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There's a pattern developing here; call it, the Geek Child becomes Geek Adult. Like many of our previous Bloggers of the Week, Ari Herzog, 33, started learning BASIC and LOGO as a pre-teen on a Texas Instruments personal computer, and dialing bulletin board systems like Prodigy and CompuServe to play games and transfer files. From there it's was a short journey to creating avatars on LPMuds (or multi-user dungeon games).
"In an era before the WWW was commercially launched, I mudded, talked on IRC and telnetted to chat forums," Herzog says. "We were social networking, though it wasn't called that; we called it college students using computers to connect with strangers and try to be productive. Occasionally, we met offline, in person, and became friends.
"Everything changed for me in 1996, when I joined an online movement to protest the congressional Communications Decency Act, worked in tech support for an ISP, and began coding a database of record labels on the web - Ari's Simple List of Record Labels - which is still active, albeit many dead links, at www.recordco.info (speaking of which, I'm looking for someone who knows open source programming to help me turn that site's HTML into a MySQL database with PHP, if any readers are interested)."
Herzog started blogging in the fall of 2004 on LiveJournal but later deleted his entries. He says he wishes he'd kept them. In May 2007, while between jobs, he started writing online again... by hosting ariwriter.com on Blogger. The name 'ariwriter' comes from an email address he had in 2001, when he worked as a fulltime freelance newspaper reporter.
"The irony of being asked to be Blogger of the Week is that I don't consider myself a blogger; I'm a writer," he says. "My bookshelf is filled with writing books, not blogging books. I write online, and I'm frustrated that so-called old media puts me in a separate caste system because I write online. To that end, I'm seeking to narrow the digital divide by writing about similar topics as on my blog - but with print newspapers and magazines, and explaining to "their audiences" about the benefits of social networking and new media. Last year, I blogged about everything under the sun. If you look at the archives, you'll see I wrote about apartment life, travel, literature, and everyday stuff. A few months ago, while unemployed, I decided to merge my passions and experiences in communications, technology, and government - and focus extensively on social media."
Herzog is now developing a consulting firm to advise businesses, organizations, and individuals on social media and online marketing.
"I recently spoke to the local Rotary Club and about half of the room never heard the term "social media" nor grasped that Facebook wasn't just for kids anymore," he says. "So, I educate people the only way I know how - through writing, speaking (I used to teach travel courses at the Boston Center for Adult Education), and involving myself more in my community. While Baby Boomers are using social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook, they don't "get" the value or purpose, so they create online personas and never update them. My take is they should update their profiles, commoditize themselves, and I can help explain why. If they don't want to update them, then they should delete the profiles. I don't like things collecting dust."
Over the past three years, Herzog earned a master's in public administration and worked in senior management roles in both state and local government in Massachusetts. He says he is passionate about increasing e-government initiatives, and looks to Seoul, Korea, as the international benchmark that every e-government model should follow. He's also excited by the prospect of working with other bloggers to build open-source wiki environments for cash-strapped communities. Because of his government background, he recently created the Twitter Fan Wiki for U.S. Government users.
"Many people are unsatisfied with their jobs because they are "jobs" and work solely to make money," he says. "Money's great, but I don't want a "job." I've been there, done that. I've worked in corporate America and for the government. I want to wake up in the morning and make no distinction between what I do for pleasure and what I do for work. In this sense, my blog and my blossoming business are parallels to each other. Seth Godin's "The Dip" was the catalyst to this notion for me, to do what I know best and to try to be the best in the world. I'm beginning to work with some local organizations who want to enhance their communication models by using online tools, and I'm also contacting regional advertising/marketing firms to align my interests with theirs, so we can work together."
If you're interested in working with Ari or need a speaker or writer check out his blog and drop him a line.