There is no such thing as content. The only thing that causes a commotion is hand-crafted, hard-fought, heart-infused art. Everything else is just placeholder copy.”

- An excerpt from piece I wrote for Gather Content called The Cure for Corporate Blah, which you could totally read right now if you wanted to.

Netflix does it: learns from the tastes of millions to custom-produce content that is almost guaranteed to be a hit.

Is that the next big step for social networking companies? Are Twitter and Facebook going to become the new cable networks, the new entertainment companies? After all, what are they going to do with all that data? Sell it  to the government?

Big data only matters if you use it. Facebook’s got some really interesting in-house anthropologists and academics combing over the data trying to make sense of it, so we know some interesting work WILL be emerging. I wonder if it’s just a natural next-step for Facebook to turn the data over to content-creators and say, “Meet your audience. Make things they’ll love.”

You could release a PPV MMA fight to a Facebook-only audience.
You could pilot a new show and get fans of a similarly-themed show to pay to view it.
You can craft custom journalism, briefings, reviews, stories geared right to a user’s needs. “I pay $4 a month and Facebook writes content for me. It’s like having your own personal Anderson Cooper/Peter Mansbridge/Stephen Colbert.”

Am I excited? Absolutely. I really care about the topic I’m speaking about, and I really hope it connects with people. Plus, it’s a big crowd! I have some excitement-flutters, like little hamsters are jogging inside me.

I’m going to spoil the talk for people who don’t get to be in attendance (if you’re coming tonight, you might wish to stop reading.)

Technology is an amazing paradox. There are times when we write amazing things to friends we love, and times when we hide behind our screens like they’re toilet stall barricades. Technology is both a catapult and a corset, depending on how we use it.

So, tonight, I am saying the next big thing to watch this year in digital is focus. I am seeing a strong movement towards tools that promote greater engagement in our surroundings, and a more mindful use of technology. (I’ll bring up some specific examples in my talk, and share them later.)

Imagine fewer notifications. More chaos-cutters. More tracking the things you love, and more actually doing them. There’s a movement afoot to find, use and build technology that supports our best intentions, instead of taking advantage of our greatest weaknesses.

This is why I’m excited: all of us dotted at our desks across the country, or sitting in seats at the conference tonight, are bubbling over with potential and possibilities. The side-projects, ambitions and dreams we all have, the relationships we want to grow, the skills we want to develop, the places we want to go — I want these to happen, for all of us. I think this is the year technology starts to want that for us, too. I can’t wait to see where we go from here.

I recently wrote this summary to help my colleagues at Domain7 write faster posts for the company blog, but thought it would be useful for a wider audience, too. Here’s what works for me, and I think it can work for you:

1) Brainstorm topics, and post it visibly

I sat down with a coffee for 30 minutes and brainstormed any topic I could think of. Projects I had worked on, problems I had solved, ideas I’ve been thinking of, trends I’ve been watching: anything that might fit our company blog. A messy, dirty mind-map. Then I chose my favourite 10 ideas, and I wrote those topics on a piece of paper I posted on the wall by my computer. I now I have a list of great topics from which I can glance up, pick a topic, and write.

2) Pick a calendar time

When will you write? I have a recurring calendar appointment that is reserved for me to write blog posts (Wednesday at 9 am). Once that timeslot is happening, I pick a topic off the list on my wall, set a timer, and go. It’s reserved, nobody else can book anything in that timeslot. And it gets done, usually far before the hour is up. Maybe yours can be once a month, once a week, or just a one-time deal to get that post done you’ve been dreaming of doing.

3) Set a timer (for 15 minutes)

I always overestimate the work it takes to write, but the hardest part is starting. I set a timer on my phone for 15 minutes, pick a topic from the wall, and write until my timer stops. Sometimes I’ll finish a whole post in that timespan, but if not, those first 15 minutes give me the momentum I need to keep galloping towards finish, and often I’ll just pretend I didn’t hear the timer and keep going.

4) Know what tool to use to write

Where do you write? And where do you store your notes and ideas? I use an amazing app called Scrivener. Maybe you use Evernote, Microsoft Word, Google Drive, Dropbox, Notational Velocity….whatever you use, just know where to go when it’s time to write. Don’t add extra friction by having to make the “tool” decision every time it’s writing time.

5) Optional: Get an editor

It’s not your job to edit your post. Your job is to create something out of nothing, which is hard enough. Stop stalling in the editing phase, and just dig out your great ideas. At Domain7, we have the amazing privilege of having an editor for our blog, which means the things WE write don’t have to be perfected by us. It honestly saved me so much time once I stopped over-editing. Just write the basic points, get it half-decent, and trust that Amanda will fix my poor grammar and bad ideas. She does. And it breaks the bottleneck of not-writing. When your roughest, baddest, dumbest-sounding first draft is done, send it to someone to edit. If you don’t have an editor, it’s okay. Call it a “first draft” and finish it later.

6) Optional: Go long form
The real reason I’m excited about this new workflow is not because it helps me write more blog posts. It’s because it helps me write long-form text, too. I am working on a full length non-fiction book, and I’m structuring my writing bursts in this same way. I’ve got an outline or list of topics I’ve brainstormed, which I keep in Scrivener. My writing block for my book is on Tuesdays. When it’s time, I pick a topic and I go. When the timer’s done, I’m done. And I’m making more progress writing than ever.

I recently started seeing “bad news stories” a little differently, though, thanks to unusual perspective on advertising.

I was reading the book The Age of Persuasion by Terry O’Reilly, a broadcaster on the CBC. (The book is absolutely boring, I cannot recommend it to you at all.) But in one passage from the book, Terry says something like this (I’m paraphasing, not quoting):

People think advertising shapes our culture, and sometimes lament its effects on us. But here’s the thing: in the ad world, everything is tested and pre-tested until the only ads that air are the spots that reflect the safest, most widespread norm. That is, advertising only shows what it believes to be a commonly-accepted worldview. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be a sure bet for the companies running the ads. The influencing-business is not the place to take a risk of losing sales. You need to push a message that you believe will resonate with what your audience already believes.

Hmm. That was interesting to me. I know pre-testing is on the decline, as companies like Old Spice and Coca-Cola try to launch ads with more of an improvised flavour rather than a pre-tested one. However, if this is true for most companies…what can that teach us about journalism?

Journalism is a business too; they need to keep making money. They wouldn’t run a story unless they believed the news was pertinent to its audience. That means “bad news stories” are good for business because…
…They are a safe bet, because…
…It is widespread belief that terrible news is terrible.

Bad-news stories only get published because the publishers believe we, the viewers and readers, will respond with shock/disgust/disapproval/pain/disappointment. Which is a good response to have to tragedy.
It is a GOOD thing to be upset when a terrible things happens.

And if it is profitable for journalists to keep mining our reactions to tragedy, it means this:

1. We are all still sensitive enough to have those reactions
2. There is enough of us having those reactions that we still form the majority of the audience that drives the business.

It suggests a wider and wider share of the world actually holds a positive worldview.

The more shocking and widespread a “bad news story” is, the more it suggests that the attitude of the viewers is the opposite of that story.

Bad news stories are published because most of us still want the world to be amazing.

Who is David Eby to me? I’ve heard the guy’s name, know he is a lawyer and advocate for civil rights in the Downtown Eastside, but besides the highly singable name, don’t know much else. My old boss J. was the only person I could think of who would know who David Eby was, so I sent the recording to him in July 2012. My malicious-but-friendly hope was that J. would immediately have this pleasantly repetitive song become permanently lodged in his brain, so every time he saw David Eby’s name, it would be triggered — an irrevocable ear worm. But J. wrote back in July 2012 to say,

Sure enough, I’ve learned recently that David Eby is running against Christy Clark in the contested Vancouver-Point Grey riding in the upcoming 2013 BC election. Perhaps this could become a useful jingle after all.

You can listen to the David Eby jingle here on SoundCloud, or use the embedded player below:

Obligatory disclaimer: This jingle does not suggest an endorsement or non-endorsement of David Eby for his candidacy for his current race. Please consider this song as apolitical as it is atonal.

Disclaimer 2: Although I would be happy to accept money from anybody, really, if you’d like to pay me to use the song AS an official jingle. Because “every potential MLA in BC needs a jingle,” as the saying goes.

In that spirit, I wanted to create for myself a helpful reference chart that would match my mood with the best tasks associated with that particular state. I’ve had this idea for a while now: In a coastal town, you know that not every minute of the day is meant for fishing or beach-going. A lot depends on the tide. So you refer to a chart to help guide your decisions for how you spend your time. Why not make a tide chart for managing moods?

Not every moment or mood is meant for productivity and conversation. Why not use a mood for what it was meant for? This paper-napkin first-draft sketch will hopefully help us see if it works. Here is what I am hoping to test:

1. Do I find this useful? In my day, does it become a helpful chart, or just a silly little map on my wall with faces on it?
2. Do others find it useful? If you were to adapt this to your own moods and scenarios, would you find such a thing useful?
3. Can we make it better? Because this is a first draft, I know I will simplify it/beautify it, but what would make it better? Better design? Shorter words?

So, anyway, I started by picking some moods. (My moods, I will assume, may be different from the ones you’ll pick when you build your own chart). The moods I chose for now are shown below: anguished, sad/post-lunch slump, bored/unsure, alert-but-distracted, happy, chatty/funny and overcaffienated.

(I left out a few states that are simply lower-maintenance frames of mind: ie, feeling focused, feeling neutral. Those guys? They’ll figure it out for sure.)

For each mood, I filled out four rows:

• Using this mood (Best way to take advantage of this state)
• Changing this mood (For when it’s not just useful to feel this way)
• Being ready for it (What I can do in advance to better use these moods)
• Risks (What I need to watch out for)

I was thinking specifically of work and productivity scenarios, so I wrote answers that would steer me towards the best use of time assuming I’m on-the-clock. If you can’t read it, no worries, the biggest takeaway is the format of the chart, so you can consider building your own. Mine is a super rough draft anyway that will probably change tomorrow. Like…my…moods. Hmm.

What I can see emerging is that to be ready for each mood, I need to keep running lists. For example, when I’m in a post-lunch slump or just plain sad, this could be a great time to do some reading. But if I don’t know what to read, I could waste that moment.

This so-called “tide chart for moods” was sketched on a ripped-off piece of blank newsprint taped to my wall. I expect it to evolve as I start actually referring to it and putting it into practice. I may find that once my consciousness descends into “anguished” that the advice I’ve given myself is terrible after all, and I may have to revise the instructions. Similarly, I may find I’ve left out a crucial mood that especially requires guidance, that I may need to add. AND, don’t forget, these are not YOUR moods or your scenarios: you could try adapting it to suit yourself.

But as a start, I’m excited to try this out: if the muse exists, this is like a transit timetable to help us coordinate our travel schedules.

The idea is this: many “knowledge jobs” are not about physically being somewhere, they’re about accomplishing something. Yes, for many jobs, place is crucial: construction, medicine, etc. But in the magical new land of computery-pixel-pushers, it ain’t about being located somewhere, it’s about craft.

The amazing company I work for, Domain7, lets me work from my home office in Kelowna. I find the setting really helps me find get immersed in the problem-solving, creative zones much faster than when I work in a shared space. It works for me — I’m used to this style of work-alone working (I was homeschooled, y’see.). Others hate working from home, and find it counterproductive. I get to visit the D7 team about once-a-month for a fun explosion of client and team meetings to feed the social side of things, and get a face-to-face fix.

For those in an office, then, how do we adjust our spaces to better suit the work we’re all trying to do? Our offices need to flex to our needs as humans, if we’re going to still work in shared spaces. How can our minds be encouraged to be used well? How can our plant-like introverts be given the mix of water-and-soil needed to thrive? How can we dive into the watery world of writing, coding, dreaming, designing, thinking and making, and pick places to DO that work that facilitate our best work?

Gervais Tompkin from Genslor provides some great perspectives on this, with a post called The Challenges We Face in Open Offices. (I love that architecture firms like Vancouver’s Kasian and Genslor help solve problems like office configurations, based on true human needs.) Watching the videos on Tompkin’s post, courtesy of Microsoft’s Global Workplace Strategies, explains the use of their own open-style offices suggests.

Reverse engineering these videos offers these principles that open offices need to have:

1. A hub: A public space to work for a change of pace, where you’re working, but it’s okay to be interrupted. You work here when you want a mix of socializing with your working.
2. Phone rooms and focus rooms: A place to take private or longer calls, and to focus on specific in-depth tasks
3. Etiquette: A common understanding of when to use the rooms, the hubs, and when to stay at your desk
4. Desk clusters: The places you work, near others, but shielded enough to support productive work.

One of my favourite workspaces I’ve visited in Metro Vancouver is the SFU Surrey campus. Filled with breakout rooms, beautiful windows, and private work areas, you always feel like any resource you need is waiting for you.

The cube farm is dying, which is great. But as open-concept offices continue to flourish, we need to be careful they are designed right, to promote connectivity, privacy as well as creativity, not just the overload of stimuli that can sometimes come.

Additional reading:

• Open Workspaces Are Here to Stay. Now, How Do We Get Any Work Done? (Forbes)
• From Cubicles, Cry for Quiet Pierces Office Buzz (New York Times)
• The pleasures and perils of the open-plan office  (BBC)
• Workplace Woes: The ‘Open’ Office Is a Hotbed of Stress (Time)
• In New Office Designs, Room to Roam and to Think (New York Times)

Today I sent them this email (below) to ask what happened. I am still waiting for a response, but thought you all might be interested in reading some helpful tips for some blog posts on content strategy I was considering writing. The letter is below.

Hey guys!

I submitted an article to Contents in January but didn’t hear back. Psychologically, this has only had a minor impact on my daily functioning, as I’ve almost fully recovered from my crippling email-related paralysis/daymares, where my eyes go glassy and my mouth sags open in this bitter picture of a nearly-catatonic-yet-resilient hope-clinger — like I said, minor; we’re mostly good here.

Practically, speaking, however, I find myself unsure: is the piece dead and rejected, or can I fix it to make it better? Perhaps it’s not quite the style Contents is looking for, and I should write something entirely different? You see, I’ve quit my job and left my family and kids so I can focus exclusively on re-submissions for Contents Magazine, so you just tell me what to write and I’ll produce anything you like. I bought a new internet-enabled typewriter just for this project.

Here are some ideas I’ve been researching that I am fully qualified to write about:

- Mobile first, or why residents Mobile, Alabama will be the chosen firstfruits for the coming rapture
- How the changing role of web content has influenced remote Australian aboriginal communities’ prevailing liver disorders (It hasn’t, actually, this would be a really short article. The research is surprisingly scant.)
- Adaptive content and the nationwide burgeoning of people trying to be like NPR
- Salmon spawning patterns as a metaphor for structuring meta-content for increased likeability in social channels
- My experience growing up in the British embassy in Honduras, the charming-yet-horrifying story of a 7-year-old raised with full diplomatic immunity in the murder capital of the world, and its impact on the content strategy industry. (**Graphic content warning on that one**)
- How humanity’s destiny is intrinsically tied to how well we’ll be able to master and teach content strategy to the next generation
- Librarian superheros: why archivists and data-nerds will be the future of the web if they don masks and combat real villains and make a graphic novel and publish it online in an app-based pay-what-you-want format
- Classifying content fields for search appropriately in multi-domain, multi-lingual web projects for Big Pharma on a shoestring budget
- Pictures of my 1-year-old-daughter with captions about what she’s crying about, in the style of the recently-popular Tumblog of the same concept, except mine would include totally meta references to the cruelty of the trend itself, in the style of “Unhappy Hipsters: It’s Lonely In the Modern World,” and serve as scathing commentary of the blogosphere’s propensity for semi-anonymous bullying that actually exploits individuals in a very specific way, and how true content strategy helps escape the dehumanizing patterns of knee-jerk publishing while still retaining the human core we’re all drawn to.
- A better article than the one I sent, which clearly did not meet the high standards we’ve all set for ourselves, am I right, not that we’re wallowing, of course not, just trying to get better for the sake of the whole content strategy industry

I’m happy to fly to your house for an in-person meeting any day this week to go over these stories in more detail. Bags are packed! It will be fun.

Sincerely,
- Kevan Gilbert

Today, as part of work on a project for an HR branch of a higher education institution, I got to study career motivations and job pattens of millennials. What makes Gen Y seek out a specific employer? What are they seeking in a job? What are their expectations? It’s fascinating research that I’m hoping to sum up and formalize, ironically, in the form of a blog post when I get the time. (Note: Please leave a comment below if a research summary like that would interest you; it would help motivate me to write it.)

But what started to seep out in the literature was this ugly condescension towards millennials from the popular press, which the academic articles tended to quote. Newspaper articles were calling this generation narcissists, “coddled children,” entitled, the product of over-protective parents. Yeah, I’ve heard it before, but it just seemed strange to read it so nakedly.

First of all — and the journal articles would call the newspapers out on this — the statements were contradictory and conflicting with each other.

But in all of this bold labeling of a people groups, there is one much more obvious mistake: it’s impossible to sum up the uniqueness of individuals into one convenient mass-applicable label. Scientifically, and from a humble human/relational perspective.

A standard bell curve would suggest that only a portion of any data set — yes, naturally a large portion — would fall within the middle spectrum. So while statements about a generation might apply to many within the group, it cannot apply to all. Not every member of a group carries the same characteristics.

And relationally, you and I can look around at our friends, colleagues and neighbours and say easily: all of us are so incredibly different. There are threads we might have in common, but to ascertain what truly unites us — in an unbiased, non-condescending way — will end up being so general that it wouldn’t even be interesting.

My catchphrase for that fallacy is this: generations are generalizations. Genera-lies-ations. Lies about generations. Never believe them.

The class followed an amazing format: it was taught via Google Hangout, from my home office in Kelowna. You can participate in the class in its entirety following the link below, complete with 10-minute-break, and awkward attempts to unmute our classroom mics triggering only horrendous feedback noises.

Here is the YouTube version of the content strategy talk we did.

The slide deck is here: The Living Web: How content strategy is revolutionizing online communication

And one-by-one, here are the links we walked through.

A. About landing pages

1. Salesforce.com – Example of a perfect landing page?
2. Behind the scenes: 37signals A/B testing on Highrise landing page
3. Domain7 – Smarter web for higher ed

B. About content marketing and storytelling

1. Crap. The Content Marketing Deluge.
2. UBC Continuing Studies: Continue Your Story

C. Other stuff that came up that we talked about that I’ll add links to after:

Regent College website
Regent College case study
Birkman (personality/career test)
Coca-Cola’s “Content 2020″ initiative

D. This week’s assigned reading:

1. Complete Beginner’s Guide to Content Strategy
2. Content Marketing Explained
3. Optimizing Landing Pages for Lead Generation

If there are other content strategists in the room, I’d love to ask some more questions based on this:

1) I believe in content strategy 100%. My intention is not to undermine the process by asking what the point of it is, but I do think the way we answer the question can motivate us to do even better work. What is the “point” that motivates you in content strategy?

2) I don’t believe in badgering or antagonizing our clients. They are amazing people we get to work with, and while our questions are tough, we ask them with gentleness and respect. Do you find it easy or hard to ask those “tough questions”?

3) Web content and crafting a better web is obviously what content strategy performs, but the parts of the process I truly love the most are the discovery and vision-setting parts. If you do content strategy, what’s your favourite part?

My first day at Domain7

“At Pixar, they call it beginner’s mind.” That’s my former colleague Derek talking, gesturing wildly and speaking faster and faster like a circular saw approaching a two-by-four. He’s telling me about a conference he’d just attended. [read the entire article here]

Productivity Habits and Hacks

This whole “starting a new job” thing has forced me to return to the basics of what it means to actually do work. All my old instincts have to be recallibrated for this new environment: everything from how to most efficiently structure my day, to how to best manage emails. So I figured that if I’m spending all this time re-learning productivity habits and hacks, I thought, hey, I might as well share what I’m learning with you. [read the entire article here]

The World’s Worst Project Manager

Tips on good project management are as common as pre-printed Royal Wedding memorabilia, and they’re just as useful, too. After all, if project management was just about following instructions, we wouldn’t have construction projects going years beyond deadlines or Fast Ferries being sold for scrap metal.

For those of us who need to see it broken in order to know how to fix it, here is our guide: tips and tricks for becoming the world’s worst project manager. [read the entire article here]

A Christmas Mad-Lib

A semi-traditional quasi-long-form end-rhyme Christmas poem, sent as a Christmas card to Domain7′s clients. “Fill in the blanks to join Domain7 on a dramatic, seasonal, internet-themed, literary adventure, then share the ridiculous rhyming results with your good-humoured friends.” [read the entire poem here]

Tips on good project management are as common as pre-printed Royal Wedding memorabilia, and they’re just as useful, too. After all, if project management was just about following instructions, we wouldn’t have construction projects going years beyond deadlines or Fast Ferries being sold for scrap metal.

Fact: Nobody knows what a well-managed project looks like. When it happens, it’s virtually invisible. Since it caused no delays, broke no budget, and made nobody angry, there was no reason to even notice it. It’s like a polite dog or a car with a good muffler—so harmless and tame nobody even bothers talking about it.

Now, a poorly done project, there’s a case study we can learn from. It’s loud, noisy, and fails spectacularly, like a celebrity in a tailspin. Show me a project manager doing it wrong, and I’ll have an example of what not to do.

For those of us who need to see it broken in order to know how to fix it, here is our guide: tips and tricks for becoming the world’s worst project manager.

1. Say yes to everything When a client suggests a neat technical idea but you’re not sure if your team can do it, say yes. When you’re asked if the project can be delivered two weeks earlier than planned, say yes. When the client wants to add more features to a project that already has a defined scope, say yes. The answer is always yes.

2. Always assume Not quite sure what’s needed? While you might be tempted to clearly define the requirements, this time, just take a stab: guess intelligently at what the requirements are, and then get the team started right away. The client will thank you for your intuition and sensitivity.

3. Avoid hard conversations If a red flag pops up, fiercely cram that back down into your subconscious. If there’s any area of concern, a hint of the project being delayed or running into trouble, enter lockdown mode and lower the blackout blinds. Do not acknowledge the issue to yourself, and do NOT tell the client about it. If you ignore it, it will go away.

4. Don’t bother the client Your goal is to stay out of the client’s inbox, off their caller ID, and clear of their voicemail. They less they hear of you, the happier everybody will be. What, are you some kind of needy, desperate person that you need to be talking all the time? They probably get enough emails. If you’re following steps 1–3, you shouldn’t need to talk to the client anyway. Stay out of their hair, just update them when the project is done.

5. Just talk to your team when you need something Stay away from trust-building scenarios like lunchtime conversations, jokes/humour, small-talk and/or banter. Do not engage in questions about your teammates’ spouses, families, weekends, hobbies, vacations and/or recent movies seen. And please do NOT attempt to get to any sort of place where one of your teammates would call you a friend. Better to talk to them only when discussing work assignments.

6. Work on whatever’s in front of you Whatever’s in your inbox is probably the most important. Discard everything else: plans, schedules (schedu-what?), calendars, forget it: if somebody’s asking for something urgently, just do that work (they know best). The less you look into the future, the more you can live in the present. Carpe diem, PM.

7. Procrastinate If you’ve got the nagging feeling there’s something you’re avoiding, good—it’s a dangerous world out there. Nurture that feeling, feed it so it grows like an infant, tend to it gently like a campfire. Gaze into the comforting glow of your Twitter stream, find your friends again in the fields of Facebook, or graze casually in the pasture of your RSS reader. Creating a warm, lazy glow of avoidance to shield you from the unwelcome icy blasts of real life’s blizzards. The door is closed: the wolves are howling outside, but procrastination is safety.

8. Just wing it Projects practically manage themselves these days. There’s no real reason to scribble out next steps or let the team know what happens after next week. Just take it one day at a time, that’s our motto. Tomorrow will take care of itself.

9. Bask in the drama and glory of emergencies Once you’ve let your non-planning, procrastinating ways climb up the walls of your psyche like an overflowing dam, it’s time to savour the dramatic panicky reactions required to handle the flood: just freak out. IM people frantically, interrupt their work, send high-priority emails—nothing is more important than you right now. You’re the star. Plus, now that you’ve manufactured a good old-fashioned emergency, you are quite justified in ignoring everything else for the time being, right in line with steps 5-7.

And there you have it. Nine field-tested techniques to turn you into the world’s worst project manager.

Now you know what NOT to do. What would you add to the list? Have you witnessed (or possibly even committed) some of these rogue acts of PMing? What happened?

And jesting aside, next time we’ll talk trick and tips for surprising and delighting your clients. Stay tuned!

The Longest Poem in the World is a series rhyming couplets drawn from randomly selected Twitter updates. Looking only for end rhyme, the site’s script pairs one tweet with another to make a couplet, then streams couplet and couplet down the never-ending, always-creating, nonstop-scrolling site.

An example:

hide and seek ain’t the game, cos you’ll never find what you are looking for.
and why does a potential employer need my credit score?

Line 1 was written by one user, Line 2 by another. Yet the nonsense blends into a kind of tongue-in-cheek, unaware-yet-self-aware poetry.

Real poets always try to reflect our contemporary moment in some kind of contained literary form. Yet this machine is aggregating the mundane minutiae of everyday life, and assembling the debris into a rhyming reflection of 2009′s most relatable experiences.

Going for a drive and this time i probably wont come back.
Making mac and cheese and bacon. who up for that late night snack?

How can you match such a sinister, threatening line with another that just snaps you back into the trivialty of every day? Did user 1 just threaten a break-up, or a suicide, and the second person balance it off with gourmet KD?

Rise and shine give God the glory!!!
AND WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT LORI?

Author Terry Pratchett always uses ALL CAPS whenever Death or God is speaking. I imagine God has just questioned Lori’s motives for rising and shining.

I find myself clicking “next” endlessly and continually reading for something profound, or something hilarious, but sometimes even just watching something mundane turn into a rhyme makes the silliness of our daily lives that much more passible.

Birds and the Bees. Why is it called that?
I put on my robe and wizard hat.

Our fictional combination poet is hoping to answer the question by donning the wizard getup, I guess.

Anyway, check this thing out. Try reading entire pages aloud with Shatner-like sincerity, or take turns with friends. I love it right now.

Over the past year, Kevan Gilbert Online has slid deeper and deeper into a catatonic stupor. Messy, verbose and undirected, my site was the victim of a sloppy, whimsical development process that had no plan, point or purpose.

I’ve had the chance to oversee the design and launch of about half a dozen websites now, and decided that whenever I next re-do my own site, I should do so like it’s a work project: I’d plan well with the future in mind, trying to craft a product that will actually do what I want it to do. For anybody else who is on the edge of doing their own redesign project this year, I thought I’d share what my process was like.

The first step was deciding what the deuce I wanted my site to do. I started by putting together a page-and-a-half outline for the project, part creative brief and part strategic plan. Here are the questions I made sure to answer:

• What’s the objective?
• Who is the audience?
• What are visitors saying now?
• What do I want them to say later?
• What the site’s tone of voice?
• If my website was a store, a product, a food: what is it, and what is it not?
• What are the final deliverables?
• What content will the site focus on?
• What’s my five year vision for the website?

On top of that, I held myself to a strict timeline, acknowledging that evenings and weekends were all the time I had available. Here’s what that plan looked like:

April 19: Project plan signed off on; weekly content resumes
April 20 – 26: Visual identity created, fonts & colour palette designed, favicon created
April 27 – May 2: Database upgrade to WP 2.7 + damage control
May 4 – 10: New theme is selected, tweaked, designed
May 11 – 17: New theme is finalized and installed
May 18 – 24: Plugin testing and further theme customization
May 25: New site launches

With the web changing at the speed it does, I’m grateful for the flexibility of WordPress. The fact that I’m able to switch up the very core of my site, PLUS re-do the front-end without the help of programming team is a just plain extraordinary.

New trends are afoot in WordPress-land which promise to make this process even easier, I’ve learned. Chiefly, the idea of using a “theme framework” in conjunction with a “child theme” is the new direction. Instead of the old-timey straight-up WordPress themes, where all of the main theme files and customizations are tied in together, a theme framework lets you keep all your customizations whenever you want to upgrade or change your theme. There are a few different theme frameworks blazing trails and competing for your attention, but the three front-runners seem to b: Thematic by Ian Stewart, Thesis by Chris Pearson, and Sandbox by Scott Wallick.

In the end, I didn’t choose to launch the new site on a theme framework, because the idea is still so new. I’ll wait for the technology to mature a little first, and for some killer child themes for each framework to come along (right now, there aren’t too many to choose from.)

The whole point of redoing this thing was to finally unify the disparate personas, public and personal, that I’ve got. When my site first launched, I was trying to attain the voice of Anonymous Internet Funnyguy. However, my attempts to be entertaining ended up generating a whole lot of organic search traffic for topics I didn’t even intend to be known for (like penguins, lemurs and yes, ringworm — you don’t wanna know).

Meanwhile, as my day-job began piloting me deeper and deeper into the realm of web projects, social media and online engagement, it became clear that I’d need a site that could reflect my professional work as well as my personal existence. Hopefully, this new site achieves that.

FOR BONUS POINTS

AWESOME DESIGN HELP: My new site benefits greatly from the incredible art direction and graphic design help of Zach Bulick. A superb designer and an even better friend, Zach gave me tips all along the way on typography, colour choice, and even helped me create the hand-drawn search/speech bubble and sidebar boxes. Zach has his own brand-new portfolio site arriving any day now, which is gonna knock your socks off. Anybody looking to collaborate with an extremely gifted designer with super-reasonable rates should definitely drop Zach a line.

MOST-DEF HOSTING: Calgary’s most down-to-earth designer, aka Neil Gilbert, aka my bro, aka Elbowroom Design, deserves mad props for the ever-generous hosting. The site has been riding on ERD server space since 2005, and I’m incredibly indebted to Neil for that generosity.

THE THEME: The theme this site employs is called Magazeen, created in early 2009 by Smashing Magazine in conjunction with Function, and was modified mercilessly by yours truly and truthfully.

If you notice anything quirky about the site I need to fix, let me know! If you’ve got shout-outs, antagonizing comments, or anything else to say, please, leave a note below.