Featured post

Welcome

This is the official site for the works and music of Stephen Hammill.

A digital communications specialist with several years experience in media, SEO, digital marketing and public relations, I’ve worked to create content utilizing new media while training others to do the same.

A New York native, I now live in Portland, OR and work as Director of SEO for Reply!. My resume and portfolio can be found here. Click here for my music both as a solo artist and member of the band Life of Pi.

For my blog, look below. For more timely updates, read my Twitter feed to the right. . For everything else, use the menu at top of the page.

11 reasons why an old person shouldn’t make generalizations about 23-year-olds running your social media

Leave a reply

The title isn’t mine, but stolen from a recent tweet by @mktgdouchebag, which is meant to be humorous (I think); but I thought it might warrant a real list of its own.

First off, as someone who implements social media for other organizations, I will identify with the 23-year-old in this scenario, however, this really isn’t about age, but about experience in new media and what we as social media “experts” do for a living. After all, I’m 35, not 25, and sometimes I have these types of conversations with people younger than I am.

So, here are the 11 reasons why a old less tech-savvy person shouldn’t make generalizations about 23 35-year-olds running your social media:

Continue reading →

One third of all Americans walk less that 10 minutes a week

Leave a reply

The title, hard as it is to believe, says it all. In a recent Atlantic Online article, it’s revealed that Americans are somehow walking less and more at the same time. Confused? So was I.

Essentially, fewer Americans are walking at all, but the ones of us who do walk regularly are walking more often and over longer distances. So there you have it. The most disturbing fact has to be this: More than one-third of adults in the U.S. have not walked for more than 10 minutes straight over the course of the last week. Let that sink in.

Living in a walking-friendly city such as Portland, I have the luxury of forgetting just how much most of our lives revolve around walking out the front door to our car, driving to our destination, and driving back home, never breaking a sweat in the process – -convenient, but a little too comfortable, and comfiort can often be the enemy of fitness.

Read the full story the Atlantic here.

PPSC, the Portland Pick-up Soccer Club, reaches 250 members

Leave a reply

Fellow Portland soccer player Andrew Callaci began the Portland Pick-up Soccer Club (PPSC) on Facebook a little over a year ago. In that time, we’ve grown the group to more than 250 members.

PPSC features seasonal fixed weekly games, plus a bunch of on-the-fly games.

All skill levels are welcome to join PPSC. No membership, fees or player’s card required. Just join the group, see a game you’d like to attend and show up. Bring a light and dark shirt to help even out the teams.

If you live in/near Portland and are looking to play some footy, check out the PPSC group here at http://www.facebook.com/groups/PortlandPickUpSoccerers/.

We play soccer inside to get away from the rain

Leave a reply

Here are some cool action shots, taken by Andrew Callaci, during a game at Soccerplex in Beaverton.

Continue reading →

The Google+ circle conundrum: searching for new names for my “friends”

Leave a reply

One thing Google+ forces me to think about — something Facebook never did: What do I call all these digital acquaintances of mine?

In Facebook world, everyone is a “friend,” which is simple enough, if not true in real life. Google+ offers circles, places where we can box-in the people we know into as many customized categories as we see fit.

The obvious circles are, well, obvious — coworkers, colleagues, family, people you went to school with, exes. But what about the big vague one: your “friends?”

Within the first few days of using Google+, I realized my “friends” circle was starting to look like my Facebook friends list: an expanding collection of people with whom I had extremely varied levels of contact, from the daily to, well, the never.

I realized what I really need are some new names for these types of friendships. If the Eskimos have 1,000 words for snow, I should have more than one name for my friends. What I need is a new taxonomy. Continue reading →

Planes, trains and ferries; travel to New York by way of Boston

Leave a reply

It was a busy week/weekend of cross-country travel for me. I took the red-eye to Boston Wednesday night for a two-day meeting/site visit with the good folks at Health Leads. We did some hands-on social media training and also took the first steps toward building their new website to launch next year.

Friday saw me take just about every conceivable method of transportation (minus helicopter) to get down to New York for a relaxing weekend with the family. The ferry ride across the Long Island Sound — during a zero-visibility rainstorm, at dusk — was a little harrowing.

It being just a week removed from my mom’s 60th birthday, it was great to spend some quality time with her and enjoy some good meals and time outdoors in the sunny New York July, something I’ve not experienced in years. On my last day out before flying back to Portland, we lunched in Port Jefferson. Some pics: Continue reading →

Leave a reply
Coding. A time-suck, but also occasionally monastic in nature. #ZenPHP
June 27, 2011 12:15 pm via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite
@stephensolo
Stephen Hammill

My top 5 favorite bestest U.S. cities

Leave a reply

A native East-coaster now living on the west coast, I’ve finally reached a place where I can say I visited every U.S. on my wish list.* A friend asked for my current favorites, so here they are (in alphabetical order):

Austin, TX
Awesome: great food (cheap but good); affordable living; bars; music; cowboy hats/boots on non-cowboys; weird; liberal
Con: lack of good public transit, too hot, it’s in Texas

Chicago, IL
Awesome: affordable living; bars; music; ocean; public transit; good sports culture
Con: way too cold in winter; far from the coasts

New York City, NY
Awesome: good public transit; liberal city; bars; music; great sports culture; cultural panoply
Con: too expensive; really spread out in some boroughs; cold in winter

Portland, OR Continue reading →

A true football derby on American soil: 500 strong from Portland to Seattle

Leave a reply

Last weekend I had a chance to be part of a traveling football supporters group for the first time, as along with 500 Timbers Army members I took a bus caravan up to Seattle for the first-ever MLS match between America’s most bitter soccer rivals: Portland Timbers and Seattle Sounders.

It wasn’t just a first for me. This was the largest-ever traveling contingent for a soccer club in the history of the United States, and it would have been even larger had there been more tickets made available.

The national sports media was there (I managed to make it on ESPN a few times, without doing anything that would make my mom blush). The league, and, to some extent, the entire North American footballing culture, were watching to see if the hype was just that, to see if the rivalry would erupt, and to see if we’d behave ourselves. Continue reading →