For more details email me at: ewbeyer@gmail.com

Thank you for your interests!

I am beginning school again. Sure, I finished my BFA in Visual Communications from AIU Online. Now, I am going to be attending Ashford University through their online MBA program allowing me to concentrate on Marketing. I am excited about the opportunity and what the knowledge will bring me further in life and as a professional.

I am working on putting together a band as well. This is more with the intent of having a band to help record my debut CD. Not sure if we’ll be out playing shows anytime soon. I have about 17 original songs we will be working on. 2 of them need to be completed, admittedly. One of my newer songs is called Window Ledge. I will be sure to share it soon. I plan on recording a simple acoustic version. It’s a good song! I am proud of it.

The graphic novel, Earth V.2 is going to be back under way. We are going to be finally stepping into the script of the project. I have been sharing this project with a handful of people and I am excited about it’s possibilities. This makes 2 projects and a 1 serious adventure, not to mention a day job, family, meals, sleep, and a dog.

You know, my wife is working on her Master’s as well. However, hers is in psychology. Something I don’t even pretend to fully understand. But, she is a rockstar with it, so I support it!

I do honestly plan on posting more. Just like this.

Thanks for reading!

So, I thought about starting this: Some of you may ask, why would I convert a perfectly good road bike? Then the other start idea was: Following the footsteps of trend and underground ways gone fad, I have done the deed and converted a classic road bike into a single speed.

Now, this picture, courtesy of some other guy on Flickr (not sure who it was I got this image from…), shows exactly what I am working on. or should I say, having a shop work on.

Frankly, this shop has never done a conversion, but they know they stuff. It was just a matter of time and getting the right parts in. They have taken some free time to play with this as I am in no real hurry. It’s actually really exciting!

I can’t wait to get my single speed and find other SSers out there! Even fixies are hard to find here in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas.

Everyday on my way to work I take a shortcut through a Target parking lot and there is an early bird at work with his nicely built single speed bike. I want to find out who that is.

So, my reasoning behind the change is simple to me. This road bike is old, heavy, but in great shape. Just needed some work. The amount of money I would have put into it to have it brought up to road racing again would be about the same as this current conversion. I figure spend a little now and get a great bike in a form I really want now, then later I can spend some serious money on a newer road bike for more long distance and performance riding.

It has been nearly 13+ years since I have been on a bike like this. Yup. It is just like riding a bike. Here in this area, which I am still new to is not condusive to extensive riding.

Dallas/Fort Worth, TX has a reputation of being the worst city for riding. I guess we’ll see.

Well, I will send plenty of pictures once the bike is completed.

In the meantime, as the weather gets warming in various parts of the world, get out there and excercise! Even if it’s only 30-minutes a day!

Talk soon, everyone!

Anyone have any ideas or tips how to get back into my groove?

Cheers everyone!

I had the opportunity to go into the military immediately following high school. After getting out of the military I began working various jobs. Other than having been in the military, I didn’t have any real world work experience to bring to the table. Once I decided on a career path I worked very hard to reach it. For the most part, I spent several years working professionally in a great field without a degree, but I was also a contract employee and freelance consultant. I was able to sell myself well.

I learned that I was going to need a degree in a related field in order to add additional credibility to my name and to justify my experience with schooling. This equation of information, so to speak, equated to having a more desirable resume and showed that I was able to complete something substantial.

There is the concern that college graduates tend to need a hand-hold to get through things. I agree, to a certain point. I went to school after I had some work and professional experience and I had a true ownership in my continued education. I do believe, and have seen, that the college students that come right out of high school, without any real world work experience tend to have a lack of knowledge or street smarts, and also tend to lack the ownership and desire to succeed, thus resulting in reduced quality of education. This is not a fault of a school, at all. I believe this is a result of our society. But, once these students finally graduate, they don’t have a purpose or drive, and may even feel the college experience was a waste of time. That is sad, and disappointing.

So, how can we change that?

I support internships, but mostly the ones that pay. I believe in being a full-time student, but students need to have goals and purpose, other than to acquire a degree from such-and-such Ivy League school. Who cares where you attended school. It’s the effort of completing a degree in a reasonable time, with solid goals, and making an honest effort to get out into the world and experience it, either through an internship or a job that is related to your field of study, not just waiting tables or working as a barista.

So, to answer the question, yes, a degree matters to the professional world! It gives you the edge you need to succeed in MOST professions – not all. Also, some companies require specific degrees, and specific levels of education, such as a Master’s degree or even a PhD!

Plus, those of you who have a degree know how good it feels to have completed it, and how good it feels to know you can use it as a tool, as leverage for employment, and as a formal basis for your knowledge and experience.

(photo taken from: http://trailblog.rockthevote.com/…issue.html)

I have seen WIKI’s on back ends to manage definitions, rules, and how-to documents in the IT arena, but also for other general information and to submit ideas for discussion. Outside of the WIKI format, in the intranet of a major corporation, I believe having a profile based system will help people to be able to put names to faces, and to allow individuals the opportunity to connect in deeper professional levels.

Having blogs, forums, discussion boards, and workspaces with goals, document sharing, and project management can really help to keep everyone informed of what is going on. Online collaboration tools like Central Desktop (www.centraldesktop.com) is a wonderful, easy to use, and clean way to put together teams in a professional environment, share documents, allow discussion, version tracking, and even hold meetings, all online!

One of the most valuable aspects of social networking and the tools associated with it I feel is the increase in access and ability to educate. Professional growth is a huge desire for people. Once inside of a company, many people can feel trapped if they are unable to get any continued training or education to allow them the opportunities of growth. By implementing an intranet social environment learning resources can be globally shared, classes and seminars can be announced and scheduled, as well as discussed and rated.

Depending on the structure of your company, you may feel comfortable with something like WordPress MU (http://mu.wordpress.org/), and then built up with the new BuddyPress (http://buddypress.org/) you can now host multiple blog users on one account and with BuddyPress create profiles and open the door to IMing, group creation, and work friends. Groups can be your company softball team, your safety team, your charity team, and so on. There is a section for picture albums, which is great for special events, and the result of last week’s softball game.

If you have a more sophisticate IT and UX team you can use Joomla (http://www.joomla.org/) which is free, and then install Community Builder (http://www.joomlapolis.com/) to incorporate profile building and sharing, but by using the Joomla platform you now have a very powerful CMS that can organize content, turn on the forum, install all kinds of plug-ins that allow for document and picture sharing, you can create blogs, company news, calendars, media sharing, etc, all with free open source tooling!

Another free online tool available is called Ning (http://www.ning.com/). Here you can use the free account to build your own social network. If you buy a more advanced account you can expand customizations, and over all accessibility to the site structure, and have a dedicated URL instead of a subdomain. Either way, the free tool makes it extremely easy to get into creating a social network with very little effort.

Social networks should be looked at as tools, especially inside of a company. If it’s perceived as anything else other than a useful tool for growth and advancement, then you may miss the valuable benefits and miss the opportunity to increase your company’s internal growth.

In essence, social networking in a corporate environment can be very easy to implement, and will increase morale, team building, productivity, friendships in the workplace, and can lead to greater tenure in your company. Once you create your new social network for your company, take the time, and make the effort to encourage people to use it and explore it. You will find many benefits from this type of tool.

(This was a response to a Q&A on LinkedIn by Andy Smith. Original question:
How could you see social networking technology deployed in the enterprise changing your business?

I find enterprise software often expensive, inflexible, ugly and closed. Popular personal social networking tools are beautiful, fast, cheap and flexible but lightweight and the value of the underlying data is often trivial (how I feel about what I had for dinner).

What could you imagine would be improved (e.g. mentoring, knowledge transfer, ideation, etc) and how if "Facebook tech" were effectively deployed at your company? Is anyone already doing this well?