My 2024 Recap

So many people are doing 2024 recaps, so I figured I’d write one too.

2024 was a weird year. That’s even an understatement.

At the beginning business was extremely slow. It rather sucked.

Most of the business I had this year pushed off to the 2nd quarter or later. Thank goodness for ongoing maintenance and hosting business.

Once the year picked up, it wasn’t as fruitful and I had hoped.

But I did discover a new vertical to explore — podcast coaching.

Podcast Mastery was born out this weird and rather sucky year. Unlike when I started Goldstein Media 17 years ago. The interest in podcast coaching is hot right now. To be honest podcasts in general are in their second or third renaissance.

Enter Podcast Coaching Arena

What I found is that business people are realizing that having a brand-related show or sponsoring a relevant podcast makes sense for brand recognition and even some return on investment, though the latter takes time.

So, hung up my podcast coaching shingle.

I decided that the complete suite of podcasting wasn’t where I wanted to focus. I do my own production work for my Entrepreneur’s Enigma podcast and Digital Marketing Dive, but I’m better suited to help people get started with their shows and how to keep them going for the long haul, than doing the whole production process.

What I work on with my current clients is how to structure the podcast, set expectations, and streamline the overall process to ensure success. This alone is quite a bit of coaching and fully in my area of expertise.

I’ve been podcasting for 15 years, it’s hard to believe, and in that time I’ve learned so many things to do correctly from doing them the wrong way.

So, with a few clients already signed up and more coming onboard this year, I’m really excited for where that’s going.

Mentoring Startups

I’m worked though my 4th (or was it 5th) cohort as a mentor for the Founder Institute’s Keystone chapter. I really enjoy helping emerging startups with their digital marketing.

I’m currently working with four startups in varying degrees as an advisor, and I’m finding what I can contribute to be really helpful and rewarding.

Homelife

Last year was another year in the life of being a father to an amazingly smart (often too smart) son and an extremely lucky husband to the most amazing woman in the world.

All I’m going to say about parenting is that it’s hard and add pre-teen moodiness and puberty to the mix, is a real trip.

The kiddo turned 12 in November. Looking back I can’t believe how old he’s getting and did I mention how smart he is? He’s already surpassed my knowledge of math a long time ago and he’s coding Roblox experiences and types faster than I do. He’s getting all A’s in school. I’m proud of him.

Looking Forward… 2025

Man, this year’s going to be interesting. I’m hoping that what’s going on with WordPress and it’s co-founder Matt Mullenweg simmers down and the community takes over the project from the “BDFL”, who hasn’t been acting very benevolent and WordPress, which powers more than 40% of the websites on the interwebs continues to grow and evolve, with LESS DRAMA.

I’m cautiously hopefully that something good will happen, but hopefully not going as far as a phoenix rising from the ashes. God, that’d be horrible.

I’m really hoping the podcast coaching practice picks up and grows as it looks like it’s trending.

Hey, it’s day two of 2025. Let’s buckle up and get going!

#2024 #LookingBackAt2024 #LookingForwardTo2025 #Retrospective

#federation #fediVerse

Forward of some comments by @Fla about the latest events in the walled VC gardens and the place #diaspora* actually still embodies in the fedi. Even tho I not only consider that his comments are on spot, without having any idea about the internal situation or discussion of #framasphere, in general there are a few things to point out.

Besides the fact that the diaspora community needs desperately #help by #coders and #developers to further their project, at least that what it sounds like, there is some certain "elitist" tribal viewpoint around that community, at least it feels like that. In general terms, this tribalism is a universal human skill, apparently coded deep into our DNA, and we witness this all the time. It's not different with other communities like #mastodon, or those who come from #twitter and refuse any change or questioning of their evolved culture, or what we experienced when #pluspora came along and started stirring up the fediVerse community by trying to impose their culture evolved on g+.

So, even if I for myself can envision a bright future for diaspora in the fediVerse, and I truly would like to see that community thrive again, as well as considering that their decision to not adopt #activityPub will stay in place, something that actually creates an interesting setup, what would be needed at least is a cooperative behavior with the coders of the platforms that create the bridge to the fediVerse. What we have is some kind of semipermeable wall that integrates but doesn't overwhelm the diaspora space. Last time we had this will to cooperate trully working, at least that's what @Mike mentioned in it's time, was the decisive help and attitude be @Ilya ❤️ . Without that, the integration with the fediVerse will always not only be flawed but probably even deteriorate as running behind coders that are overloaded with their tasks and anything but helpful in their attitude and behavior, sooner or later will perjudicate interaction and federation of the communities. It already did. So if for example framasphere were to reverse course, the cooperation for example with #friendica and #hubzilla, in terms of coding would be key I guess so diaspora can be really considered a part of the fediVerse in the future to come.

Just a few cents of thought, hope D* doesn't become some mayor Tom in our space, yet it looks to me that this isn't a matter of the vast majority of users on both sides, or the coders from over here.
👍

youtube.com/watch?v=DVM9PnGw5z…

Fla

2025-01-07 23:22:58

The announcement of #markzuckerberg today is proving us once again that #diaspora has a role to play in today's internet. This was already the case 10 years ago and we never really managed to keep the development pace high, but it still is a reliable piece of software.

I think I should have defended it more when the decision was taken at #framasoft to shut down #framasphere, the biggest french pod. Honestly, we could really have kept it online. I'm not going to go back on what happened now, but I think the important message here is, we need simple, privacy-respectful, easy-to-use social networks, and while diaspora* is far from perfect, it is still answering a need. Microblogging is a different thing and personally I really don't like it.

Maybe it's time to put around the table all the people who are ready to get involved and act?