Every Dot Connects

A group of us were gathered in the downtown San Marcos, Texas, home of online media entrepreneur Scott Gregson, following the successful Blogtoberfest 07. Laura Fitton and Chris Brogan had flown in for the day from Boston to participate in the event. John Moore of Brand Autopsy fame spoke. My business partner, Connie Reece, was there with her pink boa. And then there was whurley. He put social media, current trends, technology and its impact on people, all into perspective.

whurley is a person. whurley is a brand. whurley is a philanthropist. whurley is an open source software expert of world reknown. whurley rides a skateboard, or more accurately, a long board. Now late in the evening, whurley was playing guitar.

When I went over to get a better listen, I recognized Queensrhyche’s Silent Lucidity, and he was playing it pretty well. Everyone around him, especially Chris Brogan, was singing along. Chris was holding a laptop with the lyrics pulled up from a favorite site. I’m pretty sure it was Mac. It was the kind of after-party I’d been to in plenty of green rooms, with plenty of rock groups in my earlier days. The mood was similar, just decidedly more digital.

Brad Rollins, the newly selected Managing Editor of Newstreamz.com, an online news platform, asked if whurley, Will Hurley to the non-digitized, was some kind of latter day renaissance man? I didn’t think of it then, but later it came to me. Yes, he is. whurley is a digital renaissance man.

Recently, whurley told me that he is involved with Mark Warr and the Warr Guitar. While his being chief architect for open source for a major software company is impressive, this, like his guitar playing, really caught my attention. You have to check this out. I have this feeling that, before long, we’ll be seeing a whurley Warr Guitar performance in person. Maybe it’ll be in San Marcos, maybe in Austin, the city Scott Gregson refers to as a suburb of San Marcos, or maybe it’ll be in a city near you.

Look for our digital renaissance man to be right in the middle of it, wherever it is, whatever it is.

~Mike Chapman