@RyanNewYork

How we should all remember George Washington. Happy Birthday Mr....

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 14:06:06 -0500

How we should all remember George Washington. Happy Birthday Mr. President.

Some of these pictures of morose children posing with toys in...

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 15:35:00 -0500

Some of these pictures of morose children posing with toys in the 1860s are LOL funny. This one is my favorite.

Lisa Wade explains that people didn’t really know how to pose for pictures back then. They didn’t have Facebook.

Photo

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 13:35:00 -0500

Some pictures from last night, where Tommy Wallach and I took a...

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 18:57:24 -0500

Some pictures from last night, where Tommy Wallach and I took a bar tour of Bushwick. These photos are from The Loom, Life Cafe, & The Narrows.

crazycakescasey: This is so awesome. Please take a moment to...

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 16:56:58 -0500

crazycakescasey:

This is so awesome. Please take a moment to read:

A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that 1,100 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by, and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace, and stopped for a few seconds, and then hurried up to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping, and continued to walk.

A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried, but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally, the mother pushed hard, and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money, but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the most talented musicians in the world. He had just played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, on a violin worth $3.5 million dollars.

Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.

This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste, and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?

I’m a sucker, almost teared up reading this. See the video and read The Washington Post story here.

It’s really, really difficult to create a trending topic....

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 16:25:00 -0500

It’s really, really difficult to create a trending topic. It takes a lot of tweets, from a lot of users, over a sustained amount of time. But, even if your topic doesn’t trend you can still generate buzz through unique impressions.

Last night, when New Jersey Governor Chris Christie vetoed marriage equality, I took to Twitter with the hashtag #shameonyouchris and directly asked people to tweet with the hashtag. Thanks to the support of many digital activists, we generated 405 original tweets, totaling 1,152 with retweets and mentions. In a world where every follower reads every tweet (which we don’t live in) the maximum audience was 403,307.

These pictures are just a few of my favorite #ShameOnYouChris examples.

Even though we didn’t officially trend, we did get mentioned in The Huffington Post, and Broadway celebs like Audra McDonald, Neil Haskell, and Rory O’Malley participated.

This goes to show that even if you don’t trend, a well-executed, real time hashtag campaign can still make a mark. Especially when you’re dealing with someone as shameful as Gov. Christie.

I was on an interesting panel today at JWT as part of New...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 20:23:00 -0500

I was on an interesting panel today at JWT as part of New York’s Social Media Week. Some very cool panelists, including Bill Wilff, Executive Producer of the Rachel Maddow Show, and Beth Waxman-Arteta, CMO of JWT North America.

We talked about real-time marketing, one of the latest buzz words in digital. Everyone shared some good insights. I got to make fun of Morning Joe. Click here or on the above image to watch the archived livestream.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie vetoes marriage equality & his chances of having a decent legacy. History won't be kind Gov. Christie.

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 17:27:09 -0500

Three images from last night’s Blue State Digital panel...

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 15:52:00 -0500

Three images from last night’s Blue State Digital panel for Social Media Week DC. The animated gif is courtesy of Allison.

I was lucky enough to speak with two big social thinkers; Clay Shirky and Adam Conner. Interesting stuff, hope to have a video in the near future.

Really enjoyed this Navy Seals of Comedy sketch dramatically...

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 17:49:00 -0500

Really enjoyed this Navy Seals of Comedy sketch dramatically reenacting a tween Facebook conversation. It’s a clever idea, that they promise to explore further.

Probably my favorite social media comedy since Aziz Ansari’s Harris bit.

Such a cute picture of a gay couple at a Barack Obama rally in...

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 17:23:12 -0500

Such a cute picture of a gay couple at a Barack Obama rally in 2008.

Join them at Obama Pride.

foreverliberal: micahpk: President Obama presents Maya Angelou...

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 12:30:00 -0500

foreverliberal:

micahpk:

President Obama presents Maya Angelou with the highest civilian honor.

Incredible moment — Maya Angelou is absolutely amazing.

Beautiful. Can’t imagine what that moment felt like for both of them. So much going on.

Been nice if the Catholic Church had fought as hard to stop the Iraq War as it did to stop women...

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:36:20 -0500

Been nice if the Catholic Church had fought as hard to stop the Iraq War as it did to stop women from receiving birth control.

"A conservative, a moderate, and a liberal walk into a bar. And the bartender goes, “Hey,..."

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:19:30 -0500

“A conservative, a moderate, and a liberal walk into a bar. And the bartender goes, “Hey, it’s Mitt Romney!””

- Rick Santorum Super PAC funder Foster Friess

A new store has opened up in Bushwick, Brooklyn that focuses...

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:13:00 -0500

A new store has opened up in Bushwick, Brooklyn that focuses exclusively on Pope John Paul II swag. I’m getting my mom a gift certificate.

Five years ago today, Barack Obama announced his candidacy for...

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:23:00 -0500

Five years ago today, Barack Obama announced his candidacy for President in Springfield, Illinois.

Watch the speech.

Listen to the below stream (or download here) to David Foster...

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 20:23:59 -0500

Listen to the below stream (or download here) to David Foster Wallace’s This is Water, which was recorded during a commencement address at Kenyon College in 2005. Wallace took his own life in 2008.

I try to listen to this every few months, because it’s full of powerful lessons, that are easy to forget or lose sight of. I’ve quoted some of my favorite bits below, but you can read the entire piece here.

Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.

They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing.

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving…. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

Last weekend I attended Deconstuctive Theatre...

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:24:00 -0500

Last weekend I attended Deconstuctive Theatre Project’s The Orpheus Variations presentation at IRT. It’s a very cool project, combining live film and theatre with the Orpheus myth. Look forward to watching this develop.

For more information on DTP, visit their website.

Full disclosure: I’m on DTP’s Board of Directors.

Photos by Mitch Dean & Adam J. Thompson

"Rick Santorum decisively swept all three primary contests last night, shattering the myth of..."

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:36:40 -0500

“Rick Santorum decisively swept all three primary contests last night, shattering the myth of inevitability that presumed front-runner Mitt Romney…”

- The Incredible Shrinking Mitt

Too funny. Update: Zack Ford tells me this is photoshopped....

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:18:00 -0500

Too funny.

Update: Zack Ford tells me this is photoshopped. It’s still really funny.