The Road Ahead

Well, it’s been a while. I hope you weren’t waiting on me. Or trapped under something heavy. You look good. Have you lost weight? Done something different with your hair? Whatever it is, it’s working. Don’t change a thing.

If you’re a long-time follower of this site, then you know it’s like that flower that blooms only once every seven years. Yes, that’s the flower that also smells like a rotting human corpse, but we’re getting lost in the metaphor. The point is, it’s time for a rebirth. Both for me professionally and for this site.

After six wonderful, enjoyable years at Discovery (née Scripps Networks Interactive), it’s time for a new direction. I’m excited, nervous, but mostly excited. I feel a bit like someone who’s just emerged from a committed, long-term relationship and is now out there again for the first time in a long while. The landscape has changed considerably, and I’m left wondering if these sideburns are still in style.

When I joined SNI in 2014, the cloud was still this untrustworthy curiosity. Now, your mom spins up an AWS function to optimize her grocery list with machine learning. Collaboration once meant reserving a room for an hour and then spending 58 minutes dialing into a conference line followed by two minutes rescheduling. Now, everyone just Slacks into Zoom from their mobile while taking an Uber to their next gig. Back then, video was a “nice-to-have.” Now, produced 4K with attractive camera talent, a thumping soundtrack, sufficient character development, and a twist ending (but not like a gimmicky M. Night Shyamalan twist that’s trying way too hard) is considered the baseline. Simple point-and-click interactivity in an e-learning course, once considered mind-blowing, is so passé. If your training course isn’t part Avatar sequel and part alternate-reality game, then no one is impressed. So, here we are.

I’m eager to start building new content to transform some lucky company into a digital utopia. For my part, I plan to keep following the same rules that got me here: quality content first, polish second, and hype a distant third.

But I decided that the old website, she needed a bit of attention. Can you believe I started this site in its original form in 2006 on Windows Live Spaces no less? When they shuttered that site, I moved it over here as “Hello, world,” where I continued contributing to it steadily.

I re-titled it “Greg Said Words” a few years later, which I thought was a pretty clever play on my online brand. But this thing called social media happened, and I kinda let it wither on the vine. I mean, my last post was five years ago. My bad.

That’s why I’m launching the new gregsedwards.com.

My focus will continue to be on my observations about technology, e-learning, and life in general. Stop by once in a while, and I’ll try to make you smile. Or at least think.

In the coming days, expect to find a bit more content. I’m adding a proper portfolio, maybe some social and YouTube integration, and who knows, I may even spin up a little podcast. Here’s to the next adventure.