My “place” on the web has been pretty quiet lately. Not surprisingly, visits to the site have gone down by quite a bit (except the everyday searches for Blackie Lawless’s daughter).

The lack of posts here, one of the longest gaps in all the years I’ve kept the blog alive, is due to the software I use.

Years ago, after using FrontPage to manually update my site, I moved to RapidWeaver for Mac. I loved the software and recommended it to anyone that would listen to me.

After many problems with my RapidWeaver on this site, our daughter’s and our family podcast, it just became too much work to update the site. Then, the comment system used in the application, Haloscan, went out of business. The comments were moved to Echo but that service leaves a lot to be desired. It mixed up comments between this site and Makenzy’s and made it difficult to find out on what post comments were made.

I would prefer to use WordPress, a platform I have become much more comfortable. Being able to update via my iPhone and from any computer is very appealing. With 1000s of themes available and tons of custimization options, WordPress is my favorite blogging service.

Sadly, though, moving to WordPress will take a considerable amount of time and effort. I wish there was a magic wand to move this site to WP but there are some obstacles:

- mattbeckwith.com is hosted on a Windows machine (my host’s, not mine) that won’t support WP
- with my current hosting service, I have to move this domain to a Linux box (and boy, I’d love to)
- I have more than 75,000 files / 300GB+ of data to pull down before moving
- there is no utility to convert my blog posts to a format that I can import into WordPress

So, I’m not sure when, if ever, I’ll move this site over to WordPress, but I am going to start writing more.

J.C. Hutchins's first installment of the 7th Son trilogy, 7th Son: Descent, hit book stores recently.

I don't read much fiction. I prefer to get my fiction fix by watching movies. This book, however, is worth reading over and over again. J.C. Hutchins tried, unsucessfully, to get his story published before releasing it as a free podcast. I discovered his podcast just before his final book was released on audio. He took to the podosphere and used the power of the internet to spread the message about his book.

After amassing an enormous following to his podcast, publishers finally started to take notice. And now, 7th Son is in print!

The story starts with the brutal assisination of the President by a 4 year child. Readers quickly learn that there is an evil conspiracy consisting of clones and government officials with code phantom clearance.



J.C. is a masterful storyteller and 7th Son is the creepiest story I have ever read. The podcast version of the book is still available, check out the info here. You can also purchase a copy from your favorite bookstore, or from Amazon.

If you're in to sci-fi thrillers, this one will not dissapoint!

If you do pick up a copy, tell J.C. that Beta Clone #235 sent you.

Andy continues to fan the fire he started last week. And it appears that his plan to #stir things up is gaining momentum. Local blogger, SlickDiaz, wrote a well thought out piece on his blog, Reclaiming the Title. Rod has not been silent on the matter, either. On Friday, Ian added his voice to the mix. What we have here is a handful of passionate Stocktonians, wanting to increase communication throughout our communities. How cool is that? Seriously. That is cool!


The What
We have an opportunity to increase communication between city departments, elected officials and the people of Stockton. I don’t know if we’ve been at this point before. I don’t know if we are here now because of technology or because people are just becoming more energized. It is likely both. The web, with current services like Twitter and Facebook, give us the ability to interact with friends and family. It can also give us the ability to interact with our local government.

While I agree that most people don’t trust their elected officials, I do not believe that you need to trust someone to interact with them online. We need an easier way for citizens to get up-to-date information from local government and for these citizens to have tools with which to communicate with the city. Not everyone can (or wants to) attend city council meetings. Writing a letter, and even sending an e-mail, can be arduous. Using Facebook and Twitter is a simpler way.


The Who
As it relates to social media consumption, I see three populations in Stockton. Andy, Slick, Rod, Ian and I are in one group - the “veterans”, for lack of a better term. In another group are those that have no access to a computer and may not own a cell phone. The third group is the one I will refer to as the “fringe”. This is the population that may already use the web to get news and may have even visited our city’s website (provided that they remember what the URL is). They may have delved into social media but only to have fun with their friends or keep tabs on their favorite American Idol contestant/judge/host.

The size of the fringe is not insignificant. I would argue that it is the biggest of the three groups. This is the group on which we should be focusing our energy.

We mustn’t forget about that second part of the population: those on the other side of the digital divide. We still need traditional communication channels for this group. We need the smart people in our community to come up with better ways to get this population engaged.


The How
We need to reach the fringe. Not to sell them on Twitter or Facebook. Rather, we need to have an open dialog about new ways to communicate with the City. It is our job, as members of the veteran group, to help spread the word to the fringe.

We need to hold social-media town halls. Although I am very much a fan of meet-ups (can’t wait for our first Tweetup!), getting a bunch of veterans together won’t do much to get new participants involved. We can hold how-to sessions at local libraries. We can also do what we’re doing now, talk to our friends, family and neighbors. We can keep stirring it up.

In order to realize any success in this regard, the City of Stockton must officially jump into the mix. They need to start small and identify what departments are best suited for this new medium. The city cannot wait for “enough people” to be in the channel before ramping up their efforts.

To help the city along, the Record must dedicate some space to educating the community about social media. The Record’s managing editor, Dan Blount blogged a simple post recently. Writing about social networking sites, Mr. Blount added, “As the world expands, it continues to contract through the use of these media.” We need more than a quick blog entry. The Record has the power to get in front of a lot eyeballs. This cause could benefit from that power.


The Question
What else can we do to increase and improve communication amongst the city and its citizens? What ideas do you have? Leave a comment or send an e-mail to matt-at-mattbeckwith.com.

At the end of the day, Twitter and Facebook are awesome tools to start a conversation. We need more conversations in this city and we need more people in the conversation.

If you follow me on Twitter, feel free to ignore this entry; this information is not new to you.



If you have no idea what Twitter is, please keep reading. Many friends, family and other readers to this site have asked what is all this Twitter about? Before we get started, let me just say that Twitter is not new. In fact, there were more than 14 million other people that discovered Twitter before me (courtesy of Twitterholic).

Wikipedia defines Twitter as, "... a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send "updates" (or "tweets"; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via short message service (SMS), instant messaging, or a third-party application..."

In short, Twitter is like text-messages you can follow online or via text message to your cell phone. The first person I started "following" on Twitter was David from the FredCast (the internet's premiere cycling podcast). With a quick text page of 'follow FredCast to 40404 I was getting text page updates from David. Besides getting updates on my cell phone, I can also go to the internet and read his updates there http://twitter.com/fredcast.

I now find myself following a handful of my podcast friends, other cyclists, writers, technology gurus, the three leading presidential candidates, and a guy I went to high school with among others. Twitter loads especially easy on my iPhone so I check it often throughout the day.

I also track keywords in the public Twitter via text message. By sending a text message of 'track beckwith' to 40404 I get updates to my cell phone any time someone in the Twitterverse uses the word 'beckwith'. What else am I tracking?

The name of the company where I work. Because I work for a large corporation with millions of customers it is very interesting to see what the Twitterverse thinks of us. Mostly negative, some positive, but still a interesting angle on the voice of the customer.

Where I live, where I ride, where I work. I track Stockton, Lodi, Pleasanton, Livermore. I also track 580 and 205 which helps when there is a traffic issue.

Still confused? Well, don't be. The fine folks at Common Craft have done it again with a great video explanation of Twitter. Check it out here.


Also, in case you always wanted to know what a podcast was, Common Craft has a great video explanation of that, too. After you watch that, hop on over to Pizza Go Here and subscribe to our podcast.

So, now you know all about Twitter. Sign up and follow me. You'll wonder how you ever lived without it.

I made a mistake with the comments and accidently deleted a lot of them. If you've commented on our site lately and your comment is gone, sorry about that. Please feel free to comment now, I promise not to delete them.

In case you didn't notice, we are busy adding archives from the past several years. Some of our entries from mattbeckwith.com, pizzagohere.com, familyisforever.com and even our old AOL webpages might show up. Some of the links may not be working (especially those to picture pages which have moved). We are trying to clean them up but aren't making any promises.

Thanks for stopping by... stay a while... enjoy your visit... drop us a line.

With the start of Emily's and Makenzy's soccer season set to begin in less than 6 hours I have finally got most of the recent pics posted. I used a couple of different formats... let me know which you prefer. Good night!

... to the new Beckwith website... beckwithweb.com.

We still have our home of the past several years, mattbeckwith.com but we will be moving all of our 35,000 or so files to our new site.



- Matt, Dawn, Emily and Makenzy

Pictures, pages and videos are queued up and ready for the move. Pics from the Stockton Lightning game and the Brad Paisley, Sara Evans, Josh Turner concert are also up (go to 'pics' link). More to come soon.

We were in the process of updating the site... hadn't decided which program is better. iWeb is really cool but the structure is difficult and there are only a handful of themes. RapidWeaver has been the tool of choice ever since I stopped doing it on a pc and will continue to be my favorite on the mac.




See ya!

... well, only a month! But what a month indeed, December flew by... Christmas, Eve and New Years have passed... what a fast year. Nothing rings in the new year quite like the G&M combo birthday party! So, check out the picture pages... there's plenty of catching up to do. So, first, Merry Christmas

and nothin' says Christmas like new babies... there's plenty of pics of Audrey... since she just loves having a camera in front of her... she's such happy baby... probably because she is always thinking about her favorite uncle (Matt) and aunt (Dawn).

Also... what's Christmas without a kid in a box... here's another niece, 'lizabeth, fitting nicely in a box that Santa brought.

Happy Birthday Gianna & Maryssa... cool party.... glad you're old uncles and cousins got to hang out, too.

Welcome to our site... pizzagohere.com, formerly known as mattbeckwith.com ... gladly serving you since 1997...
 . . . CONGRATS TO THE DETROIT PISTONS . . . !!!!

Pizza Go Here???? What the heck kind of name is that for a web site??? I can here it now.  I guess I expected that question to be asked.  Pizza go here is forever; "pizza go here" is proof that family never forgets... especially when you really want them to!  Pizza go here is a famous quote uttered by my Mom, at Dante's Pizza, many years ago... you know... sometimes what you mean to say and what you actually say are two different things... well, that's what happened.  When the waitress came to our table with the food, Ma said, "pizza go here!"  and we have been laughing about it ever since!
So... Dawn and I have been talking about changing domain names but we just couldn't come up with a name that stood out above the rest... then, a few nights ago... it hit Dawn... just as she was going to bed... she came running into the Outback... PIZZA GO HERE... and here we are!

Welcome back to mattbeckwith.com - we redecorated... again... pretty much the same content... but we will try to post more pictures and keep the site up-to-date.....enjoy 
so... what are we up to... well, it's january so that means new seasons of 24 and american idol... yes, american idol!  that is our family show... we all watch it together... cheering on the good ones and laughing at the bad ones.  we are very civil to each other... that is, until voting starts... then we can get mean and nasty. during season 1 we always had one unified vote... one family, one vote... we had to agree on one vote... last year we could never agree so now everyone gets their own vote.
Superbowl?  no thanks, we'll pass!  actually, we will be in arizona that weekend ... rootin' for the panthers!!!

Welcome to our site --- once again updated... a Spring Cleaning of sorts.  I guess I get bored with the same ol' look and feel.  Sometimes I think I am the only one that even visits this page (please, if you're out there, drop me an e-mail and let me know you actually saw this page.

For return visitors, most of the content is still the same; you can still find pictures, pictures and more pictures, find out what we're up to as well as browse some original MP3s and videos.

If your name is Matt Beckwith and you have found my page after asking the age-old question, "hmmm, I wonder if that domain is taken", or you know another Matt Beckwith, you can still visit the "More Matt Beckwiths than you can shake a stick at" page. 
One of the biggest changes is the fact that I can no longer use the Publish feature in FrontPage so there will be no more forms or counters.  I know that there are other ways to do them but I simply don't have the time to learn them. So, it's back to the basics.



So, while your here, pull up a chair and relax for a while... we have lots of pictures and a little bit of humor along with a snap shot of our life for you to see.  Use the links below to get around.  If you come across something that doesn't work, please be sure to let us know.
Enjoy.
Matt & Dawn

Our girls are probably the single biggest reason we have a site in the first place so of course the girls have newly designed pages of their own.  Also, with nephews and nieces by the dozen, pictures will always be plentiful.