I’ve just learned of the passing of one of the greatest Canadian musical talents, Jeff Healey. I had the pleasure of meeting Jeff back in 1993 during one of his tours. He was one of the warmest, kindest, most down to earth people I have ever met. Anyone privileged to have ever seen him perform live knows how he was able to move his audiences with his energy and passion. He’ll be truly missed.
Making a Brand for Yourself
Here’s a guy that totally gets it. Gary Vaynerchuk, of winelibrary.tv didn’t just throw up a little web site with a few videos on it and then sit back and wait for it to go viral. He didn’t think – “gosh, nobody else is talking about wine on the Web”, because he KNEW that lots of people are out there talking about wine on the Web. Instead, he developed a brand – HIMSELF. 10,000 of the people who watch his show don’t know or care anything about wine. But they are interested in Gary. Why? I think it’s because he is not at all the kind of personality that is normally associated with a wine expert. He’s loud, bold, and cusses a lot. His abundant enthusiasm for the subject of wine is enough to draw you in, and his personality gets you hooked. The implementation of his site is fantastic. First, he’s using Viddler, my favourite new video app. Second, his site is all about how you can link up and connect with him. I follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and Viddler , I subscribe to the RSS feed for his show so it’s in my Google Reader, and if I wanted to I could follow him on LinkedIN, Pownce and Cork’d too. What does this mean? He’s EVERYWHERE! I can’t go a day without seeing some sort of update from the guy. And that doesn’t even count all of the other blog posts he’s appearing in these days. Here’s what I find really interesting about the success he’s had with the Gary Vaynerchuk brand (besides the fact that now just about everyone can spell “Vaynerchuk”). He’s had to get an agent. Mainstream media is noticing him and putting him on their shows (Ellen, Nightline, Conan, to name a few). Hollywood is calling about doing reality TV shows. As he says, mainstream media is beginning to source its new talent from the web. It’s like an open casting call out here on the Internet right now. You can be sure that the talent scouts are spending more time surfing YouTube and vlog posts than ever before. But I don’t think they are necessarily looking for the next big talent. They are looking for people who are making a brand for themselves and building their audience based on that brand. What does it mean to content producers? The time to start building your brand is NOW. Quick, before someone else does it. Watch what Gary has to say about this here: http://www.viddler.com/explore/richschefren/videos/50/
Music Video – What Makes a Man
My friend Greg Wyard, singer/songwriter extraordinaire, has a new music video for his song “What Makes a Man”. Check it out. Great song, great video, and it’s local (well, Toronto local), and independent. I just had to share it. Greg started out in Ottawa playing little local pubs and has a huge following in the city. I’ve known him for about 15 years and have witnessed his evolution from local boy to an award winning singer/songwriter. He’s a real talent, and now is making waves in Toronto with his fantastic voice, terrific songs and incredible guitar playing. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5HvylE89Zs]
Indoor Sports
It’s another ridiculously cold and snowy day in Ottawa. I was talking to a guy in Arizona the other day and where he was it was 82 degrees Fahrenheit (about 27 Celsius and yes, I had to convert that in the Google Calculator. I’m so metric.) It’s completely unfair and I can’t wait for winter to be over. There’s part of me that would like to just wallow in self pity about it but my new enlightened point of view (thanks to “A New Earth“) has taught me that wallowing is never a good idea. So instead of dwelling on the crappy weather, I decided to stay inside and cook a pile of food for the freezer. I headed out at about 7:30 this morning to hit the grocery store. Loblaws today was surprisingly busy considering it was so early and there was 15cm (almost 6 inches, yay Google!) of new snow on the ground. I was a woman on a mission. The recipes of the day? Cabbage rolls, vegetable soup, beef stew and cherry chip cupcakes. That oughta keep me out of self-pity mode for a while. It’s 12:30 and I’m about half way through the process. I’ve decided to leave the stew till tomorrow and focused this morning on the soup and the cabbage rolls. This afternoon I’ll probably make the cupcakes, but they are easy. So I’ve managed to have a pretty productive day so far, I’ve got 50 cabbage rolls, a big pot of yummy, healthy soup and I’ve gotten caught up on some tech stuff too. I thought then, I would share with you my perfect day indoors – complete with recipes! As I was cooking I was listening to net@night with Amber MacArthur and Leo Laporte. The first show put me on to Friend Feed, which is kind of a cool tool that lets you tap in to friends’ internet travels via Twitter, Flickr, their blog, etc. And it also gave me more information about my new favourite video player, Viddler, which we are experimenting with at the office now for one of our TV series. More info on that to follow soon! Now for the recipes. Thom Allen twittered me to ask what cabbage rolls were. I assumed everyone knew what cabbage rolls were! I think he is in Utah. Maybe they don’t have cabbage rolls in Utah? Well, here’s the recipe, so all you Utahns can be introduced to one of the most delicious and inexpensive to make foods EVER! Suzemuse’s World Famous Cabbage Rolls (makes about 50 – perfect for freezing!) 2 heads of green cabbage 3 lbs medium ground beef 1 medium onion, diced 3 cloves of garlic, minced 3/4 cup of Minute Rice salt and pepper 6 cans condensed tomato soup 1 large can all-purpose tomato sauce Fill a large stock pot with water, add some salt and bring to a boil. With a sharp knife, cut around the core of the cabbages so the leaves will loosen in the water. Carefully add the whole cabbages and cook for at least 20 minutes, or until the outer layers start to peel off. Meanwhile, mix the ground beef, onion, garlic, rice, salt, and pepper in a large bowl. Don’t be a wimp and use your hands for the best result. Use tongs to peel off individual cabbage leaves and drain in a colander. Take one cabbage leaf and trim off the tough spine. Place about 1/4 to 1/2 cup of the beef mixture (a smallish handful) in the cabbage leaf and roll up, tucking the ends in as you go. Place the rolls in a large roasting pan. After the first layer of rolls, cover with 3 cans of tomato soup and 1/2 of the can of tomato sauce. Repeat for second layer of rolls. Bake in a 350 degrees oven for 1 hour and 40 minutes, or until the sauce is piping hot and bubbling. Suzemuse’s Soon-To-Be-Famous Vegetable Soup makes a whole pot! Also good for freezing! 2 tablespoons olive oil 1 medium onion, diced 1 large carrot, diced 2 stalks of celery, diced 1/2 red or yellow pepper, diced (you could use green peppers, but I HATE green peppers, so don’t tell me if you do!) 2 handfuls of frozen chopped spinach 1 can of red kidney beans 1/2 cup brown rice 2 cartons organic vegetable broth a couple of sprigs of fresh thyme salt and pepper to taste In a large soup pot, sautee onion, carrot, celery, peppers and spinach in olive oil about 15 minutes, until tender. Add in the kidney beans, brown rice, thyme sprigs and broth. Simmer on med-low heat for about 45 minutes, until delicious. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Oprah's Web Event
I have a confession to make. I watch Oprah. I LIKE watching Oprah. It’s my unwind-from-a-long-day, think-about-something-completely-different, guilty pleasure. But at this moment, I’m glad, I watch Oprah. For all you non-watchers out there, Oprah is doing something cool these days in the online media space. She is touting a new Book Club Book, called “A New Earth”, by Ekhart Tolle. I don’t usually pick up the Oprah books, but I have always been interested in spirituality and religion, so yes, I picked up the book. It hasn’t transformed my life yet but it raises some very valuable and interesting concepts that I’m willing to continue to explore. But this post isn’t about the book. Do a Google for Ekhart Tolle and I’m sure you’ll find plenty of reviews. This post is about how she’s talking about the book. On March 3rd, she is hosting a “web event”, what is being called an “online classroom“. There, she and Tolle will discuss the book and take video, audio and text questions from the audience. The class will be running Monday nights (EST) over 10 consecutive weeks. As of yesterday, over 300,000 people had signed up. What I find fascinating is how this is being implemented. If one wishes to sign up for the class (which is free, by the way), they go to oprah.com and sign up for an account (And it’s nice that you can opt out of all the newsletters, etc. up front). Then you just register for the class, and at 9pm EST on Monday, March 3 you tune in. I was wondering how they were going to do this. 300,000 people (sure to AT LEAST double or even triple by next week) all logging on at the same time, can you say, crashy crashy? But today, they sent me an email prompting me to download and install the Move Networks media player onto my computer. Of course I went to check them out, and yah, these guys have pretty much got their #$*@ together. They offer superior quality (it’s spectacular) and a scaleable system that allows simultaneous streaming to millions of people at once with no crashy crashy. It also collects lots of data about the users – experiences, demographics, geography – all the juicy tidbits of information Oprah’s advertisers could dream of. They’ve got it down. As far as interactivity goes, well, viewers can record video or audio questions, and submit text questions as well. There are discussion forums so that if you are not one of the lucky few that gets to actually talk to Winfrey and Tolle, you get to talk to each other about the class and the book. Maybe I’m expecting too much, maybe not, but this seems to me like a pretty nifty idea. I’m sure it will be successful. 300,000 people, including celebrities like Jim Carrey and Valerie Bertinelli have signed up already. (The star factor will only make it more popular.) This could be the beginning of a trend with mass-market broadcasting, possibly the beginning of true interactive television. And I’m so in. Maybe I’ll get a spiritual awakening, maybe I’ll just be entertained. Maybe I’ll get both. Say what you want, but if there is anyone that can move millions with online media, it’s Oprah. I’ll let you know how it goes – but then again, you’ll probably sign up too…won’t you. 🙂
Explain RSS to Your Mom!
I love this! The other day I posed a question to the web-o-sphere – “how do I explain the power of RSS to my Mom?”. Well the web-o-sphere responded, and I got a great suggestion from theinternationale: I tend to frame RSS in terms of that old idea of the “Daily Me”. Sit down at your computer with your coffee in the morning, pull up- your Bloglines, Newsgator et al page and read the news that interests you. Brought to you from multiple sources onto a single page. But I also got comments from Scott Monty of the Social Media Marketing Blog, and Chris Brogan of chrisbrogan.com about this great video from CommonCraft, that pretty much sums it all up. So for all of you readers out there, consider this the next installment of Internet 101. Frankly, you don’t need to know much more than this to take full advantage of what the web has to offer these days. Enjoy! [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU&rel=1]
Making a Case for Social Media
James Koole from Tucows presented this afternoon at Podcamp Toronto on enhancing corporate communications through social media. Tucows is doing some really neat stuff as far as creating a social media focused web presence. He’s showing the group that it’s not rocket science and all it takes is some creative people willing to invest a bit of time to improve their company’s profile. At this session, they were talking about how to convince “the powers that be” in companies to embrace the power of social media. It’s a challenge I come across often when talking to clients. How does one make a good business case for social media? How do we communicate the real value of social media to our clients, to convince them that their corporate communications can be greatly enhanced by not only getting online but getting linked in to the industry through blogging or podcasting, or even Twittering and Uttering? As podcasters, bloggers, media creators and storytellers…what do you think our communications strategy should be?
How to Explain RSS to Your Mom
I am a virtual attendee of Podcamp Toronto 2008. Sadly I was not able to be there in person, so this is the next best thing. I just sat in on a session lead by social media guru Chris Brogan. One thing Chris is great at is putting things into a context that anyone can understand. This means he has some great quotes. Here are my Brogan-isms from the past hour: “Mainstream media is not afraid of social media, they just don’t know what to do with it.” “No one has to be granted the authority [to make a blog, a podcast, or contribute to a conversation].” “The thing about social networking is, the more we help people feel good about themselves the more they do good things.” I’ve been troubled by something for the past little while. I now consider myself to be an “intermediate” level user of social media. I’m at the point where I’m pretty well versed on many of the popular tools and sites, I have a pretty good network of social media experts around me to answer my questions and open my eyes to new things, and I now have the confidence to start talking about what I know with other people. I get RSS. I get Twitter. I get podcasting, Oovoo, and WordPress. But I can’t figure out for the life of me how to explain it all to my Mom. Ok, my Mom is a bad example because she has a Facebook page, reads blogs and uses Instant Messaging. But she is the exception of her generation, not the rule. This morning’s Podcamp session has got me thinking…social media is now becoming more mainstream, because mainstream media is starting to catch on. Fast Company is doing it. USA Today is doing it. Now, people who get their news the old fashioned way are being given an opportunity to take advantage to the biggest thing to happen on the Internet since …well…ever! My challenge is not in explaining the technology, but in explaining the VALUE. The value in using an RSS aggregator like Google Reader. The VALUE in using Oovoo to host a conversation. The VALUE in posting your own blog and contributing to other people’s blogs. Social networking is one of those things that people don’t get until they try it. So maybe, the question is..how do we get them into the social media space in the first place?
To Procrastinate or to Incubate?
Thursday Bram over at lifehack.org published an interesting post today about Fake Deadlines. It’s all about how to create deadlines for yourself where none exist (eg. a client that says “just get it done whenever!”). I’m sure we all know people who say things like that. It makes it hard to get motivated and easy to procrastinate. However, I have found a distinct advantage to procrastinating on some things. Case in point: I have a proposal to write. It’s a pretty good opportunity, and I have already come up with some great ideas for this client. But they haven’t given us a deadline. They just asked for a proposal….”just get it done whenever!”. So, another day goes by and I haven’t started to write the thing yet. I’m not usually a big procrastinator. I’ve been told that procrastination is the direct result of not having enough information. Nope, that’s not it. I have all the information I could possibly need…I have been working with this particular client for years, and I know very well what they need and how they need to do it. So why am I posting on my blog about this, instead of writing the darn proposal? I’m incubating. Now, Mom, before you go getting all excited about babies and things…it’s not that kind of incubation. Sometimes in the creative process, I need to let my subconscious work on things for a while. Instead of staring at a blank page of my open document “client_proposal_v1.doc” and wondering where to start, I need to put it aside and do something else. Write on my blog. Text message my hubby. Eat Lunch. Chit chat with my business partner about something completely unrelated to work. Maybe I even need to go home and sleep on it. Then, when I’m absolutely NOT concentrating on the task at hand, the inspiration will hit. Maybe that’s why so many of our company’s proposals get written at 11pm on a Monday night or 4am on a Saturday morning. I found myself doing this incubation process so often that now I use it as a technique. If I’m really stumped on how to start something, I put it away. Let it fester in the back regions of my brain for a few hours, or even a few days (sometimes not having a deadline is a blessing in disguise!). Then, when I come back to the project, the words just flow. Try incubation next time you get stumped on a creative task. You’ll be surprised how doing nothing about it can make for a much better end result.
Public Editing: Many Heads are Better than One
Timothy Ferriss, best-selling author of The Four Hour Work Week, has a great idea. He is engaging his readers as editors of the next edition of his book (due out in 2008 or 2009). How is he doing it? He’s published a wiki where people can login and make suggestions for new content, updated information or new concepts. The incentive? He’ll pick the best contributor and acknowledge them in the book, AND give them a round trip plane ticket anywhere in the world, AND he’ll help you plan your getaway (Tim is the KING of the mini-retirement and how to make the most of adventure travel). This strikes me as another way that a community can be powerful. Tim is working on the premise that “many heads are better than one.” It’s possible he’s suffering from the effects of having looked at his manuscript a few too many times, and can’t see the forest for the trees. I get that way with my video projects. It’s possible to be too close to a thing, and you need someone else’s perspective to make it better. Tim has taken this to the extreme, by enlisting his community of readers to help him edit his book via the web. It’s easy enough to get involved. Just get yourself a copy of The Four Hour Work Week and read it. No, not just so you can show off your editing prowess and potentially get some free stuff, but because it’s actually a really great book! It totally changed my perspective on being a businessperson. It transformed me from being the “doer” to being the “creator” in my business and as a result I am much happier, content, and therefore successful in my business. And I take a lot more spa days, long lunches, and coming soon, mini-retirements than I used to! Tim is not really looking for style suggestions (I’m sure he gets enough of those from his professional editors). He’s looking for the following, according to his wiki: “I am particularly interested in additional resources, outdated or incorrect web addresses (URLs), and any errors or ways to clarify confusing parts. I’m not so much interested in stylistic changes, but all suggestions for improvement are valued. I want the book to be up-to-date and full of the latest resources and innovations. No spamming or affiliate URLs are permitted, and if you suggest a company you are involved with in any respect, please state so in brackets [ ] or it will be deleted. Be upfront.” This form of community contribution is something I hope to see more of in the future. Maybe this concept can be expanded beyond the bestseller. Maybe my next TV script could be thrown up on a wiki for the masses to pick at? Or maybe just my next blog post? Or web design idea? I would be fascinated to see what people have to contribute to my creative processes. What do you think? Would you consider making a contribution to someone else’s creative work? If so, how would you feel if your suggestions were used? Or not used?