It's time to crack open a Guinness I think, St. Patrick's Day is upon us! This is a wee bit of a random post, but I was thinking this week about holidays like "good ole’ St. Paddy’s Day" and the memories I’ve collected along my travels over the years around this Gaelic holiday and the Irish.

Some have faded, others stick around, new and old, I find I’ve acquired quite a kaleidoscope. These aren’t about the meaning of the holiday in as much as what I think about when St. Patrick’s Day shows up. I'm sure this dates me, but oh well, I have a lot of dates...

In no particular order...

The Quiet Man. Starring John Wayne as a retired boxer who moves back to his village in Ireland. The first time I saw this movie was at a drive in with my cousins around 1960. I was bored to tears. I rediscovered the movie years later and became a huge fan. I love Maureen O’Hara, Arthur Shields, Ward Bond, Barry Fitzgerald, etc. Nobody tells a story like the Irish.


Bing Crosby in Going My Way and The Bells of St Mary’s. I’ve always connected with the Irish in their ability to take a hard knock story yet smile and joke about it. Bing was awesome in these movies with an optimism beyond the challenges of the times.

“There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met.”
~ William Butler Yeats


Arthur Guinness (the 1st one) was born in 1725 in Cellbridge County Kildare. He was a land Stewart and brewed beer for workers of the estate. When the landowner died in 1752 he left 100 pounds to Arthur who went to Leixlip in County Kildare in 1756 and set up his first brewery. The rest is history. Guiness

Pierce Brosnan one of my favorite James Bond actors (Golden Eye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, and Die Another Day) became an American citizen in 2004, and let us not forget Remington Steele! Yet I remember the dark story of The Matador and (for some reason) I am still so attracted to the movie, Dante’s Peak.

Sailing in the British Virgin Islands in May/June 2006...

Oscar Wilde is one of the most successful writers ever. The Picture of Dorian Gray was amongst his most renowned works and his only published novel. He was such a decadent cause and shrouded in controversy. That’s probably what attracted me to him in the first place!

“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
~ George Bernard Shaw

I saw a program on PBS one night a few years ago and it profoundly moved me. Excavations at the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang province of China revealed over 100 well preserved mummies that were 2,000 to over 4,000 years old. They were blond and red haired with blue eyes and their DNA traced to Gaelic origins.

Paul David Hewson better known as Bono of the U2 group was born in Dublin in Ireland. He’s also dabbled in movies and is also known for his humanitarian work.

Grace Kelly was from a wealthy family yet failed admission to college because of poor math skills. Disappointing her parents she pursued an acting career and went on to the silver screen to do such memorable roles in Hitchcock classics like Dial M for Murder, and Rear Window. She became a top Hollywood Actress and in 1956 married Prince Rainier of Monaco.

John F. Kennedy became the first and only Irish-American Catholic President Of The United States of America. Born May 29, 1917, JFK served in WWII with distinction and was more than a tremendous inspiration to me growing up and still lives in my heart today. Looking back it seems amazing he was only 43 years old when he ran for office against Nixon.

Finnegans Wake is a timeless read. I consider Joyce among my dearest friends on the bookshelf. James Joyce

Frank McCourt like social media itself is the best friend I ever had and never met in person. Angela’s Ashes, ‘Tis, Teacher Man... absolutely brilliant and to me, “Oh so Irish.” If there was ever a greater storyteller, a master of the run on sentence (other than James Joyce), please let me know.

The peoples of Ireland have given us many gifts for more century's than we can remember. They are family to all of us who live on this tiny little planet called Earth. Bless you all on this day of remembrance and thank you St. Patrick for being one with courage to point us to a better future.

Enjoy the green beer, the plaids, the shamrocks, and all the wonderful stories of pots of gold at rainbows end and leprechauns. We all get to be a little bit Irish on March 17th...

Clay Shirky gave the keynote address at the 2011 Penn State TLT Symposium (the symposium for teaching and learning with technology). I appreciate Clay for his keen insight and his ability to articulate how socially adopted advancements in technology change the social and economic landscape. Simply put, when we change the way we communicate we change the way we behave.

It's a great conversation, I highly recommend it.

In the last few moments Clay sums it up with...
It’s not just about adding some new tools to an existing ecosystem.
It’s about building a new ecosystem.

And that’s exactly our challenge isn’t it? Many see the broken and wonder who's going to fix it while others are relieved it's finally broken and engage the possibility of a new opportunity and future. What is that? I’m not sure, yet the truth is we crossed the infamous bridge into the 21st Century and we now find ourselves in a new social context. The many to the many (and that never happened on a global scale before).

So now that we're all here in the big 21 I wonder why some of us still act as if it's going to remain the same, especially those that hold out for a return to the way it was. That ain't possible. It can’t happen. Sometimes I think we accepted the technology (for the toys and fun we have with them), yet we're a little slow accepting the responsibility that came with the gift.

We are now the purveyors of content, the creators, the agents of change, the authors, the producers, the entertainers, and the thought provokers. As amateurs I pray we do something quite different and better than the media we are often quick to judge.

They is now us.

I don’t pretend to have the answers (and that's a total relief to me and I hope it is for you too!) but I suspect in 5 years we’ll be looking back at now as them olden days. We're in the midst of a paradigm shift and it won't be business as usual 5 years from now (expecting different results) with a few more gadgets, apps, and gizmo's added on to make it a little more fun and entertaining.

We changed.

Maybe I could put that a little more succinctly?

“I’m no expert, but I love to tinker.”

As a guy with an artist’s bent I love looking at everyday common things and finding one thing about it that’s special or unique. Be it blogging or composing I enjoy revealing the inherent drama any object or idea has by framing it in an attempt to reveal how a most simple thing can convey a lot of meaning, feeling, or emotion if it’s just looked at in the right setting or from a certain perspective.

I studied music composition and theory for many years. This is my wellspring for almost everything I create. It’s where I come from. I love all kinds of music and a favorite genre is 20th Century orchestral music by composers like Stravinsky, Bartok, Debussy, Ravel, Harris, Copeland, etc. One thing I learned from them and have always admired was their ability to illuminate a very simple idea into an amazing work. They took you on a journey not unlike an epic novel or a great movie.

How did they do that?

They developed a personal language and style. They created systems to adhere to. They created rules for each piece they composed and they followed them.

Stravinsky once put it like this.

“Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.”

What he meant was composing is not just about being inspired. It’s cool when you are (so get it all down before the editor turns on) but more often than not it’s having discipline and doing the work that creates the inspiration.

He followed a path of inquiry and explored. In short, he created a box where he was free to roam and explore and play with anything he wanted to as long as it was from within the box.

Through this self imposed limitation he found freedom.

He no longer had to grapple with infinity.

Great advice for bloggers don’t you think?

Inspiration comes from doing the work. Create your box and stay in it!

Well at least for one post!

Question: What is a search engine’s job?

Answer: To offer up the most relevant and freshest content it has based on the terms we use to search.

Why? Search engines like Google, (Bing and Yahoo) want to provide everyone with the latest and most useful on target content they can so we keep coming back. The more ‘eye time’ on their pages the more opportunity is created to click those paid-for-ads.

That’s it in a (proverbial cyberspace) nutshell!

Granted this explanation is a gross over simplification, yet... The more you understand what the search engine wants to accomplish the more opportunities you’ll find to get your brand out there and seen.

Let me put it this way...

We wouldn’t do over a billion searches a day on Google if they didn’t offer up the answers and content we were looking for.

This is why geographic or hyper-local blogging is so powerful. People out of town checking out your area, yet more so, locals looking for the best deal on a new coffee pot, the best chicken teriyaki joint, the lowest price on a set of tires for the car, when is the museum open, what's playing at the cinema, what grocery store has the best deals this weekend, the phone number for the local cleaners, and yes, real estate. You know (or should) if all we talk about is ourselves and how we’re the #1 choice in real estate people are not going to find us very interesting, nor are they likely to follow or engage us, and neither will Google, Bing, or Yahoo. I hope you see the obvious, search engines need content. A lot of it. Not necessarily content about you (like advertising), but the content people look for every single day. I want Google, Bing and Yahoo to consider me a good source of relevant content. If they do they will choose my content as a 'best solution' to fulfill the searchers request.

Blogging about your community creates an opportunity to become a purveyor of content that the search engines will want to offer up. If they find you a reliable source of good local information your visibility will grow.

What is marketing? I heard this so many years ago I can’t remember who said it or how exactly they put it, but I morphed it into this...

Marketing is two things...
1. Attract people who are not doing business with you and convince them they should.
2. Convince your present clients they should keep doing business with you.

There’s no denying in today's world that pull is more powerful than push. Getting and staying in front of people means what you have to say better have some value, be useful, hopefully interesting, and/or entertaining.

Write about the world your clients live in. Address their interests, needs, wants, and desires... And the more your topics align with what the search engine needs to fulfill its objectives, the more you’re going to be smack dab in front of your audience creating opportunity.

When people do have a need for a real estate professional, who do they know? Who will they remember? Who will they call?

What is a search engine’s job? It’s a job very much like yours.