M & A Rainmaker

I died at 5.21 and 50 seconds on Sunday 17th January 2010. I was born on the 18th June 1956. My mum knows the time. You can work out my age – it’s still a matter of some sensitivity to me.

Don’t grieve for me because I had a great life, I died quickly and painlessly and I was ready to go.

Of course when I put my old Captain’s wife’s picture up on Facebook last year telling them that she will ” live forever in cyberspace ” I knew that I would also live forever in cyberspace too.

I have a permanent digital imprint – I am – or was – a Digital Citizen.

If you don’t know what a Digital Citizen is you can look at this link here

http://mcdn.hubspot.com/Hiring_In_The_DARC_Ages_HubSpot_eBook.pdf

which I came across only recently and explains what a Digital Citizen is. I am not sure where having been a Digital Citizen is in the ranking of all the things that I did but it’s way up there.

As anyone knows who is 50 ish we lived from a time of black and white TV to the Facebook generation. We experienced the digital revolution. For us things happened at the rate of Moores Law. Man, we are talking serious progress here.

Of course you are your Google. I have known this from the day a salesperson that I was interviewing said ” Well actually I know quite a lot about you because I Googled you “. At the time I thought that it was rather unfair to come at me with a statement like that when I was just trying to ” put him at ease ” by telling him a bit about myself. I mean as soon as he said that I just wanted to get him out of the room so that I could Google myself and find out who I ( digitally ) was. What DID he know about me ????

It’s also true that it’s now too late to start that company that I always wanted to – the one that delved deeply into people and company’s secrets via the Internet. A digital detective agency. No, I never did that one but I did become a bit of a geek at using Google – not like super good – just pretty handy.

Anyway – you are your Google eh ?

Well here’s mine http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=chris+windley&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq= , well it was at the time of my death anyway – I don’t know what it will be like in 1 hour, 1 year, 10 years or 100 years. Only you will know that.

So, I hope that my Google of me bears at least some resemblance to yours or else this is not going to make much sense is it ?? ( Of course it might be even more interesting !! )

See, we already know that a Google depends on who you are, when you did it, where you are, what your preferences are and anything else that Google decides to introduce between the time that I died and the time that you actually read this and look at the Google. It’s looking like I could write a book about this point alone so I had better leave that one for another life.

Now, how many pages of Google search results describe your life adequately ???  I don’t know about you but I got bored at the 140th result.  No doubt ” the long tail ” stretches into infinity or something but at the time of my death I understood that people only really looked at the first couple of pages. Well – we were so busy we did not have time to click on the next arrow too many times did we ??

I thought I would Google ” Bill Gates ” just to see what his Google looked like ( sorry Bill I was not trying to rub in the fact that Google sort of eclipses Microsoft ) and discovered that he was dead aswell – well at least on page 2 of my Google of him there is a website called ” Bill Gates is Dead “. Bit weird really.

Anyway – I reckon that you will get the essential me in the first few pages – certainly by the 140th result you will know a lot about me. Having said that you may not find out much about my family – my parents, my wife and my children – and my pets. Of course Dave ( son ) and Claire ( daughter ) and even Pam ( my wife ) are now on Facebook. Oh yes and some of my old friends have recently ” friended ” me.

Now, lets get this one out of the way shall we. A whole load of experience has taught me that it’s actually not that beneficial to come up on Google for your name. ok – so there’s a few ( thousand ) people out there who know the ” Chris Windley brand ” but really I have been trying to come up on Google for what I offer rather than who I am. I doubt if you are going to find me by searching for ” salesperson ” or ” business angel ” or ” marketing person ” or ” Digital Citizen ” but you will find me for ” M&A Rainmaker ” and ” Condor Bermuda ” for example.

Had I lived longer I probably would have addressed some of these things. I could make myself come up on Google for at least some of these terms you know. Of course you can’t guarantee anything in the search rankings world but I am confident that I could have firstly defined the essence of myself better and then ensured that you would find it if you Googled it. If I had had more life I would have worked harder on this.

There will be some really random things that I will come up on Google for aswell.  Here’s one

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=mikuni+carburetors+harley+upgrade&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

Now you are going to think I was a biking freak aren’t you ??? Well I wasn’t but I did make a film of upgrading a Harley Davison bike with Mikuni Carburetors with Mark ( my sister’s husband ) and some other guys. It’s on a social network that I started called ” The Bike Channel “.