From Pine Needles to Wine Tasting

With the Bradley Lodge getting nearly five inches of snow on Thursday, we were not sure what to expect for the weekend, especially since we needed to finish raking pine needles and clearing our property to make it fire safe.  Luckily by Friday when we arrived we only had small patches of snow and when we started to work on Saturday everything had melted, it was just soaking wet.  Since it was so wet we could not bring out our inner pyro like last time, we actually had to take it to the yard waste disposal site and pay $5 per cubic yard of pine needles and tree branches.  After about $50 spent our property was clear and it was time to have fun with my cousins and family for the rest of the weekend.  We got to walk around Big Trees State Park (without snow) and then headed down to Murphys for some wine tasting.  Next up ... heading to Portland, OR for a wedding.

Using Social Media as Part of a Job Search

Over the last few months I have continued to use multiple methods while searching for my new "dream job." Beyond the traditional search (looking at Craigslist.org, the Capitol Morning Report, Monster.com, CareerBuilder.com, Indeed.com) and attending Bayside Church's "Career Coaching," I have used social media sites to expand my reach and my networking, making lots of great connections and meeting leaders throughout the Sacramento PR and business community.  My search started off by expanding my social media network, I added new LinkedIn connections, started to follow additional people on Twitter and went through my address book (Google contacts to be exact, I currently have more than 1400), researched industries and companies and began my "search."

Although I haven't landed my job yet, I have used my "sabbatical" to learn new things by participating in Webinars, many hosted for free by companies like Careerealism and CirclePoint, attended events like Social Media Weekend, seminars hosted by the Social Media Club and American Marketing Association Sacramento Valley, networking events including Placer and Sacramento Tweetups, SPRA Mixers, Cal Poly and Jesuit Alumni events, and joined two committees ("Jamba Jump Day" and Citizen Voice/SafelyOut). I have also developed stronger relationships with reporters (something that is important in the PR/communications industry and now have contacts at many, if not all, of Sacramento's news outlets.

Yesterday one of those contacts, Suzanne Phan of KXTV News10 asked to interview me about one of the facets of my job search, using social media.  Suzanne came to "Fort Bradley" in Roseville, set up her camera in my "office" (aka converted dining room) and we were able to chat about some of the sites I use in my daily job search and how I use social media (in conjunction with traditional networking) to expand my network, after all in many cases it is not "what you know, but who you know."

Yesterday at 11 pm the story aired (see below) with my first ever on camera interview (I am very used to being behind the camera, just not in front of it) and included not only me, but highlights from the Social Media Club's event "Putting Social Media to Work" at Sacramento's Urban Hive.

Do you have contacts that I can meet with to discuss future opportunities? To expand my network? Let me know, leave a comment below, find me on Twitter or LinkedIn or e-mail me MrAndrewBradley [at] gmail [dot] com. Looking for a communications position that uses social media, can be at a PR agency, non-profit or within health care field.

Burn Notice

After two years of taking our pine needles to a green waste disposal/recycling site near the Bradley Lodge, Calavaras County decided not to fund the subsidy that allowed us to do that for free, so we decided that instead of paying $50+ to haul all of our pine needles there we would try burning them for free (with a CDF permit of course). So on Saturday we not only raked about 3/4 (Sunday we did the other 1/4) of our property and hauled the pine needles into massive piles near our fire pit, we burnt lots of them too.  Over the next few weeks we will finish the project and then decide what to do next year ... do we haul the pine needles or do we continue to burn? I will admit burning was/is kinda fun (and looks cool too).

In Bloom

Granted I should have taken these pictures last week or the week before (there has been lots of rain and wind since then), I wanted to share with everyone that my backyard has done a pretty well in surviving its first year.  Only four plants succumbed to poor soil conditions and freezing temperatures, the rest are growing up nicely and many have already produced some really cool looking flowers (my parents neighbor did the design, so for the most part I had no clue what most would look like in bloom).  May 19th marks the end of my first year of home ownership, thank you to all who helped me move in, paint, decorate and whatever else it was you may have done. For other posts about "Fort Bradley" click here.

Thrive 2010

Bayside and Thriving Churches International's "Thrive 2010" was another amazing conference, full of fun, learning, insight, growth, fellowship and discussion. Due to limited space (and because I know most of you don't like to read long posts ... well okay I don't like to read them when other people write them) I am going to try to be quick and to the point.

First I'm not going to talk about what all of the speakers said, if you want that, CDs are available of each general session, not sure about breakout sessions.

Second, these are the books I purchased (i.e. speakers I really liked and wanted to read more about what they had to say): "The Me I Want to Be: Becoming God's Best Version of You" by John Ortberg, "Scouting the Divine: My Search for God in Wine, Wool, and Wild Honey" by Margaret Feinberg, "Everyone Communicates, Few Connect: What the Most Effective People Do Differently" by John Maxwell, and finally a new way of reading the Bible (it takes away chapter and verse numbers) called "The Books of the Bible" published by Biblica. The book I will by when it comes out has a working title of "OPEN" and is being written by CJ Alvarado.

Third, this was the first non-social-media conference that I have been to where there was lots of tweeting going on during the conference and where the conference really embraced people using Twitter throughout the entire event. First they developed and promoted the use of a hashtag (#Thrive2010), second they had a specific Twitter user name (@thrivetweets) that posted new information and interacted with others on Twitter at the conference, third people used it and finally many people were rewarded (including me) with small prizes, I won a USB thumb drive. It turned out to be a great to find and connect with others at the conference, get additional insights into what people were thinking, learn about what some of the other break out speakers were saying and see what each person found most interesting. On a side note, during the conference I read two separate posts (one, two) about people using Twitter during church, I have to say although some may find it distracting at times, I do see merit in the practice, as long as the person doing the tweeting can pay attention to the rest of the message while typing something he/she just heard.

So what are your thoughts on using social media during church? During your company staff meeting? During an annual investors conference? During your child's soccer game (tweeting stats of course)?

Side note: I also got to see the exhibit "From the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Bible in America" currently being hosted at Bayside, if you are anywhere in the Northern California region over the next few weeks and care about the Bible and/or history you really should go see the exhibit. First it may be the only time you have to see such a large collection outside of Israel and second the display is museum quality.

Here are some pictures, many taken by Bayside's team of talented volunteer photographers.