I've been blogging off and on ever since LiveJournals were a thing on the internet in my teenage years. Not quite as young as the photo on the right with my little brother at Niagara Falls, but fortunately for me Geocities and Angelfire sites no longer exist. So embarrassing photos like this one, sappy lyrics to songs, and whatever horribly written posts I had in the 90s and early oughts are no longer. Phew.

Since those days I've had two places to call home on the internet. The first blog that stuck was Adventures of an Expat which chronicled my few years living and working in South Korea. However I didn't think ahead with that one and upon returning home needed something new and appropriately titled. 

The Social Chameleons took over, which was my catch all, mostly professional blog that made me into the professional I am today.  In early 2010 I was a blogging fiend, mostly because I was 26 and living at home for six months with just barely part time work to keep me busy. 2010 was a pivotal moment for me in that I had moved back to the US, really gotten into Twitter, started #cmgrchat, and dedicated my time to learning everything there was out there on social media and how best to use it. Now here we are in 2018 and it was time for a whole new refresh. 

Really it was 2017 and the company that provided my website hosting for the past five years decided to shut down and I needed a quick place to turn, stat. Then it only took me a year to finally move some content around and put something together. Why go to all of this effort?  Well, I believe that any communications professional worth their salt should have their own site, well maintained social media accounts, and the occasional insight here and there.  Sure there's Linkedin or Medium, but sometimes it's nice when everything is all in one place and belongs to me. I mean who really can tell if those fly by night companies will be around tomorrow, amiright?  (Well, I can safely say at least one of them will be for at least the foreseeable future.)

So what's ahead? Well that's a great question. I still work in the world of community building and teach at Syracuse, so you can expect commentary from time to time on social media and tech. I oversee two global programs at work - a Corporate Alumni Program as well as Corporate Social Responsibility, so these are topics I hope to explore more in the coming months. I'll also share any talks, presentations, or articles I appear in over in my career section. I'm also looking forward to chronicling my travels a bit more on the travel section of this site.  If you would like to get in touch for any reason, you can find me almost anywhere on social, or drop me an email at jmpedde@gmail.com. 

For now, it's feels good to have a fresh coat of paint on an old website.