Jared W. Smith

Hi, I’m Jared. (I’m not going to say “Hi, I’m Jared W. Smith” because that is a mouthful and sounds awkward.) I’m a 20-something geek with a bachelor’s in journalism currently residing in a nondescript apartment complex somewhere in the metropolitan Charleston, SC area. You might’ve seen me around; I’m the really skinny guy who’s looking at his BlackBerry. Currently, I’m working at ReadWriteWeb as their webmaster and designer.

My Life’s Work

I’ve maintained some sort of Web presence for over ten years (I suppose having a GeoCities page with a lime background and black text with a gigantic red scrolling marquee for the title qualifies). I’ve been blogging since March 31, 2000 — before blogging was even coined as a term. (Check out the archive of my old sites.) In the early part of the 2000s, I was into running heavily modified message boards based on phpBB, including a fairly successful Windows community once known as WindowsLaunchpad.com. My work with phpBB earned me a spot on the inaugural Support Team at phpBBHacks.com and a writing gig for Apress which materialized into Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress. After a brief hiatus to write the book, I returned to blogging here at jaredwsmith.com in October 2005.

I’m a reasonably early adopter of technology — I can’t count myself among the Robert Scobles or Louis Grays of the world — but I don’t do too badly keeping up, I don’t think. Currently I’m most excited about mobile technologies, especially location-based social networks (with an emphasis on Brightkite). Other areas of interest include the transforming media landscape and how technology can enable the next generation of news reporting techniques.

I’m currently the webmaster and designer for ReadWriteWeb. You may have heard of them; they’re one of the top tech blogs in the world. Previously, I was a webmaster at College of Charleston, my alma mater. There I assisted in a rapid expansion of the Web infrastructure, culminating in the launch of the new College website in August 2009.

Weather Fans, You’re Not Alone

I’m a life-long weather nut; this is manifested in my weather project, charlestonwx.com, which currently serves up a simple display of conditions for Charleston, SC and a 36-hour forecast. I also do some blogging about the weather over there. I operate the Charleston Weather Twitter account, which tweets automated forecasts four times a day. When things get rough, I break in and tweet warnings, watches, and other pertinent advisories for the area. I also do a live streaming weather show when conditions warrant; in fact, I gave a talk about that live-streaming show in October 2008 at the post-ConvergeSouth Independent Bloggers’ Conference.

Hyperlocal

I’m very engaged in an increasingly vibrant social media scene in Charleston. I contribute roundups of what Charleston bloggers are talking about to Lowcountry Bloggers and am among the founding members of the Charleston chapter of Social Media Club. I’ve also worked with @blairblends on the LocalTweetStats project for Charleston (known as @chstweets, currently on indefinite hiatus). LocalTweetStats enabled us to track several measures of Twitter activity in the Charleston area, including the most vocal users, the most-talked-about users, and popular topics.

What I Write About

jaredwsmith.com is a journal reflecting on the eclecticism of my life experience, what I’m learning, how I’m putting it to work, and the like. Since the advent of Twitter I’ve kept some of the day-to-day quick takes there and reserved the blog for a bit more long-form analysis with a little less frequency. Currently, the focus is largely on my experiments with social media and tying them back to community-building, so I’m writing a lot about that. You’ll find that the focus here is a moving target; shift back six months and the string of posts can and usually is vastly different.

I used to write heavily about weather here; since then, I’ve opened the Charleston Weather blog, which is still in its infancy but will light up as hurricane season approaches. I also dabble in sportswriting; last July I wrote up a rehabilitation start for Yankees pitchers Carl Pavano and Phil Hughes for YanksBlog.com, a Yankees fan blog.

What Else?

While I’m not running around like a chicken with my head cut off, I’m probably watching baseball, peoplewatching, or singing karaoke (I leave it as an exercise to the reader to find the YouTube videos). There’s a rumor going around that I sleep, but I cannot confirm that.

Find me on Twitter, Brightkite, Facebook, or any number of other services.