It’s a fascinating way of thinking and it takes a minute to get your head round it. I aim to help them find the right expressions, communication channels, and inroads with thought leaders to help spread the word.

I want to fast forward the internet. Either that or sleep through the next 5-10 years.

This SEO stuff is getting me down. I know things are always changing, but at this point they can’t change fast enough for me.

A depressingly large subsection of the internet seems all too willing to prostrate itself at the altar of the great SEO diety. If you want the right customers to see your products, you need to have a great search rank, and that means you need the right keywords in the right places, plenty of backlinks, active comment boards, a constant stream of fresh content, and the list goes on.

Few businesses seem to be looking to the future rather than directly at the ground in front of them. Search engine rankings, in their current incarnation, won’t be around for long.

While they are still somewhat ill-defined concepts, the “semantic web” and “web 3.0″ seem to be aiming for an internet not limited by what’s placed within constraining HTML tags–the current basis for search engine rankings. The forward thinkers at the World Wide Web Consortium envision an internet where machines understand one another more like human beings do–that is to say, less in terms of specially designated tags and more in terms of meaningful context. At present, if I tell Google I have a website about hippos, it asks me to put the word “hippo” into about a dozen different boxes, put the boxes in the right place, tie a string between my boxes and other peoples’ hippo boxes put something new in the box every day, and paint the box with a picture of a hippo. Then, and only then, will the rest of the world know about my hippo website.

When I tell you I have a website about hippos, you instantly form a picture in your head of what my site might be like. In other words, your brain is already semantic. The web gurus want Google to be more like your brain. And when you ask Google for hippo websites, it doesn’t have to think about the boxes, strings, and paint jobs. Instead, it can say, “Mkay, but what kind? Like do you want pictures or facts? Obscure? Funny? Cartoons? Do you need it for a paper? Or are you just bored? Talk to me.”

Let me put it another way. During the punched card era, when a computer program literally consisted of a box of cards placed in just the right order, if you removed a single card the entire program was ruined. Now you can type “Skee Ball Cha” into Google and it’s already guessed you want to know about skee ball championships and dug up hundreds of websites to cater to your fancy. Now try to imagine how today’s Google will make similar advances over the next several years. Everything is marching towards an internet that “understands” users instead of simply reading a series of punched cards (or HTML tags).

Yet online businesses seem all to happy to invest in hole-punching technology. The recent fall of Ezine is a fine example. Prior to January of 2011, when Google implemented its “Farmer” search algorithm update. Ezine Articles often ranked very high in a number of searches. Ask Google how to hang a picture, and one of the first five results would be an Ezine article about it. Ezine played the game well, pumping out tidal waves of content with all the right things in its boxes and all the right strings tied up. Were the articles any good? Did they actually provide useful instruction on how to hang a picture? With little exception, no. Articles composed by authors being paid little to nothing to churn out keyword-rich garbage attracted plenty of traffic but left most users disappointed by the lack of real knowledge being imparted.

Then Farmer hit, and Ezine all but disappeared from the search rankings overnight, as well it should have. Google found ways to make the algorithm more complex and prevent people from gaming the system as Ezine had done. As we speak, some of the nation’s best web engineers are devising new ways to outsmart would-be opportunists eager to make a quick buck by giving search engines all of the nectar but none of the fruit.

Some companies, however, and looking ahead. They focus on providing well-composed, well-researched, meaningful content without worrying too much about mechanistic SEO. They may not get instant legions of traffic by showing up on every single first page for every single Google search pertaining to their markets, but they get bookmarked, revisited, blogged about, and respected.

In the offline world, people with something of value to say generally find themselves with bigger audiences than blathering morons (I know, I know, Twilight/Rush Limbaugh/Snooki/etc. exist, but let’s not get too cynical just yet). That’s how I optimistically view the future of the web. The more semantic it grows, the more intuitive and refined, the more it will become able to recognize, appreciate, and promote real, meaningful content. So why base your marketing efforts on ethically questionable and ultimately doomed tactics?

Let’s get back to the basics. Be a merchant–provide something of value to your customers. Do what you can to get the word out concerning your business, but keep the focus on providing things that will truly help them live better lives. No matter how many startups enjoy meteoric rises by seizing on holes and flaws in the market, they almost all share a destitute fate.

Here’s a link to the website version.

Click the image below to see it in a new window and enlarge it.

Before I go any further, I’ll kill the suspense: I didn’t get this particular full-time job. Somebody with deeper, more applicable experience did. (Pshh. I guess for some reason a seasoned Communications Manager with lots of “experience” running a “department” and “doing a fantastic job” moving the organization “forward” is somehow better than, you know . . me. I know, I know, it strains credibility, but not everyone can be so prescient as to instantly realize my infinite worth.)

But I still want to talk about the organization, because they’re the bees knees.

They’re called Goods for Good, a New York-based nonprofit whose missions is to turn excess into progress by taking surplus goods scheduled for destruction in the U.S. and making them available to partner NGOs (Non-governmental organizations) in Malawi, Africa.

Having spent time in the kinds of classrooms they supply–you know, the kind with 40 kids packed into a 15′ x 15′ room, concrete floors if you’re lucky, no furniture, and perhaps 5 textbooks and 3 pens for the lot to share–I really love their mission. A few tons of pens might be headed for a landfill or a zillion yards of fabric might be languishing in a warehouse, unused. G4G steps in and says “Um, if you’re not using that, I’ve got a great idea . . .” They ship the pens to schools in need around the Lilongwe area (near the middle of the country). The fabric goes to young tailors-in-training to make badly-needed school uniforms.

I’m especially a fan of the priority they make of partnership, developing relationships with schools and other NGOs. There are way too many people who show up in Africa with “a Land Rover and a plan” without any intention of truly learning about the culture and what locals are saying and doing about development in their own country. Like Lao Tzu said: “Go to the people. Live with them. Learn from them. Love them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have. But with the best leaders, when the work is done, the task accomplished, the people will say ‘We have done this ourselves.’” While the people in this case won’t exactly believe they made the pens, fabric, and everything else, they’re the ones who use them to give the kids a better shot at success.

In addition, the idea of using surplus from a rich country is pure dynamite, both for the practical reasons and for the massive potential it holds for getting people excited to help here in the U.S. “Wait, I can join an organization that’s not only helping schools in one of the world’s poorest countries, but simultaneously cutting down on waste in our country?”

Of course, there’s much more that they do, which you can read about for yourself.

Big ideas always find people to help make them happen. I’ve got to think Goods for Good has a bright future, and I wish them well.

Donate or learn more.

The section was required to be an interactive, choose-your-own-adventure course with as much active learning and trial-and-error as possible, preceded by a brief description.

Click here to view the sample (PDF).

The Fruited Plain Cafe was just written up in the New York Times. Co-owned and managed by Laremy DeVries, a man with whom I once shared a dorm room and a crush on the same girl (more on that in a minute), this dandy little establishment serves the tiny town of Sioux Center Iowa with premium coffee, wines from around the world, a fine beer selection, plenty of lunch fare, and dinners served up on weekends by none other than their resident Sicilian, Giovanni Romero. Read the article for more about Giovanni and his authentic Italian culinary stylings.

Laremy married and had a precocious daughter with Rebecca (Schelhaas) DeVries, the aforementioned mutual crush as well as the co-owner of–and the brains behind–the Fruited Plain. What can I say? When you’re outmatched, sometimes you just need to step aside and let the victor claim his prize–and a prize she is indeed. Together, the two run a comfortable, unassuming, yet cultured little establishment that is winning over more and more local residents by the day. Trying to sound as pretentious as possible, I regularly tell Lar that I’d probably frequent his cafe as much as any in Chicago. The only difference between the Fruited Plain and any of the hip, well-run places in these parts is that I don’t have to pay $8.50 for a scone or feel out of place amongst the ironic t-shirts, tight jeans, and meticulously bedraggled hairstyles of the hipster hoards that frequent them.

The Cafe features fairly-traded coffee, a stage where young musicians flip the hair out of their eyes to tell you about why they wrote this next song, an elegant Backroom Bistro that serves 50 patrons, family-style, and even a small play area for the kids. It’s one of those small-town places that can make a jaded city dweller rethink his choice of habitat.

If you live in Iowa or happen by my old college town of Sioux Center, stop by “the Plain” and tell them Adam sent you. After they say “Adam who?” and you patiently (but curtly) respond “SMIT,” they’ll smile and offer you a warm cup of something and a plate with something else you’ll invariably scarf right on down.

And goodness gracious do they need a website. I think I’ll see if I can help with that.

My website is now finished!

It took a lot longer than I expected, and I had to learn a little about PHP and a lot about WordPress, but here she is. If you’ve got any feedback, I’m 97% ears.

And now it’s time to go and get some sunlight on this pasty, sallow skin.

Usually, I complain with the best of them, but this year was different. This year I had a bone to pick. People started whining about winter in August. It wasn’t even fall yet, and people had just barely begun to notice that the days were no longer 92 degrees but 89 degrees. Bring on the prognostications and ominous foreboding.

October rolls around, and all I hear about is Old Man Winter, despite the fact that we had a generally beautiful fall. By the time it finally snowed, on the second to last day of November, I’d heard so much about winter that you’d have thought we’d been buried drifts for months.

In this way, Chicagoans make winter longer than it is. Granted, there have been some harsh ones here, and somehow the lake, the grid layout, and the generally narrow streets and scarcity of greenery in some neighborhoods do make it a bit ickier than some more rural places that get colder temperatures and more snow. But there’s a lot to love about winter–don’t worry, I won’t go into all of it. You know you thought the Snowpocalypse was cool and you like sweaters–and complaining about it gets you into a cold state of mind.

In fact, recently those smartypants scientists have learned the the “brown fat” in your body, which protects you from the cold, can take a few weeks to get activated. This means that if you tough out the first few weeks of cold without wearing eight layers once it hits 45 degrees, your body will get used to it a little. I can remember doing this as a kid in Montana before I knew there was actual science behind it. I was simply too lazy to bring a coat everywhere and liked to think of myself as tough, so I’d go out in 20 degrees without a coat. Mid-winter I’d always notice that I didn’t get as cold as everyone else did. Gold star for twelve-year-old me.

The scientists just illustrate my point: Cold is in your head, at least to a degree. Several degrees, in fact. On the thermometer. PLAY ON WORDS.

So, dear Chicago, next fall can we just chill out a bit (Eh? Catch that one?) with the collective dread? Let’s enjoy the warm sun whilst it tarries in the sky and abstain from the portentous pessimism.