I’ve been watching my kids skateboard for nearly a decade now. We’ve been back East, we’ve skated in the US Heartland, the Rocky Mountains and the West Coast. It’s been a lot of fun and I can tell you that I wouldn’t trade places with anyone in the whole wide world.

We’ve met so many interesting people from all walks of life and everyone has a common thread, skateboarding. I’m actually not sure why and how I got so interested in the sport. Early on, I got on my son’s skateboard and nearly broke my arm just rolling down the driveway. Occasionally, I’ll walk over to him at the skatepark and take his board and act like I’m going to show him something. It usually draws a lot of eyeballs since all the other kids know me and have never seen me skate. Casually, my son will take the board from me and go do an elaborate trick so I don’t get embarrassed. Then, I typically walk back to the sidelines and say something like “You know I showed him how to do that”.

One endearing quality I’ve observed in all the skate parks we’ve visited is the admiration the parents have for their kids. Some sit stoically and proud, others twitch and hold their breadth on every trick and once in a while you’ll see a parent jump up, pump their fists and scream “yeah” as if their favorite team had just scored a touchdown in the super bowl. It’s usually followed with “You know I showed him how to do that”. It’s funny how things work out in life, of all the things I could teach my kids, skateboarding was NOT one of them.

Sure, it’s not easy driving to the parks each day, taking care of the occasional bumps and bruises or just generally finding the time. It’s really weird though, you see I feel as if I’m the one that wants to go to skatepark now and I’m always disappointed when one of my sons says “no, not today dad”. Then, I have to get creative, I’ll make a comment like “seems like there might be a lot of people to show-off for today” and if that doesn’t work I’ll escalate with a possible trip to Chipotle or Tokyo Joes afterwards. Finally, if that doesn’t work, I pull out all the stops with some new bearings, wheels or even a brand new deck, but clearly that can get pricey and only happens once on a blue moon.

It’s really hard for me when I’m away from my kids on a trip or something, but it’s comforting to know that even when we are apart we are still together in spirit. I know when I return, I can always count on them and I know that they know, they will always be able to count on me. It’s that unconditional love thing. I’ve really enjoyed watching my kids grow up and can’t wait to see what they do with their lifes in the future. So in part that’s why being a “zombie skateboard dad” is the greatest job on earth.

The first time I read about the underlying concept of web 2.0 was a little over a decade ago in the ending chapters of “Weaving the Web” by Tim Bernes Lee. This is a fascinating book on the history of the web and is highly recommended for anyone interested in the original vision of the web.

The final chapters of the book are about bringing semantics to otherwise disparate content. Over the years, the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative has made progress with formalizing interoperable standards, but we still have a long way to go before we realize the vision of the Semantic Web.

However, it’s interesting how we are now starting to adapt these principles in are our daily lives. An example might be our use of YouTube to broadcast our skate videos through RSS. Now our SK8NE1 subscribers can be notified and review our latest materials in their RSS readers without even coming to our web site. Here’s an example of a video you would see in an RSS reader:

Another interesting trend has been an increasing number of blogs. It seems like it was only a few years ago that Google bought Blogger and applications like MovableType and WordPress were just starting to get momentum. Today, blogging is part of the mainstream and an intregal part of the way we get our information.

In many ways, blogging and RSS are synonymous since most people syndicate their blog’s content using RSS. Embedding the display of your YouTube videos in your feeds is a powerful way to add rich media to an otherwise text only post. We now live in an on-demand world. Social networking and personalized web spaces allow people to receive information based on their preferences and most people subscribing to our blog seem to be primarily interested in our videos.

To that end, we plan to add more and more videos to our blog posts and are now embedding the entire posts in our feeds. This means that if you subscribe to our blog we’ll automatically send our latest posts directly to your designated location and you don’t even have to come to our site.