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Over the next several weeks I’ll be posting about my top 5 StrengthsFinder Strengths: Futuristic, Strategic, Responsibility, Restorative, and Competition.

The second StrengthsFinder strength in my Signature Themes is the Strategic strength. In practice this strength manifests itself in decision-making and planning. People with the Strategic strength are generally able to visualize every possible path to an end-goal and choose the most efficient one. Often times this happens in an instant.

I share the Strategic strength with Jessica and when we were first married we would find ourselves planning two separate routes through the grocery store. We had to try to stop this kind of thinking, but not before having a few good laughs about it.

Gallup says that this isn’t a trait that can be learned, people are just born with it. I’m not sure what I think about that, but I do believe this is a talent that some develop (or maybe just have) naturally, and that others do not.

Those with the Strategic strength are also known for their ability to create alternative ways to proceed. This can be at a roadblock in a project, or in planning a new process. “Faced with any given scenario, they can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues.”

Over the next couple weeks I’ll be posting about my top 5 StrengthsFinder Strengths: Futuristic, Strategic, Responsibility, Restorative, and Competition.

My number one StrengthsFinder strength is Futuristic, and is my personal favourite of my Top 5. According to the Signature Themes report, I have a knack for seeing what is coming in any given situation I am constantly interested in what’s coming next:

As if it were projected on the wall, you see in detail what the future might hold, and this detailed picture keeps pulling you forward, into tomorrow. While the exact content of the picture will depend on your other strengths and interests—a better product, a better team, a better life, or a better world—it will always be inspirational to you. You are a dreamer who sees visions of what could be and who cherishes those visions.

Over the next couple weeks I’ll be posting about my top 5 StrengthsFinder Strengths: Futuristic, Strategic, Responsibility, Restorative, and Competition.

This past year my personal skills and involvement in various projects has diversified a lot. I mean A LOT. I’m now working as Creative Director for a startup and my other design work is being noticed by more than my immediate world. My experience in strategy and future planning is being realized by people I’ve never directly tried to sell on my personal brand. So I thought it would be interesting, almost 10 years out from when I took first the Gallup StrengthsFinder test, to look through my top 5 strengths and see how they have impacted my life.

When I arrived at Greenville College as a freshman I was introduced to a Strengths-based curriculum. As new students we took the StrengthsQuest test and started classes that taught us not only about our Strengths, but how to use them effectively in school, work, and personal ministry. So much of my journey through undergraduate academics was viewed through the lens of Strengths. In fact, the creator of the system would come and speak to our campus once a year, extolling the virtues that Gallup wanted us to know and love.

It inevitably became the target of numerous inside jokes, the most popular being the pickup line, “What are your Top 5?”

Since you asked, mine are:

1. Futuristic
2. Strategic
3. Responsibility
4. Restorative
5. Competition

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be looking at each of my top 5 and examining how they’ve affected me in my work and living. For me, it’ll be part nostalgia, part self-evaluation (for as Socrates once said, “The unexamined life is not worth living”). I hope that if you read the series you will come away with a better understanding of my passions, quirks, and thought processes.

Either way, I’ll have fun.

If you’re not sure what the Gallup StrengthsFinder is, I encourage you to go get the book and take the sorter. It’s fun and enlightening.

Today I turned in my last final paper for my official MA coursework. Now all I have left is writing a thesis and I’ll be walking in May in NYC. Woo!

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So, now that I am finished with school I can focus on the season. Saturday is my 6-year anniversary of being married to the wonderful @waysideviolet and we will be celebrating at Moto in Chicago. I am so looking forward to eating some amazingly creative food that night, not to mention spending a great evening out with my beautiful wife.

I almost can’t believe Christmas is a little over a week away. I’ve been so busy with school, work, RecoVend, and other projects, it’s been tough to put myself in the holiday spirit for fear I’d get lazy and not do something I need to. I am looking forward to spending some time over the next few weeks on projects I’ve been wanting to do for myself.

Thanks @mallorywood, @sethodell, & @jillianodell. Totally made this week.

I think it’s safe to say that I’m not really what you would call a normal person. I feel most refreshed when I have new projects and new work to do. Sure, I like vacations and trips as much as anyone else, but at my core, I am energized the most by things happening.

A few people have asked why I joined RecoVend as creative director on top of my full-time job, grad school, and work with Dept. 3. It’s a lot, no doubt, and during this first push to get RecoVend.com looking nice, I had a lot of late nights coding, and early morning finishing schoolwork. But I think what it comes down to is that I needed something that excites me.

The vision that Kyle and Jason have put together for the service is pretty visionary, and though in its current infancy RecoVend isn’t full-featured and perhaps not yet revolutionary, where we’re going certainly is. We were already pushed on to the next round of the BetaSpring weighing, and we’re working hard to push substantial updates out quickly.

How Refreshment Helps

I had a tough week before this Thanksgiving break. Just a lot of stuff going on on top of the RecoVend push. But the late nights/early mornings didn’t make me upset or frustrated or bored even. Actually the opposite – those days made me feel more energized mentally to get in and push through what I had to do at work so I could get back to finishing up RecoVend.

This semester has also marked the last real classes I have to take at The New School for my MA and next semester will be spent on my thesis and what is involved around that. Working on RecoVend makes me feel all the more urgent to get done what I need to this semester (which is pretty substantial).

Constant change, constant goals, persistent deadlines. All of these motivate me. Loose ideas, constant spur-of-the-moment demands, lack of vision, and disrespect do not. I want to work on great things, make progress, and change the ways people think and work. I want to make a difference on a large scale. I want to see results and have the time and resources to do things right.

These things drive me. Finding new opportunities to do these sorts of things is refreshing. And so, even though I am tired now, I feel completely accomplished. I sleep well at night (when I get to sleep) and, for the most part, thing seem to be looking up.

I’m excited to see what these next few months bring.

This year at #heweb11 I was finally able to meet Kyle Judah in person. We shared the best BBQ in Texas with Michael Staton one night in Austin and talked about startups, the tech industry, how amazing the brisket was, and RecoVend – the new service Kyle was starting with Jason Woodward.

Kyle and I had some adventures with the likes of @sethodell, @mallorywood, and a couple of the Inigral guys and formed a quick bond.

When I got back from the conference, Kyle and Jason approached me to see if I would be interested in joining RecoVend as Creative Director. I’m excited to announce that I accepted and will be helping make this awesome service look as beautiful as it is brilliant. At the start, I’ll be helping out in a part-time capacity, working to hit some early goals while maintaining my current work at Trinity International University.

If you work in the education sector and haven’t signed up at RecoVend, head on over, register, and help us build the best resource possible for researching education products and services!

(I promise it will start looking amazing very soon.)

I finally have a minute to talk about #heweb11.

If you’ll remember my post last year about #heweb10, I wasn’t entirely happy with the quality of the sessions. This year was a big improvement – even if my presentation proposal was denied. The content was certainly better, I think what might have helped was that I went in not expecting much from the sessions, but expecting everything from connecting with people throughout the conference.

And really, that’s the crux of working in Higher Ed. The people are amazing.

Top 10 things about #heweb11 (in no particular order):

1. Roadtrippin’ it with @aaronrester
2. Roomdawgin’ it with @sethodell
3. Banjo Pickin’ at The High Ball in Austin
4. Being the CTO of Dropbox for 25 minutes
5. Eating lots of Mexican food
6. Salt Lick with @kylejudah and @mpstaton
7. Networking, networking, networking
8. Bacon & Marv behind Buffalo Billiards
9. Seeing sessions from @sethodell, @mikepetroff, @kprentiss, & @mallorywood
10. Learning and discussing higher ed with so many great people in the lobby of the Hyatt.

Thanks for a great conference everyone!

But stuff hasn’t slowed down yet.

I’m hoping to do a write-up of my time at #heweb11 later today or tomorrow, but here’s my laundry list of things to-do first:

1. Catch up on Discourse Analysis schoolwork done
2. Figure out the stupid mess The New School put me in for my thesis (and if I can still do it) done
3. Read 2 articles for said thesis done
4. Do revisions for said thesis done
5. Work on two Dept. 3 websites done
6. Work on a site for another person
7. ???
8. Profit

I’ll say this – it was a great time. If you want to see how great, I recommend looking through the #heweb11 hashtag on Twitter.

A lot of exciting things are happening.

photo by h.s. in the midwest on Flickr

I was super lucky a few months ago to come across the announcement that Laura Marling (probably my second favourite songwriter right now… close behind Ryan Adams) was making a stop at Lincoln Hall in Chicago. Last year I pegged her second solo record, I Speak Because I Can, as my number one choice for best album of 2010. Jessica bought tickets to the show and we waiting patiently for my birthday to roll around.

So 22 September 2011 came, I turned 27 years old, and we made our way to Lincoln Hall to see quite possibly the best show I’ve ever been to.

Tomorrow I turn 27 years old. And there’s nothing witty or wise for me to say. This is a year where I’ve just plugged along and that makes the changing of years void of any sort of creative words.

This past year I’ve built a ton of websites with Dept. 3 for clients like Eliza Dushku, Vita Chambers, Denison Witmer, and Anthem Films. I’ve been playing a lot more bass and I’ve made a lot of progress on my master’s. And I bought my first new car.

I launched 8 websites in six months, redesigned my own blog…

This year was spent on the web, wasn’t it? Pretty much all I did this year was create the web, or write about it. The results? Well, a lot to go in the portfolio and on my résumé and wrists that ache, a lot.

I’m not sure what my 27th year will be like. I know I’ll finish my MA. But beyond that, I think the year is wide open.

… I will

Do some more freelance

Finally rollout the next update to notsocommonplace.com

Add a couple of things to this site

Work on my thesis

Take a mini-vacation

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I’m also taking suggestions.