Thursday, March 29, 2007

Southern Comfort on the Right Coast

There's just something about the south... No I'm not talking about Georgia or Alabama or Louisianna, right now I'm only speaking of Florida. Most people don't consider Florida to be part of the "true South" and I'm totally fine with that, because I can still get sweet tea in any restaurant in Merritt Island (that's an inside joke that most of my friends on the left coast may never get). For me, the great thing about living on the East Coast of Central Florida is simply the atmosphere. I mean we have great weather, waves, most of the time people are friendly, and you don't have to worry about getting mugged if you go for a walk at night around the neighborhood. On top of all that, and this is one of the best things, almost every one of my friends in the area have no idea what it is that I do... and when I explain the nuances of being a search engine marketing consultant and serial entrepreneur their pupils swell. Why is that something I like? Because it reminds me that the stuff I do really isn't that important in the grand scheme of things and that I can hang out with my friends and family and not even talk about work, you don't have that kind of freedom in the Valley.

Now recently I've been learning more about my area (even though I grew up here) and have come across some really interesting projects. Those projects are from a company (or is it one dude?) here in Central Florida. The ceo, Alex Rudloff, graduated from UCF (like myself) and has quite an interesting background. I just learned that Alex was the developer behind Mr. Calcanis' BlogSmith CMS (it powers all of the blogs running over at AOL now). I find that pretty interesting since I had no clue.

Now lest you think I'm only interested in technologists, I'd also like to share another little treasure my wife discovered in our area. An art gallery slash workshop studio where you can learn all sorts of artistic techniques from local artists. The company is Beach Culture 101 and last weekend Shannon and I took a class from local artist Henry Lund. The class was about airbrushing but if you've ever used spray paint then you can think of airbrushing as spraypainting evolved. The class was great and Shannon and I are looking forward to taking more classes there. My next project is getting Kim (the owner) set up on blogger so she can start sharing more information about the goings on at the studio.

Posted By Jason Dowdell at 03:31 PM
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