Month: February 2009

Roe 2.0 Product Launch

Roesevelt David Fulkerson was born February 15 at 23:20 PT (-8 GMT). He weighed 7 pounds 9 ounces and was 19 inches long. I say Roe 2.0 because my name is Aaron Roe Fulkerson. However, to be accurate he’s actually a 5.0 release. My Great Grandfather was named Newton Roosevelt Chrisope. He went by “Roe”. He begat two sons, one of which he named Bobby Roe who begat a son and two daughters , on of which was named Roeann (crap, I forget my mother’s middle name). Roeann begat two sons and a daughter. One son, Eric Daniel, begat two daughters, one was named Madeline Roe. The other son, the cooler and more handsome of the two, was named Aaron Roe, that’s me, who begat a son and a daughter. The son was named Roesevelt David.

Tara, Roe, AaronCan you believe how great Tara looks? This photo was taken about twenty minutes after Roe was born!

Tara and I decided to spell it “Roesevelt” to prevent him from being nicked “Roo”. I suspect Geoff “Kangaroo” Norton would have liked this though. I suppose since I have a niece with “Roe” in her name this could make Roesevelt’s version number 5.2…Anyway, David is also my father’s name. Hence, Roesevelt David Fulkerson and that is the story of the name for those of you who asked via Twitter and Facebook.

So, the birth. Tara, Ashby and I went for a nice long walk in Balboa Park in the morning. Tara was experiencing severe leg cramping and back pains. The back pains were clearly contractions, but the leg cramps we weren’t sure about. At first we thought maybe she was just really dehydrated, but Tara being a runner is obsessive about hydration and this seemed unlikely.

We cut our walk short and headed home. Tara Googled leg cramps and pregnancy and discovered this can signal the baby is dropping. When this happens sometimes the baby can place pressure on a nerve bundle and cause symptoms that feel just like leg cramping.

I suggested Tara take a nap since her contractions were spaced out and if she were to be in labor it would be good to be rested. She agreed and when she woke we called our Doctor and was instructed to head into the birthing center.

Ashby, Tara and I arrived at Scripps Memorial Hospital, La Jolla at about 3 pm. Her contractions were a couple minutes apart. By 10 PM she had only progressed to 5 cm and the Doctor decided to use an IUPC to determine the strength of her contractions and to gage the effects of Pitocin, which she wanted to introduce to move things along. Thirty to forty minutes later Tara was completely dilated and the nurse and doctor were rushing to get into position.

Contraction. Push three times. “There he is, he’s almost out”
Contraction. Push three times. “Ok, he’s out. Let do one more push.”
Push. Done.

_

Wow, it was that easy. God bless epidurals. This was completely different from Ashby’s birth.

Speaking of Ashby, she’s been amazing. She is totally into being a big sister.Thanks to a friend of Tara’s she even has a special “big sis” shirt. Her and I have been spending a lot of time together and I’ve been pumping up how special she is for being a big sister. We also had many books about being a Big Sister Coupon For Free Ice Cream. ROCK!big sister that we’ve been reading to her over the last several months. We attended a big sister class as a family. She had big sister presents from Roe when he was born. I’ve added a song about being a “big sister” to my repertoire of songs I sing nightly (mostly Cat Stevens and the Grateful Dead tunes).

During labor I was twittering status updates. I have this setup to also post to my Facebook account, which is nice because I don’t know anyone outside my professional social network that uses Twitter. My intent was to create a record of the events as they happened. Also, it’s a nice way to pass the time and soothe the nerves. Here’s my twitter stream from the time we got to the hospital to the time our family arrived home.

A 28 photo slide show of the birth (it’s PG, nothing gross):

In conclusion, I’m blessed with a gorgeous, healthy and wonderful family that I love dearly. Man am I lucky!

16 Miles Run

NOTE: I was wrote this post last Sunday, but I didn’t publish it because we left for the hospital to give birth to our 2nd child: Roesevelt David Fulkerson. I twittered the birth and I’ll be publishing a blog post ASAP about Roe and the birth.

Time for my weekly training update. First, let me remind myself here that I started running with my other  shoes at the beginning of this week. Shoes are good for 300 miles and I’m rotating two pairs to make sure I have shoes for the Rock and Roll Marathon on June 1.

This week was especially hectic at work as I finished a time consuming project. As a result I missed running one day :-(, which means I only got in three runs. My run on Tuesday was 3.74 miles through downtown and in the rain. My run Thursday was a great 5 mile run through Mission Hills. The Saturday run was a brutal 8 mile run that began at Morley Field to the North of Balboa park. The run was partly on muddy trails and consisted of running up and down canyons. It whipped my ass. Rion did fantastic with a 9:40ish pace. My pace was terrible at 10:49.

America's Finest City - Half Marathon 2008My left calf is giving me problems. My muscles in the calf and shin cramp up so tight that it is difficult to even walk. When this happens it’s always within the first two miles and I have to stretch it vigorously for it to loosen up. This happened to me after the first canyon during the 8 mile run yesterday and it took me a half mile to get the calf to loosen so I could run again. I never know when to expect it to give me problems, but whenever it does it leaves me feeling not in control. It’s very frustrating. Also, after runs along the right side of this left calf, from just above my foot (on the right side) to just below the knee on the inside of the leg and what feels to be under the calf muscle I have a sharp sustained pain that does not feel like a pulled muscle, but more like tendon strain.

I spoke with one of the WC Roadrunner coaches about strategies to help. Obviously I’m already stretching the hell out of the problem (left) calf before every run. The coach suggested: stretch it more, run on your heels and also toes during warm-up to stretch it more and work it with “The Stick“, which I’ve been considering buying anyway.

My training schedule this week:

Feb 14
 Feb 15 Feb 16
 Feb 17
 Feb 18
 Feb 19
 Feb 20
 Feb 21
8 miles OFF 40 min (missed) 25 min 45 min 35 min OFF 9 miles
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Social Media Expert

Damien Howley created this image in jest:

The proliferation of social media “experts” amuses me too. Evidently if a person has registered accounts at Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, WordPress, etc…, and records videos of oneself this makes them an expert in social media. Yay! Well, no. Actually, this makes you a software user. Gold star!

Are you really an expert in social media? How does one know? Here are some indicators:

  1. You have successfully launched, at least, one product employing primarily, or entirely, Internet tools.
  2. You created global appeal for this product.
  3. You did this with little to no budget for advertising, marketing and PR.
  4. You’ve launched and nurtured, at least, a few online communities to success. Success can come in a couple forms. Success doesn’t necessarily mean the community has upwards of thousand or tens of thousands in daily unique visits; although, this is a pretty clear indication you did well. An alternative indicator of success to the aforementioned site traffic metric is that the community captured a significant percentage of the overall population of given interest group. Basically, you’ve got to be in the top couple, which for some interest groups could be small.
  5. If the previous metric you selected for success was traffic then it is the case the traffic is 75%+ organic. Store bought stumbles or huge ad budgets don’t count.

Bonus:

  1. Traditional media and publishers consult you on product and site launches.
  2. You know the meaning of hyperlocal and understand what’s meant by “faces and names”.
  3. You are a regular listener of “On The Media” (I love plugging OTM 🙂

Factors that do not indicate you are an “expert” in social media:

  1. Saying you are a social media expert.
  2. Again, using social software tools doesn’t make you an expert any more than driving a car makes you an automotive expert.
  3. Having hundreds or thousands of followers on Twitter, Facebook and other social sites. This likely means you’re, at least,  a mildly attractive female or that you are someone others  want something from and it’s a near certainty it is not your wisdom of monetizing online social and media tools.

If you’re still wondering if you or someone you know is a social media expert watch this video:

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