My name is Matt Hixson.  This blog is a space for me to express my thoughts on things like social media, business and leadership.  I have been working for 10+ years and have taken a strange path.  

I started in public accounting at a big 4 accounting firm.  I jumped ship there and went to work for Tripwire, which is a software company in Portland, OR.  After playing the roll of Corporate Controller and Director of Finance for 5+ years I moved into Business Development, which lead me to lead a startup within the company.  I was tasked to create a business in the virtualization operations space.  It was a completely new experience for me that taught me a ton in 2 years.  

The best thing that happened to me in that experience was that it was not a success.  We built some amazing things in a very short period of time but some of our core assumptions were wrong and our runway was short.  I learned way more in failure than I would have in success and for that I am thankful. 

Through that experience, one of the things that I discovered was social media.  The influencers in the virtualization space were using Twitter as a place for their core communications so we hung out there.  I learned the basics of social media and I learned that social media is about relationships not about a new marketing megaphone and not about lead generation - at least not for me.  

I have applied those learnings to a larger corporate strategy on social media and I continue to learn everyday.  Through these experiences I have developed my own views on social media.  I have opinions on how it should be used and I even have some ideas on how to change the game somewhat.  The space I am most interested in is how social networks truly operate and the relationships that form as a result.  Companies that sell in B2B markets is an area of interest because that is where I have seen the direct business problems.  

I tell you all this because that is what has brought me here to this part in my journey.  That is what has driven my interest in social media and it's power.  That is what will drive my blog posts and my passion.  

If you have an opinion (love it, hate it or anything in between) on what you read please reach out to me by commenting, email (matt[at]matthixson.me or Twitter (@matthixson).