In keeping with the illusion of the “Rock and Roll Lifestyle,” I could tell you that last Thursday night, I drove into Chicago proper, where I spent the evening having drinks with a group of lovely women, admiring the city from atop its highest rooftop lounge, after which I got home late and woke up the next morning at the crack of 10 wearing the same clothes from the night before. At face value, that doesn’t sound like a fitting scene for a married father of two (especially me), but it happened – all in the interest of the greater good – and that’s my work. I don’t usually talk about the business of digital publishing here on THE ROCK FATHER, and there’s a couple of good reasons for it – most notably that my regular readers wouldn’t be interested (too many bloggers blogging about blogging, and I don’t really “blog” at this point), and I don’t like to share my playbook with the world. But here I’m making an exception, because last Thursday was Mode Media‘s first-ever Chicago gathering, and Mode helps fuel THE ROCK FATHER. I’m a Mode Publisher.
Formerly Glam Media, Mode is a digital ecosystem that brings together a network of content creators from around the world through several different verticals (see, the business lingo) and I work mostly inline with their family side, Tend. What that boils down to for me is that they sell the ad space on my site (all those cool reskins and such), and I do some special projects and writing gigs for them. What happened last Thursday was a gathering of local publishers and writers, along with folks from the Chicago Mode Office to talk about the past, present, and more importantly – the future. Advertising might not sound exciting, but I look at what I do and how it fits in much in the same way that a Race Team looks at sponsors – they put up the money that keeps me going toward the ultimate goal, and in turn, I wear their mark. What’s the goal? To keep on racing.
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With Mode having such a strong background in the fashion and lifestyle space (it was Glam), it wasn’t surprising when I arrived at 52Eighty (after making a detour to AMERICAN GIRL PLACE because I can’t walk by there without buying something for the girls) to find myself the “token male” in the bunch (sorta like when I attended BlogHer last year), but it turned out that there was another (Dietrich Zeigler, who runs Fashion Files with Anna Marevska). It was cool, though – and I made some new friends, while reconnecting with a few folks that I’d crossed paths with previously, like Kristin & Betsy from The Little Style File.
Looks for the CARS jacket, that’s a Rock Father cameo…
Overall, it was a fun excursion to hang with other “grownups” for a bit, and nice meeting and networking with other locals to Chicagoland. What’s in-store in the year ahead? That’s classified.
