Wow, the first quarter of 2012 has come to a close and I have not done a single post on this blog.  I think that is now officially the longest I have gone without one here. 

I am not sure why the absence occurred. I share via short updates on Twitter but that is no excuse to not do long form writing.  My Q2 goal is to do more so let's see how I do.

It has been a busy first three months of 2012 with several trips to Atlanta to work with the team at LoopFuse, a business trip to Rhode Island allowing me to mark that off the "states visited" list, a nice family visit with my Dad on St. Simons Island, GA, a mostly unispiring trip to the South by Southwest Interactive festival in Austin, TX, and lots of other adventures nearby our home in Kirkland, WA.

I also managed to run 2 half marathons (Jacksonville, FL and Mercer Island, WA) with Marel and am just shy of my 300 mile quarterly running distance goal sitting at 275 as I type this.

We have also continued to work on Nearstream and the first version of the social lead generation software is now available so if you are interested in learning more, email me.  It has been an exciting process to take an idea to working prototype to customer trials and now to commercial offering. Much more to share on this as we ramp up further.

I was also very flattered to be asked to be an advisor to Seattle-based Optify which provides inbound marketing, search, and social analytics software.

I am very convinced that marketing technology will be a huge growth area going forward as automation, instrumentation, and measurement are applied to the ever larger amounts of marketing spend being shifted to on-line channels from off-line predecessors like newspapers.  My work on marketing automation at LoopFuse, social lead generation at Nearstream, and now inbound marketing & analytics at Optify are all aligned with this trend.

So, staying busy and having some fun plus enjoying watching my girls grow up faster than I thought possible.

Here's to Q2!