Here’s a wonderful Spike Jonze mini-doc on Al Gore and family. It’s only 13 minutes and worth watching in its entirety. It paints just the right picture of the Gores, albeit a few years too late.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-29385328971143264&q=al+gore
Having spent many years in New Jersey, I completely sympathize with the filmmakers of the following. These guys got together and obeyed the speed limit in Atlanta and brought a major highway to a standstill. Danger, potential loss of life and limb, damage to property, everything you look for in a sound traffic system. This is five minutes long and worth a watch!
The marketing world is abuzz with the notion of blogging and podcasting as tools for greater saturation, visibility, touch, whatnot. We’ve been hasing out some of those concepts around here and I thought I’d take a minute to outline them.
I started experimenting with podcasting last month for a public relations course I just wrapped up. It was a small class, a good one full of guinea pigs for my tech machinations. The course is offered as a hybrid — on ground one week, online three weeks, on ground one week — so I pitched to the students that it might be a fun experiement to try podcasting my online lectures for the three weeks we’re not together.
Using GarageBand, a new condenser microphone, a PreSonus breakout box, and my previously typed lectures as my scripts, I jumped in. The feedback was wonderful. I had students telling me that the whole concept changed the way they interact with the content. That they gather around their computer with their families and listen together — a la some sort of post-modern “Fireside Chat”.
Hyperbole aside, it helped me, too. Being able to provide the tone of the lecture along with the slides allowed me to connect with the material in a new way, to connect in a way I hadn’t experienced with the traditional on ground lectures to boot. They’re focused. They’re tangible. They’re tactile, in a strange way, knowing that the students are out there warehousing my material on their iPods makes the whole process brilliantly fused with distance education.
When I finally took the lid off my little experiment for University administration, the response was guarded, but positive. While the technology was dazzling — certainly dazzling to those who have no experience with this sort of wizardry day-to-day — the cynics and technical folks rallied against the concept for every reason you can probably already imagine: too expensive to host, too expensive to serve, can’t put University intellectual property on a publicly accessible site, etc, etc, etc.,
But it sparked dialog, and gave me a soapbox to talk about this technology from a PR perspective. Here are my points:
The Whims of Professional Media
The PR role is a tricky one. Aligning an organization’s message with the needs of the media public is not an easy job. To do it well, it requires a mind-numbingly detailed awareness of media outlets in the markets and within that understanding, a grasp of the timeliness of news as it passes through the public filter. When hard news is heavy, when trends fall out of favor, getting your pitches acknowledged can be chronically difficult.
Our contract and in-house PR pros are wonderful. They get it. They understand our message and they drive to spread the word by defining and crafting messages and delivering stories to media outlets with whom they have a sound history — a relationship. But if the news cycle drives our segment out of the spotlight, our story is canned no matter how strong the reporter relationship is.
What this technology delivers organizations is opportunity. Opportunity to define and craft your messaging, define your core audience, and deliver your message yourself in a cost effective medium. Organizational PR pros can now control the distribution of their messages and take advantage of timeliness and targeting that compliments the news cycle, not combats it.
Transparent Relationships
I’m a subscriber to the idea that markets are conversations. The brains that have lead the charge on that front are certainly greater pros than I at this stuff. So, what I have to say here really serves to amplify a point that I’m not satisfied is trumpeted loudly enough.
Publics expect the conversation.
Marketers do their level best to figure out how to start the conversation because it feels like value-added to let our customers in on our little secrets. Value-added is no longer of value, it’s assumed. If we stand on our walls and open doors for minions to enter and behold our inner-workings, we’re shuttering the rest of the world — we’re inviting the masses to go elsewhere, to find the conversation.
We’re not doing our customers any favors by building transparency into our operations. We’re doing just what they have expected all along.
Ignorance is Alienation
The time to start the dialog is yesterday. The technology is far too easy to adopt, to build upon, to produce passable content. With another day that goes by, so goes another of our peers leveraging these tools against us. The generation we’re marketing with, the Echo Boomers, Millenials, Flip-Floppers, Thumbers, they are already the MySpace generation. They’re raised on distance education. They’ve studied their online games, they’ve IM’d across fanboards and now they’re Skyping all around us while we’re just getting used to DSL.
Content
But it’s more than just the technology. Right now, blogs are read if they’re pertinent. Podcasts are devoured because they’re cool. If that timeline persists, blogs should be completely outmoded in three years and podcasting will be a vast new advertising sponsored audiovisual black hole. Popularity will be defined by utility: the level at which we’re able to deliver use beyond cool.
Here are a few things I’m working on right now.
They’re weather balloons, but we’re doing our best to get on board now. Does the organization understand it? No. Is it our charge to push, and keep pushing until they do? Absolutely. Our customers expect it.
A new feature to the iTunes Music Store is users’ ability to purchase an iPod completely through iTunes. Why is this important? Several internet critics have speculated that the iTMS browser is the future of the internet: easy-to-use, simple, and graphically pleasing. This is one more step towards making iTMS a web browser.
Agreed. I’ve been thinking about this for some time. We need an iTunes Software Store, iTunes Amazon Store, iTunes eBay Store, and so on, and so on. This interface works because of the trick of the eye — you don’t believe you’re online when you’re in it. The metaphore of your iTunes library allows you to be in the sale without knowing it — just click on an artist in your library and POOF, you can buy more just like that.
This is one of those wonderful ads that cuts to the core of what it means to be a dad for me. Of course, this is coming from a guy whose primary purpose in breeding is to develop smaller versions of myself for movie buddies. As it is, many thanks to the Ad Council for this kind of positive reflection and cinematic genius!
Technorati Tags: Fatherhood
Hat’s off to Lewey Geselowitz. I never played Quake 2 — believe it or not, I was a Deep Space 9 guy — but this is the coolest mod I’ve seen for a game yet. Crazy, crazy — I actually expect a dragon to pop out, or an American eagle, or Pamela Anderson.
“Quake II AbSIRD is a modification of the standard Quake II rendering engine so that it can create SIRDS instead of normal 3D environments. This means that you can play Quake II just as you normally would (single player, network play, most mods, etc) except all the 3d objects and characters will jump out at you with the full 3D power of SIRDS.”
Jump out, yeah. I still can’t quite figure out how your visual acuity is affected by mutants with chainsaws. I know my reaction time ain’t that great.
Apparently, real researchers have finally found the rosetta stone of public speaking, and it’s intercourse. That’s right, all your visions of fright and peril are awash in a warm glow with only a quick brush of love in the back seat.
Volunteers who’d had PVI [penile-vaginal intercourse – ed.] but none of the other kinds of sex were least stressed, and their blood pressure returned to normal faster than those who’d only masturbated or had non-coital sex. Those who abstained had the highest blood-pressure response to stress.
Check out the new truth here. Then get busy.
For those who don’t know much about University of Phoenix marketing, if you haven’t run across a banner or pop-up, let me bring you up to speed. Organization’s like UOP are cost per lead shops; advertising has only as much value to the company as can be assigned each individual new prospect on a volume basis. For example, if we do 20,000 blow-in inserts in a market that costs us $10,000 and see a return on that of 50 new leads, our cost per lead is $200. If we do a direct mail drop to 75,000 that costs us $30,000 and we see 200 leads, our cost per lead is $150. Internet? I’ll spare you the volume, but shooting for a cost per lead between $45 and $80 is pretty darned good. These are all just broad strokes examples.
A List Apart: Articles: Web 3.0: Yeah, I read Zeldman. Most of the time, I don’t understand him. In this case, I don’t understand him.
Until the end. Then it all comes together and affects me. If you are wondering what AJAX is, this isn’t the piece for you. If you’re wondering whether it’s OK to keep going to work in the morning and serve your customers with integrity even though you haven’t stumbled on the next Pet Rock, give it a read. That Zeldman. Good guy.
Sophie’s in school, if I haven’t said anything about that already. She’s attending the Goddard School in our neighborhood four days a week. So far, we’re thrilled about the experience. Sophie loves it, she’s making some good little friends and the program brings the world to her, right in the playground: everything from the Oregon Zoo’s petting zoo program to the Children’s Museum.
Each week, the kids work on one letter of the alphabet. They write it, the bring things to school that begin with that letter, etc, then they bring homework that consists of tracing pages full of dashed glyphs of that letter for them to trace.
This is good stuff.
The Myth of the Product Adoption Lifecycle
One of the giant insights of the new marketing is that the only way to introduce a new idea is to move across the curve. Sell to the little tail, they tell the next group, which passes the word on to the mass market. That’s why the little tiny green tail is so valuable… these are the people who are listening, these are the people who will become your marketing force.
So, where’s the myth?
The myth is that marketers think these people actually care.
People don’t care, certainly not about marketers.
There was a time when bots were all the rage. I remember instant messaging with bots a decade ago through the university research departments that were attempting to simulate human intelligent conversation. They were charming enough, but you could always stump them with curses.
Soon after, the major players started using them to help customer call flow and voice response systems. Annoying little beasts that can’t understand the slightest hint of Jersey accent still pick up with Verizon, Sprint, Comcast, you name it — the list goes on.
But check this out. John Battelle writes a bit about the MakeBot, and instant messaging search utility that links the RSS of these particular sites with a back-end search function allowing access to site updates through your IM client of choice — providing, I assume, it’s AIM compatible. I’ve signed up to get the boingboing.net feed update every two hours and so far it works swimmingly.
But wait, there’s more! To see this really take off, add MovieFone to your AIM buddy list and type a bit. This bot allows you to search the MovieFone database by title, location, theater, whatever, all through your IM client. I find it faster — far faster — than checking the site through the web. All I need to do is type 1 – 4 – Y – 1 to see a list of movies and times at my favorite theater in my neighborhood. It’s the Century Cinemas over at Cedar Hills, the one that serves warm KettleKorn instead of lameass movie popcorn. Of course, the bot remembers the last time I ran a search and so my zip is still cookie’d somehow, which cuts down my keystrokes.
The implications of this sort of connectivity are huge. It has the potential to have the same impact on customer service than online billpay had five years ago: it eliminates a simple problem with an elegant solultion. With billpay, it eliminated the hassle of managing checks and stamps with a few mouse clicks and auto-payment schedules. With MovieFone, it eliminates the interactive voice response program on the phone and the graphical nonsense and ad programs of the sites with a convenient and unobtrusive “buddy.”
Would advertising play? In a heartbeat. As John mentions, Google is probably salivating over this program. For me, the more interesting implications are in teaching remedial programs to university students. For example, we’ve completely automated our grammar tool online with 90+% accuracy. What if students could open their IM client of choice and paste in a paragraph to the GrammarBot, and receive a near-instantaneous response with corrections, suggestions, tips, and tools? More important, what if a student could submit passages to a PlagiarismBot and get a Google search return of the top ten sites with 85% or greater likeness?
Ah, the heady odeur of success.
Or, whatever.
This year, as my Christmas present from the office, I got promoted. That’s right, it’s the best Christmas present ever, if you’re on the look-out for a bright new pair of golden, fuzzy, warm, vibrating handcuffs.
When Sophie was gestating (I *heart* gerunds), I kept a fairly rigorous blog on the whole becoming a father process. I was a complete nut about it and thought, somehow, others would be as interested in the inner-workings as I was. In hindsight, the whole thing was clearly more for me which is, I think, as it should be.
Things are officially changing again. Kira is now 20 weeks along with our second child, heretofore referred to as “Seed2″ (sic) and today we saw the pictures. (Note new banner text on this page. It is so very 2001: A Space Odyssey.)
Some background. If you’ll recall, the last time we did this whole baby thing, it was a pretty traditional birth. Kira got herself knocked up, we went to class, we did the homework, we scheduled the birth, induced, and Sophie exploded from between Kira’s legs like a live turkey in hot oil. That’s the Cliff’s Notes version, anyway. Short story shorter: we had a doc in a hospital.
This time, we’re going water birth. What does that mean, you ask? Excellent question. I don’t know much, but what I hear is that they give birth in a bathtub and the baby comes out smooth and happy and doesn’t cry. That’s what it says on the brochure anyway. Thing is, I remember the last birth. Don’t get me wrong because I’m all about the whole earth birth process, but there was a whole bunch of thrashing and tossing about, not to mention the gallons of *mess* involved. Doing this in a tub… isn’t there some danger of drowning?
Clearly, I have a lot of research to do before I weigh in on this one way or another. Which, of course, will do me no good whatsoever since Kira’s already made up her mind and last I checked, I’m not so pregnant, myself.
We’re doing this whole thing up at OHSU. That’s the Oregon Health Sciences University high up on Markham hill here in Portland. Imagine Hogwart’s, but a hospital that houses thousands of doctors, nurses, students, and sick people with all their cars all pouring off of a hill. It’s not entirely dissimilar from the Cistine Chapel on the head of a pin, though the Cistine Chapel is smaller. We’ve been there once so far and when we finally made to the actual office, it was great. There was some walking, tunneling, shimmying, and sneaking to do it, but we made it.
Today, we had to start on one end of the campus with the Ultrasound people. They put us on this super cool, super new Phillips(TM) Sono-Wonder 9000 with this perfectly clear high resolution display and many wires and buttons. It also had a trackball, which I see as an homage to devices gone by: heart-warming, that.
They lubed Kira up with the warm jelly and started the procedure. And there it was. Seed2.
I’ve been having a hard time, honestly, getting my head around having a second child. I’m an only child, you see? I was pretty used to having my folks all to myself and since they didn’t have a whole lot of choice either, they had me to hang with. The relationship we’ve established over the years has come to be very powerful and important to me, and I’d always imagined that I’d be able to establish the same with my only child.
Kira has a sister.
Sitting there, looking at that screen, brought the whole thing back to me. The late nights, the logistics, the money, the diapers, it was all so crystal clear at that moment. The first time I caught Sophie standing up in her crib. The first time she smiled. The first time I got to take her to a movie.
I remember talking about kids with my boss. He has four. He told me that I’d be surprised when the second one comes around because I’d find that I wouldn’t have to split my love between them; somehow, somewhere, more love appears.
All these moments with Sophie, they were gifts, every one of them. And today, I caught up with them all while looking at that screen, at Seed2, and somehow, somewhere, love appeared.
The technician was fantastic. She showed us the face, the legs and arms, the little hands opening and closing. For what they could see, the baby is in fine shape. Spine is closed, brain is closed, lip is non-cleft, the world is all put together. With as much “Grey’s Anatomy” we’ve been watching, we’ve been starting to wonder how these little things get put together in one piece; word has it, they come together more often than they don’t.
We didn’t want to know the sex. I’ve been telling people that it’s because the whole experience of telling the world that “It’s a Girl!” was so spiritual the first time around. Then, we were in that room and it all changed. I wanted to know. I wanted to know something awful. I tried to talk about it out loud, my change of heart, but I got the smackdown from Kira. So be it.
After the ultrasound, they have one of the doctors from the high-risk baby unit come in and debrief us. We had Dr. Trosos, a nice generically foreign guy who tells us that the baby is fine. With all they could see, there were no problems. That by the time we get back to the midwife, his comments would be in the computer and that we could review the detail with her. Again, so be it.
We hike back to the midwife. She’s nice, new to us, but charming. She introduced us to a cool new pharmacy with naturopathic pharmacists. I didn’t know they made those.
There’s the midwife, reading through the results from Dr. Trosos. “This is fine with that. This is aligned with this correctly. The baby is developing this and that fine, and all of this is aligned with her this.”
Catch that? I’ll repeat the salient point: “… all of this is aligned with her this.” Then she says, “Oh, so you’re having a little girl!”
Yeah, the midwife read that part out loud and confirmed it. Kira remained calm. I was, oh, boiling over inside that fate was on my side with this one. Kira says, “Well, we didn’t want to know that.” Then, the back-peddling began. The poor midwife was dancing. “Oh, I’ve never seen this before, I’m sure he didn’t mean it, back-peddle, back-peddle, back-peddle, it’s probably wrong.”
And there’s room for that, too, of course. Before you get all hung up on the fact that it must be a girl, like I am, there’s a good chance that the good foreign Dr. Trosos did not actually know the gender. After all, he didn’t see the whole ultrasound. The only way he would have known is if the tech actually told him, right? And according to her, she doesn’t remember gender up to five minutes after the session. And you know, the doctor could have been referring to Kira.
So, could it have happened? Could she have walked out, handed the file to the Doc and said, “So, this is for a little baby girl in exam room two.” I like to think there’s room in this reality.
There it is. There you have it. That’s the story. I’m sure there will be more in the coming weeks. That, and I’ll have to get some good Sophie updates here before too long. She’s three, and a
ll she really wants me to do any more is check her poop before she flushes it.
So be it.
