Doc Smitties

Posted on June 22, 2026 by Scott Smith

My son was 4 when my father died, so I don’t have many photos of the two of them together. I think this might be the only one where I am in the shot with them.

Photo of a middle-aged white male on the right leaning to steady a silo from the Fisher Price farm, for a baby who putting object. A 80-year-old white male, who is holding the baby by his overalls straps to steady the baby as he stands.

Smitty, Smitty, and Smitty.

This photo above was taken: about 35 years after my Chief Petty Officer  father retired from the US Navy where he served as a Hospital Corpsman; and roughly, 18 years before my son completed his Hospital Corpsman training (as I predicted my son  would be given at least two nicknames during the career: “Smitty” and “Doc.”

Both of them completed field medicine training at Camp Pendleton and became fond of San Diego (“It’s too damn cold there!” my father would say most other places in on the planet).

In between those milestones, I was born—in the same base where father had undergone his Corpsman training during World War II.

I’m glad the two of them got to hang out a few times, both seemed to have fun. Though I doubt that my father would have approved of the young ‘un wearing a Yankees hat on a trip to Boston.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Doc Smitties

“No Openings”

Posted on June 5, 2026 by Scott Smith

In the previous millennium, when most people still wrote résumés and rejection letters on typewriters, I found an envelope in my mailbox from a company to which I’d sent my rez a few weeks prior. 

I bounded up the stairs to my apartment and ripped open the seal before I’d even closed the door. Inside the envelope was the cover letter that I’d written and signed. Somebody had written “No openings,” with a ball-point pen at the top of the letter. 

At that moment, I was infuriated. However, I later realized that they had made an actual effort to reply: writing the two words, addressing an envelope to me and getting it stamped and mailed. So many other organizations didn’t do jack shit.

In the past couple of years, I’ve read the agonizing stories of people who have applied for dozens and dozens of job postings and have received only a few replies, if any at all.

I know that there are many companies using AI to make (or influence) staffing decisions and I get why they are doing that. Though stop the damn ghosting. If you are a recruiter, hiring manager, etc. and your candidate-selection methods are AI-reliant, you absolutely should use said  AI to provide candidates with timely, meaningful updates about their status in the hiring process.

Though in this modern era of automation, you should strive for something more elegant than “No Openings.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on “No Openings”

Pure Substance Content

Posted on June 4, 2026 by Scott Smith

I finished up the school year yesterday and this morning I revisited something I wrote before I started working in education four years ago.

Predictions about the future have never been in short supply. However, tech predictions have seemed nearly ubiquitous in recent years.

This seems as good a time as any to  wade into the tech-prediction pool:

“Organizations that can ensure systematic and efficient reuse of content will provide clarity through consistency, and delivery of better, personalized, content experiences for consumers; therefore these organization will gain a competitive advantage over competitors in their space.”

To be honest, this is not a new prediction.  It’s from a position paper I wrote for my Dot-Com Era employer….in the year 2000 (How’s that for content reuse?).

A few years ago, I thought about that 2000 position paper, as I pondered the  current (in 2020) state of content strategy, including single-source content and content reuse.  Roughly 3,500 words later, I developed a (rather extended) chemistry metaphor which classified types of content of as:

  • Elements
  • Molecules
  • Pure Substances (which are elements or molecules)
  • Mixtures

(I’ll explain more about this metaphor in future post, but you should note that my scientific credentials are unimpeachable: I MINORED in Political SCIENCE!)

I have a bit of downtime, thus going to revisit those 3,500-ish words and harvest some of my thoughts, assuming they make sense, and are relevant. I’m going to try to express them in  blog posts, and perhaps in-person presentations. I’m looking forward to getting the thick of content strategy discussions again.

 

Posted in CM, DAM. ECM..., Content and Coffee, Content Strategy, Digital Asset Management | Tagged | Comments Off on Pure Substance Content

“Attention K-Mart Shoppers”

Posted on April 8, 2026 by Scott Smith

Joe, a former kickball teammate, and Little League opponent, wrote a blog entitled “Blue Light” that, among other things, was a reference to Blue Light Specials that  Kmart department stores did in their glory days in the 20th century.

In short, an employee would broadcast on the store’s speakers —”Attention Kmart shoppers….” — announce a promotion (a discount, or buy-one-get-one-free) in one of the departments. The exact location was marked with a flashing blue light.

I had something of a flashback to my Kmart days, and I wrote to Joe:

“A younger version of me (well, older than the one you remember from elementary/middle school) worked at a K-mart in Central Florida. I worked in the garden shop— loading cars, watering plants, sweeping concrete floors, and occasionally working the register. I liked the job well enough, but it was peculiar that they called me—200+ lbs, pushing 19, with sideburns and later a beard—a “Patio Boy.” I wonder if I could get same job at one of the remaining K-marts if they would still call me that, or I’d be classified as a “Patio Geezer.”

He suggested that I would now be a “Patio Man.” I’m cool with that, thus I’m thinking of adding PM to my Linkedin profile and email signature.

If people think that I’m a prime minister from somwhere, I’m good with that.

(You can see Joe Blair’s writing here: Also, check out his book, “By The Iowa Sea.“

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments Off on “Attention K-Mart Shoppers”