Matthew Barksdale: Think Digital Now

Our company, Family Features, relaunched culinary.net this week – the following is my post on the launch:

Hello and welcome to the new culinary.net. After a tremendous amount of planning, we are proud to present the first of many changes to the culinary site. Our goal is simple – to help our visitors get more value and joy from their food and food preparation. I want to emphasize the word “joy” – we want everything about the new Culinary.net to focus on bringing more joy to your life.

Believe it or not, Culinary.net was one of the first food sites on the Internet. In fact, it started in 1996 as an online bulletin board service for food professionals called “Culinary CyberCity.” In 1997 the service transitioned to the World Wide Web as Culinary.net.

I just read a fascinating article at the Harvard Business Review by Umair Haque examining if our current society promotes or hinders the creation of a “well-lived life.”

The reason this is relevant to me from a professional perspective is simple – how can technology and digital media help us to lead richer and more fulfilling lives.

The following are some of the highlights – “In short, I see an outcomes gap: a yawning chasm the size of the Grand Canyon between what our economy produces and what you might call a meaningfully well-lived life……..And deep down, while it might be hard to admit, I’d bet we all know that our current habits are leaving us — have left us — not merely financially and fiscally broken, but, if not intellectually, physically, emotionally, relationally, and spiritually empty, then, well, probably at least just a little bit unhealthy. Eudaimonic prosperity, in contrast, is about mastering a new set of habits: igniting the art of living meaningfully well. An active conception of prosperity, it’s concerned not with what one has, but what one is capable of………….A good life today? It’s been vacantly reduced to the frenzied sport of buying “consumer goods” — more, bigger, faster, cheaper, now. But the foundational idea that ignited the art of human organization in the first place just might have been eudaimonia — and today’s opulence is just its clumsy, hurried streetside caricature, empty of depth, shorn of meaning, bereft of the essence of what make us human, void of the hunger to create a better world for humanity. Somewhere along the way, sometime on the journey — perhaps for the best of reasons — we lost it. Let’s get it back.”

So the question is, “How to use digital media and digital technology to not only make money – but to make the lives of everyone we connect with richer and fuller?”  That is one of the key goal in my professional life – to make the lives of everyone around me richer and fuller .

Drive is developing a new program to promote technology service providers – the program will have a national media footprint and will be promoted on the WallStreetJournal.com. The program will feature a series of case studies highlighting how technology companies are using cutting edge products to help clients achieve results. Case studies will be both text and video with the ability to download the case studies from the WallStreetJournal.com. Stay tuned as we announce more details of the program and release the first series of case studies.

We have three full crews in France this week shooting the world famous 24 Hours of Le Mans (or 24 Heures Du Mans if you prefer). Our teams are working with Inside Motorsports, Level 5 and a reality series project. We will have a jam packed week with festivities on and off the track every day. Check out insidemotorsports.com for daily updates throughout the week and level5motorsports.com for information on the Level 5 team.