So who is this 'Jay Garmon' dork...?

I, Jared Matthew "Jay" Garmon, am a professional geek. Specifically, I am a writer, husband & father, technologist, science fiction nerd, and self-professed trivia expert. Each of these aspects is entertained at different venues around the Web, as listed below.

Technologist: First and foremost, I am the VP of Product at Finvi, where I try to build some cutting-edge SaaS fintech. I've founded and sold a startup or two in my day, run a $2 billion healthcare transaction platform, built actual factual AI solutions, and once wrote an online spoof of the Daily Show focused on the stars of the Food Network.

As sidelines and consulting work, I have advised on social media and emerging technologies for the Louisville Digital Association (for whom I have served as both president and vice president), Louisville EnterpriseCORP (for whom I was a founding member of their advisory "Justice League"), XLerateHealth (for whom I was a founding director), organized the Louisville Geek Dinner, and, as a guest instructor, helped inaugurate a Social Media marketing curriculum at the University of Louisville. 

Writer: This post is hosted on Jay Garmon [dot] Net, which is my personal blog where I prattle on about whatever topics interest me with very irregular frequency. You can also find herein copies of my science fiction short stories that I have "trunked," which is a euphemism for "given up on trying to publish." Yes, I have written other sci-fi shorts, exactly one of which has been sold for professional publication (though it did make the Tangent list...barely). I haven't written any fiction since my second child was born more than a decade ago, but I hope someday to return to the practice, which is why I started the Aldebaran Roundtable writers group.

I also technically share a screenwriting credit with David Goyer, but that was for a contest, not a job. (I won.)

As to the majority of the writing work for which I've been actively paid, look no further than my LinkedIn profile, and you'll see I've made my living in whole or in part by stringing together words for CNET, CBS Interactive, Scholastic Library Publishing, TechTarget, Backupify, Talla, LinkSquares, Patlytics, Neurometric AI, Rally UXR, and Practical Assurance. But that's all non-fiction, so it doesn't count.

Husband & Father: I have the requisite Facebook page for the disseminating of pictures of my daughters, wife, friends, cats, travel, and Star Trek memes, but -- fair warning -- I also do the "talking about politics" thing there. Don't go if you're sensitive about your votes or policies.

Science Fiction Nerd: I have whittled a long career of semi-professional sci-fi fandom down to a single membership these days: running Hugo McNebula's Reading Circle for a few other book nerds. The membership of said circle has largely been collected from the pursuits below.

Until 2020, I was the Vice Chair of Marketing for ConGlomeration, Louisville's fan-run sci-fi and fantasy convention that shuttered due to COVID-19.

Many moons ago, I was the originator of and prime contributor to The Geekend, a nerd culture blog at TechRepublic, a Web community for IT professionals run by CBS Interactive (I think they call it the "After Hours" section, now). Predating the Geekend is Geek Trivia, a weekly (ahem) geek trivia column that I wrote for more than a decade. Both the Geekend and Geek Trivia have been cited by sources as diverse as author John Scalzi to the editors of Wikipedia.

I was an also an extremely irregular contributor to the Hugo-winning SF Signal blog -- usually their also Hugo-nominated podcasts -- where I performed a barely passable impression of an expert in sci-fi media and fandom.

Self-Professed Trivia Expert: As an adjunct to Geek Trivia, the kind and talented hosts of the now-defunct TechTalk radio show on WRLR 98.3 FM in Chicago had me on as a regular guest. There I snarked about movies, science fiction, technology, current events and ... eventually ... provided a geek trivia question each week.

I also occasionally wrote the Truly Trivial column here at JayGarmon.Net, wherein I threw a few hundred words at an obscure factoid that very possibly only I find fascinating. Inexplicably, other people were entertained by this.

In the unlikely event you would like to retain my services as a consultant, writer, speaker, radio guest, conference/convention panelist, or one-shot dungeon master, you can reach me at jay [at] jaygarmon [dot] net. Depending on the job, I can be be had for very free or very not. Pitch me, and we'll talk.

I want a newspaper that DOESN'T include AP content

Image via Wikipedia

For those that haven't heard, the Associated Press (AP) is trying to add digital rights management (DRM) to its syndicated news content because its tired of the bloggerati and spam sites making money off its hard earned journalistic products. Setting aside the fact that this absolutely, positively won't work, it also misses a key point about the AP that I think has been missed in the coverage of this brewing fiasco: I don't want AP content from my newspaper or news Web sites.

AP content is a product of a bygone era, when I had to consume my print news from a single (or, at least very few) source: The local paper. The AP's coverage of foreign and national events saved my favorite newsrag the time and expense of maintaining a bureau or freelancer contact in every major city on Earth. It also had the side effect of every major paper carrying essentially the same story, though few people noticed it because most of us read our local paper almost exclusively.

I don't have a single text news source any more. My RSS reader is crowded with dozens of news mastheads, and those sources cull from dozens or even hundreds of other sources. The problem: Those news "sources" are riddled with duplicate content because most of them run the same freakin' AP stories!

To show you how pointless the AP business model has become in the modern era, choose a single game in a non-tournament sporting event. Say, yesterday's Red Sox/Blue Jays game. Check the story on CNN, ESPN, Fox Sports, CBS Sports, and Sporting News. It's precisely the same story, dressed up in each respective site's drag (though Fox Sports gets points for pulling in local paper content ahead or alongside AP stuff). If I subscribed to each site's baseball feed, I'd get the same story almost word-for-word five times.

What I want is a newsfeed that filters out all this duplicate AP stuff. If I read the AP story once, I'm good. What I want are different perspectives (which blogs give, though usually absent the on-the-scene authority of a beat reporter) on the same story. As a devoted Louisville Cardinal fan, I want not only the AP and local paper's perspective on UofL games, but the opposing team's paper's perspective on the game, as well as that of national columnists and analysts.

I've tried hacking together just such a filter using Yahoo pipes, one that goes through every local Big East paper's Louisville content and one that hits the major sports Web sites' college basketball pages, trying to block out the AP content which I know will be endlessly duplicated. The results are kludgy, mostly because there's no simple, universal way of noting AP content. (I'm left with keyword filters, so other teams from Louisville or other schools with Cardinal mascots creep in.) Thankfully, once the AP's DRM kicks in, I'll have a nice, simple way to screen out all the endlessly duplicated AP clone-stories from my feeds and get the actual analysis and opinion about the sports -- and other subjects -- I truly care about.

Thanks, AP, for conveniently engineering yourself out of my consciousness. I can't wait until you've built your own future demise.

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