Welcome to Inkville

Oregonians Getting Graphic

2012-01-10T15:10:03-08:00

Graphic Novels by Oregonians, for Oregonians

This annual roundup of all things comicbookical originally appeared in Eugene Weekly's December 15 "Winter Reading" issue.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What is it about Oregon that makes our state such an incubator for the creative imagination? Is it the natural beauty? The fresh food? The history of pioneering exploration and countercultural experimentation?

Whatever that X factor may be, it isn’t limited to genre or form: Out in the wider world, our fair state has a reputation as a mecca for creators and fans of comic books and graphic novels. So it comes as no surprise that three of 2011’s noteworthy works of sequential art were crafted by Oregon residents. Taken together, these three books (all of which are more appropriate for teen and grownup audiences than they are for kids) demonstrate the breadth of talent and creative impulse inherent in the Beaver State.

The leader of the pack is the charming Dear Creature (Tor Books, $15.99), written and illustrated by Jonathan Case. It’s a surprisingly gripping effort for a graphic novelist early in his career.

Case’s hero is Grue, a sea monster with the heart of Romeo and the appetite of Jeffrey Dahmer. Grue loves capturing and eating the young couples that hang out (and make out) on the beaches of a small town in midcentury Southern California. Inspired by Shakespearean verse he discovers floating in bottles in the ocean, Grue vows to curb his proclivities and devote his life to love, beauty and locating the person transcribing the words of the greatest writer in the English language.

At the heart of Dear Creature is the interplay of base desire and reasoned response. Grue’s entertaining quest to identify the sender of his Bardic bottles somehow makes time to comment on B-movies of the 1950s, Cold War hysteria, prejudice, immigration and the enduring powers of art and romance.

Another graphic novel dealing in large part with a menace to a coastal shoreline is Oil and Water (Fantagraphics, $19.99). But this book couldn’t be less like Dear Creature, tonally or in execution. This nonfiction work is written by Oregonian columnist Steve Duin and illustrated by comic artist Shannon Wheeler of Too Much Coffee Man.

Oil and Water follows a group of real-life, concerned Oregonians (including a couple of Eugeneans) who visit the devastated Gulf Coast in the wake of last year’s Deepwater Horizon spill. Upon hitting the Southern-fried states, the small band of Northwesterners witnesses firsthand the consequences, ecological and economic, of the disaster. Encountering church ladies, wildlife rescue volunteers, shrimp boat captains and even a voodoo practitioner, the trip becomes personal as the protagonists encounter a culture shock that parallels the environmental shock they see in ruined marshes and oil-slicked coasts.

Reading the book feels a bit like watching a juicy reality show, with all the romance, bickering, homesickness and other familiar aspects of group dynamics, culminating in a surprising eleventh hour decision by the unlikeliest of the group’s members.

In the modern detective story Stumptown (Oni Press, $29.99), writer Greg Rucka and artist Matthew Southworth cast that great city to our north as a venue for criminal intrigue and gangland violence. The story follows Dex Parios, a wry, rough-and-tumble female private detective on a case that could forgive her substantial gambling debts, or run her afoul of a crime family, casino owners and the Portland Police Department.

The Parios character demonstrates a believable degree of humanity that is refreshing in a comic book heroine, and by the end of the book the reader (this reader, at least) develops a real fondness for her strengths, failings and adventures.

Rucka and Southworth do a great job of constructing a compelling, noir-ish Portland one suspects might be just under the surface or hidden away in shadow, and effectively mix real-life local landmarks (Mount Tabor Park) with fictional ones (the beachside community of Coast City).

Oh, and Stumptown also features a cameo by a Voodoo Doughnut. Yes, really.

Kon-suming Passions

2011-08-19T20:40:08-07:00

Fans and Friends Descend on Portland for Northwest Tiki Kon 2010

Photos by Jennifer Ragan-Fore

This article appeared this week in the summer issue of Tiki Magazine. I've really enjoyed my acquaintance with Portland's Team Tiki, and was really pleased I had a chance to document their summer 2010 adventures... even if the vagaries of a quarterly publishing schedule did mean that the article about the 2010 Kon came out after the 2011 Kon was completed. Whoops.

I have to admit I absolutely love writing for Tiki Magazine. It's not my best-paying gig (seriously, how could it be?), but there's just something about wiritng about one's passions, and about people one finds fascinating (and who seem genuinely grateful for the coverage), that makes it worthwhile. Getting to attend these events gratis ain't too shabby, neither. Mahalo, Tiki Magazine! Mahalo, TikiKon ohana!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The lights, like the music, are low. The food is greasy and filling. And the company can’t be beat. It’s the perfect environment to nurse a Sunday morning hangover.

Scott McGerik looks up from the kalua pork, macaroni salad, and other assorted Hawaiian delicacies sharing room on his brunch plate with mainland fare like scrambled eggs and fruit. “It’s a shame how few people appreciate something like this,” he pronounces, gesturing with his knife at a glowing red lantern.

McGerik, a computer programmer visiting the northwest from Minnesota, is clad in an aloha shirt and a turquoise lei. He’s seated next to his similarly-attired wife Kat, a nurse and massage therapist, in a comfortable curving booth at the back of The Alibi Bar and Restaurant, a Portland, Oregon tiki bar dating back to the 1940s. The McGeriks have traveled to the Northwest to celebrate with like-minded tiki fanatics at Northwest Tiki Kon VIII, with the incredible theme of “Atomic Tiki.”

You and Me and the Bottle Makes Three

The 2010 Kon officially kicked off the night before, with an evening of food, follies, and friends at Tony Starlight's Supper Club. With handcrafted items for sale by tropikitschy vendors, the Kon offered a sort of tropical-themed Etsy in the club’s entryway.

Tony’s is a swank, retro Portland nightspot usually styled to look like you could expect a set belted out by Frankie or Dean. But tonight the dining room has been transformed into a thatched tiki paradise, a fitting environment for patrons to enjoy seafood, strong drinks, and stronger music courtesy of Portland’s own seven-piece orchestra, Sneaky Tiki and the Lava Lounge Orchestra.

Heather Gregg, who along with her husband Craig Hermann comprises a tiki power couple (if there is such a thing), calls the evening at Tony’s “our reach out to a bigger tiki population” amidst a smaller core event jointly hosted by a committee, all of whom count themselves as Gregg’s and Hermann’s friends.

“We will never be a big event like Hukilau or Tiki Oasis, but we like it that way!” Gregg enthuses. “We also like to keep the event focused on what makes tiki culture unique: the handcrafted drinks, the art, the decor, the ohana, the clothes.”

Neither those priorities nor the intimate feel to the event are lost on the attendees, who seem to be having a fabulous time helping to recreate a bygone era. And with mid-century melodies like “Aloha ’Oe” and the Pink Panther theme, Sneaky Tiki kept the cats and kittens purring all night long.

Taking the Luau Way Home

After all the grog the night before, it’s no wonder the tiki faithful looks a little groggy themselves the next morning at brunch. But after fortifying with coffee and vittles at the Alibi, the whole floral print-bedecked troop piles onto a charter bus for TikiKon’s central (and signature) event, the home bar tour.

Gregg cites “a desire to keep it small, as the 'Original Tiki Home Bar Tour' is integral to the formula of Tiki Kon,” as the driving force of the Kon’s family feel. “Taking 50+ people into a private home necessitates that we stay a friendly, smaller group.”

Justin DuPré, president of Portland’s Mid-Century Modern League (and blessed to hold jobs in two tiki bars simultaneously), says that he and his partner, web coder Greg Clapp, had very few friends when they first moved to Portland. In volunteering their mid-century ranch house and its basement lounge for the home bar tour, DuPré says they “quickly found a great group of people who appreciate tiki and vintage stuff.”

And DuPré and Clapp are about to welcome a few dozen new friends into their home: the charter bus is rolling closer. “Since we live in the northwest and have many gray days, we wanted to create a place where friends can get together and pretend we are someplace tropical at any time of year,” says DuPré.

Another notable stop on the bus tour is Elroy Artspace, a snug gallery of modern art with an obvious warm spot for Poly-pop and lowbrow works. Today’s show is predictably tiki-themed, with works including an atomically-themed vinyl wall decal by Jonathon Hill-Jacquard (a framed print of which currently adorns the wall of your humble author).

In direct opposition to the permissive and friendly atmosphere of this intimate annual gathering, the eyebrow-raising theme of Tiki Kon 2011, scheduled for July 15-17, is “¡Tabu!”. Gregg promises that this year’s event will feature “New sponsors, new venues, new outreach, new friends!”

The Kon planners have some fun stuff in store this year, including the return of Elroy Artspace with a “Scootiki” art show featuring works by Bosko and Bamboo Ben, as well as a tiki fashion show co-hosted by AlexSandra’s Vintage Emporium.

As incredible as the 2010 Kon was, it seems there’s no rest for the tiki!

The Burning Bush

2011-05-11T21:46:09-07:00

Big Love, Smallville, and Messianic Fiction

The spring of 2011 marks the finale of two television series that have been keeping me company for several years, each of which I feel a little misty at the thought of letting go of. Beware, traveler: herein lie spoilers for Big Love and Smallville.

The protagonists of the two programs hardly seem similar, at a passing glance. Big Love's Bill Henrickson is a fundamentalist Mormon polygamist, a family man, and an entrepreneur. Smallville's favorite son, Clark Kent, is a monogamist of undetermined Protestant stock, single, and searching for the right career.

But scratch the surface a little (with Kryptonite, if you must), and it's easy to see how the two characters have more than a passing resemblance to one another. Even beyond generalities one could draw regarding each program's implicit statements about the American Dream, for example, each continuity's set of thematic elements mirrors the other so well, in fact, you'd think the writing teams were each cribbing from the Aarne-Thompson Tale Type Index. (And heck, if one subscribes to the Campbellian monomyth theory, as does your humble host, the popular wisdom is that we're all cribbing from it, all the time, simply by being part of our own culture.)

The Secret Identity

Both Bill Henrickson and Clark Kent protect double lives, secret identities. The lies and deception that these two men, each of whom purports to rely on values such as honesty and forthrightness, are born of their iconoclastic and idiosyncratic natures. Bill is forced to hide his family life away from the American and mainstream Mormon publics that will castigate him for his lifestyle choices, while Clark must obfuscate not only his abilities, but his very species, in order to lead a normal life and to facilitate helping others.

Generational Villainy

Opposing the hero on each program is a villainous father-son team, Roman and Albert Grant plaguing Utah as Lionel and Lex Luthor plague Kansas. The generational aspect of the characters' villainy suggests in each case that the hero stands for something immovable, unfickle, true in every age: a heroism that stands the test of time.

The Good Woman

Both Bill and Clark are aided in their quests by the love of a Good Woman, a female character and romantic interest who provides the love-force necessary to keep the male hero grounded, to serve as a sort of "lightning rod" through adventures, no matter whether those adventures span the deserts of Beehive Country, Outer Darkness, or the Phantom Zone. And while the utlization of female characters as this sort of set dressing is nothing new, it is disheartening that Smallville never quite evolved past it in the way Big Love did. Smallville's Lois Lane, of course, differs from Big Love's Barbara Henrickson in one other important way; because the Henricksons don't practice monogamy, Barb has to work all the more to foster the special sort of connection to her husband that monogamists like Lois and Clark (or like my wife and myself, for that matter), can take for granted.

Guided by Voices

Finally, and perhaps most importantly within the schema of each program, both Bill and Clark try to be moral actors for order within television worlds that naturally favor immorality and chaos...just like our own real world. And each character is guided by the voice of a disembodied, invisible Father Figure. Bill's moral center derives form his belief that Heavenly Father provides him with a testimony to split from the Juniper Creek (an FLDS Church proxy) compound and found his own, "true" religion. Clark's spirit guide, meanwhile, is literal: the artificial intelligence of his alien father Jor-El, frozen in the ice and crystal of the Fortress of Solitude. (A bonus for Clark: he can quite literally switch off his god when he grows tiresome, as in last week's penultimate episode.)

What I'm Driving At

Neither of these semi-messianic characters is always entirely successful in operating in a moral manner, of course. Bill Henrickson, as a "realistic" character, could never hope to truly emulate the example set by proto-Superman (as none of us could), but even Clark is frequently tempted to use his birthright super-powers in a selfish or venial manner.

Clark always comes around, of course! Like Christ, Superman serves as an impossibly perfect ideal, not as a literal role model: both Superman and Christ are inspirational, not aspirational. And an argument could certainly be made (hey, the First Lady of Inkville makes it all the time), that Bill is himself one of the greatest villains of Big Love. It is Bill's hubris, his fall from grace (a fall Clark can never truly experience, assuming the character retains any sort of fiction-world integrity), that makes Bill such a complex and moving character. Sussing out whether Bill Henrickson is an example of what to do or what not to do is a more confusing proposition.

The characters are also dissimilar in one other telling way: Big Love attempts to explore the issues and concerns of a real-world public admission of polygamy (not to mention moral clarity), while Smallville, for all its gritty (and perhaps over-protested) "no tights, no flights" mise-en-scène, still essentially cleaves to the logic, moral and physical, of a comic book universe.

Thus, the characters have correspondingly different endings. Bill Henrickson, like Christ, like all misunderstood prophets, must eventually forfeit his life once his Good Works are done, a necessary sacrifice to cleave to his ideals and rescue his people from the wilderness. Clark, in his own messianic feat, is fated to be reborn with an entirely new and upgraded identity, as a Superman come to save not only his Chosen People, but all of us. Big Love's realism (and attendant bleakness) is necessarily countered by Smallville's science-fictional pop-hope.

But each man still redeems our sins...

"I am the voice of one calling in the desert, 'Make straight the way for the Lord.'"

History in the Making

2011-02-09T04:24:00-08:00

A Springfield café connects past and future

Photo by Kai Hayashi

With this article, which appeared in Eugene's Weekly's January 26 winter Chow! guide, I sadly bid a fond adieu to able editrix Molly Templeton, who has fled the charms of the Le Eug for trendy, trendy Brooklyn. Molly has been a consistent advocate for my writing, and was even supportive of me in what bordered on a quixotic campaign to interview Gail Simone. As usual, I tried sneaking some local history stuff into this non-history article.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Downtown Springfield’s Main Street strip continues to tread the line between gentrified and generally sketchy. And the permanent closure of Ruthie B’s Antiques in a couple of weeks marks the end of one of the neighborhood’s anchoring storefronts.

But last May saw the addition of the Washburne Café, a homey breakfast and lunch place just down the street.

“I wanted to create a place that I’d like to go, that was comfortable and welcoming,” says café owner Karen Hageman. Originally from New Jersey, Hageman says the Washburne is her first foray into restaurant ownership after stints in construction, real estate and retail.

At breakfast time, Hageman’s new venture serves various egg dishes with cibatta toast, including a “Washburne bowl” with eggs, meat and potatoes. Lunchtime fare includes paninis on locally-baked focaccia, as well as house-made soups. The chicken salad wrap is especially tasty and includes cucumbers and cranberries in the mix. Fluffy, house-made baked goods include tropical fruit scones and peach muffins, complemented by a coffee bar ... and free Wi-Fi.

“It’s getting busier all the time as word gets out,” says Hageman.

And she seems to be right. During a recent visit at almost 2 pm on a weekday afternoon, the lunch rush had yet to abate. The crowd proved eclectic, too. Some patrons read while dining alone. A couple of parents had children in tow. A group of college students, laptops and calculators spread across a round table by the window, discussed APR and interest rates.

Continue reading "History in the Making" at Eugene Weekly.

Elastic Journalism

2011-02-08T18:53:00-08:00

On Friday, the First Lady of Inkville and I checked out "Multimedia Journalism & the Landscape of News," a talk by The Daily's Gabriel Dance. It was sponsored by my old stomping grounds, the University of Oregon's School of Journalism and Communication.

Dance was a popular act; we arrived a few minutes late, and found the room already at capacity and hotter than Hades. Good on him.

A lot of what Dance had to say really hit home, especially his strong recommendation that 21st century journalists need more than one skill set. And as I can attest both as a freelancer and as a former magazine staffer, it's hard out there for a pimp, assuming the pimp is a writer trying to support himself solely through freelance.

Dance's song-and-dance about multimedia was interesting, and he aptly demonstrated how the concept of "journalism" is elastic enough to encompass computer animators, designers, illustrators, and other creatives.

All Dance's examples stemmed from his time at The New York Times, and I'll admit I was hoping for a bit more about Dance's new gig at The Daily. But that job is new, so perhaps Dance deserves a pass for at least a few more weeks. And frankly, The Daily has thus far failed to impress me.

But what really left me scratching my head was the amount of culture shock Dance must be experiencing transferring from the Times, a supposed liberal bastion, to working for Rupert Murdoch. As I type this, Dance's personal website features a link to an article about a journalist's "battles" with Murdock, so perhaps The Daily really is enacting a separation of church and state for the purposes of doing business.

Tricks are for Kids

2011-02-03T20:05:59-08:00

Graphic Novel recommendations for 2010

A month late a dollar short in cross-posting. This originally appeared in Eugene Weekly's December 16 "Winter Reading" issue.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The year’s crop of comic books and graphic novels presents a couple of noteworthy projects that are fun for the whole family, and two that are decidedly just for grown-ups.

Juan Díaz Canales’ and Juanjo Guarnido’s lush and noirish Blacksad collection (Dark Horse, $29.99) falls into the latter category. This single-volume collection of comic albums, originally intended for the European market and now produced in translation by Oregon-based publisher Dark Horse, simultaneously celebrates and lampoons the American detective genre, using anthropomorphized animals as stand-ins for human characters in shades of Art Spiegelman’s famed Maus. These aren’t comics for kids; the adventures of titular feline detective John Blacksad feature all the sex and violence of dime-store private eye paperbacks, lushly rendered with a Disney-like eye for detail and an admirable fidelity to the craft of building a fictional world.

Like Blacksad, Wilson (Drawn & Quarterly, $21.95), the first original graphic novel by Daniel Clowes (Ghost World, Art School Confidential), is titled after the surname of its protagonist. And like Blacksad, Wilson is an incredible and affecting work. That’s where the comparison ends, though. The title character is a middle-aged, bloviating blowhard of a loser who loves his dog (sort of), accosts unsuspecting coffee shop patrons (always) and, weirdly, gets wrapped up in a kidnapping plot. Each page is presented as a separate comic strip, with a separate episode title and a distinct art style, bricks in the single storyline house Clowes is constructing. The usual Clowes levels of ennui, disaffection and misanthropy are on full display, blended with just a slight touch of nausea. So laugh along with Wilson as he tries to grow up and get his shit together. Or not. Whatever. He’s a Dan Clowes character.

Full-color Sunday adventure comic strips are the forerunners of modern superheroes. Combine this with the fact that Wednesday is the traditional day of the week that comic book stores release new issues, and you have the handsome new hardcover Wednesday Comics compendium (DC Comics, $49.99). This thing is massive, well over 11x17 inches, and, in combining work by indie darling creators like Paul Pope and Oregon favorite son Michael Allred with superhero stalwarts like Joe Kubert and José Luis García-López, the sprawling project convincingly replicates the Sunday morning comics-reading experience. The stable of DC characters is also diverse, from headliners like Batman and Wonder Woman to niche characters like Sgt. Rock and the Metal Men. There’s a bit of innuendo and a bit of violence, de rigeur for superhero comics. The price tag is a bit steep, but DC has really hit a home run with this project, producing a meaty helping of comics that straddles that elusive middle ground between the reading (and interest) levels of the YA and adult reader. And hey, the titanic thing would look darn stylish under the Christmas tree.

But the real winner for tykes this year is The Golden Collection of Klassic Krazy Kool Kids’ Komics (IDW Publishing, $34.99), an encyclopedia volume-sized collection of comic books and comic strips reveling in their immaturity and aimed squarely at children. These comics, spanning from the 1850s to the 1990s, are Looney Tunes-style zaniness, a pure and uncut sugar high reminiscent of chugging the milk left over after a helping of your favorite chocolatey breakfast cereal. There’s not a whole lot here for adults, beyond those grown-up comics history geeks who will enjoy seeing early work by the likes of Dr. Seuss, Steve Ditko (The Amazing Spider-Man), Dan DeCarlo (Archie) and Mort Walker (Beetle Bailey). But that’s OK. Just think of the book as the printed equivalent of a secret clubhouse, and let your kids go on believing you’ve forgotten the secret handshake.

Call Me a Duck

2010-12-22T15:02:58-08:00

My marketing job in the University of Oregon's Office of Admissions allows for a whole lot of creative leg-stretching. An indulgent and supportive boss, ditto.

Videotaping a ghost hunt in a cemetery? Go for it. Facebook-based essay contest? You betcha. Foursquare scavenger hunt? Sure, why not?

But nothing—and I mean nothing—has been so much fun (and so unexpected) as the writing, production, and creation of "Call Me a Duck."

Based on Maino's "All the Above," the video was launched last Friday, and as of this writing we're closing in on 160,000 views on YouTube... and still climbing.

Originally the brainchild of my boss Holly Moline Simons, "Call Me a Duck" was fast-tracked and produced on a shoestring budget once we learned that On the Rocks, the UO's resident male a cappella group, was going to appear on this fall's The Sing-Off on NBC. (By the way, "fast-tracked" in academic parlance means just under half a year.) Our boys were eliminated just shy of the final round, but hey, we'll take it!

Besides teaching me how to spell "a cappella," this project afforded me the chance to write and produce a rap song, which is a résumé line item I never would've considered.

I was privileged to work with an amazing cast and crew. Special shout-outs are due to Holly, as well as director Michael McDermott, director of photography John Waller, amazingly organized assistant director Christopher Parker, effervescent OTR liaison (and crystal-clear tenor) Jeffrey Rogers, audio engineer (and OTR founder) Peter Hollens, and the rock of UO Admissions, Jett Nilprabhassorn.

Funny side note: In a few weeks the UO plays Auburn in the BCS championship game. I learned something interesting today. Guess what l'il ditty Auburn has adopted this season as the football team's "pump up" song?

Maino's "All the Above." Complete coincidence, Tigers, scout's honor!

Photo courtesy of Michael McDermott.

Celebrating Hard Times

2010-12-05T19:28:47-08:00

Local craft distillery gives Eugene a buzz

My able editrix for this piece asked that, if I was going to write for a second time about my buddy James and his bootleggin', I'd have to identify myself as his friend, make it clear we have a personal connection. That was a good idea. The line between business reporting and nepotism can grow mighty thin when covering local folks. One thing that made it simpler was the fact that I honest-to-God find James' and Dudley's efforts fascinating. The boys, James in particular, have been striving for so long to reach this level, that it's really gratifying seeing them hit the mark. Cheers, gents!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The last time I wrote in these pages about the liquor-distilling ventures of my friend James Stegall (“Money Where the Mouth Is,” 3/13/08), he had a different business partner, a different company name and a different plan for his product line.

He also had 100,000 fewer miles on his car’s odometer, now the legacy of commuting among a day job in Albany, his home base in Eugene and the clean and earthy refurbished granary in Monroe he shares with business partner Dudley Clark and two stills composed of copper tubing and stainless steel.

They make an unlikely pair, smooth-headed, thirtysomething Stegall, and Clark with his longish silver hair and swashbuckler’s goatee. “We don’t always see eye to eye,” says Clark, “but James and I have figured how to be partners in a very deep sense. Almost like brothers.”

It’s been a busy fall season for these almost-brothers and their business, now christened Hard Times Distillery. After more than two years of work fueled by a loan and training courses courtesy of Lane County’s Entrepreneurial Development Services (eDev), their product finally hit liquor store shelves in early October.

Continue reading "Celebrating Hard Times" at Eugene Weekly.

This Little Piggy Went to Market

2010-11-18T18:21:00-08:00

Last week Inkville took its show on the road to sunny San Diego, the city playing host to the 2010 American Marketing Assocation's Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education.

I took in some great (and not so great) presentations and talks. Here are some highlights.

Alicia Nestle, assistant director for new media at Nazareth College, presented "20 Tips for Powerful Story-Driven Branding & Communications." Besides the fact that I am a professional storyteller, I also liked this presentation because its Letterman "Top 10 List" style provided a lot of practical ideas one could implement immediately.

In what appears to be a possibly disturbing trend at this symposium both of the years I have attended, Nestle was joined in her presentation by a representative of the media firm that partnered with Nazareth. Many of the presentations involved one person from the academic side plus one corporate partner, in fact. If schools want to partner with outside third parties, sure, go for it. We do here at Oregon. But I'll admit it does give me pause in considering whether a presentation might be discounted by the AMA planners simply because the academic side presenter planned to fly solo.

Most of the conference sessions surrounding social and new media suggest to me that the University of Oregon is already at the forefront in this arena. We aren't doing everything we could, of course, but we're doing what we reasonably can, given that social media isn't at the tippy-top of any UO staffer's job description (to my knowledge, at least).

Gratifyingly, the location-based services presentation by Joe Hice of North Carolina State (who presented sans corporate partner) even used my UO Foursquare online materials as a demonstration of schools on the cutting edge of this particular medium. (By the way, NC State's social media plan is amazing, and include some cool ideas for QR codes, in particular.)

I was in awe of Purdue's "Makers, All" campaign as presented by Teri Thompson, that university's vice president for marketing. The campaign is simple and elegant, and offers return to a core branded identity while maximizing use of a mascot that might be confusing or awkward in the 21st century. But really, how could a presentation called "From Gatorade to Lady Gaga" fail to disappoint, especially when its presenter charges onto stage in a triumphant pop music opener?

As a side note, Thompson's bold decisions in her work have reinvigorated me to produce more potentially troublesome collateral like the risky tagline I'm currently employing on the University of Oregon Admissions site:

But it was a breakfast keynote presentation by Dave Kissel of the Zocalo Group that may have been my favorite piece of content. He soke ambout word of mouth makreting, and about how much brands are affected, for both good and ill, by comments on online fora that can't be controlled directly by the instituion: message boards, online chat, Second Life, etc. Kissel likened a brand's adherents and detractors to an iceberg, as in my hasty illustrative doodle on a blank page of the conference booklet:

And yes, evidently the bottom of my iceberg is underwater.

The military presence in town was definitely felt: keynote sessions were held in a large pavilion-style tent on the waterfront behind the Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina, which afforded me an excellent view of the pirate ship moored literally in the hotel's backyard...

...but also facilitated the way the interior tent walls (not to mention the presentation screens) frequently reverberated with the force of aircraft taking off and landing.

Ah, well. The new mode of transport and the old, I guess. I just hope my continued marketing efforts for Oregon look more like a HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter and less like the Queen Anne's Revenge.

"These Guns are Fully Loaded"

2010-11-17T08:44:58-08:00

If the fever dream scene from last night's episode of Glee had aired in the 1980s...

...a spinoff Glee Babies Saturday morning cartoon would be immediately rushed into production.

That is all.