This morning I was doing my usual Twitter trolling to get up to speed on the days events, catch up on the gossip and find out what my friends are up to. I happened upon some tweets from @luckthelady (Angela Natividad) who used to write for Adrants. Sadly, I had to lay her off in June because of this year’s shitty economy but she still fills in from time to time and I want her back as soon as I can afford it.

She’s an amazing writer and if you’ve read her stuff on Adrants (or on her blog or on MarketingVOX or anywhere) you know this to be true. This week she’s been in New York for the Adforum Worldwide Summit which is designed to “Provide industry leaders, consultants and advertisers the opportunity to assess and forecast global advertising industry trends.” Angela joined this group to visit some of the top agencies in the city to hear their outlook on the industry. You can read her summary of the week on the Adforum blog.

As I read through her posts this morning, I reacted with glee…in three different ways. I felt pride in a fatherly way (I’m 22 years older than her), admiration and appreciation as a former (and hopefully future) employer and happiness for her as a friend. Ever since she came into my life almost four years ago, she’s continually amazed me with her skill, made me laugh at her wit and awed me with her writing abilities.

It’s like there’s a hole in Adrants right now. Something’s missing. She brought a different and unique voice to Adrants. And now it’s gone. Oh sure. I do a serviceable job at turning a phrase and trashing an ad campaign with an acceptable element of snark but Angela trumps me when it comes to the wittiliciousness that Adrants tries so hard to exude.

So get to know Angela. Follow her on Twitter. Read her blog. Check out her writing for MarketingVOX. See how she can make reading about the worst panels at an ad:tech conference enjoyable. Get to know Angela Natividad. She will stun you.

On a dismal, cloudy, rainy Sunday morning in late March, Chapter Two of my life began. A new chapter is often met with anticipation. And while there is anticipation in the air as the page turns, there’s also a significant degree of fear and uncertainty.

Chapter One lasted 20 years and, all things considered, it was a great 20 years. There were high points and low points, happiness and sadness, challenges and celebrations, failures and successes.

A trip to Disney World two years ago with was one of the happiest times of my life. During those eight days in January of 2007, my family spent more time with each other than we have in the past five years combined. And it was good. And it was right.

Today, looking out the window at the gloom enveloping the sky, I wonder how such contentment could have turned into such unhappiness. No doubt, I had a hand in it. Your life is what you make it.

I hope one day I am able to look out a different window at a much more pleasant sunny sky and feel happiness as Chapter Two unfolds. But right now as I take a break from writing, stand over the sink eating cereal and happen to glance at the clock…which reads exactly 9:11…things aren’t feeling so positive.

They say everything happens for a reason. That everything has a way of working itself out in the end. To a certain degree, I believe that and understand the trepidation I’m feeling right now will subside. It will be replaced with optimism for a new life, new friends and a renewed sense of purpose.

While the pain may subside, it will never, ever completely disappear. Nor should it. After all, life is a learning experience. If we were able to forget our experiences, we would never learn from them and never benefit from this adventure called life.

The next few months will be transitional for me. There will be big changes. Major upheavals. Location changes. Pain. Sorrow. Sadness. And much introspection. But also, I hope, there will be joy, positive readjustment and a renewed outlook on life.

In turning the page to Chapter Two, I’ve irreparably hurt people. I’ve damaged long-term relationships. I’ve broken people’s trust. I’ve lost people’s love. I’ve tarnished future friendships before they’ve even had a chance to grow. In short, I’ve fucked with people’s emotions and that’s a very bad thing.

While perhaps not knowing it at the time, I did choose the path which brought me to the beginning of Chapter Two. At first, withdrawal from active participation in Chapter One. Then, hesitant baby steps clearly outside the plot confines of the chapter. Then, a Chapter One cliffhanger that could end only with one possible outcome…and the onset of Chapter Two.

For better or worse, I, though the pen sometimes controlled the author, wrote it and it happened. In doing so, I, rightly or wrongly, changed the destiny of my life and those who are part of it forever. I understand this change has, and will continue to, cause great pain to the people in my life. I am so very sorry for causing any pain at all because all I want - all I’ve ever wanted - is for everyone to be happy. I know that’s not always possible but it’s what I strive for.

In hindsight, it most certainly should have been written differently. With a more sensitive stroke of the pen. With more character consultation. With less stupidity. And with much more honesty. Perhaps the outcome would have been the same but it most assuredly should have been written in a manner that didn’t cause so much harm and heartache to so many.

ad:tech’s Jeff Valentine agreed once saying, “I see him everywhere I go and with his hair he’s hard to miss.”

If you too have seen Murray at some conference, you probably already know he always ends up at the best parties. And we have the pictures to prove it.

The reason for Murray showing up everywhere soon became apparent to me - he seems to know everyone. With a long career in online marketing, Murray, along with his other accomplishments, recently founded the affiliate network Affiliate Heat and is serving as CMO and head of US Operations for carbon offsetting company Carbon Advice Group PLC.

When I spoke with Murray about his plans for Carbon Advice Group, it turned out to be an interesting idea. The Carbon Advice Group uses affiliate marketing as a mechanism for environmental change by making it easy for any individual, company or organization to launch their own white-label site to sell carbon credits. Murray says seventy percent of the revenues go directly to carbon offsetting projects.

Murray also told me, “It is great to be able to use your knowledge and connections to do something genuinely good for the world.” And why not? Everyone’s going green today.

Murray, who hails from the U.K and did a lot of lead generation and affiliate marketing there before moving to the States, predicts there will be a surge in green social entrepreneurship this spring. And if that does happen, it can’t be a bad thing.

So the next time you’re at an ad:tech, an Affiliate Summit or at any other ad conference and you see Murray (and you will see him), ask him why he hasn’t dyed his hair green yet.

The first time I went to Vegas in September 2008 for Blogworld, I immediately thought of it as Disneyland for Adults. And it’s exactly that. Just as Disneyland caters to the dreams and aspirations of a child who smiles when he takes that first ride in the one of the parks, Vegas caters to the dreams and aspirations of adults seeking, perhaps, a temporary respite from the rigors and realities of their daily lives.

During Affiliate Summit West in January, I made even deeper connections with old friends and new acquaintances that are now permanent memories I will cherish for the rest of my life. Yea, I know that sounds totally cheesy but that’s how I feel. I get attached. I can’t help it.

No, leaving Las Vegas is not easy for me. It wasn’t the first time and it wasn’t the second time. In fact, it’s not easy for me to leave behind any city I travel to for work. When I travel to a conference, I immerse myself in it and in the people who attend. Because of the personal connections I make, it’s very difficult for me to just disconnect and go back to business as usual.

Simply put, I just don’t want the social intensity of a conference to end. I hate packing my suitcase and leaving the hotel. I hate the cab ride to the airport. I hate getting on the plane for the long lonely ride home. I just want the fun to last forever. Of course, that’s an unrealistic view of life but it doesn’t change my desire for the dream to live on indefinitely.

In my mind, the reason conferences are so intense and, consequentially, so hard for me to leave, is because so much happens in such a compressed period of time with so many people you know in the same building in the same city at the same time. While expecting that intensity to last indefinitely is not practical, nor healthy, it’s just not easy for me to flip a switch and walk away from it all at the end of each conference. It takes time for me to adjust.

Perhaps because I work at home alone without the benefit of social interaction that comes with an office job, I overindulge in conferences at which I can hang with real people. Real people who, over the years I eagerly look forward to seeing every time I travel.

And, in addition to the people I already know, I look forward to the new people I will meet. Because, without fail, I always meet someone (or several) new with whom, for whatever reason, I make a lasting connection.

I don’t know what it is.
I hate being alone.
I love meeting new people.
I hate saying goodbye.
I love going to conferences.
I hate leaving conferences.
I detach from reality more than I probably should.
And, yea, I can’t wait until the next conference.

I hope to see you there.

And yea, don’t laugh at my laugh. I hate my laugh.

Once that initial novelty wore off, I became interested in Julia’s work at Undercurrent, an ad agency with its hand completely immersed in the world of social media. The agency’s website is the furthest thing you’d expect from ad ad agency. On their site, a sort of Drudge Report-style collection of relevant news items and thoughts from the twittersphere and blogosphere, it’s all about social conversation and little to nothing about ego-stroking portfolio’s of work, the common denominator of most agency websites.

Undercurrent had its hand deep inside the Mad Men/AMC/Twitter fan fiction movement that saw upwards of 20 Mad Men characters come to life on Twitter. Initially, AMC went legal and did a cease and desist. But all that did was raise the ire of the show’s fans, mostly those who work in the ad industry and created the characters on Twitter out of the love for the show.

Julia, who writes a blog about her digital life, went to Simmons college in Boston to study international relations, public policy and political science, It wasn’t long though before she realized it wasn’t the thing for her.

For a while she worked at Boston’s Cone Inc. where she brought life to the Making Change for Katrine fund-raising campaign. At Cone, she dove head first into the world of social media and then met Joan Schneider of Schneider Associates and worked for a while before she ended up in New York where she currently resides and works at Undercurrent.

A few months ago, Julia launched Tweet Week, a weekly recap of news, trends, discoveries and drama found on Twitter including the highlight of the show, Hilarious Tweets. It’s like Lonelygirl16…but with a purpose.

In addition to Tweet Week, you can always find Julia in front of her webcam, grinning for all who follow her on Twitter. There, you’ll find her blowing bubbles, showing off her new hot boots, modeling her new haircut, showing us her hot dress that’s so short she can’t bend over while wearing it, highlighting her work on a CNN project, letting us appreciate the cuteness of her hittens, sharing yet another new (ahem, seriously hot looking) dress, sleeping, eating cupcakes, making alternative uses for a tie, showing us her own, ahem, cupcakes, the brief love affair with Second Life, sharing the fact she can cook, her Twitter worshippers and…oh the horror…posing without her glasses on.

During Advertising Week in September, about a year after I had digitally met Julia, I had the pleasure of physically meeting her. I met her at the Undercurrent offices along with her co-worker Yianni Garcia. If you think the 2D digital version of Julia Roy is appealing, wait until you see the goodness of her 3D physical version. And the wit that completes the package.

We had beer. We talked advertising. We talked Mad Men. We talked Boston. We talked New York. We talked Twitter. We made fun of the suit-wearing mid-town crowd that filed the bar at which we met. We had fun.

Digital Elite. Social Media Mover and Shaker. Those terms are horribly trite and overused but Julia knows her shit. Like any good social media expert, she plays in the sandbox and because she does so she knows the rules.

Linda is an SEO and ecommerce guru who writes for elasticpath’s getelastic blog on which articles such as Improving Search Results for Research-Online-Purchase-Offline Customers, Why eCommerce is a Lot Like iCanHasCheezburger, How to Find an Online Reputation Manager and Yes Virginia There Is a Santa Claus & He Searches for Free Shipping can be found.

Recently, Linda won Marketing Pilgrim’s 2008 Search Engine Marketing Scholarship for an article she wrote entitled, 8 Stupid Things Webmasters Do To Mess Up Their Analytics.

Since Linda began writing getelastic in October 2007, she’s grown the blog to one of the most widely read in the space resulting in its being named one of 15 entrepreneur blogs worth reading by the Wall Street Journal.

Before landing the getelastic writing gig, and all the travel-to-conferences glamor that comes with it, Linda was Marketing Director for Vancouver-based Image X Media, an SEO, SEM, web design firm which has done work for CreativePro, FreshBrain and Arizona State University.

In 2000, Linda suffered a kickboxing injury which injured her calf muscles and landed her in a wheelchair. As one can imagine that fate isn’t an easy one to take but after spending five minutes with Linda, you very quickly realize the ability to walk is not the only thing that matters in life. Obviously Linda, as anyone in her condition would, wants to walk again and she’s working diligently towards that goal but she hasn’t let it over shadow her life or stop her from living a rewarding one.

I first met Linda at Blogword in Las Vegas in September 2008. I can’t remember the exact moment I met her (hey, it was Vegas) but I distinctly remember sitting with her at a bar in the Mirage after the TechSet party at the hotel’s Bare and just talking about life, relationships and this thing they call the internet. We even made our way into Jet, Vegas’ answer to a New York City nightclub.

The next two days were filled with the aforementioned pigeon chasing and the “guacamole event” along with cosmetics shopping (at Sephora), dinner (I think she ordered a Caesar salad…without the Caesar dressing. I could be wrong, though. It gets “foggy” in Vegas sometimes), chocolate scavenging (from exhibitor’s booths), more clubbing (I hate that word. It sounds so pretentiously…hipsteresque) at Planet Hollywood’s Prive with a group of people including elastic path’s Jason Billingsley and his wife, ring tone obsessing (hey, she likes them) and funny voices .

Linda is one of those really bright, fun, intelligent, positive-thinking people who will make you smile as soon as you meet her. So if you see her at some conference, stop and say hello. She’ll brighten your day.

This past weekend, I was up in Thetford, Vermont at Lake Morey for the annual Watershed Pubishing meeting which is quirkily referred to as Watershedapalooza. Watershed Publishing is a company that publishes, among other things, MarketingVOX, MediaBuyerPlanner and MarketingCharts and is part owner of Adrants.

All the usual stuff was covered: how to increase sales, how to improve editorial product, how to better publishing infrastructure, how to position ourselves in the marketplace.  But the best parts of the weekend occurred outside the conference room; on the lake in canoes in the middle of the night with fellow writers, in the bar where rabid Red Sox fans were cheering the team on until their ultimate 11th inning game 2 ALCS 9-8 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays, observing the local cougars go to work on one of our web tech guys, humorously ambushing a writer and a sales guy regarding the merits of “imports” versus “domestics” when it comes to adoption, watching some old local dude perform impossible dance moves,  tasting maple syrup made by Watershed Publishing CEO Tig Tillinghast and observing the cheesines of local weddings taking place at the resort.

For a company with virtual offices and employees who go months without seeing wach other physically, the weekend provided an opportunity to appreciate the non-digital side of life. All the pictorial goodness is here.