Ideas take a while to marinate, simmer, and then come out fully cooked. After a lively conversation with Daniel Burka at FOWA earlier this year, I have had the idea for a presentation about the practical outcomes of following your passion (and what happens when you don’t). Based on my own experiences, I have found that not listening to your inner voice and doing “what you are supposed to do” has actually been detrimental to my career. Instead of keeping me safe with a “good” job with “good money” (one of my biggest pet peeves of phrases), working jobs that I was not passionate about kept me small, disguntled, and actually chipped away at my belief in myself and my capacities.
When I saw a tweet from Rick Tuttle (@RickTuttle) that LaidOffCamp Miami was looking for presenters, I knew that is was time to take that presentation idea out of the oven of my head and set it on the table in front of a potentially hungry audience. Edwin (@TheRealEdwin) fortuitously videoed the presentation (in two parts), so now you can get fired up about all of the possibilities that exist for you in the world too.
If you can dream it, you can live it.
video – part 1
video – part 2
slides
Gardening has been a consuming passion for me lately. I can’t wait until the evenings when I can go outside and sculpt my yard to match the vision that I have in my head (and on paper). Here is my plan: no grass AT ALL in the backyard (grass is highly overated in my opinion), and only garden beds full of edibles, medicinals, and fragrant plants and mulched paths.
Here is the sketch that I drew up over Christmas that is my working blueprint:
My friend Maria de los Angeles (@vicequeenmaria), who volunteers for Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, came by to check what I have done so far and let me share my vision of extreme yard transformation.
South by Southwest is truly one of the most amazing 5 days that a web person can spend. You are surrounded by smart, accomplished, interesting people who are all doing great work in the field of web design, development, blogging, being an entrepeneur, social med, web standards, and more. And folks are fun, too! The moniker of “Geek Spring Break” is pleasantly accurate.
I enthused earlier about my panel being accepted to South by Southwest (something that I have been wanting for years now!), but to add to the excitement, I also had the pleasure of being interviewed by one of my panelists, Liz Burr (@calinative) for Studio South by Southwest about the panel, its origins, and the discussion we hope to generate from it.
Denise R. Jacobs is a writer, speaker, designer, and educator on many things web. She is author of