The whole concept of a sabbatical is foreign to those of us who haven’t worked in academia. For someone who bought his first police scanner at age 14 and who has measured time in news cycles ever since, taking a pause to refresh was heresy.

Yet I found myself on “garden leave” – the term the British use to describe the time a departing executive is dormant before getting back to work –for much of 2009. The irony is that the only thing resembling a garden at our New York condo is a window box. Despite the lack of a plot to plant, I can honestly say the last few months have been exhilarating.

While I thought my work-life balance was in check before, now I actually know my daughters’ shoe sizes and the menu at the soup kitchen where my wife, Maureen, cooks gourmet meals three days a week. I also experienced the joy of mentoring two recent City University graduates, and helping low-income women gain self-sufficiency through a highly effective program called First Step.

On the networking front, I have been awed by all the brilliant entrepreneurs who are introducing fascinating and disruptive ways to do tasks that have long confounded marketing and PR pros. In private equity and venture capital, I have new respect for the discipline and guts it takes to find, fund and execute. And on the customer desktop, I share your pain that it’s possible to order a pizza through your Tivo but automating a MarCom department remains but a dream.

Today, as I prepare to begin a new chapter as a board member and vice chairman of dna13, I want to thank the many friends, peers and complete strangers who embodied the very spirit of social networking by brainstorming, opening their Rolodexes and challenging my preconceived notions about how PR, media, marketing and sales are intersecting, and the role that technology will play in that convergence.

Most people have never heard of dna13. Compared to an entrenched giant like PR Newswire, this Ottawa-based software company is very, very small. Yet dna13 is a wonderful example of how someone who’s an expert in his job – dna13 founder Chris Johnson worked in corporate communications for Bell Canada – can bring a fresh solution to market and watch it grow.

What does dna13 do? In short, users of dna13 software can listen to what is being said about their company across all channels — print, major market TV, online and social media. When the SM (social media) or MSM (mainstream media) hits the fan, the dna13 platform has cool permissioning features so subscribers can securely align team members to plan the synchronized delivery of messages. (Note: those who love managing their 500+ Google Alerts, emailing multiple “track changes” documents to their CEO, or plugging their good, bad and neutral hits into a spreadsheet should not look at dna13.)

dna13 is moving from entrepreneurial to growth phase. Because it’s set up in the Software-as-a-Service model, product development is nimble. I have never seen a better technology organization – moving from white board to production in days and weeks rather than months and years.

My new colleagues include seasoned sales, marketing and product people, super-capable COO Kevin O’Neil, as well as board support from software veteran Howard Gwin (PeopleSoft, IBM, Pivotal), Tom Birch of Propulsion Ventures, Inc. and Pierre-Andre Meunier of Celtic House Venture Partners.

To all those who invited me into their homes, offices, industry events and social networks during my transition, please know that I’m happy to repay the favor. Just say the word.

Dave Mance, in leather jacket, taught me Hyperlocal before it was an Internet business model

Applying the knowledge absorbed early in life is not always obvious.

Case in point, I was too busy having fun as a 16-year-old DJ at tiny Dansville, NY, radio station WDNY-AM to truly grasp how owner Dave Mance was keeping his overhead low and his customers in sharp focus.

Sure, I knew that the start-up shared office space with local real estate man Tom Wamp, and that I was only making $3 an hour to do weekend air shifts. I also realized that Dave didn’t own many vinyl 45 RPM records, instead relying on oldies he borrowed and copied onto dozens of reel-to-reel audio tapes.

In 1978, I was too young and inexperienced in business to understand that Dave was simply being prudent after spending every last cent for an FCC license, transmitter, antenna, turntables, tape decks, mixing boards and other gear needed to get his station on the air. He was a human chameleon – morning show DJ, newsman, sales manager and bathroom cleaner – and his wife and two others were the only full-time employees.

The penny-pinching aspects of running his tiny broadcast enterprise didn’t damper the staff’s enthusiasm.  We were celebrities as we did live “remotes” from car dealerships and the village’s annual Dogwood Festival.  The lack of a local newspaper allowed us to be the authority on things like obituaries, which were sponsored by the Chamberlain Funeral Home and aired during the noon  news.

The cash flow from WDNY allowed Dave to add an FM station in Dansville, purchase additional radio properties in another remote southern New York community — the Delaware County village of Sidney — and in the city of Watertown, 70 miles north of Syracuse.

I had not seen or spoken with Dave Mance for 30 years when I caught up with him in the picturesque Thousand Islands on Thursday night.  While he had sold most of his radio stations three years ago, his status as a small-market media magnate meant he knew virtually everyone in town and enjoyed prestige, like acting as emcee for the Clayton Antique Boat Show.

Spending an evening with Dave in Alexander Bay brought back happy memories of being a big fish in a small pond.  I also realized the business lessons learned from announcing WDNY’s “McDonald’s Birthday Club” had indeed driven my judgment a decade later at PR Newswire.

Seemingly niche businesses like Dan Forbush’s nerdy academic experts service on CompuServe, ProfNet, were fascinating to me — not because of the size of his pre-Web social network but because of focus, uniqueness and the resulting fanatical loyalty of his customers .  Dan owned a niche in the same way our tiny radio station commanded respect, and a bit of cash, in Dansville. PRN bought ProfNet in 1996.

Even with all of today’s media fragmentation and demographic challenges, Dave’s stations in Dansville and Sidney continue to defy national trends by embracing a business model now known in Internet circles as hyperlocal (see Max Kalehoff’s interesting post on the definition of hyperlocal) Broadcasting play-by-play of local high school hockey and football games might only attract a few hundred listeners and minimal revenue, but the consumer loyalty among players’ families and community leaders is priceless.

The GPS-driven localization applications on my iPhone are doing their best to mimic the successes experienced by small-town media properties.  For these local media disruptors to persevere, their citizen journalist contributors will need to do much more than restaurant and bar reviews.  Yelp, Buzzd,  Prximity and Google Local, we’re waiting for you to show up at the Dogwood Festival and soccer game before we annoint you king of neighborhood media.