Gabe's Digital Life

My top 5 Artists For the Week: My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-6-7)

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 20:40:15 +0000

Gabe's Blog: Closest friends of Gabe #tweetdinner

Gabe — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 03:01:44 +0000

I’m certainly on a kick lately of wanting to take part in some social experimentation. So when this idea came to mind, I couldn’t pass it up.

The other day I jumped on a new Tweeter stats type thing. There’s hundreds of them. This one is twitteranalyzer.com. After it analyzed my online social circle it determined who my “closest friends” were. Although all awesome people, they’re not the people I’ve spent the most time with. But I guess in the twitter world it meant that we had the most to/from conversations.

This list turned out to be @nickashley, @kfred85 and @scoutdrygoods.

So I figured if a web service has the balls to tell me who my closest friends are… then I’ll go for it. I asked them all to dinner. For some reason they all liked the idea and this Sunday we have the first computer generated guest list to a dinner. So what happens if a computer tells you who you should hang out with, and then get them all together?

Nick
Katie
Kelly

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Gabe's Blog: A goodbye to an old friend

gabek — Fri, 29 May 2009 15:42:01 +0000

This post was originally published at ChannelOmaha.com where Gabe is a guest blogger.

I can’t think of a more inappropriate first blog to ChanelOmaha.com than a story about how I traveled to Kansas City. But that’s just how this is going to be.

On Wednesday night I traveled to Kansas City to say goodbye to an old friend.

I arrived, got comfortable, and heard him tell the same stories he’s told so many times before. But this time he was a little more jovial, just a little less stone cold serious. But each tale still had the complete power and inspiration as every time he told it before. I still was able to mouth the words with him, as I’ve heard the stories so many times.

Of course I’m talking about seeing Nine Inch Nails perform in Kansas City. From the t-shirts saying "Wave Goodbye" to Trent closing his show with "Hurt" instead of something like "Closer", it was nothing less than an old friend giving a large collective hug and saying "Thanks."

For those who’ve seen Trent and Company perform before, this wasn’t like previous tours. No video screens. No lasers. No special effects. Just some guys on stage, a fog machine, and some of the best music ever made.

He didn’t play a lot of what many fans call "the new stuff." And to me, that was a downer. I don’t recall anything from Ghosts being played. But it seemed to work. This is Trent’s goodbye, and from the crowd screaming the lyrics it got a lot quieter during "Discipline" and "Echoplex" anyway. But like any other NIN show the place erupted with "Sin", "Wish" and "Head like a hole."

I can’t think of a better way to say goodbye to an old friend than how I did Wednesday night.

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Gabe's Blog: Where friendship and responsibility collides in a community

Gabe — Mon, 18 May 2009 19:57:25 +0000

In the years I’ve had this blog I’ve rearely talked about the nitty-gritty of running an IRC channel. In theory, there’s not much to it. But in reality, it’s a community of people, many who have been there for many, many years.

This is where a large group of my friends are. All types of people from all over the world.

But lately the topic of respect and seniority has been brought up more and more often. Why certain people have different levels of privileges than others. Those who are asking, and feel they deserve the elevated rights state loyalty and seniority as the reason for it. But I feel very differently, and I wanted to discuss it here. I’m probably not the only one who has encountered these issues in whatever type of community they happen to run.

I have the highest respect for those who have been a party of a community for an extended length of time. In fact, any group of people would just slowly disappear if people didn’t stick around. So that’s common sense, you need a core group of people that you know will be around. It makes it more comfortable for new people knowing that if the group has been there that long, then it must be something special.

But I personally see a very distinct difference between quantity and quality. Especially online you know the difference between people who “use” something, and who “take part” in something. On digg.com there’s people who use it to see what stuff is popular and go and read it. And then there’s people who go out and find new stuff and submit it to the site. On twitter there’s people who only follow celebrities and read what they have to say, and then there’s people who submit 140 character pieces of content to keep the community alive. The examples can go on and on. There’s people who use it, and there’s people who are it.

On IRC it’s no difference. We have people who run the web site, we have people who run the wiki, we have people who take care of the bot, host podcasts, etc etc etc. There’s been so many things over the years that people have stepped up and said “I can take care of that for us.” While there’s people who have been there 15yrs and never once even logged into the wiki to update their profile page, or used the website for anything. Those are two completely different groups of people. While giving elevated privileges to the people who have been loyal members of the community for many years, they never earned it. Never made an attempt, never even showed interest.

This is an issue for me. As both groups of people are my friends. All who are long-time friends and I care about. The question becomes am I willing to to please a friend, and gift them with something that shows I respect them while at the same time disrespecting the community as a whole and how it operates? My answer I determined was no. I’m not. This hurts people, and that really sucks.

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Gabe's Blog: How to communicate, by Gary Vaynerchuk

Gabe — Fri, 15 May 2009 23:54:38 +0000

What great conversation between Gary Vaynerchuk, the internet and I today. There’s something invigorating about a really constructive conversation where you come out of it feeling better about the topic than when you went in. While it’s a great business and brand technique, the world would in general be a much better place if it happened more often.

Gary reached out to me after reading my blog post that I had Alex (@alexpgates) check out, and wanted to clear up any miscommunication with me, and everyone else on how he’s seen or interpreted.

I probably came off harsh on my post. Few can deny that Gary is not only a very talented salesman of wine, but also a successful brand consultant and inspiring speaker. While his ideas are great, and probably very likely to succeed, if you’re watching his video, and you have ideas yourself… yours probably are great as well. I promise I’ll take my own advice someday soon

Thanks Gary, you’re a good guy. And that’s meant outside of any speaker/consultant/expert role that you fill. Being a good person will always be what matters in the end.

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Gabe's Blog: My BIG post on BIGOmaha

Gabe — Wed, 13 May 2009 21:26:59 +0000

I’m not going to talk about what Big Omaha was, or was not in the “Big Omaha brought the counties best and brightest creative blah blah blah” type thing. I’m not going to write much about what the speakers had to say. I’m going to tell my tale of the first ever Big Omaha conference and the parts that mattered to me. This will probably be long and spread with random photos.

Everyone knows I was excited. If you were to ask me why, I’d be completely honest and tell you that I didn’t know. I even posted a video for Big Omaha’s use explaining that It’s going to be great, and I won’t be able to tell you why until Friday night. Friday night came and went, and now I can tell you why it was awesome.

It was the perfect mix of new and “old” friends. You know I’m going to have a great time hanging out with people like KT and Lasertron. I’ll always have some great tech conversations with Matt and Corey. But the new faces were awesome. I finally met Chris Rich, I’ve only known him from Twitter since forever. Met Steff Childs at Slowdown at the kickoff party. A handful of KC’ers were around that I got to meet. While at the awesome What Cheer / Secret Penguin party Thursday night I met Jolie O’Dell because of a tweet she sent out. Now I have a crush on her, I won’t lie. I also met a new friend, LeAnn, who now hangs in #TheCabin… so that’s a big win there. Jimmy Winter introducted himself to me and we had a chat while waiting in line for beer. By the way, the beer line is a huge opportunity to meet people. Man, I met so many awesome people. I can’t really go on any longer just listing them… but seriously. Cool.

Thursday night was the kick-off party featuring Gary Vaynerchuk. Anyone who knows me knows I’m not a fan of Gary. There’s a ton to like, and he’s one inspiring bastard, but there’s one reason I can’t click with him. He positions himself differently online than he does in person. During his talk on Friday he said he doesn’t have the answers, and he told the story that worked for him, and all he can do is hope you’ll find what works for you. But online he positions himself as a role model with all the answers, when in reality: he’s a wine salesman. When he gives an idea online, many people jump at it believing that his spontaneous ideas are somehow better than their own. And I think Gary would be the first to agree that it’s not cool. After seeing him in person he wants people to succeed based on what they want, not because they copy verbatim what he has to say. I really believe he means well, but it’s hard to be an online personality, and also say “I have no idea” at the same time.

I only bring this up because during the awesome speaker panel he told the crowd to quit college, and it’s an outdated institution that is “going down”. Jason Fried said it’s the next big bubble to burst. I sent out a tweet saying it’s probably the first thing I’ve ever agreed with coming from Gary.

Gary replied via twitter with a smile. He then mentioned my comment during his talk saying he’s bummed when people have problems with him. I found him at the party that night he looked like he had his plate full, so I left it at that. So all in all, I learned Gary Vaynerchuk is human. But I still think he’s a salesman who doesn’t have the answers.

I also found Micah Baldwin to be way cooler than when I checked him out online. His personality and stories were infectious. He was completely honest about things that have happened in his life to bring him to his point. Things like “you have to wake up in a pool of your own vomit” really made him personable. We then connected over Twitter that night, and I met him in person at the Tweetup Saturday morning. Very glad to come out feeling like I met someone who is really a good person and doing well in the space we’re all interested in.

Other highlights of the actual conference? Seeing my good friends Megan and Kt up on stage representing Omaha’s chapter of Girls in Tech. That was seriously great. Also the presentation from Ben Rattray from Change.org, I expected to be “do your part to help blah blah”, while a great message, wasn’t what I was there for; it ended up being a “do something that matters, make it important”. What a kick in the ass. The slide that says “Are you working on the most important problem you can think of?” made my jaw drop. No matter how important your corporate management thinks your job is, it isn’t. Another slide saying “If your company was gone tomorrow, would anyone notice?” was another question. I answer “NO” to both of those questions. And so begins the journey to make my life worthwhile and do something to enrich the world.

Another great surprise were the sponsor presentations. I thought Yahoo! would be full of “Hi, we’re yahoo. Let me tell you why you should use our search engine. Now look at Flickr, cool huh?” It turned out to be this great guy, Micah Laaker, who is originally from Omaha, presenting all the APIs and developer tools Yahoo offers. I learned a lot. I met him at the Girls in Tech party and we chatted for a while. I told him about how some of the tools I’ve used in projects, and some I’ve never even heard of and was thankful he was there to tell me about them. A really great guy. Another high point was the local Omaha panel where we saw the co-founder of Saddle Creek records, the person who runs Film Streams, the guy who started Nomad, etc. How cool is that. Local success stories from people that matter.

But I’m being long winded. So let me narrow this down. The quality was 150%. Every detail from the coffee cups, to the VIP lanyards, the signs for the bathrooms, the lunch, the sponsors for the parties… everything. Top of the line in every single way. The speakers, where I expected them to be cocky “I’m important and let me tell you how to do things” type of personalities turned out to be completely different. They were fun, intriguing, and approachable. They wanted to be there, and they all wanted to meet you. Most of them even gave out their personal telephone numbers to *everyone* who attended. (Micah Baldwin gave out his mom’s too. I got her voicemail.)

There’s one hundred things I missed talking about, but that’s ok. Anyone who was there experienced it, and anyone who wasn’t has a glimpse into the first ever Big Omaha conference. What a wild ride.

Six months of being an Omahan ( #bigomaha ) So this week marks six months of living in Omaha....
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Gabe's Blog: Breaking news: Big Omaha proves how awesome Gabe is

Gabe — Tue, 12 May 2009 17:57:10 +0000

Big Omaha is a success. No doubt. The friendships that were built, the inspiration that filled multiple venues. It’s a story that will be retold many times for the next year. But the real story took place online yesterday, when it was discussed how really awesome I am.

Names hidden to protect the innocent.

[17:56] <OldFriend1> NewFriend from omaha?
[17:56] <NewFriend> yep
[17:57] <NewFriend> we met at the Big Omaha thing
[17:57] <OldFriend2> ohhh
[17:57] <OldFriend2> what did you think of gabe?
[17:57] <NewFriend> well…its funny because I was sitting around a table with a bunch of people wearing dress shirts and then gabe walks up
[17:57] <NewFriend> and I was like hey that guy looks cool
[17:57] <NewFriend> much cooler than these other people
[17:58] <NewFriend> then I saw the plugs in his ears and I was like, awesome!
[17:58] <OldFriend1> like hearing aids?
[17:59] <OldFriend2> no…like big ass holes in his ears
[17:59] <NewFriend> except these had little circuit boards on them
[17:59] <OldFriend1> people still wear those plugs?
[17:59] <Gabe> SEE GUYS I’M COOL

This post will be continue to be referenced when the need arises to convince someone that I’m rad.

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Gabe's Blog: Quick Big Omaha video

Gabe — Mon, 11 May 2009 18:42:53 +0000

In time I’ll absolutely make a post about BigOmaha. How can I not? But until then, check out this compilation (that’s pretty speaker specific, but whatever) of photos that is visually entertaining, but not at all showing the energy of the event.

Big Omaha from Mike Malone on Vimeo.

Be at Big Omaha May 7th and 8th. Seriously. Big Omaha is coming up. It’s really your last...
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Gabe's Blog: Six months of being an Omahan ( #bigomaha )

Gabe — Wed, 06 May 2009 20:48:36 +0000

So this week marks six months of living in Omaha.

I can’t help but look back to a simple blog post I made on August 1st, 2008. I wrote “Do I want to move to Omaha? Not really.” Now flash forward to May 2009 where my journey in Omaha has so little to do with the reason I came here in the first place.

It’s mostly about the people for me. From the second I stepped foot on Omaha’s soil it’s been a non-stop experience of meeting the greatest people ever.

I land in October, to visit. I immediately get a text message from Jess, “Welcome to Omaha.” From that moment I never felt more welcome somewhere.
A couple days later Jillian helps me find a place to live in Dundee.
Boutcher introduces me to everyone at the office and invites me to a party thrown by Phil.
I meet Kat for coffee and I’m glad to know someone who wants to talk geekery with me. She introduces me to drag queens.
I meet Cassie who shows me how the city likes to have fun and in turn I get to show her how Chicago does when we visit my friends there.
At my first Tweetup I introduce myself to the infamous KT, who has since become a very close friend and a source of inspiration both socially and professionally.
Andrea becomes my partner in crime any time either of us want to go out, or there’s a show.
I meet Dusty and Jeff who show me that I can be a part of something in Omaha that would never be possible in Chicago.
Becoming friends with Christin makes me realize that I can share things and be important to someone else’s life just like so many have become important to mine.
I learn when I go out with Terah, Bree, and Valerie there’s going to be some awesome tunes played on the jukebox. We’ll sing “Tom Sawyer” multiple times.
I become a real part of a neighborhood. Knowing if I go to “my bar”, The 49r, I’ll see people I recognize.
Krin sucks because she moved to Chicago. Wish she could have stuck around longer.
In no other world would Schaft, otherwise just “the bartender”, be a friend of mine outside of a pint of Boulevard.
I can walk to “my coffee shop” and see that Megan is just down the street. I can go say hi and share some ice cream and conversation.
Brian shows me how fun and awkward it could be for a few guys who have no clue what they’re doing to throw themselves into the public promotions game.
Dave and Matt help me debug issues with my web site on IRC. The difference here is I know I’ll see them in a couple days and I’ll buy them a beer to thank them.
BigOmaha

There’s so many other people, places, and experiences that I’m missing. But this isn’t meant to be some kind of all encompassing list of everyone that I know. Just a snapshot of some really important people that have made the six months probably the best six months of my life.

Thanks, Omaha.

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Gabe's Blog: Search engine queries are funny

Gabe — Sat, 02 May 2009 02:31:32 +0000

ity com 22 36% gabe kangas 5 8% december 3 5% pandora fm 3 5% drumline grant high school 2 3%

ugliest desktop2 3% real-ity com 2 3% #heart_tuesday 1 2% desperate housewives images of gabes house 1 2%

gabek 1 2% ity download 1 2% arcade cabin com 1 2% annotify 1 2% tweply 1 2%

shake like me streaming 1 2% music 1 2% ity 1 2% albums 1 2% incognito1027 1 2%

kazuho okui married 1 2% october 1 2% gabe long 2009 1 2% gabekangas 1 2%

kutcher / king / diddydumdum on cnn 1 2% download crack addict 4 (2005) 1 2% caprica boobs 1 2%

gabekangas com 1 2% pandorafm 1 2%

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Gabe's Blog: A quick catch-up post

Gabe — Fri, 01 May 2009 15:21:31 +0000

I opened my blog editor here with an idea of what to post. Then I got side tracked, and I no longer remember what it was I planned on talking about. So instead this is just going to be a catch-up post. Sorry about that.

I bought a new camera the other day. With BIGOmaha coming up I needed a way to document the event, so off to Nebraska Furniture Mart I went. I came out with a Canon SX200.

I liked it because it has a really big lens. The optical zoom is crazy good for a point and shoot. Those are my big complaints with most cameras. Who cares how many megapixels it can capture if the camera isn’t really seeing them well? And zoom on point and shoots is really limited, instead falling into “digital zoom” territory. Digital zoom should just be called “crap mode”. This beast fixes those issues. Plus it captures video in 720p HD, 16:9 aspect ratio. In a point and shoot. It’s a little bigger than most people would like, but I don’t care. I just want quality without knowing how to use it. I believe I got that.

Next topic. I’m making my first trip to Kansas City tomorrow with @Andrea_Joi. She got free tickets to The Killers and asked if I’d like to come. So off we go tomorrow to some random city in some random state I’ve never been to. I expect big things, though. People here seem to piss themselves over Kansas City. Maybe because they have an NFL team. Valid.

In other news, BIGOmaha next week! If you’re not excited about it, it’s because you’re not going. In fact I believe I’ll be getting my invite to the Girls in Tech party here shortly. 15 tickets remaining as of this writing.

The first automated #retweet_thursday on Twitter was nothing short of completely annoying yesterday. Success. Feel free to follow @RT_Thursday. But I highly recommend that you don’t.

Yesterday was my two year anniversary with my company. Even though I had a couple years working for them on top of that via consulting that never counted. Oh well.

My parents are coming to visit Omaha on the 15th. Aside from the Zoo or whatever I don’t really know what to show them that’s of much interest to them. I love the city, but it’s not much for a couple day visitation.

Hope everyone had a great week and a better weekend. See you soon, talk to you sooner.

-G

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Cool links to share: Scifi Tattoos That Say 'I'm A Futuristic Bad-Ass'

gabek — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 02:46:02 +0000

Cool post showing tattoos on sci-fi characters.

Cool links to share: Sorry I Missed Your Party: Alaskan Wedding

gabek — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 18:06:39 +0000

Funny post from one of my favorite photo blogs about an Alaskan wedding.

Cool links to share: Hyphenate: Omaha--Somewhere in Middle America

gabek — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 12:16:05 +0000

My buddy Hyphen made this really supportive post about me and my decision to move to Omaha.

Gabe's YouTube Videos: Gabe's Album Journal: Episode 10. 20080713

realgk — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:32:49 +0000

	Gabe's Album Journal: Episode 10. 20080713 The 10th installment of Gabe doing his thing and trying to make tunes.	From: realgk Views: 88 0 ratings
	Time: 04:17	More in Music

Gabe's YouTube Videos: /me Promo Video (2001)

realgk — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:35:50 +0000

	/me Promo Video (2001) Promo video from the 2001 release of Real-ity - /me.	From: realgk Views: 45 0 ratings
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Gabe's YouTube Videos: Beaver Boys: Behind the shrimp and wine.

realgk — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 12:48:09 +0000

	Beaver Boys: Behind the shrimp and wine. From Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! we see how the Beaver Boys tick.	From: realgk Views: 62355 138 ratings
	Time: 02:00	More in Comedy

Cool links to share: Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts

gabek — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 19:49:49 +0000

Everyone go buy a copy of the new NIN album, Ghosts. $5.

Cool links to share: The Other Side of Kim du Toit - TheOtherSideofKim Front Page

gabek — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 15:55:33 +0000

The best post i've ever read about men, relationships and marriage. "I think that men keep a running ledger going in their subconscious—all the good/great things about their relationship on the one side, and all the bad/terrible things on the other. At

Gabe's YouTube Videos: Gabe's Album Journal: Episode 9. 20071219

realgk — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 02:29:24 +0000

	Gabe's Album Journal: Episode 9. 20071219 Been a long time. Yeah, sorry about that. Here's some new stuff!	From: realgk Views: 179 0 ratings
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