry heave upon hearing the word “blog” or any other self-publishing euphemism. And, to make matters worse, I have a bad habit of silently mouthing the words the words that I write. This “entry”… (excuse me) is providing an interesting test on intestinal fortitude. Things can get really wild when I hear the typical hipster jerk reveal, “Well, when I’m not doing xyz, I can be found at www.Iamaselfinvolvedahole.com.” Is it not bad enough that we have to look at these Elvis Costello wannabees with their non-prescribed, architect-like, black, thick rimmed glasses, their ironic tight t-shirts and their complicated shoes? Do we also have to listen to them talk about their creative channels and where they can be found in the act of such supposed creativity? I do a lot of improvisational dance in the bath tub, mostly literal interpretations of the Enrique Inglesias song ‘Bailamos’. Should I invite the world to see that show? Blogs, bloggers, blogets, twitters, all jerks! What am I doing to myself? This blogging experiment is the worst idea ever! Actually, I am the worst. Apparently, I am now one of these self-important a-holes. Fantastic!
Why am I writing about myself to an audience of one or two individuals? Nobody cares about my opinion, right? However, I did say “two individuals” and that is a start. Why will there be “two individuals” that read this blog? That is because my mother will want to read this glorified diary. YES! Todd Palmer and readership (mom +1) are hitting the airwaves. Lookout Technorati! We are hitting the charts, with a bullet! Sadly, she will probably print out each page of this blog. YEAH, that’s what she does, she prints out pages from the internet to READ. Many people from her generation don’t like to interact or read from a computer screen; it is a strange practice but understandable nonetheless. Also, my mother thinks being on the internet is like being on television. I can hear her now, in a voice that eerily reminds you of the Saturday Night Live ‘Church Lady’, “You are famous! Can the whole world see this blog-thing? Is this LIVE?” Really? Mom, are you serious? Ugh, I am sick. Now, I have to ask, how does one begin to explain how blogs operate to someone that equates the internet to a television show? I think I would say, “Umm, yeah, not the whole world actually. Think of my blog as community access television. A channel on your T.V. that exists but no one watches.” Again, why am I doing this to myself? This task and the ultimate realization that she isn’t that far off in her television/internet understanding is enough to abandon this blog altogether. Should I explain to her that a blog is like a journal? Maybe I call it a diary and completely emasculate myself? This sucks. This is a bad idea. I know I am going to visit my parents one day and see that my mom has all of the pages from this blog printed out and pinned by clunky magnets to the refrigerator, like an NFL coach trying to rally his team with ‘locker room material’ press clippings. That will be great! My self-indulged, unsubstantiated ramblings and thoughts will be in plain view for my brother to mock at family gatherings and holidays. Thankfully, my parents have very few people over and the audience will be as small as community access television. My mother’s television analogy is strangely appropriate.
Anyway, I digress, back to this lame “About Me”. I never owned a computer growing up and I never cared about technology until my senior year of college in 2002; this would classify me as a late adapter and not a “digital native” with the inborn technological skills that so many upper-management corporate executives whine about today.
To be honest, my fascination with the web was born out of fear. After all, fear motivates action more than any other incentive (Just take a look at how the conservative right historically rallies the vote in each election. Thankfully, they failed in this last election. Yahoo!). Motivated by fear; probably the only thing I have in common with the Republican mindset and that is just fine with me. I hate self-imposed ignorance and yet that was exactly what I had accomplished by being so stubborn about the advent of the internet and its efficiency. The internet has created a level playing field and has become the ultimate equalizer; something I wish I had known the for first three years of my college experience. I have been trying to make up for lost time ever since.
Since college, I have worked in a few industries. I was a fashion buyer for a $40 million dollar division of the former May Company and I also worked in real estate investment and brokerage. However, none of these jobs satiated my desire to learn about technology and the internet. It was a start-up, entrepreneurial experience with the company PureVolume Inc., parent company of PureVolume.com and formerly owned Virb.com, that changed how I look at the internet and old school business models. PureVolume is a website created by a small group of college friends and roommates with no business training or formal business knowledge. Ten employees, myself included, created this website from scratch and built a steady business model out of thin air. Today, PureVolume is visited by over 4 million unique visitors per month and is credited with being one of the preeminent platforms for emerging musicians to promote themselves. Virb is a website for artists of all mediums and was significantly shaped after our company acquired a design firm out of Missouri, formely named Neubix. After moving to PureVolume headquarters, this team of talented designers, entrepreneurs and bloggers created a viable MySpace alternative. Virb and some members of the design team have since been acquired by the larger entity, (mt) Media Temple. After calling Boston its home for several years, the PureVolume team now runs their operation out of Los Angeles and I have moved on with law school aspirations.
The future of cyberspace direction, development, standards and laws, constantly grab my attention. My time at PureVolume and the challenges of running one of the original social media/social networking websites, with an emphasis on legal distribution of mp3’s, certainly sparked this curiosity. Now and moving forward, web technology needs attention and well laid-out plans for governance. The most recent Olympics, hosted in China, brought attention to an environment of extreme censorship and limited access. This type of information control and restriction needs to be addressed by the global web community. The web is a vital tool for commerce, but we should also recognize the web’s ability to highlight the world’s injustices and atrocities. To keep the web on course we need flexible laws and a brand new, centrally based, accountable, non-government separate entity for global oversight. We need to do a better job of promoting innovation while also protecting fairness, equal access and privacy. Such work requires a delicate balance. I am hoping a law school education, coupled with some additional practice in the field of communications law, will hone my argument and provide the opportunity to be at the forefront of such discussions.
I also have an unhealthy obsession for golf and baseball (i.e. Boston Red Sox). The history and trivia of each sport are secret hobbies of mine.
Our dog, Puppy, a source of constant entertainment, is a 10-12 year old terrier mix. My future wife, Hope, rescued Puppy ten years ago from the mean streets of Atlanta. Puppy had been abandoned. This dog is one tough mutt; in fact, this dog is so tough, we often have to dramatize that Puppy was born in a pool of gasoline and once survived on a steady diet of tin cans. See Puppy below (she just vomited, hence the roll of paper towel in the background). Her look is suggesting, “Umm, yeah, you should probably pick that up. I’m sure as hell not going to do it.” Like I said, she is one tough mutt.
Hope, the woman I tricked into marrying me, is a brilliant and beautiful person and can do much better. She is a counter-terrorism finance expert and runs the premier open source web platform for counter-terrorist finance news and research, appropriately named TerroristFinance.com. It is like I am marrying ‘Jack Bauer’ from 24, if he was a girl. I am extremely lucky. See Hope below. Here she is saying, “Yes, Todd. You are right! I can do much better than you.”
The three of us live in the uber-opinionated Cambridge, Massachusetts. We (Puppy too) love the city’s arrogance, self-indulgence, intelligence and sense of entitlement. My daily run-ins with these beloved Cantabrigians makes for an interesting life.
