Results tagged “personal” from KPAO

For the longest time, I didn't give much thought to my first name. I told new acquaintances it didn't matter if you called me Dave or David. I had a tendency to use David for the most part, since that's my legal name it it makes things easier when filling out forms, signing documents, and the like.

But then I started to become aware of my personal brand. I worked on the design for Nombray, a site for personal domain name registration. And that's when I started thinking about my name.

It turns out there is already a relatively well known David Cortright out there (according to Wikipedia, he is "an American scholar, peace activist, and president of the Fourth Freedom Forum"). It's hard to compete against someone with a Wikipedia page. Plus, he owns the domain davidcortright.com. That pretty much settled it.

So I decided that I would start going by Dave Cortright professionally. I switched the name on all of my public profiles (LinkedIn, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter...) to Dave. I secured the email address davecortright@yahoo.com. I use that name and email address on my resume and when I create public content (such as on this blog). And of course I registered davecortright.com using Nombray.

This strategy has worked out well for me. My domain is the #1 result on both Yahoo and Google when searching for Dave Cortright, and I have the top 8 results on Google. There is a real estate agent in Michigan who shows up as well, but my strategy of creating compelling fresh content on multiple sites gives me a big edge over him.

So my advice to you if you want to build a personal brand on the web: pick a name to go by that is realtively unique and consistently build your brand around that. If you need to, go by a nickname, include a middle intitial, use a title, or whatever it takes to get something that will separate you from the others out there with your name.

This sounds like a line out of Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen), but surprisingly it's not in there. It should be. It's exactly fits the seemingly trite but really profound advice in that song.

Take more pictures.

As my brother and I were planning for my mom's memorial service, we needed to get about 30 pictures of her throughout her life for a slide show. Dan already had 20 from the ones he found in her house, and the many he had of her with his girls (her granddaughters). So I just had to pick 10 of the best from my collection.

I found 9. 9 pictures of my mom in all of my digital photos. I've been taking digital pictures since I got my first digital camera around Halloween 1998. I have well north of 15,000 pictures. And I have 9 unique, good pictures of my mom.

3 of those I scanned in from my wedding pictures. And granted, I do have more of her at the wedding. But most of those are dupes; her standing in formation with various permutations of the family, with slight smile variants in each.

The last really good picture I have of her is from Mother's Day, 2005. 3½ years ago. I've seen her many times since. I have pictures from those visits. Mostly of the girls, my nieces. I have the side of her head. an arm holding a granddaughter's hand. Her fuzzy in the background.

I even have a bunch of my dad from this time. He had a stroke, on top of a litany of other heath problems. We're all acutely aware of his mortality. But we didn't think the same way about my mom.

I'm trying the be pragmatic about it. She didn't mind. To her, the granddaughters were the center of attention. They are a the ones that should have their pictures taken. But I can't help but feel a little guilty and a lot stupid. After all, it takes a minimal amount of time and effort to move the camera 1° and take one more picture.

So do it. Don't take anyone in your life for granted. And if you've got the camera out, get a picture of everyone.

Haven't been publishing as frequently as I would like. Some excuses:

We finally moved into our new building at work. Everyone is now sitting together, at last. Lots of serendipitous hallway/kitchen conversations generally means more stuff going on in the day.

I'm working on two projects full time right now, and I'm consulting on a third. I'm managing 4 visual designer contractors concurrently. I'm making work calls in the middle of the BBQ dinner with my family, and I'm browsing stock photography at 10pm looking for the right brand feel for one of my projects. I haven't been this busy at work maybe ever.

My social life is full. My wife and I are trying to burn through our Planet Granite guest passes before the end of August, so we've got lots of rock climbing dates on the calendar. Plus we have weekend plans pretty much until the end of summer, like going to Boulder, CO for the long weekend. Leaving tonight.

I'll be back next week sometime. If I don't decide to eschew all technology and start reading books by candlelight.