Apperceive

Road Trip, Fall 2009 - Part I

Markus Sandy — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 05:20:27 +0000

We're off with the dogs on another adventure, visiting state parks in California, New Mexico and Texas. Thanks to Didj and Sharms for looking after our home and kitty friends. We're going down to the gulf coast again to visit with family and because it's Oyster season!

Check out twitter for updates and flickr for pics and vids.

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Drupal Quest

Markus Sandy — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 05:23:56 +0000

We're planning a road trip to Drupal-Con 2009 in Washington, DC and to the Show-In-A-Box Hangout-A-Thon in Virginia. Here is the proposed route so far. It's still in flux, so things may change, but it's starting to take shape. Still lots to do to this map. Photos are here on Flickr. Twitter updates in the blog sidebars. Stay tuned...

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Super Happy Vlog House III

Markus Sandy — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 06:37:30 +0000

It's time for the third annual Super Happy Vlog House at the Ojai Digital Dojo. Saturday, February 7, 2009, 2pm-11pm.

Here's a Flickr slideshow of pictures from past Super Happy Vlog Houses...

Update: We had a blast! New photos added below...

What's a vlog house? It's a place where people geek out over audio & video, software, poetry, music, story-telling, television, web sites, new media and technology in general. We get together to share and learn, to have fun, to take a walk, get things done and break bread.

Last year there was quite a bit of interest in learning about Drupal. This year, we are planning a whole workshop around "Planning your next social media site". Each of workshop leaders have experience building Drupal and Wordpress sites.

More info on the Ojai Digital Dojo site.

Santa Barbara Drupal Meetup

Markus Sandy — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 22:32:17 +0000

Click to play Quicktime version | More formats: blip.tv and archive.org

We had a nice Drupal meetup in Santa Barbara last night. A few of us started out at the Goleta Sushi House and then moseyed up the street to the Java Station, both on Hollister Ave. Attendees included chris (christefano), lee, jason, joe, felicia, joe (artlung), jim, owen (grugnog2) and myself (markus). Topics included introductions, current projects and interests, wysiwyg editing, drupal 5 vs drupal 6 and finding drupal developers. A fun time and free wi-fi were had by all :) Special thanks to Christefano and Lee for organizing the event.

RemixAmerica

Markus Sandy — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:36:55 +0000

I saw a post today in the Yahoo Videoblogging Group about RemixAmerica.com. This is a nice looking video site. Check it out. They use the Kaltura player. Here's a blast from the past from the site featuring Rammondy Massey in a 1964 Goldwater spot.

I've participated in several remix collaborations with videobloggers and it can be a lot of fun. Carp Caviar is one of my favorite examples. What are your favorite remixes? What remix tools are you looking for?

Wow! I went to look up the url for Carp Caviar and found a Bottom Union RemixAmerica Interview! Too cool. Leave it to Eric to be on top of it already :)

Kaltura

Stowe Boyd on Web 2.0 Marketing and PR

Markus Sandy — Thu, 15 May 2008 16:33:53 +0000

What's Happening in Marketing (WHIM) interviews Stowe Boyd about changes in how people and in the way companies can market themselves and their products.

via tweet from johnkellden

Social Media for Social Change Behind the Nonprofit Firewall

Markus Sandy — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:55:47 +0000

Check out Beth Kanter's blog for a great discussion about social media adoption and management culture in larger organizations. Here is a quick presentation that Beth points to on the basics of social media from Sacha Chua

What the 2.0 in Web 2.0 Means

Markus Sandy — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 12:50:51 +0000

A number of my friends have encouraged me to post something regarding what I have observed about the meaning of the "2.0" in "web 2.0"

There are lots of articles on the web about "what is web 2.0" and how it differs from web 1.0 (or 1.5, etc.). From my experience, it is simply this:

Web 2.0 applications generally cost at least twice as much as web 1.0 applications.

Why? Simply because most web 1.0 applications required a degree of system administration, while web 2.0 applications also require community administration. Building, deploying and administering an application is not enough to ensure it's success these days...

In terms of people, you now need both someone to administer the application and someone to manage the community aspects of the site. Social networking sites often require significant investment in time and effort by community reps. Simply answering support questions, posting and replying to comments and forums (both on and off-site) takes time. Being a contributing member of a community takes time and the application provider's community manager is the most likely to set the standard and continually raise the bar.

Budget for this.

I shudder to think what Web 3.0 will bring ;)

Los Angeles Barcamp Geek Dinner at uWink

Markus Sandy — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 05:10:03 +0000

We had a great time last night at the monthly barcampLA geek dinner at the hi-tech uWink restaurant in Woodland Hills. Lots of new and old friends. Good food, fun demos and give-aways.

Thanks to our uWink hosts and special thanks to organizers hvst, ccg, boogah and mjlambie.

Check out heathervescent's feb geek dinner recap. Here's a video I made from the event.

The next Los Angeles barcamp is coming up March 1&2 at AOL. Geek dinner's are every third Tuesday at 8pm. The next one is March 18th at Canter's deli.

Click the pic to view the vid

Super Happy Vlog House II

Markus Sandy — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 07:41:15 +0000

Lan Bui just iChatted and said that a group of OC'ers had gotten together recently and been thinking how great it would be to have another Super Happy Vlog House at the Ojai Digital Dojo. Nuff said. It's set for the weekend of Feb 16th. Feel free to come by anytime that weekend from Fri-Sun. Come and make video or spiff up your vlog. Beginners to advanced...

Photography and podcasting/audio buffs too, plus geeks and nerds of all kinds. Rooms and couches are available, plus camping and RV spots. All are welcome. Pot luck. Free, but please RSVP so we can plan. Pool, spa, bbq, firepit, bathrooms, wireless, kitchen, large meeting room with projector.

Update: I made some minor changes on the wiki to reflect this year's date. Have at it and make it your own.

Update #2: While a Super Happy Vlog House is generally a fairly unstructured event, we do have some planned activities for those that are interested. Here is a general outline of some times and events for Saturday, Feb 16th:

8am-10am: coffee, breakfast, pre-day organizing

10am-12am: workshop: intro to videoblogging

12pm-2pm: photo/video walk in ventura river preserve, lunch, discussions

2pm-4pm: workshop: setting up your own videoblog show, content, tools, audience, statistics and more

4pm-6pm: siesta, work on a video, take a swim in the pool or spa, drinks, snacks, music, one-on-one time

6pm-7pm: potluck dinner/bbq, open source music

7pm-9pm: special live, mixed video and music performance and discussion

9pm-11pm: vlog screenings and discussions

11pm-9am: whatever, it's a sleep over (or work on a video all night), roasting marshmallows, stuff like that.

9am sunday: coffee and breakfast

[Digital Dojo]

Laurel Springs School Distance Learning Video Contest

Markus Sandy — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 16:46:11 +0000

Tyler Suchman asked if I'd help judge a YouTube video contest for Laurel Springs School for distance learning, which is based in here in Ojai. Over forty students from around the world participated by submitting a one-minute video essay about why home schooling is cool. There were several age categories and one grand prize winner. This was a great experience and i learned a lot about how to efficiently and carefully review so many videos, but also came to realize that the task was fundamentally no different than reviewing as many student term papers or projects.

I'm amazed at how many people seem to raise an eyebrow to home schooling. I think it is because they associate it with people who have pulled their kids out for religious reasons. Watch the videos and find out the real reason. As though it wasn't obvious. Who the heck wants to sit in most boring, public, school classrooms. Now I know there are some good teachers out there in public schools, but both of them are way past retirement age :)

Seriously though, distance learning is about doing your own thing and taking control of your own education. These kids rock!

Side note: when I turned in my votes, I added a nice little comment that I thought some smart marketing person would pick up on. They did! They asked if they could include it in their press release. Gotcha!

“I thought all of the kids did a fantastic job showing why they think homeschool is cool. These students are
definitely creative and enjoy the freedom that homeschool allows,” said Markus Sandy, a software
developer, teacher and videoblogger, who served as a judge. “The freedom to learn was a resounding
message the students portrayed in their videos.”

Drupal as a Framework for a Social Context Engine

Markus Sandy — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 12:17:35 +0000

Richard Schave from the LA Drupal Group discusses how Drupal might be used to help relate and recommend content. Here's a video recording of Richard's Los Angeles Drupal Camp 2007 session.

Click the pic to view the vid

Formats: Quicktime (iPod), Quicktime (iPhone), Quicktime (Flash)

Sites: archive.org, ourmedia.org

Drupal and Open Source

Markus Sandy — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 07:05:34 +0000

Our good friend Jacob Redding stopped by to participate at DrupalCampLA 2007. He gave us a brief open source, pep talk during the opening session. Good stuff. Since then, I met Richard Stallman at BarCampLA 2007 and have become more interested in open source, and more importantly, "free" software. Here's a video recording of Jacob's presentation.

Click the pic to view the vid

Formats: Quicktime (iPod), Quicktime (iPhone)

BarcampLA - Mike - wifi shirt

Markus Sandy — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 17:17:02 +0000

LA Drupal

Markus Sandy — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 23:40:50 +0000

Mike explains Drupal issue queue for the group.

Party in Ojai

Markus Sandy — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 19:18:58 +0000

Santa Barbara Indie CoOp meeting

Markus Sandy — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 21:38:31 +0000

Sent from my iPhone

Show in a Box Hack-a-thon

Markus Sandy — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 03:45:05 +0000

Show in a Box, originally uploaded by msandy.

We had a hack-a-thon for http://showinabox.tv Here's Cheryl & Verdi hacking the theme.

Drupal for Web Designers

Markus Sandy — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 22:19:16 +0000

Some web designer friends have been asking "What is Drupal? I have a client who mentioned it". Here is a quick run-down on what Drupal is and how web designers interact with it.

What is Drupal?

Drupal is an open-source, content management system that has many great features that make it useful in building dynamic, data-driven, web sites. It has many popular social networking features such as tagging, friends, member profiles and blogs, in addition to forums and comments. It also provides support for so-called Web 2.0 technologies such as AJAX and web services from Google, Yahoo! and others.

Click "Read more" link to view the entire article

We used Drupal to build this site :-)

How do web designers work with Drupal?

A theme is generally a folder containing template files (.tpl.php), style sheets (default is style.css), javascripts (.js), static images, flash movies, etc, a screen snapshot, a description and an optional file named. template.php used to customize theme data and behavior. Template files (.tpl.php) determine how pages and their components are displayed. These files consist of mainly XHTML, with some PHP tags that are replaced with data like menus, content, sidebar blocks, header, footer, etc.

There are several methods for customizing a Drupal site. One generally starts with an existing theme, makes a copy to the /sites/all/themes/yourtheme folder and then modifies the associated files as follows.

Use the administration panel to select a theme and set logo, favicon, title, slogon and mission. Some color choices can be made here, but most designers will want more control than this.
Modify or override the theme's CSS. Look for style.css and possibly others, such as layout.css
Modify the HTML in the theme's template files such as page.tpl.php and node.tpl.php (nodes are Drupal's name for pages, posts, articles, etc.). This is similar to modifying a blog template, it's mainly HTML with some special tags to indicate where to place the dynamically generated content.
Modify the template.php file to define new template files of functions. This requires some PHP programming knowledge to do most things, however there are many cool and useful "snippets" on the Drupal site that you can just cut and paste. The snippets are also great for learning PHP and the inner workings of Drupal. If that is not your cup of tea, plan on partnering with a Drupal developer who knows PHP.
Drupal has some powerful extensions (called modules) that can facilitate certain design needs. This includes the front page module that allows for custom splash screens, the views module which allows for custom reports, contemplate for creating content templates with custom fields, panels for common layouts. If one is familiar with PHP, one can also create custom modules that are used in conjunction with your theme to achieve your particular goal. Sometimes modules include CSS files and over-ride themes.

There are many more features and ways to customize Drupal, but this should give an overview of the main options. For more details, explore the resources below.

Drupal resources for web designers

How does Drupal work?

Drupal is a content management system written in PHP. PHP is a popular, server-side, scripting language. Drupal uses a database to store content and information about the site and it's configuration. Many Drupal sites use MySQL for a database and many run Linux operating systems and Apache web servers. This is referred to as a LAMP stack (Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP). These are popular because they are built from open-source software, however some sites use Drupal and run other operating systems (e.g., Max or Windows) and databases (Postgress, Oracle, etc).

Depending on the setup, little of this should matter to web designers. Web designers will mainly be concerned with having easy access to theme files that they wish to modify. The workflow for this can vary from project to project. It is always wise to have a development server where you can test your work before deploying to the live server. Theme files are often accessed via FTP or other protocols like WebDAV. Some projects utilize source control and you may need to check files in and out of a repository using tools like CVS.

Theming Drupal is somewhat similar to customizing blogs like Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad and Movable Type. Most themer's seem to prefer text editors over tools like DreamWeaver, but then again I'm a coder and may not have the best POV.

Some graphic artists just produce mockups and graphic elements, expecting to hand them over to a Drupal themer This means that someone must figure out the CSS and HTML necessary to achieve the desired result. Generally speaking, Drupal is not designed with a primary goal of "everything must look the same on every browser version on every operating system" so don't expect to slice and dice an image and slap it into some tables. Instead, Drupal emphasizes web standards that provide for accessible content under all conditions. The person who does this work is the themer. The best themers are comfortable with tools like Photoshop, Flash, CSS, HTML and are not afraid of a little PHP and Javascripting. Many good themers team up with a developer familiar with the scripting tools.

Designers have to think more dynamically and be aware of how Drupal assembles a page for display. There is much power in learning "the Drupal way" though an understanding of how to get Drupal to create the page you want to see.

Newspaper Sites with Drupal

Markus Sandy — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 03:32:20 +0000

There seems to be more and more interest in using Drupal for newspaper sites and since several people have been asking, I wrote up some notes on that topic. Here are some example sites, features, resources and things to consider.

Some basic questions to ask include:

How will the site be used? What are the workflows or use cases?
What roles do different people play? Who are the actors in your story?
How many people do you expect to visit your site each day, week, month?
Do you have existing content or accounts that needs to be considered?
Do you need to integrate the newspaper site with other systems and services (e.g., advertisements, classifieds or paid subscriptions)?

Click "Read more" link to view the entire article

Drupal-based examples

Standard features

Basic content management (add/edit/publish pages, articles and blog posts, revisions, feeds, archives, aggregation, menus, files, headers, footers, sidebar blocks, search)
Basic user accounts, registration, passwords, profiles, forums, comments and personal blogs, friends, role-based access control and permissions (see below)
Typical newspaper roles:
- Content contributors
- Editors
- Publishers
- Administrators
- Paid subscribers
- Registered members
- Visitors
Categories, keywords and taxonomy, free-tagging (e.g., News, Weather, Sports, Events, Business, etc)
Contact form

Additional features

Custom forms
Workflows, actions
Events, calendar
Groups/channels
Custom reports
Letters to the editor
Email newsletters
Search engine optimization
Social networking
Translation and multilingual
Site maps
More...

Widgets

Rotating Ads - sidebars and banner
Google Ads
Google Ad Sense
Local Weather
Calendar/Events
Related stories
Cartoons
Maps

E-commerce and external services

Paid subscriptions
Classified ads
Personal ads
Store

Media and content

Photos
Video
Podcasts/Audio
Content recommendation engines
Printing, PDF's

Other considerations

Administration (servers, site, data, community, support, affiliates, store, etc.)
Hosting, Bandwidth, Storage
Traffic and Reporting (average daily visitors, referrers, etc)
Theming (custom presentation templates)
Setup of initial system, custom fields and content
Export and Import of existing sites or data
Spam, Moderation, etc

Articles and resources

DrupalCampLA

Markus Sandy — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 07:29:47 +0000

DrupalCampLA was a blast! Thanks so much to all that participated and especially to Crystal for leading the charge and doing much of the heavy lifting. Roland took a lot of cool photos. Here's one I like, of course. Vlogger at work.

Video and Drupal

Markus Sandy — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 22:59:24 +0000

Here are some notes I pulled together for a discussion on "Video and Drupal" for Drupal Camp LA.

Probably one of the biggest challenges to using Drupal to share, display and distribute video is to make a choice from all the available tools. It's best to start of with some questions about how you intend to use video in your application or community. Once you have performed this brief self-analysis, you can consider one of many possible approaches...

Some Questions To Ask

Who is audience for your video content? How will they use it? (e.g., browsing political video archives vs. searching demo reels for video production teams).
Who will post? User submitted? Admins or members? Access/permissions on Javascript and embeds.
Who will host? Hosting services or your own? Capacity? Size and format limits?
What formats do you need/want to support? Transcoding services?
What kind of (meta)data do you wish to collect? Embeds vs. CCK. License info.
What version of Drupal are you running?

Some Approaches To Consider

Cut and paste code from sites like Archive, YouTube or blip.tv
- Requires near full HTML posting permissions
Cross-post from blip.tv
- Screen snap shots of cross-posting process.
- What is XML-RPC end-point for your site?
- Gotchas: default input format and teasers.
Filter urls and tags
- May conflict with other filters
Fill out a form
- What data? CCK? emfield?
- How render (teasers, blocks, views)? Contemplate?
- Hosting provider support in emfield
Upload a file as a node attachment
- How copy path to a field?
- Drupal settings effecting uploading files (by role).
- Display progress bar in new Drupal versions.
- How add to feed?
- How add metadata? License?
- Storage location?
- What formats supported?
Discovery
- XML feeds & cron jobs
- Page scraping (leech, parsnig). See tools.ourmedia.org
- Aggregation / Feeds

Some Discussions & Articles

GDO: Video contents with Drupal: my analysis - Feb 2007
GDO: FLV Video Solution - July 2007
GDO: Video Content in Drupal today - Feb 2007
GDO: Youtube-like, with flash transcoding - May 2007
Handbook: Video - circa 4.7
Flash Video in Drupal 5: A complete multimedia tutorial - Feb 2007
Nick Lewis: Call for Wishlists: Using Video in Drupal - Oct 2006
A Drupal youtube Site Recipe - - Sept 2006 - From "spam: the other white meat" blog. This describes a Drupal project to create a youtube style video sharing site.

Groups.Drupal.Org

Video - This group aims to get ideas and coordinating efforts between the different people involved in the video content development. The goal is to provide drupal with an easy, powerful and extensible support for videos.
Podcasting - A place to share thoughts, ideas, questions, tips and general information about podcasting using Drupal.
RSS Aggregation - Working on the improvement of the RSS/ATOM aggregation provided by Drupal.
Flash Embedding - The focus of this group is on object embedding and, based on what is currently available, this is mainly Macromedia Flash related. There are a number Drupal modules that provide integration with Flash based media players and Javascript replacement techniques. We also welcome more general discussion about embedding techniques and conundrums which can cover Quicktime through to ActiveX if it takes your fancy.
Videocasting Drupal - This group is for learning, teaching, and coordinating videocasts about Drupal. Videocasts are one of the most effective ways to engage and teach users or potential users of Drupal and are pretty easy to make. Join this group to learn how and pitch in.

Drupal Contributed Filters

Coolfilter - This allows you to use HTML-like tags as an alternative to HTML itself for adding almost any type of media to your posts for most of modern browsers both in windows & linux easily. It can also help you make Videos on GoogleVideo,YouTube, Ifilm, VSocial etc.(many more, refer to document for detail) embedded in your drupal page.

Drupal Contributed Modules

Embedded Media Field - This extensible module will create fields for node content types that can be used to display video, image, and audio files from various third party providers.
Video - Submit videos to a Drupal site. Videos are embedded into html pages and can also be downloaded.
FlashVideo - FlashVideo is a complete video solution that expands the upload module to allow web developers and users to upload video files, automatically convert those videos to the popular Flash format, and then embed their video in any node type in the Drupal System using the simple [video] tag.
OpenPackage Video - OpenPackage Video is a set of modules for Drupal that enables video functionality for your site. Submitted videos are transcoded to FLV format so they can be viewed directly in the web browser. Transcoding either occurs locally using FFmpeg, or videos are transferred to OpenPackage.biz, transcoded and then returned to your site. To use the transcoding service on OpenPackage.biz, transcoding credit must be purchased. Transcoding locally with FFmpeg is, of course, free of charge.
Media Mover - Media Mover is a set of modules which allows website administrators to easily create complex file conversion processes.
SWF Tools - Flash embedding with simple syntax like: print swf('mymovie.swf'); and filter syntax like <swf file="mymovie.swf">. Allows you to convert a list of files into a playlist and also includes an helper functions to streamline various tasks.
Flashnode - If you just want to add Flash content to nodes without having to worry about writing any HTML or PHP then this module is for you!
Media Field - This is a bundle of two modules audiofield.module and videofield.module which are CCK fields for storing audio and video files. They are similar to filefield.module and imagefield.module fields.
Embed Filter - Many great sites like YouTube, iFilm and NowPublic allow their media assets to be served to 3rd party websites (like this one). They usually offer snippets of code to be embedded in a web page that will then load a media object (usually Flash) from their servers. This module lets your site users embed such snippets into posts but gives you the power to decide which hosts to trust.
Googtube - Googtube allows users to embed Youtube and Google Videos. When users post a url to videos on either of the two sites, the link is automatically converted to embed code.
FeedBurner - Integrates Drupal with the services provided by FeedBurner. Currently this module provides the means to redirect requests for your site's feeds to user-specified/created FeedBurner feeds. Special user agents, like FeedBurner and Feed Validator (this can be customized) are still allowed access to the direct feeds so there is no need for any special .htaccess hacking. Screen snap shots of process here
Syndication - Syndication.module offers a web page which centralizes all of the RSS feeds generated by Drupal. This helps users find interesting feeds from your web site.
RSS Remote Enclosure - RSS Remote Enclosure allows a user to attach a remote resource link (say, to an MP3 on OurMedia.org) to any node (subject to administrator perogative). The node author enters the URL and the Link Text in the appropriate textboxes, and the link appears in an <enclosure> tag in the RSS feed (complete with correct size and MIME type). The link also appears in the links area below the body of the node.
Related links - The relatedlinks module enables nodes to display related URLs to the user via blocks. Related links can be defined in 3 ways (parsed, manual, discovered).
Creative Commons - The Creative Commons module allows users to select and assign a Creative Commons license to a node and any attached content. Additionally, the site admin can select a license to assign to the entire site. This module uses the Creative Commons api (api.creativecommons.org) and can update when new Creative Commons licenses are available (for example, the more recent sampling licenses). Admins can restrict the licenses available to users, as well as require specific metadata be included.
Creative Commons (Lite) - The Creative Commons Lite module simplifies the functionality of the Drupal creativecommons module. This module allows users to add creativecommons license to any type of drupal node. License is shown as block on node view page. This has been built to make easier for user to choose creative commons licence while adding content as existing creative commons module is too complex with 2-3 steps procedure. This module does not uses any api for getting license because some license like developing nations is not supported by api.
Copyright - The copyright management module can set and display a copyright/license for a Drupal site and for any node. Licenses can be chosen from a built-in list or those added by admins. It handles URLs to the full text of the license and an associated image. Notices can be displayed in a block or site footer. Book pages can optionally set a license for all children, allowing each book or section to have its own license.
XSPF Playlist - xspf_playlist module generates a XSPF playlist from files that are attached to a node. It was designed for Jeroen Wijering's flash player, though it should work with other flash players. The admin interface allows the administrator to select what node types it works on, choose a default thumbnail file to use, and forthcoming support for CCK fields. It also supports multiple file types (audio, video, flash) that are supported by the flash player.
Acidfree - A full-featured media management system for drupal. This makes it so you can easily manage your photos and videos with drupal. Acidfree albums and media items are drupal nodes to integrate better into your system. It offers themeable drawing routines for albums and each media type so it can fit in better with the rest of your website. Items can be added individually (the drupal node-centric method) and also via a mass-import page that allows server-side directories of media to be imported or zipped, bzipped or gzipped archives to be uploaded and imported.

Drupal Contributed Distributions

FilmForge - FilmForge is a distribution (or profile) of the Free/Libre Open Source Softare content management system Drupal, tailored to the needs of videomaking communities. FilmForge makes it simple to install and run your own video sharing site. See the demo site.

Drupal Patterns

Organic Groups as media channels - channels.ourmedia.org

Free Video Hosting

Some Example Sites

Political Video - Kent Bye and Jay Dedman
Ourmedia
Filmforge
Ironweed Films
LA Drupal Embedded Media Field Examples

Some Screencasts

Adding Video To A Drupal Site - This is specific to using the video module from Awakened Voice - Social Media Services.
Drupal Videos on blip.tv
Lullabot Podcasts
The Art Lab - Drupal School - also on drupalschool.blip.tv
The Drupal Song Music Video - silly, fun - on YouTube.

Wiki Patterns

Markus Sandy — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 16:57:43 +0000

wikipatterns.com is a fantastic site that collects both best and worst practices around wiki's. There is some really spot-on information here that many people have found out through experience. Socailtext also has a Best Practices wiki and there are others, but wikipatterns brings it all together in one attractive place (is that a pattern? Maybe we should call it CoolSite).

There are a number of other excellent resource pages. In particular, I found a very useful list of articles about adoption of Web 2.0 technologies into the enterprise.

Cool badge and Creative Commons license too :)

Not sure what a wiki is? Check out this video from PBWiki:

Some great resources on Social Media

Markus Sandy — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 17:57:00 +0000

I was searching around on Flickr last night and found all kinds of nifty goodies (most of which are licensed as "public"!!!).

Notes from a presentation by David Tebbutt to the Belgian Documentation Association
Social Media Presentation
Social Media Game presentation
Social Media Game
PR 2.0
CRM2.0
Fundraising 2.0 workshop

this is social networking? both picture and notes are of interest
Facebook network graph

Here's one of the presentions:

Web 2.0 Strategies

Markus Sandy — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 17:36:28 +0000

The World Wide Web is about connectivity, communications and information access.

In the late 90's, many organizations began asking themselves "What is our web strategy?"

Countless assessments were carried out. Needs were determined. Websites were built and then rebuilt many times. Messages were honed and graphics became an essential part of most businesses. Over time, a wide array of web applications were developed and deployed. Some were actually used. Website production costs dropped or rose, depending on a variety of factors. For some, websites became a cost center and for others, websites provided new found revenue streams and avenues of communication with customers. One of the most challenging issues for larger organizations was integration of departmental resources and information into a single, cohesive portal.

Many companies took the following approach:

contract outside experts
experts hold focus groups and staff interviews
experts collect relevant data and inventory what is in place
experts present findings and recommendations
distribute summary report with a call to action

There are a number of issues with this method. More often than not, this resulted in a great education for the consultants who were contracted to carry out the assessment. While the results might be presented in a fancy report or compelling presentation, the bulk of the knowledge gained was only summarized and little was shared with the rest of the organization. Another issue that arises when commissioning needs assessments is that both management and the consultants tend to have expectations around the outcome results and hence tend to bias what is being measured. Often the results of such assessments consist of recommendations for new systems instead of considering ways to improve what is already in place. Sometimes there is difficulty in implementing outside recommendations due to a lack of internal "buy in". This process is inherently slow since it relies on the consultants to carry out their work around members schedules. Additionally, outside experts rarely have the authority, access or permissions to quickly act on group decisions. Assessments for mid to large sized organizations often ran $50-100K and implementations typically run $200,000 and above.

So, at the risk of repetition and under pressure from much marketing and news hype, organizations are prompted to ask "what is our web 2.0 strategy?"

While it might seem that Web 2.0 is about technology or social networking, Web 2.0 is more about conversation, cooperation, coordination, participation, collaboration, sharing, community, service, interactivity, openness and empowerment.

In that spirit, it makes sense to ask what one's "Web 2.0" strategy should be, but this time the answer should come from the experts that make up your organization, community or audience.

How does one do that?

The fundamental tool is face-to-face meet-ups with people that are passionate about the issues that matter to you.

Organize regular, open, publicized social meet-ups. These can be weekly coffee or a monthly dinner. Invite interesting guests. Provide wi-fi and food. Do it somewhere fun. Start conversations with people around topics of mutual interest. One of the long-term goals of the meet-ups is to promote and organize an "un-conference" utilizing the principles of "open-space" around the group's topic.

You are the experts at what you do and so all deliverables will be defined and produced by your own organization, not consultants.

Properly facilitated, this can often be accomplished quickly and on a much smaller budget.

To be continued ...

Reblogged from Ourmedia Tools

Images from http://www.flickr.com/photos/inky/306984319/, http://www.flickr.com/photos/thevoyagers/398768220/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/francoismoblog/430505535/

What is Social Media?

Markus Sandy — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 06:07:44 +0000

Some folks want to delete the topic 'Social Media' at Wikipedia. There is an interesting discussion around this.

So, as I was driving up to Silicon Valley the other day to participate in a consulting gig around social media, I started to wonder "what is social media?"

For one thing, it seems like most media is social to some degree unless you create it for yourself. I think that the media is not so much social as is our production and consumption of it.

It's like food: you can enjoy it alone, or you can go out and have a nice dinner with friends or a productive lunch with co-workers. Food is even produced with individual or group consumption in mind.

Likewise, some media is meant to be consumed alone and some is meant to be enjoyed with friends. Again, like food, some media can swing both ways.

We're live!

Markus Sandy — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 00:39:01 +0000

Ok, so it looks like most things are working as best expected. The domain is transfered over and all the pages are at least outlined. We still need to flesh out the site and add some graphics. A little more theming would be nice. I see that both Drupal and the Deco theme have updates.

The biggest surprise so far was the apparent lack of linked primary and secondary menus like there used to be in Drupal 5. I don't see how you do this in version 6 and I'm aware that the whole menu system has been revamped so maybe this is still yet to be done. I hope so. I like that feature.

The other big shock is simply dealing with the lack of version 6 contributed modules. You really take some of those for granted and it's a bit of a shock when you want to work some module magic and you realize it's not ready yet. It's a good exercise in Drupal basics.

I turned of the error messages; there were simply too many. I know, I'm not supposed to use it for a production site, but everything we do is a production site :) That's life here at Apperceive and Outhink. Hit when the iron is hot!

So this is the new Apperceive site. We'll see how it grows as Drupal 6 matures.

Welcome to our new site

Markus Sandy — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 23:23:48 +0000

We are aggregating and upgrading our various sites including the Digital Dojo, Apperceive and Apperceptions to the development release of Drupal 6 and the new Deco core theme.

I am hoping that this will serve as a prototype for a new Outhink site that builds on what we do here.

Please note that we are testing a pre-release, development version of Drupal 6. We have found that this is already an excellent tool, but some features are still being worked on. For this reason, we have set up this site to display error messages while we are evaluating the new version. Thus you may see strange messages on the site from time to time. Please ignore them.