victor.ramayrat.org

I am looking forward to 2008.  Here’s on the pipeline:

Personal:

• Arrival of our first baby girl LYRA

Projects:

• Relaunch of Fresnojobs.org
• Fresnopolis.com
• Redesigns of FresnoRegFoundation.org, FresnoArtHop.org

1. Complaining is silly.  Either act or forget.
2. Thinking life will be better in the future is stupid;  I have to live now.
3. Being not truthful works against me.
4. Helping other people helps me.
5. Organizing a charity group is surprisingly easy.
6. Everything I do always comes back to me.
7. Drug feel great in the beginning and become a drag later on.
8. Over time I get used to everything and start taking it for granted.
9. Money does not make me happy.
10. Traveling alone is helpful for a new perspective on life.
11. Assuming is stifling.
12. Keeping a diary supports my personal development.
13. Trying to look good limits my life.
14. Worrying solves nothing.
15. Material luxuries are best enjoyed in small doses.
16. Having guts always works out for me.

Source: A presentation on “Design and Happiness” by Stefan Sagmeister

“If the citizen and the consumer are the same thing in a free-market economy, the bigger the social problem you can solve, the bigger the business opportunity must be.”  - Adam Smith

Several months ago, I wrote about Plone and the power of its workflow publishing system.  For the past few months, I have been busy getting acquainted with Drupal CMS and I tell you I might stay with it for a while…  The power of Drupal stems from a large developer community churning out various modules that extend the functionality of this CMS.  For instance, when I was researching for a viable membership management software, I found the CiviCRM module that plugs into Drupal without a hitch.  So, when I built the new FresnoArtsCouncil.org, I implemented the membership and events feature without breaking a sweat.

So, if you are looking for the holy grail of content management systems, why don’t you give Drupal a try.  I am sure you won’t be disappointed.

Socient LLC is the new limited liability company that I just formed. The name “Socient” was derived from a combination of the words: “social” and “enterprise”; also from the words: “social” and “agent”.

As I continue to mature in my personal and professional development, I constantly strive to balance my quest for life’s “happiness” and “meaning”. By creating a venture that focuses on working on meaningful projects for profit, it somehow becomes easier for me to do my balancing act.

Some have told me that it might be a bad business move to filter out clients (especially the paying ones); but somehow, inspiration to create comes easier when the projects at hand adds value to the world or just to the local community. In today’s noisy and distraction-full society, it is a blessing when it is easy to find the motivation to do some work.

As a consolation, I know it’s just not me who’s doing this approach. And you know what, I get this great feeling after a project is done because I imparted some “goodness” into this world.

Create Impact. Be Relevant. Be Good.

I’ve used Plaxo’s sync platform ever since they started offering their service, except that I was not as impressed because there were some holes left unplugged. Well, what do you know — here comes Plaxo 3.0.

After reading about it from TechCrunch, I took the plunge to try the new version after watching their quick video demo from YouTube. I’m hooked; especially that I am gearing for the iPhone, which as you know offers web services apps via Safari 3.0 on top of its own mobile apps.

As of today, Apple has yet to provide a solution for the Google calendar sync with iPhone. Well, here comes Plaxo: which not only syncs Google Calendar, but Yahoo! and Outlook calendar as well, while having a centralized web site to manage it all.

Try it and you won’t be disappointed.

Read below:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

–Rudyard Kipling

I just implemented the Plone CMS for Fresno Leading Young Professionals (flypinfo.com) and I might say that I am impressed with the CMS. It’s based on the Zope web platform using Phyton; the same language that is a favorite amongst Google Engineers.

I recall a transcript from one of my favorite movies of all time, “Pi“, and it goes like this:

The king asks Archimedes to determine if a present he has received is actually solid gold. Unsolved problem at the time. It tortures the great Greek mathematician for weeks. Insomnia haunts him and he twists and turns in his bed for nights on end.

Finally, his equally exhausted wife, forced to share a bed with this genius, convinces him to take a bath, to relax. While he’s entering the tub, he notices the bath water rise. Displacement - a way to determine volume, and thus a way to determine density. Weight over volume. And thus Archimedes solves the problem. He screams “Eureka!” and he is so overwhelmed, he runs naked through the streets to the king’s palace to report his discovery.

Now, what is the moral of the story? That a breakthrough will come. Wrong! The point of the story is the wife.

Listen to your wife, she’ll give you perspective.

An article from Fast Company, dated March 2004, entitled “Where the Bucks Are”, talked about how research showed that more than 65% of women controlled (or at least influenced) 3/4 of the financial wealth of the United States.

Come to think of it, I rarely buy anything without running it through my wife Jolynn; and when she wants to buy something, she does ask my opinion, but I do not control her buying habits.

So what is the moral of this post? In marketing, listen to the wives, the mothers, and businesswomen of your consumer market. They have a lot of control and influence whether you will get their money away from their household’s bank.

The image on the left is a thumbnail link to the Creative Commons video that will explain what exactly the concept is. By watching the video until the end and then clicking on the ad, you help Creative Commons raise funds. {What is CC?}