Up-to-date local fishing information can be very difficult to come by. The best source of information in the mid-80’s were frequent checks of the VHF radio, a trip to a local tackle store, or hanging out by the ESLO derby weigh stations hoping to get a fish story.

With the internet I figured there would be a much easier way to avoid floating out in the big lake without a clue. Fishing for the big salmon is an art and a science. I thought for sure that all of the local charter captains would be hanging out online somewhere. To my surprise, it was nearly impossible to find any up-to-date information for the port of Rochester. It seemed many fishermen were posting information for the Salmon River, or Oak Orchard.

Then, FINALLY, I stumbled upon Lake Ontario United that is hopping with information from the Rochester, NY fishing scene. There are tons of charter captains and weekenders sharing fishing reports, lures and tactics. Of course you can see pictures of the big catch as well. It has everything I need to enjoy salmon fishing again like my dad and I did in the heyday of the ESLO derby. Now, I just need to get out on the water.

I’m not necessarily big on the “recruito-sphere” as a place for interactive marketers of staffing firms to hang out every minute of their spare time. I prefer to try to find resources from marketers in other industries and apply them to ours. This helps bring a more innovative approach to everything we do. For instance, find out what Coke’s latest technique in loyalty marketing is, and figure out how it could apply to an online consultant retention program within your staffing firm.

On occasion however, I do pull nuggets of value from recruiter-focused blogs. Today, it was a resource on the basics of SEO from RecruitingFly.com. Essentially he took advice from free and paid SEO consulting resources out there, and made them applicable to the savvy recruiting firm marketer. He packaged it nicely into a guide that quite honestly I’m surprised he isn’t asking people to pay for. However, I think RecruitingFly is deriving much more SEO value from making the content free (after all his guide DOES mention that content is king) than he would get from coaxing 25 bucks from people to buy it. I’m going to consume the content and implement some of the recommendations (especially those on link building for recruiting firms) as fast as I can.

There’s nothing like Friday morning crack o’ dawn golf at Genesee Valley. Today the North course was closed due to an impending 9am tournament, so we were directed to the South Course. It was Marc, Kevin, Mike and me playing the front 9. We’ve never played that course before and it was not at all impressive. The fairway was in rough shape. It is just a good thing that I rarely hit the ball from the fairway. Any chips from there were hitting off of rock hard, sandy soil. That meant with my brutal short cgame, that I was flying the green with consistency. The rough was much better though. I played well from about 130 yards out, sticking the ball within 10 feet of the cup 3 times. Plus, my putts were rolling much better. I have this online video by Gary Player to thank for the simple putting advice. Put the label of the ball to the back and stare at it. Listen for the ball to roll into the cup instead of watching it. While my drives weren’t very accurate, I ended up with my best round of the summer at 47.

True to its name Victor Hills is indeed hilly, and for me treacherous. This morning Dad Agosti, Matt Agosti, and I played the front nine of the North Course. This was a tune up for the big pre-marriage golf game to take place this Friday. Matt, who is getting married on Saturday will be looking to calm his nerves with 18 more on the same course. We’ll be joined by Adam Agosti and Don Watters, the father of the bride. Today we all had our struggles. For me, it was a game that deteriorated as the course wore on. I started strong and finished weak save for a 25 yard chip that landed 2 feet from the cup on 18. Alas, the scores don’t lie.

Friday is another day and another chance to try and tame the beast of a course. The good news is we’ll be on carts, thus removing one excuse, and adding to the possibilities of other excuses to come. My personal favorite – cart whiplash.

As close to weekly as possible, I try to get up at the crack of dawn on Friday before work and play 9 holes of golf. It’s always a different crew. Today, it was just my my dad and I. We slept at my parents’ lake house and then played Old Hickory Golf Club in Livonia, NY. We were on by 6am (15 minutes before anyone else was even there) and off by 8:15. Here’s how we scored:

Overall I’m happy with my round. I didn’t lose any balls and kept the 7’s to a minimum. My goal has been to break 100, so I’m on pace. I just lose way too many shots around the green. I’m happy to take the loss to my Dad as he managed 3 pars. Anyone that does that deserves the win.

For our 9th anniversary my wife presented me with a new wedding band. That may seem like an odd anniversary to renew vows or rekindle flames, until you consider that I have been posing as a single man for the last 7 months. Without a ring on my finger I have spent many late nights prowling the streets of Webster, New York for the unattached. Unshackled from the marriage symbol I have lived my bachelor pad, 2-seat convertible dreams. It’s no wonder that Tricia put the bling back on my finger. She couldn’t handle the renegade that was unleashed and had to tame the wild beast before I jeapordized our family’s well-being.

If only I were that interesting…

I have really been sans wedding ring for the last 7 months because of one of those you’ll laugh about it someday stories. Late last year Tricia and I decided to make pierogies for our family Christmas Day festivities. I took off my ring and put it on the computer desk downstairs so that it would not get ruined amidst the 14 hour day of mixing, filling and quick-freezing dozens of pierogies. Before bed I went downstairs to put my ring back on. It was nowhere to be found. Not on the desk…not on the floor…not anywhere else I would typically leave it. Then I remembered that earlier in the day our 3 year old Anna was playing computer games. Here’s how the conversation went down:

Me: Anna, were you playing with Daddy’s ring today?
Anna: Yes Daddy
Me: Do you know where you left it?
Anna: No
Me: Were you playing with it on the desk?
Anna:Yes
Me: It’s not there anymore, do you know where it is?
Anna: Yes, it rolled on the floor
Me: Oh, and THEN what happened?
Anna: I DON’T KNOW **crying** IT JUST DISAPPEARED

We tried hundreds of different memory jogging techniques, but the long term recall of a 3 year old who plays with pretty things is less than that of a goldfish. It HAD to be somwehere in the house, Anna hadn’t even been outside that day. I didn’t panic. I was convinced it would just turn up. Lost things tend to do that.

The next day, my “it will turn up” mindset turned into obessing about the ring’s whereabouts. I turned the house upside down – opening every Little People toy, and shaking out every princess costume. Finally, I resorted to the best MacGyver tactic I could come up with. I lashed a webcam and a flashlight to a coat hanger, then hooked the apparatus up to my laptop. As if sending the remote cameras down to the Titanic I sent zippy1 (the name for my remote scout) down into the depths of every one of the first floor heat ducts. While there were plenty of dust bunnies and candy wrappers, alas there was not a glint of gold. Dejected, but nonetheless convinced that I looked everywhere, I turned back to “it will turn up”. It never did.

The wild beast I was not. I was heart broken about losing that original symbol of our marriage. But, I also know in the end it is just that. The Ring became a little joke within the family. Now, whenever we lose something we say, “Maybe it’s with Daddy’s wedding ring”. Tricia and I fully expect to someday find that ring along with the countless other trinkets that our kids have lost; probably in the bowels of Mister Potato Head.

The good news is that neither of us is into the yellow gold rings we chose in 1998. We thought perhaps an upgrade to our new taste was in order for our 10 year anniversary. Thankfully Tricia didn’t make me wait that long. Today I’ve got a simple white gold, comfort fit band on my finger. It makes me feel like I just got married all over again. Isn’t that what anniversaries are all about?

Sometimes media hits the target market so squarely that you just can’t help but listen. Recruiting Animal interviewed Louis Vong on the ins-and-outs of TMP’s SecondLife Strategy. Animal’s Howard Stern meets Jim Rome style coupled with discussion by former mates at TMP about a new technology that I find fascinating made for the perfect way to blow an hour.

Here are my takeaways

• Companies are poking around virtual worlds for recruitment with the help of people who already understand it
• SL is at most the next generation internet and at least a cool virtual meeting place to conduct business similarly to Real Life
• People are noticing that staffing firms have also decided to set up shop in SL
• The learning curve on everything virtual is going to take a couple of more years to become mainstream, but the wheels are already in motion. As the ease of use gets greater so too will adoption.
• TMP Labs is a catchy name for the folks that get to think out of the box without revenue targets. I’m not convinced that it is R&D in the Xerox Parc sense

I admire the team at TMP for pulling us all into conversations about SecondLife. From the same group that built a business explaining to people what this internet thing was in the mid 90’s, now they have a whole new technology to keep people mystified and spending recruitment ad dollars.

Today we attended the beautiful wedding of Wendy Rzepkowski to Ian Vosper in Cassadaga, NY. The reception was at the White Inn in Fredonia.

I love a good Rzepkowski wedding! Mason and Anna, who are now professional wedding attendants brought their ‘A’ game. It was great to see everyone. Congratulations to the newlyweds! Tricia posted some pictures from the festivities. We also made a wedding video and picture slideshow (at the end).

Marketing Profs has some interesting views. What strikes me is how many conversations about staffing firm marketing turn down the road of things an interactive marketer can’t do much about (easily). From the cold call approach used, to long-held beliefs that relationships begin and end with the recruiter, much of the discussion centers on fundamental staffing firm values and delivery process.

I do think that how our core delivery process is exposed online has the most potential to deliver a unique brand experience. For instance, I fundamentally believe online recruitment techniques that harness the power of online social/professional networks are a key to long term competitve advantage. The techniques are so much more advanced than what had been done in the apply-online based web 1.0 worlds, that it requires re-thought of the core recruiting process and values of the firm. The technology exists to reveal the rich intertwining of social and professional connections living within a staffing firm. It’s just that the process and comfort with the new realities do not. While there are many projects I’d like to implement that require intense change management. It is best to take the advice of many in this forum and balance those projects with a good dose of quick-hitters. I think I’ll call on Haley Marketing Group just to see what they bring to the table.

In my desire to learn, I have bit off about as much as I can chew. In February, I wrote a quick post explaining only briefly that I had come out from the dark ages. I was embarking on a journey to learn how to layout pages using CSS, blog using a platform other than Blogger, and build a dynamic website that meets my long term requirements. As a frame of reference, my old website, ziprz.com was built in a short period of time to get my first .com job in 2000. It was a simple design built with static tables and frames, plus a dead-nuts simple blog on Blogger.

Here it is June 9, 2007 and I have learned a lot.

Ambitious Ideas
First, I have always had this idea in my head that my website could chronicle EVERYTHING about me if I so chose. If I wanted to talk about professional things I could do that. If I wanted to talk about Life, I could do that too. But, I want to keep them separate. Do my family and friends care about the latest recruitment marketing trends? Nope. Do work colleagues care about my fishing trips and personal rantings? Doubtful. I want 2 clean feeds. I also have this obession with documenting every piece of design I have done since the dawn of time. I am both a chonic organizer, and someone who likes to collect things. Even though a proper portfolio only has your 10 best pieces, EVERY single thing that I create is some sort of learning that educates the next thing I do. When I’m doubting myself before I get the next idea it is therapeutic to look back and say “I have had good ideas in the past, surely one is to come”.

Master of My Personal Domain
The domain I chose in 2000 was largely a result of reading Peter Merholz’s blog. Ziprz.com became the home of me because it was much shorter than my real name and sounded cool, hip and webby. Now that I look at identity management online, it seems clear shauninman, cameronmoll, jeffcroft, and many others have solidified thine firstandlastname as an excellent choice for personal domains. My job has taught me a bit about SEO too. If someone were to meet me at a conference, they are likely to Google Kris Rzepkowski (although they would DEFINITELY misspell it). Fed up with Catalog.com I wanted a blog-fiendly host where I would register my new personal domain, krisrzepkowski.com

Spelunking in WordPress
With a general sense of what I wanted to accomplish, I then searched for a platform. I knew that blogging tools could be manipulated into almost anything you want to publish dynamically online. I read a few platform reviews, and ended up with WordPress. I installed it and started to play with its features; first by importing my old Blogger content, then by examining the site structure. I found with a little manipulation of the default template, I could split out the site into Work, Life, and Portfolio. But, I also got a sinking feeling that I would need to understand a few foreign languages (PHP, HXTML,and CSS) to really bend it to what I wanted

I’m a Designer, Who Needs Templates?
My blog is also a platform for professional development. While plenty of people put up a basic blog in 15 minutes, I’m a designer – I need something different. I figured it would be perceived as weak to use someone else’s template. Who respects a marketing person who uses someone else’s brand? I’m paying for that attitude this very minute. While I learn CSS for doing layout – which I have found to lack any sense of intuitiveness, the inner pages of the blog are next to impossible to read. Instead of minor tweaks to somone else’s template, I jumped right into Illustrator, did a design, and am now trying to reconstruct the default template’s CSS to accomplish it. This approach has been insanely slow and tedious.