Station Square, Forest Hills Gardens, New York

There is a sign amidst curling photographs and faded beer labels on the beer cooler—the most prominent feature in Dirty Pierre’s bar and restaurant—that reads, “This is not Burger King. You don’t get it your way. You take it my way or you don’t get the damn thing.”

Dirty Pierre’s, or DP’s as it is referred to by the locals, looks like the antithesis of the Forest Hills Gardens where it is located. The neighborhood boasts credentials like design by Frederick Law Olmstead Jr., (the son of the planner of both Central and Prospect Parks), former home of the U.S. Open, and the site of various film productions, most recently HBO’s treatment of Mildred Pierce. And unapologetically nestled within the Arts and Crafts architecture sits Dirty Pierre’s with its out-of-season Christmas lights, dated fluorescents, and POW MIA insignia in the window.

Christopher Lucien File, Summer 2005

Established by Cordon Bleu Grande Diplome graduate chef Christopher Lucien File, who died tragically during a culinary class demonstration at the Art Institute of NYC, the current menu at DP’s features a respectable variation of gastropub fare, from moule frites to goat cheese and shallot add-ons for what has been called the best burger in Queens. It all started in 1994, when File first started a French catering business in a 600 square foot space at 15 Continental Ave.

“It was fine French cuisine but he didn’t think people in the neighborhood were smart enough to eat his food,” said current owner, and Lucien’s sister, Jamie. Truthfully, the big, loud chef didn’t think much of most people. “There was a lady who came in almost every day to ask, ‘Is that roast beef fresh? It doesn’t look fresh,’ and would order it anyway. Every. Single. Time,” she elaborated. “One day she came in with her kid and Lucien asked, ‘Is your kid retarded? He looks retarded.’”

The sights of Dirty Pierre's

As customer relations were not his forte, Jamie stepped in to help him fund a bar in 1998. Lucien named it Dirty Pierre’s, after an alter ego he created for a 5th grade writing assignment. In his story, Dirty Pierre was a world traveler who ate good food and had a good time which, according to Jamie, was all Lucien ever wanted out of life.
Bar life was suitable for File. Along with Harley runs, Roxy, (his standard French poodle), and running DP’s, Lucien enjoyed teaching across the New York Island at the French Culinary Institute (now the International Culinary Center), the Art Institute, and the New York Restaurant School until his untimely death in 2007. During a class demonstration, he choked on a lamb chop and, when no one in the class performed the Heimlich, he staggered into the adjoining classroom for help but failed there, too. “No doubt, he was being a smart ass like he always was but he died doing what he loved. It’s terrible,” Jamie said, “but I always say it’s not a bad way to go.”

Not everyone appreciated Lucien’s unconventional manners. From the start, the Board of the Forest Hills Gardens took an instant dislike to Lucien, from the large truck he drove across the brick streets, the loud motorcycles he and his friends rode through the quiet square—even Roxy. Dissension never affected Lucien, though. Eleven years ago, an over-sized terra cotta tile fell from the roof of the bar and nearly smashed into his head. Out of jest, he and a friend went to the nearest store for chalk and drew crude outlines of bodies along the sidewalk, laughing all the way home. Two days after the incident, the Board erected scaffolding to shelter the sidewalk and it has remained ever since.

Jamie has carried her brother’s vision into the 21st century with respectable aplomb, true to the nurturing vision of her brother and Dirty Pierre himself. During our interview, she answered a phone call from a newer, neighboring restaurant, worried about a Board crackdown on al fresco dining. Apparently, Jamie had been through the same predicament before and reassured her business competitor with tough love. “If you have a permit, they have no jurisdiction over you. Do you clean your own sidewalk? Do you take care of your façade? You have a fabulous establishment and are an asset to this neighborhood.”

As time passes at Dirty Pierre’s, the Files persevere. Whatever Jamie decides to do at 15 Continental Ave., one thing will probably remain unchanged: It will never be a Burger King and you won’t get it your way. You’ll take it her way or you won’t get the damn thing.

When pigs fly

Photos by Emily Hooper and Raquel Diaz

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The Cambodian border, taken while crossing on foot from Thailand

The U.S. debut of the Royal Ballet of Cambodia during the Season of Cambodia, an initiative of Cambodian Living Arts organization was, for all intents and purposes, a production 20-plus years in the making: A glittering jewel in a month-long repertoire of visual arts across stages, screens, and walls. The collective gathering of the kingdom’s finest artists was an idea born to celebrate both the traditional and contemporary talent sustained by three decades of commitment from both the Cambodian and the international community.

In a program statement, Cambodian Living Arts’ executive director Phloeun Prim remarked, “Encouraging young Cambodians to connect with their roots and supporting them in expressing themselves is one of the most important things we can do to ensure that a confident and thoughtful class of citizens emerges in Cambodia.” As difficult as it is to preserve the classical arts in any society, the Kingdom of Cambodia has had more than its share of political and social challenges, ranging from centuries of religious idealism to French occupation to national genocide. But once the house lights dropped, prayers were completed at the onstage-altar, and the first of the Apsara, (nymph-like dancing goddesses) floated across the stage it was the equivalent of being teleported across thousands of miles into centuries long forgotten.

The Legend of Apsara Mera performed by the Royal Ballet of Cambodia

In addition to sparkling costumes and elaborate staging, the May 3rd performance was further graced by a Q&A session with Her Royal Highness Princess Norodom Buppha Devi, choreographer and one of the original Apsara dancers who trained at the dance school of the Royal Palace. She was joined by her associate choreographer Proeung Chhieng, the first male to perform the Monkey role during a time when only women were permitted to train and perform as Apsara dancers. Here, they answered a list of professional and personal questions that helped the western audience gain a deeper appreciation of the production they had just experienced.

Ballet? It was not. Controlled, graceful articulations that relayed a narrative and range of emotions? In spades.  Mohini, the bewitching Apsara Mera, captivated the audience with little more than the bat of an eyelash, and as the high-strung New York audience settled into the slower, deliberate pace of the performance, every movement resonated more deeply. Khmer dance has traditionally valued upper body movement, or epaulement in ballet’s French vocabulary, but it is an entirely different range of motion in Apsara dancing. The Angkorian tradition of turning one’s wrist or fanning the fingers appears to require more motor skills than the standard “relax your fingers and hide your thumb,” instructions of occidental training. The dancers’ flexibility and strength reveals a supreme dedication to the craft; some dancers begin training as early as seven years of age.

Churning of the Sea of Milk in Siem Reap, Cambodia

The choreographers admitted the dance form’s traditions were difficult to trace after the Khmer Rouge eliminated 2 million of its own citizens, sparing only 10 percent of the kingdom’s Apsara dancers. According to Her Royal Highness, the movements in the company’s production were inspired by the sculptures that portray the story of kingdom’s birth, which vary in number as widely as the folklore accounts. One of the oldest physical examples depicting the Churning of the Sea of Milk narrative is at the Bayon, a temple in Siem Reap, Cambodia, best known for the stone faces peering out from its peaked turrets.  Completed in the late 13th century by the king regent, Jayavarman VII, the temple underwent several changes after serving as the commissioning king’s state temple: It was molded to the ideals of subsequent Buddhist, then Hindu, then more Buddhist kings. Under communism, Pol Pot lopped off the heads of the devas, demigods, and asuras, demons, (seated figures in photo) to finance his regime; what largely remains are reconstructed replacements.

The Bayon in Siem Reap, Cambodia

While viewers may have been shocked by the absence of pirouettes, jetes, and grand battements, surely the finale of 16 corps dancers, Prince Kambu, and the Apsara Mera undulating to identical cues at exactly the same angle made up for it. Their supple swaying from the neck down echoed a kelp bed swaying in the ocean’s current, while their ornately gilded headpieces pierced the sky as steadily as Jayavarman’s Angkor temples. It was an ideal portrayal of grace, pride, and resilience.

Photos by Emily Hooper

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As a collective group, Tumblrers worked through the stages of grief on the battery-powered platform, slowly making sense of the situation at hand and the implications of their new reality.

DENIAL
The absence of Tumblr was a particularly tough blow to take, even virtually.

Conditions became increasingly difficult as Tumblrers began to realize they were wholly unprepared to resort to primitive communication methods.

ANGER
This was the most difficult phase for many users as language and punctuation were thrown to the dogs.

BARGAINING
Unable to accept the status quo, Tumblrers  brokered alternatives to improve circumstances. Admitting defeat did not make up for debilitating effects in professional circles .

Some brainstormed alternative courses of action.

Wallowing in desperation, others still turned to religion for solace.

DEPRESSION
Hopelessness was a sizable hurdle.

ACCEPTANCE
But finally, the community learned that the collapse of the Tumblr regime was an irreversible truth and accepting current conditions was the only real way to move forward in life.

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We are not a patient people. As with any personality trait, there comes with this realization the good, the bad and the ugly, all angles of which were explored at Fast Company’s Innovation Uncensored (#IUNY13) conference in New York City last week. According to the parade of speakers, the tradeoff looks something like this: we have ushered in the digital age—the good—to create a work dynamic that makes the one-career path no longer viable—everyone seems to be on the fence as to whether this is bad, though it was noted more than once it can certainly get ugly! This and just about everything else during the event was a mind-fuck, in the best sense of the compound word’s definition.

Editor-in-chief of Fast Company’s print publication Robert (Bob) Safian (@rsafian) kicked off the event, noting how with the advent of the digital age, we have reached a time during which everything we do requires telling a story, something we at adroyt believe with a vengeance. He also told the crowd that with the coming of the futurist age, which appears to be closer than most of us would like to think, we will find ourselves exploring scenarios that have to be both plausible and provocative—in a nutshell, people without critical thinking skills, you are about to be left behind.

There was no one clear-cut answer for how we make the adjustments to adapt to this brave new world, though a number of presenters have figured out their own ways of being nimble on their feet. Justin Kan (@justinkan), founder of Exec and Justin.tv, keeps calm and pivots. It appears he’s on to something, as skillfully effecting the pivot—a lateral career move, or a business segue from one scenario to another just before an idea goes south—is going to be one of the most important career weapons for success in business in the future. Embracing the definition of this and three other words—disruptive, hacking and iteration—are going to come in very handy in the imagination era. Fast Company experimented with Vine during the conference and Krista Donaldson’s clip is either proof of this or a sign that everyone at the conference was a victim of brainwashing.

More than once during the conference, corporate leaders championed an investment in young talent, which they described as tantamount to the survival of our country. Venture Capitalists are certainly sold on youth, as was evidenced by the procession of the under-30 set ebbing and flowing from the stage, including David Karp of Tumblr, at 26, and Brian Wong of Kiip, at 22, who presented a 7-minute Master Class in the video below with enough verve to ignite a small mid-western town’s power grid. According to Wong, it’s impossible not to bump into money on the street in Silicon Valley. It also seems quite certain skipping classes in school is a prerequisite to nurturing a successful tech startup (Just ask Tony Hsieh of Zappos fame!).

That’s the macro view: the grander scale of futurism was also a hot topic, no surprise as it is a worldview embraced wholeheartedly by Fast Company. A panel on the topic, led by Morgan Clendaniel, the editor of Co.Exist, included Jamais Cascio, David Evans and Rita J. King, whose philosophy espouses the intermingling of science and art—science being the process where curiosity rules and art being an exploration of what it means to be human. “Art gives us a chance to ask ourselves what it means to be human while we are entwined with machines,” she said. “If we don’t consider what makes us human as we code the future, we may leave too much of our spiritually out of the equation.”

Evans made the point that we have two interconnected brains but we come up with only three-percent of our most creative ideas when we are ensconced in offices because the right brain finds the atmosphere woefully boring. “The definition of cubicle comes from the Latin for bedchamber,” he noted. “Our work environments put us to sleep!” For a steady stream of their futuristic thinking, follow them on Twitter—Evans, Cisco’s Chief Futurist, tweets as @DaveTheFuturist; King tweets as @RitaJKing; and Cascio as @cascio.

Fast Company editor-at-large Jeff Chu directed a storytelling session titled “The Future of Giving,” which included Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker, Tal Dehtiar of Oliberté Shoes, Krista Donaldson of D-Rev and Melissa Kushner of goods for good. It was an excellent example of companies looking to make a difference in the world, and it has inspired us at adroyt to look at ways we can make our company more mission-driven and socially conscious. It’s something I have long admired about the way Stephanie Odegard runs her business. I attended the conference with Corey Finjer of Hawkins International Public Relations, and I asked her to share with me her takeaway just before we finished our last cocktail together. “I’m seeing that there are times when companies have to be willing to take some risks in order to take things to a higher level of actualization,” she answered.

Host Baratunde Thurston ended the conference on a high note as he recapped the events of the conference that included him nominating nearly everyone who had walked across the dais for mayor of New York City. Yeah, we’re pretty desperate for someone enlightening (or at the very least engaging) to enter the race. I cast my vote for Mario!

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Before David Byrne founded "Talking Heads," he attended RISD. The avid civic planner is in the film.

In accord with any classical arts training, the educational process for architecture students is rigorous, to say the least. A disciplined schedule, combined with private and public criticism, is crucial to a young designer’s training; the aim, of course, being a fulfilling career of practicing architecture, which is increasingly elusive. Through archiCULTURE, the audience at the distinguished Newport Beach Film Festival will be the first to see the final design project process through the eyes of a group of students from Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute, as told by architects Ian Harris and David Kantz. Balanced with commentary from practitioners in the field like Shigeru Ban, Thom Mayne, and Ken Frampton, the film is the first instance of public access to a studio-based, architectural education. archiCULTURE begs the question, “Where does the future of the profession lay—and what does that means for the world of design?”

Archiculture Official Trailer from arbuckle industries on Vimeo.

The film has been in development since 2007, when filmmakers Ian Harris and David Krantz met at Howerton. It will debut on April 29 and will screen with Diller Scofidio + Renfro: Reimagining Lincoln Center and the High Line; the festival opens on April 25. For information on future screenings, visit archiCULTURE’s Facebook page or follow the Twitter stream for news.

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But the definition of brevity has changed in today’s information age. When sakura represented the life of a samurai warrior, brief but brilliant, there was a legacy that kept the memory of the fallen alive, as well as a lack of technological distractions to keep a widow from dwelling on her loss. With the constant bombardment of information we experience today—the second-by-second Twitter updates that feed us fresh news and information without any break—how do we have time to thoroughly process a thought when as soon as its broken down for analysis, our attention is yanked to the next breaking headline?

Observing a tradition like hanami, quite literally stopping to smell the flowers, is a changing cultural practice, even in the nation in which it began. Kaori Kono, a 22-year-old living in Chiba, Japan, believes there is a happy balance of enjoying friends, family, coworkers, technology, and cherry blossoms. “[People] use their mobile phones, but if we go with our boss, Japanese people think that using it is not good.”

Cherry blossoms in Myou Park, Kitakyushu, Japan

Nao Mantani, a 39-year-old living in Kitakyushu, Japan, says she sees a lot of people admiring the blossoms with their mobile phones in hand, taking pictures. “Some of my friends put their sakura pictures on their Facebook; I am one of them. We take a few shots of them, and we go back and enjoy the party.” Hanami in Japan, she explains, is also about having a great time with families and friends, not just admiring sakura the whole time. As a child, she recalls plenty of people brought cameras to hanami parties at Kokura Castle, Mekari Park, and Adachi Mountain. “But at that time,” she reasons, “we weren’t bothered by the idea of sharing our sakura photos we took right at that moment with people who weren’t there.”

Traditionally in Japan, visitors spend hours, at the very least, eating and drinking with friends and family beneath the blossoms; a fluttering petal in one’s cup of sake is a welcome addition to an endless picnic. And when you’re sleepy from a full belly, it is acceptable to lean back against the tree’s trunk and gaze up through the blossoms. An occidental comparison would be similar to when we were very small, and would lay beneath the boughs of a Christmas tree, peering up through the needles, marveling at the sparkling lights and filling our lungs with the scent of sweet sap. Lounging beneath the cherry blossoms conjures a similar experience; the act of losing yourself in observations that lead to deeper reflections of the sensory experience.

To the left: Myou Park in Kitakyushu, Japan. To the right: The National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C.

Today, at the National Cherry Blossom festival in Washington, D.C., the camera is king. It is a vexing challenge to find an observer who is not concerned with the color balance on their Nikon display, or finding a strong signal that facilitates an Instagram upload. What began as a symbol of friendship between the U.S. and Japan in 1935 has evolved into a crowded struggle that offers precious advantage over the race for a subway seat at rush hour, save for the fresh air. If a path of more than 50 feet is clear for leisurely strolling, the view is spotted with iPads and mobile phones reaching to catch a shot. Only off the beaten path does the crowd thin well enough to provide the time, and the space, to stop and smell the flowers.
Photos by Emily Hooper and Nao Mantani

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In his second presidential term, Roosevelt backed a movement began by Melvil Dewey, the designer of the card catalog system adopted by libraries across the nation. His Spelling Reform Association was founded in 1886 and moved away from what he describes as “archaic British usage.” Under Dewey’s plan, honour became honor; centre became center.

Roughly 20 years later, Andrew Carnegie—the wealthiest man in the country at that time—backed the movement and changed the name of the organization to the Simplified Spelling Board for fear the word “reform” would frighten people. In addition to pledging $15,000 a year for five years, he also helped establish a board that included William James, Mark Twain, U.S. Commissioner of Education William Torrey Harris, publisher Henry Holt, and Brander Matthews. Matthews was a leading literary critic of the time, a professor at Columbia University, and also a friend of Roosevelt.

On the first of April in 1906, the board presented a list of 300 words that could potentially hinder English from easily becoming the preferred global language, with suggestions to simplify the current spelling. Many of the changes included dropping a superfluous e; axe became ax, and dactyle became dactyl. The spelling of certain words became phonetic; queue became cue, and barque became bark. Words spelled with ae dropped the a; archaeology became archeology, anaesthesia became anesthesia. Perhaps the most offensive suggestion was for verbs in the past participle to be spelled with a –t instead of the customary –ed; kissed would become kisst, blessed would become blesst.

Several months later in August of that year, President Roosevelt signed an executive order from his summer home in Oyster Bay, New York, that mandated reformed spelling in all official government correspondence. Said Roosevelt:

“The purpose simply is for the government, instead of lagging behind popular sentiment to advance abreast of it and at the same time abreast of the views of the ablest and most practical educators of our time, as well as of the most profound scholars—men of the stamp of Professor Lounsbury and Professor Skeat… They represent nothing in the world but a very slight extension of the unconscious movement which has made agricultural implement makers write plow instead of plough, which has made most Americans write honor without the somewhat absurd, superfluous u; and which is even now making people write program without the me, just as all people who speak English now write bat, set, dim, sum, and fish, instead of the Elizabethan batte, sette, Dimme, summe, and fysshe; which makes us write public, almanac, era, fantasy, and wagon, instead of the publick, almanack, aera, phantasy, and wagon of our great-grandfathers. It is not an attack on the language of Shakespeare and Milton, because it is in some instances a going-back to the forms they used, and in others merely the extension of changes which, as regards other words, have taken place since their time.

Though it had been ordered by presidential decree, the other branches of government refused to adopt the system, and the movement began to lose steam when the Supreme Court declared its opinions would be printed in the old style. On December 13, the proposal officially tanked when a congressman from Louisiana, Charles B. Landis, introduced a resolution that set the orthographic standard to the prevailing spellings of generally accepted English language dictionaries. The effort, Roosevelt is said to have believed, was thwarted by a single proposal: Changing through to thru.

Now, who had the final word?

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Members of the New York Yankees are introduced on the opening day of the 2013 season.

Like apple pie and jazz, baseball is woven deeply through American history with accounts of baseball games recorded as early as the late 18^th century. The country’s first official team was the New York Knickerbockers and is widely credited for establishing the modern rules of the game in 1845. Just over 10 years later, there were 16 baseball clubs, or teams, in the New York area alone.

In Central Park, arguably the city’s most iconic outdoor recreation space, baseball played a defining role in community. A redesign in 1857 by Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux grew the park to more than 700 acres of sufficient space to accommodate all classes of the city, drawing 7 million visitors by 1865. But a ban on recreational activities like picnics and baseball kept the park’s visitors strictly upper class: parties often arrived for an afternoon in the park via carriage, but city laws restricted small tradesmen from using their commercial wagons for family trips. And baseball was stringently prohibited: only school-aged boys with a written note from their principals were permitted to play ball in Central Park. The reigns loosened when working-class New Yorkers successfully petitioned for outdoor concerts on Sundays, their only day of rest, and over time parks officials made concessions from carousels to tennis; though not fully until the early 1950s when parks commissioner Robert Moses embraced the city’s evolved culture by establishing permanent softball fields on the Great Lawn to support corporate softball teams and neighborhood little league games.

Meanwhile, baseball as an enterprise was developing concurrently. In 1903, the Baltimore Orioles merged with the New York Giants and called a high point along Broadway between 165th and 168th streets home, appropriating a new team name—the Highlanders. However the team’s record was less than auspicious and in 1912, the teams’ owner, Bill Devry, added their iconic pinstripes to the uniforms with the hope that changing the team’s look would also change a 7-year losing streak. But most sports fans, and residents of New York and Boston alike, know legend was secured when Babe Ruth was signed for $125,000 and a $350,000 loan against the mortgage on Fenway Park—all to help Red Sox owner Harry Frazee finance a Broadway musical.

A move across the Harlem River in 1923 to what is now the former Yankee stadium left the Giants behind in the Polo Grounds. In their brand new stadium, record batting averages and undefeated consecutive seasons from Lou Gehrig to Joe DiMaggio secured the Yanks as a pride of the city. And each spring as the season starts anew, New Yorkers continue to  exercise that eminent capacity to celebrate greatness.

But just in case Opening Day doesn’t conclude favorably, there’s always the Nostalgia Train to relive the glory days and revel in our city’s great history.

Former Yankee and team coach Lou Pinella delivers the season's opening pitch.

All photos by Shawn Alston

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In most cases, finding oneself in an alley is not a particularly desirable situation. But in the quiet corners of Southern Philadelphia it is a pleasant surprise to find more than gray concrete and an over-stuffed dumpster, when one stumbles upon the vibrant and colorful mosaic murals of Isaiah Zagar.

Since the late 1960s, the artist has worked to beautify public spaces in his hometown, beginning with the South Street/South Philadelphia area nearest his home. When he and his wife, Julia, moved to the area, they helped spur a neighborhood revitalization by purchasing run-down buildings and renovating both the interior and exterior with his signature mosaics: His first project, the Eyes Gallery at 402 South Street, is still in operation.  The current epicenter is his studio at 1003 Kater Street, as well as a new large-scale project, the Watkins Street Warehouse at 10^th and Watkins Street in South Philly. Zagar has been commissioned to work throughout the city, and even around the world. Local commissions can be found at the Suburban Station underground plaza, on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, and at Pizza Brain in Fishtown but his work can also be found in California, Florida, Arizona, and Wisconsin—even India and Mexico. All he needs to work is a solid vertical surface in a public place and the freedom to create.

With a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Pratt Institute, Zagar didn’t start working with ceramics until later in his career. In his Artist Statement, he credits a life-changing moment to a 1959 encounter with Clarence Schmidt’s rambling sculpture environment where he didn’t even know he was “looking at art.” Since then, he has aimed to create an “encyclopedic vision that has no parameters and no end.” He continues; “My work is marked by events and is a mirror of the mind that is building and falling apart, having a logic but close to chaos, refusing to stay still for the camera, and giving one a sense of heaven and hell simultaneously.”

In 1994, Zagar began working on a 3,000-square-foot lot at 1022-1026 South Street and, here, is perhaps the most poignant example of Schmidt’s influence on Zagar’s creative process: After the artist carved tunnels and erected walls throughout the property, he coated the surfaces entirely in mosaics, colorful glass, and a variety of repurposed materials. However in 2002, that space that Zagar had worked to transform went up for sale, threatening to disrupt the creative environment he had helped cultivate. Surrounding community members at once rushed to his aid, eager to give back to Zagar as he had given to them. A nonprofit organization, Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens, (PMG), was formed and has worked for the last decade to preserve and promote Zagar’s work on South Street and throughout the area. The lot on South Street is now open to visitors year-round and trained guides are available to lead informed tours of the PMG site and his surrounding murals.

With the help of the PMG organization, Zagar continues to give back to Philadelphia. Residents and visitors can enroll in weekend workshops and learn about the Zagar Method first-hand. Over the course of one weekend, students can learn how to break tile, cut mirror, affix, and grout a mosaic in the form of a public mural (Outdoor Mosaic Mural Workshop) or on their own 10- by 14-inch tile (Indoor Winter Workshop). “As a non-artist, it was powerful to learn that the creation of work can be organic,” said workshop participant Kate Douglas of her 2008 experience. “I learned that I don’t have to conceptualize the entire piece before working on it, but can pull tile from buckets without intentionally choosing each piece to create something cohesive at the end.” PMG also offers community outreach programs for students and residents, and the Tile & Grout: Bonding Community program includes hands-on lessons, as well as the creation of a mural on site.

To learn more about Zagar and Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens, visit phillymagicgardens.org.

Photos from top to bottom: Emily Hooper; Emily Smith; Gabe Kirchheimer.

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Pinterest Analytics Announcement

And to put things in perspective for what this means in the greater perspective of social media content and what it does for businesses, we sat down with Paul Wallace, vice president at  Ipsos MediaCT for his insight on how this new analytics tool advances SEO strategies, optimizes your business’ social media efforts, and how it plays with other social media platforms.

ADROYT: Paul, this may seem obvious but, in your opinion, what is the value or advantage of utilizing Pinterest as a business?
PAUL WALLACE: Based on their recent 200MM round, Pinterest now has a VALUE of 2.5 BN…I kid. The advantages of using Pinterest for brands and advertisers are large; it allows for the direct marketing of their goods in an environment where users, mainly women (69% versus 31%), go to find inspiration on broad topics such as home design, fashion, travel, cooking, and so much more.  With about 1.36 million daily visitors and a 2700% (yes that’s right) growth since 2011, Pinterest is a place that brands such as Wholefoods, Nordstrom and West Elm can’t ignore.

Pinterest is also good for SEO strategies.  Not to get into a whole thing about this, but the way Google indexes pages and the way that Pinterest links to pages compliment each other very well and results in higher page ranking.  Higher page rankings equal more traffic. And more traffic equals larger opportunity for advertising and sales.

A: Why is it significant that Pinterest has introduced it’s own metrics?  
PJ: With a new platform for analytics comes the ability for brands to justify their time and value that they give to marketing within Pinterest.  The more value they receive from Pinterest, the more they will invest in its service. As with most social media platforms, there is simply tons and tons of data available and  making sense of that data— finding actionable metrics against which to base success—is important to any marketer.  When optimizing one’s campaign across digital channels (social, display, search etc.) being able to attribute performance to these channels allows marketers to focus their efforts.  Essentially, Pinterest analytics ( or shall we say, pinalytics?) allows marketers to see ROI.  This allows for an increased relationship between data-hungry brands and the social platforms with which they work.

Still needs a bit of tweaking?

A: How do you think it will integrate with platforms like Twitter or Facebook? How about SproutSocial or Hootsuite?
PJ: For starters, Pinterest is already integrated with Facebook and Twitter but only to a certain extent but expect continued connectivity as these three companies grow.  As of now it is the standard Like and Retweet that spread virally.

It is important to note that Pinterest has caught some flack because they lack a public application programming interface (API).  This means that they are not able to connect with Sprout Social and Hootsuite.  Eventually, once the connections are made, social media management software (SMMS) companies like SproutSocial and HootSuite will begin offering additions to their tools like they have for other social networks.  There will be an ever-increasing volume of social data and this will result in more and more need for SMMS platforms that excel at data storage, as well as analytics which can break down ROI.  Pinterest will need to integrate.

From your mouth Paul to Ben Silbermann’s ears.

Imagine platforms working together

Paul is a vice president at Ipsos MeditCT, a market research firm, where he specializes in digital-, social-, and video-media. Follow him on Twitter and connect with him on LinkedIn.  

All photos copyright Adroyt. Headshot courtesy Paul Wallace.

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