About Me
Greetings! I am Geoff Wood.
In brief, I'm an entrepreneur, a strategist and a catalyst for businesses of all types. I'm a fan of social media, enjoy working with spatial technologies, and recently completed my MBA.
As far as history, I’m an early graduate of John F. Kennedy Senior High School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa who opted to seek my undergraduate education as a Cyclone at Iowa State University. At I-State, I was a fraternity president (Iowa Gamma of Phi Delta Theta), executively directed the largest campus philanthropy (Iowa State Dance Marathon 2000) and played winger on the rugby team for one season (poorly). I graduated in December 2000 with a Bachelor's of Science Degree in Community and Regional Planning, which I've never really used.
I spent a large part of my career thus far consulting to local governments across the Midwest and Southeast on the application of new technologies to allow them to save time, save money and improve constituent service. Around 2006, I moved into more of leadership role in small business where I led a team of software developers and (for a time) the IT operation for a regional A/E/C firm.
My wife and I, along with our two labrador retrievers, lived in Indianapolis from late 2004 through mid-2009, when our son was born. We decided the addition to our family marked as good a time as any to make other changes in our lives so we quit our jobs and moved to Greater Des Moines. My wife is now a law student at Drake University and I'm launching a technology startup (VolunteerLocal) and blogging about entrepreneurs, artists and innovators in the local scene. Also, in December 2009, I was awarded my MBA from Indiana University's Kelley School of Business.
Just in case you're curious, we hold a marriage license issued in the United Kingdom, have single-handedly kept the motion picture industry in business since 2002 through the dollars we've personally spent on movie tickets, and have been the proud owners of season football tickets at Jack Trice Stadium since graduation.
About the Blog
Wood2YourMoms.com came about early in 2005 while I was on a consulting trip in Saint Cloud, Minnesota. I decided that I wanted something to occupy my evenings while in hotel rooms in random cities across the country.
I’ve always enjoyed writing and I don’t mind putting things that some would deem personal out in front of the world. Several friends of mine were blogging at the time, though the last one standing was the guy who started it all over at BradicalMindspew.com (and he stands no more, unfortunately).
The blog has evolved over time and now I typically blog about my life(1), my teams(2), my school(3) and my interests(4).
I also tend to include footnotes(5) in the tradition of Chuck Klosterman.
For about 18 months, I had a second blog, SocialMediaFanatic.com, broken out separate on this site. After a change in interests, I merged those posts in to the main blog in March 2010.
About "Wood 2 Your Moms"
The Wood2YourMoms name (originally WoodToYourMoms) is a take off of a phrase from a bad `90’s rap song by the fake Irish-American group “House of Pain” called “Jump Around”. You may have heard it.
The original line is “Word to your moms, I came to drop bombs, I’ve got more rhymes than a Bible’s got Psalms”. I know, great songwriting.
Back in college, where I was almost always called “Wood” rather than “Geoff”, I would occasionally make reference to “Wood to your moms”, rather than, “word to your moms” and when it came time to pick a URL it popped into my head. Now it has stuck.