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Flashback: Some Guy Named Rudy
By Jeremy | October 22, 2007
When I haven't been traveling the past few weeks, Diana and I have been expanding our home office (which basically means rearranging and discarding furniture to divide the master bedroom in two distinct spaces; along with buying and building a desk, filing cabinets, and a bookcase/room divider) I've been weeding through boxes and boxes of files and records and mementos and junk. So far I've thrown away five full boxes and three big garbage bags of shredded documents. For all of its mundane drudgery, the project has also been a stroll down memory lane -- too many to record here but one which has direct relevance to this blog.
Last night I discovered my notes from a CCDA New York workshop dated November 17, 2000. My brother and I had a few hours to crash the conference that Friday morning. I had scouted the venue the day before and found a workshop title that looked appealing. We arrived at the scheduled room at the appointed time, only to find that the workshop had been moved and the replacement was being taught by some guy named Rudy. His name wasn't a draw, but the topic -- "Web Strategy" -- was, so we stayed. Afterwards, he gave everyone his email address and invited us to stay in touch. I did.
A month later we found ourselves at a focus group hosted by American Bible Society. There, a relationship began, which we nurtured largely online until two crises drew us closer. The first, 9/11, because he brought a group from Harambee to New York who visited the church; and the second, his son's leukemia diagnosis. Sam is just six months older than my son Judah, so Rudy's email requesting prayer for Sam gripped me hard. Immediately the four or five of us who were in the office that day stopped to pray. That night, my wife and son prayed too, and Judah in particular never stopped (even after God answered those prayers in a very specific way).
Over the years since that initial meeting at CCDA, Rudy has become one of my closest friends (despite living 3,000 miles away) and is the one to blame (or credit, as the case may be) for encouraging me to write. In fact, every article I've published since 2001, the book projects I've worked on, and this blog are all directly attributable to his nudging me along the way.
Anyway, here are the notes (and my editorial comments italicized).
Rudy Carrasco, www.harambee.org CCDA - 11/17/00 Articles re. nonprofits and web strategy: www.fastcompany.com (Now a favorite magazine of mine.) www.wired.com (Ditto) www.business2.com www.inc.com (Inc Magazine) Free resources (including chat & search engines) Idea List Impact Online Cnet.com (This is the only site on this list that I still use semi-regularly.) Web Monkey Stay away from Java. Still crashes too many computers (Java's more stable now, but I still avoid it.) Copy code from other sites to use like a template by using "View Source." (This was my first introduction into the world of html and probably the most valuable takeaway in terms of the development of this blog and every other of my ministry websites to this day.) Earthlink donates computers. (Still waiting to get some.) Don't use a free ISP at home. Pay $20/month for a high speed connection. If the web isn't worth paying for, your web strategy has no value. (I didn't actually write this one down, but I distinctly remember him saying it and me feeling like a cheapskate for tolerating NetZero's pop-ups.)300 ringtonenokia 6230 ringtonefree ringtones absolutyringtones absoultly freefree absulutly ringtonesair ringtones supplyno free cost ringtone 100verizon phone lg 20 free ringtone Map
Topics: blogging, ccda, family, internet, life | 1 Comment »
October 23rd, 2007 at 12:41 am
it was that same day, or the next day, that Andrew Sears and I egged each other on to start the web-based network now known as TechMission — don’t let anyone ever say that a CCDA conference does not deliver