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.

I know I’m behind the times, but I was introduced to Second Life recently and I’m finding it absolutely fascinating.

In the 7, WOW seven years since I thought it might be a good idea to create a website to showcase my abilities as a designer for the shear need to get a job, technology has taken a GIGANTIC leap forward. Today, I finally feel like I am catching up again.

I’ve played fantasy football for many years, but never have the pan-fried pierogies (as my team is affectionately called) had the kind of weekend as October 1, 2006. 196.3 points. That’s enough for 2 weeks. Are YOU ready for some football?

Last week I took a fishing trip with guys from my family including my dad, father-in-law, uncle Terry, uncle Neal and Duane. We drove to the Cabonga Reservoir in Quebec for 3 days of fishing. The catch of the week was this 13 pound Northern Pike. I’ve done a lot of fishing, but this was by far the most exciting catch of my life. We had gotten off of our boats and onto 2 large rocks. As I reeled in my first cast of a Little Cleo (the blue and white beauty in the upper right corner) and only 3 feet from pulling the lure from the water, this giant swirl suddenly peeled out 30 yards of line and bent my pole into the water. After raking on the fish for 10 minutes I got my first glimpse and I knew it was huge. A Northern does not like to see a net or a fisherman so away he went. We fought the fish for another 15 minutes, dancing around the rocks, praying that he wouldn’t saw through the line with his razor sharp teeth. I tired it out and Duane took one mighty swoop with the net. The beast was landed – barely. The net was not really big enough, and an extremely angry northern tore a nice hole right into it. A day after we had lost a stringer full of fish because of equipment failure, we took another 5 minutes just trying to get 2 stringer hooks into his mouth.

Anyways, words hardly do the experience justice, but the reward was taking in the record Northern so far this summer at Cabonga Lodge. As a matter of fact the previous night I had caught a 10.6 pounder which was the previous record. What a joy it was to beat my own record by over 2 lbs! There were many amazing experiences on this trip, not the least of which was spending it with my dad and father-in-law. I hope I can go again sometime.

So, cool story of how I networked with LinkedIn to someone who went to my same college (UB) with the same undergrad degree (Communication Design) and followed a similar path as I did to usability away from pure Graphic Design. Well, she has a consulting firm now called Sylver Consulting and I helped bring her in to Hudson to help us research our intranet usage. Well after Brianna Sylver and my team visited Pittsburgh to do our research she revealed the good news that she had an article published in BusinessWeek online. It’s an excellent piece addressing the meaning of innovation in the lexicon of different companies.

She rightfully points out that the term is so overused within corporate culture that you need to do research just to understand what that word means at a company before developing anything truly innovative. Speaking as someone who has “bring innovative marketing solutions to the business” on his personal objectives, there’s a lot to be said for simply understanding the meaning of the word in my company.

I have a lot of respect for Dave Lefkow. We worked together at TMP, and we both made the jump to another company at about the same time. I went to Hudson Highland Group – a staffing firm to work on recruitment marketing for one company. He went to Jobster to work on building a whole new type of recruitment marketing for many companies. He also writes articles for the ERE. I like his latest piece; a well-researched article on the talent behind the iPod.

Hey you know what, blogging is fun. I haven’t done this since May. I always suffer from a “who the hell reads this”, “I’m bored, but I’d rather read Yahoo news than blog”, “What’s the point?” mentality. And I suppose so many people out there go through the same thing. By and large it IS pointless. Especially for a married man that now works from home, puts in his time, and enjoys poking around with his kids for 90% of his daily entertainment. What do I have to say? My brain is burnt on work. For someone who never so much as wrote in a journal for more than 3 straight days in his life. For someone who latches on to VERY random interests at any given point, my blog is pointless. One day I’m interested in the Buffalo Bills, the next – in bowhunting. But, come to find out, there is some intrinsic value to this babbling.

My friend that I haven’t talked to in a while was able to find out what’s up, just by Googling me.

Dana Deskiewicz is doing really well in his budding Creative Director career and took the time to give me a shout out, cause of one little blog post of only 6 that I have accomplished this year. Well done man!

Last week I did one of the craziest things I’ve ever done in my career. I asked my boss if he would allow me to do my job from “elsewhere”. Not another office within the company – but from home, in another state, closer to my family, but further away from any office within the company. What I thought could be a resounding no, turned into a huge surprise. They are going to let me do it! I’m going to move to Rochester, NY to work at the same job that I love, in a town where my parents, my in-laws, and 3 of my grandparents are all within 2 hours of one another.

I really don’t need to be right next to my co-workers to be able to do my job as Interactive Marketing Manager. I work with people from London and Chicago, Tampa and Edmonton. We are a distributed team that works mostly from instant messager and email. I’ll still return to the Chicago area quite frequently, which will help soften the blow of leaving all of our close friends.

Wow, we have lots to do now!

I’ve always wanted to relate to people what it meant to be a designer from a State school to be chosen as an intern for Milton Glaser in NYC in 1997. It was a great honor, and one of the most interesting experiences I’ve had in my life to date. He is an amazing artist who holds the principles of design so much higher than anyone that I have ever met in my life. His studio was always so “un-web” though, so there was never a way for me to show others what it was like by linking there. Well, he has finally brought his studio onto the web, and now there is a short film by Hillman Curtis that gives a look inside his studio. Finally…. I can say I was there, and you might understand now what I’m talking about. Thanks to Zeldman for pointing out the new work.