Month: May 2015

Stop effing around, send the damn email, and move on to the next thing.

…but if you do, know that I’m going to tell the truth.

This Friday in New York (in my very own Harlem, no less), I’ll be sitting on a panel as a part of Verizon’s Potential Of Us campaign. The event is called “The Big Payoff” and in addition to the panel, there will be live performances along with a meet and greet with the artists.

The other panelists (Michelle Nance, Noelle Llewellyn, Ryan Cross, RoseGold, Haithem Elembaby and Vy Higginsen) are way cooler than me, but I doubt they’re funnier (or more modest). The panel will be moderated by my namesake Kwame Jackson (of NBC Apprentice fame).

I’m probably most excited about the Melanie Fiona performance for reasons related to my gender and relationship status and sexual orientation and taste in women, but there are a number of other artists who will be “rocking the house” as the kids say.

Aside from the fact that it’s an honor to be asked to speak, I’m excited about meeting people and shamelessly plugging Abernathy to everyone within an earshot.

Here are the details:

When: Friday, May 15th at 6pm
Where: Madiba Harlem (46 W 116th St. New York, NY 10026)
Panel: 6pm — 8pm
Meet & Greet: 8pm — 8:30pm
Live Performances: 9pm — 11pm

The event is free when you RSVP thanks to Verizon, and you can do so here.

See you there.

PS There’s a nice guy that I’ve been coordinating with for logistics who will be very disappointed with me if I don’t include this graphic in the post.

PPS I know you might not be able to make it, but maybe pass the link on to someone who can? Don’t be a blessing blocker.

One of my first tasks as a bright-eyed consultant at Accenture was to order company business cards. I had just graduated from FSU with a degree in Information Technology. As I completed the order form, I had a bit of degree envy when I saw all the options to specify my education level — there were acronyms I has never seen before.

In a move that some of my friends remind me of occasionally (I’m looking at you, Alexis), I ordered cards that read Willie Jackson, BS. I’ll probably go to my grave laughing at myself. BS indeed.

Moving rapidly along…

Today, I’m happy to share a project I’ve been helping to build out. It’s Seth Godin’s latest project, and it’s ambitious. It’s called altMBA — an intense, month-long, virtual learning experience that’s six months in the making.

Seth is a pleasure to work with for a lot of reasons, but I particular appreciate his uncanny ability to make problems disappear by finding simple solutions. Getting emotionally invested in your art and business can be a great thing, but this must be in alignment with the end goal (rather than insecurities and grudges and vendettas…).

There were a number of decisions made along the way that seemed confusing in the moment, but make perfect sense when I see potential customers interacting with the information on the site. Seth and my colleague Winnie have been working on this every day for months, and I was charged with building it out.

The site is built in WordPress using the latest version Alex’s new WordPress Theme + Plugin suite called Marketer’s Delight. I haven’t developed a WordPress site in a little while, so the speed with which I was able to get altMBA up and running is a testament to Alex’s hard work.

The meat of the site will only be visible to enrolled students, and there’s a bit of custom development work that’s been done to facilitate this. As with every WordPress dev project I’ve touched since 2011 (or before), there were generous and invaluable contributions made by the peerless Andrew Norcross.

I’m excited to see how the months of hard work by Seth and Winnie (Director of altMBA) will change the lives of those who apply and are selected.

Maybe you?