Category Archives: My Life

Running Together

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About a month ago, my really good friend Kat asked if I wanted to join her and some friends in running the Army 10 mile race here in Washington, DC.   I laughed because it feels like the last time that I ran was in middle school when I ran the mile for the President’s Physical Fitness Award challenge.

We talked and agreed that a 5k might be more my speed considering that I am such the running nube.  So… I signed up for a 5k that’s at the end of October.

All of a sudden it hit me.  I actually had to start running.  Hahaha…

After going out a couple of times, I realized that I wanted something that’d help me track my progress.  I had heard about the iPhone app RunKeeper.  There was a free version so I thought I’d give it a try.

RunKeeper uses the iPhone’s GPS to track your route on a map, your speed, minutes per mile, and all kinds of other data goodies. When you’re done with your run, you just hit “Save Trip” and it will upload all of the data to the Web and you can check out all the details on their Web site.  It’s great.

For me, the best feature by far has been that you can share your run with your friends.  They use Facebook Connect and Twitter Connect so that the run can be automatically posted to these sites.  They use AddThis for sharing to  everywhere else.  :-)  (Disclosure:  I work on AddThis.)

By sharing my runs with my friends, I ended up finding myself amidst a number of different communities, all of which were SUPER supportive of what I was doing…

One was existing runners. All of a sudden, all of my friends who actively run came out and were talking with me about techniques, tips, and tricks.  It’s awesome.

Secondly, I’ve met all kinds of folks who like me may not be at their peak of physical fitness and had thought about running but had never had the encouragement to do it.  By sharing my journey with running with the world, I’ve been able to be an encouragement to those who wouldn’t have otherwise run.  It’s pretty cool.

As demonstrated by the movie We Live In Public, putting your life online can go too far and be detrimental.  I think my experiences with putting my running journey online shows the positives of living in public.  It helps us to connect and form community with like minded people.   That community been a source of great encouragement and motivation for me and I’ve been able to help be an encouragement and motivation for others.

I definitely believe that part of being human is that you live in community with others.   How much better would the world be if we were honest with those in our community about where we struggle.  It would show us all the great opportunities we have to lift each other up.

“Shake The Dust”

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“Shake the Dust” is a pretty outstanding poem by Anis Mojgani. Watch it right now…

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about shaking the dust.  Feels too often we just settle.   We get excited by the “shiny objects” and we forget what we’re really here to do.  (This is definitely a topic that I want to write about more.)

How have you been shaking the dust?

So… I Started A Food Blog. Meet “Justin Loves Food.”

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So… if you’ve been asking yourself, why I haven’t been blogging here, it’s because I still struggle with what to write about.

This blog has predominantly been about the cross section of technology and people.   Over the last 3 months, I haven’t seen a whole lot that I could say that hasn’t been said by others.  Plus there isn’t a whole lot that new that’s getting my mental neurons working in the way which forces me to run to my computer and write.

I still want to write but just had to find something else to write about.  If you know me, you know that one of my passions is food.  My joke is that “eating is a lifestyle that I take breaks from.”

For me, food has always been something that’s brought parts of my various communities together.   When my family gets together around the dinner table, we will sit around and chat, even hours after all the food has been cleared away.  Some of my favorite times here in DC have been sitting around my dining room table with close friends and a few bottles of wine in the middle of the table.

Food has always been something that I’ve been fascinated by and enjoyed discovering.

I’ve decided that it’d be the subject of my new blog.  The blog is called Justin Loves Food.

This doesn’t mean that I’ll completely stop writing this blog.  I’m sure that I’ll come back to it from time to time.  My day job is still working at a Web startup.  As I run across new things and ideas, I’ll be here to chronicle it for you.

In the mean time, I’m going to chronicle my culinary adventures on Justin Loves Food.  Check it out, I’ve already gotten about 15 posts up.

In some of the posts, I’ll write about very geo-specific things, like a restaurant in a specific part of the country but what I’ll try and do is always impart something that I learned while eating there so that there will always be something for someone.

Send me your feedback – jthorp@gmail.com

Re-finding my muse…

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Wikipedia describes a muse to be the “goddesses or spirits who inspire the creation of literature and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge, related orally for centuries in the ancient culture, that was contained in poetic lyrics and myths.”

Well as some of you have noticed, I have taken a small break from blogging.  I felt like I had lost my muse.   I didn’t know what to write about.  A lot of things that I was writing about and thinking about was boring myself so I decided to withdraw, reconnect with what’s happening in the world, and start up again.  This is me starting up again.

It’s funny because it all started right around when I listened to the audio of Merlin Mann and John Gruber’s talk from SXSW about how to be a better blogger.  They asked the question, “what are you obsessed with?

After thinking about it, I found this question increasingly hard to answer.   Do I want to be the guy who blogs about social media? Not really.  Do I want to be the guy who writes about a new CSS problem?  Not really.  Do I want to be the guy who reposts the random thing that I find on Digg or Google Reader?  Only if I can really add something to the convo.

I needed to figure out where I could focus my intellectual fire power, which led to me thinking more about where generally my passions lie.

I love what I do… commnity management. I love serving people.  I love helping people connect together. I love helping communities form, especially when it’s in a way that may not have happened otherwise. These are the things that I’m obsessed with.

I do love technology but for me it really is just a means to an end and not the end.   It absolutely doesn’t matter to me whether or not community is built using technology.  All too often I feel like we lean on technology too hard and end up missing out on the great memories that could be made with offline community.

This is the stuff that I want to write about.  This is the stuff that I think about all the time.  It’s what I’m obsessed with.

So… expect more cool things coming from this blog soon.


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Falling in Love with Audible & Audiobooks…

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About 6-7 months ago, after listening to Leo Laporte and the TWiT crew mention Audible for the 10,000th time, I subscribed to Audible.

With Audible, you subscribe for a fee and every month you get a credit that you can use towards getting a book.  I’ve been enjoying Audible so much that the day each month that I get my credit feels like Christmas.   It’s exciting to start a new book.

Audiobooks are GREAT!  I commute about an hour to work to and from work every day.  I plow through so many books.

I just downloaded “The Associate” by John Grisham.  My favorites thus far have been books like “When Character Was King” by Peggy Noonan,  ”Around the World in 80 Days” by Michael Palin, and “The Pixar Touch.”

Do you do audiobooks or Audible?  If so, what do you think?

Taking Time To Reflect

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I think one thing this blog has taught me is the importance of taking time each day to reflect and write about those reflections.  The act of sitting down and trying to write about how an experience moved me forces me to think harder about that experience and understand it deeper.  Plus I get the added benefit of sharing my reflections with all of you.   You get to tell me about your similar experiences.  We all get to grow together.

Seven Things – Tagged by Keith Casey and Shaun Farrell

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So, there is this meme on the Web where you share 7 things about yourself and then tag 7 of your friends to each share 7 more things.   Well, I’ve been tagged by 2 of my comrades, Keith Casey and Shaun Farrell.  Here it goes:

  1. I love theater acting. –  Ever since I was little, I’ve always enjoyed acting.  I was always in our church plays, when I was a child.  I did most of our high school musicals. (Yes I can sing and dance.)  I found this photo of me from high school, when I was in The Music Man.  Recently, I’ve taken classes at the Shakespeare Theater Company here in Washington, DC: Basic Acting, In the Moment 1 (improv), and currently In the Moment 2.
  2. I love cooking. – I definitely have a love for eating… eating all kinds of things.  This turned into a love of cooking probably because I get to eat what I cook.  During my summers home from college, my mom would have me cook one meal a week.  Now on my own, my culinary life has gotten even more adventurous, especially with  getting to travel a lot.  I’ve even cooked two Thanksgiving dinners. One day I hope to open my own restaurant or gastro pub.
  3. I’m interested/grew up in politics. –  Since before I was born, my dad has worked in politics, mostly at the State level in Michigan.  When I was 7 or 8 years old, I started going with him to events, like going door to door for campaigns.  At age 13, I was one of the top volunteers for one of our state’s gubernatorial campaigns.  In college, I was Chairman of our College Republican chapter.  I even got a minor in American Politics.  Now I work in the Washington DC area and do nothing related to politics… heh.
  4. I’m a Conservative Republican. – I’m a firm believer in the role of government to protect my ability to pursue happiness but I don’t believe that the government is a source of hope and happiness.   Ronald Reagan was right on when he said “Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.”  Creating new laws and government programs may temporarily force/encourage people to change their behavior but it will never change their hearts.
  5. I was captain of our varsity high school golf team. – During my high school years, there was a stint where I played a lot of golf.  Due to the fact that I attended a small  high school and there were not a lot of folks to play sports, I was automatically on the golf team.  By my senior year and after A LOT of practice (playing everyday), I became the captain of the varsity team.  Probably my best score was around a 43 on 9 holes.
  6. I was a guest judge at a wine competition. – In college, to take a break from tech and politics, I took a lot wine classes.  During the 2nd one I took, our professor offered us the chance to be guest judges at a local wine competition.  My buddy and I jumped at it.  It was AWESOME.  Learned a ton from some hard core wine guys.
  7. I started making Web sites when I was 13 years old. – I remember when I was 13 (1997).  My dad told me about this online class that AOL (2.o) was doing about how to make Web sites with HTML.   From there on out, I saw how the Web had changed my life and could change the lives of others.   People started paying me for doing it and it just stuck.

So yeah… now you all know me just that much better.  Heh… feels like I wrote a lot.  Now here are the 7 people that I’m going to tag to go through this exercise also:

  1. Wes Thorp – my dad
  2. Adam Jones – my brother-in-law
  3. Lauren Hager – dad’s former boss, family friend, and candidate for State Senate in Michigan.
  4. Matt Raymond – director of communications at the Library of Congress.
  5. David Russell – close friend and digital pastor at National Community Church
  6. Hooman Radfar – fearless leader and CEO of Clearspring Technologies
  7. Saul Colt – jedi master of customer relations and head of magic at FreshBooks

Random Thoughts After Day One on the MacWorld Expo Hall

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Yesterday, after I arrived in San Francisco and checked into my hotel, I headed over to Moscone South Expo hall for MacWorld Expo.  I’d never been to a MacWorld before so I wasn’t really sure what to expect.

My first thought was… WOW.  The booths were massive and the hall was even bigger.

As you walk around, you see a little bit of everything, from iPod/iPhone case manufacturers to ToDo list software developers to Brain Toniq to the biggies like Microsoft and Apple.

Now I can imagine that for the biggies like Microsoft buying a booth is kind of like paying your annual dues for being a part of the cult of Mac.   But, if you’re one of the small guys and all you have the money for is a few big marketing pushes a year,  what makes you want to buy a 10 by 10 booth?

You definitely saw every trick in the book being employed to get people to stop at a booth.  One group had the car from Back to the Future at their booth, which was cool but I’m not sure what it had to do with exhibitor.   There weren’t many women roaming the hall because they were all working the booths, which is kind of funny.  Some were passing out food.  Some were luring people with celebrities.

It just seems like it’d be hard to make an impression.  What could you do at a booth which is going to leave enough of an impression on people that they’re going to engage further with your brand?

I talked to a handful of vendors and all in all you walked away like someone had just given you a pre-recorded pitch.

For me, the more valuable time yesterday was the parties.  Those were more centered around people meeting people and exchanging ideas, plus they had drinks.

Coming to San Francisco Next Week

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So… I’m going to be coming to San Francisco next week.  I’m going to get an expo pass for MacWorld and already have a ticket for the Crunchies.

I’m excited.  I haven’t been in San Fran in a few months.  There are so many of you that I haven’t seen in so long.

Who wants to meetup and grab a beer?

I want to do as many meetings, meetups, and tweetups as possible.   What events have you guys heard about that I should be at?

Feel free to drop me an e-mail – justin@clearspring.com

My Views On Online Community Haven’t Changed Much Since 1998

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Part of buying a Mac Book Air a few months ago, my dad picked up one of those all-in-one printer, scanner, fax machines.   In my parents basement there are tons of box of amazing old photographs.  I’ve been encouraging him to scan them and throw them on Flickr, as kind of a family digital preservation strategy.

It’s been a blast watching my childhood and family history flash before my eyes as my dad has loaded up the photos one after another.

Yesterday, he loaded up a scan of something, which is slightly blown my mind.  It was a newspaper clipping from an article that the Lansing State Journal did about me back in 1998 when I made the Web site for my school, Our Savior Lutheran (obviously the site has changed a lot since I made it in 1998).

The school bought me a copy of Microsoft Front Page, which at the time was top of the line software.  Still, I wrote most of the site by hand using HTML.   The Web server was a computer in the school principal’s office which I often edited the Web site on directly. :-)

A perk of my current job is that I’m out there talking everyday to folks who are trying to use the Web as a medium for getting their message out to the world and keeping their community in touch. It’s scary to think about how similar the concepts I consult folks around today are to the things we were talking about 10 years ago.

Seeing this article has definitely reminded me to the extent which the Lord has blessed me with amazing people in my life who’ve encouraged me to step out into the vast unknown and try new things, like making Web sites in the early 1990s.

I still vividly remember the day when my dad called me into the back room of the house, where our family kept the computer.  It was 1996-ish (maybe) and we used AOL 2.x.   My dad told me that there were these online classes in HTML and encouraged me to give it a whirl.  The rest is history.

I guess I can say that the AOL online class in HTML was a turning point in my life.  It helped to set the direction for what turned into a career.  God’s hand was definitely at work.

Looking back, what’s one turning point you’ve had in your life, where your like “wow with out this I’m not sure this would have gone this way”?