First, there’s the ad for the Ottawa Senators that features a firey banding tool stamping Forever Red on the webpage…

…then, a television screen unfolds from the banner and a woman walks across from the far left to the centre before posing with an ad (obstructed by the Ottawa Senators ad) for Larco TV (I hope they got a huge discount for being mostly covered up).

Neither ad is easily closed. In fact the Larco TV close link didn’t seem particularly responsive when I used it.

I understand the need for advertising dollars to support news delivery. However, when the ads dominate, interfere and impact the site visitor’s experience, it’s time to find a new news source.

I refer to helping Andrea become a breast cancer survivor as a project for several reasons. First, I recognize there’s a process to follow to achieve success, that we will achieve success in a finite amount of time (a year or less) and there will be a celebratory bash when we wrap-up. Second, I’ve taken on the role of primary support for Andrea which means I’ve taken responsibility for scheduling appointments, acting as the central contact for all communications and coordinating our support network. Finally, it’s a way to draw on my professional skills, learn new skills and exploit the situation as an opportunity to relate what I’m doing for the benefit of the world at large.

Besides Andrea and our two daughters, there are many people or groups that I need to interact with:

• family
• friends
• support network
• clients (of my business)
• family physician
• surgeon
• radiation oncologist
• medical oncologist
• social worker
• insurance adjudicator
• energy workers
• naturopath
• researcher
• lawyer

That’s a lot of very important relationships involving a lot of phone calls, correspondence, appointments and information exchange.

Let me tell you about the three mission critical tools I’m using and you should consider.

1) Livescribe Pulse Smartpen

I’ve been a committed user of my Livescribe pen since I bought it last December (thank you Whitney Hoffman for the introduction). I believe it represents the best money I’ve ever spent on any technology, ever, and feel that it heralds the beginning of paper-based computing. I’m particularly attached to this technology right now because it allows me to simultaneously capture both physical and digital copies of my notes (multiple copies in multiple modes is important so I can be sure I have a copy, somewhere). I’ve also recorded a few conversations when I was most concerned about retaining critical and new information.

The Livescribe pen is my workhorse and trusted ally through this process because I can use it anywhere, particularly situations where it would be physically and socially awkward to open my laptop or tap away on my iPhone.

Note that the Livescribe is compatible with both Mac and PC systems.

2) Aurex Business Ring Binder/Portfolio

It’s one of those things I bought and used in a haphazard way many years ago and, when I was done with it, threw it in a cupboard because I couldn’t bring myself to throw away something that was in great condition and may one day be useful.

Ta da!

I like this portfolio more than the binder many people recommended I use because it has a zipper — I’m able to close it and know that I won’t lose any papers.

I’ve divided the binder into 10 sections: Reports, Notes, Community Care Organizations, Receipts/Statements, Medications/Instructions, Research, Directions/print-outs/miscellaneous, Insurance, Resources, Loose notes/prescriptions/receipts (which is a folder I can throw loose papers into). All of these sections hold the pieces of paper that are very important to us.

There are two types of paper in this binder: the pieces that I’ve just collected and need to be scanned for electronic backup, and the pieces that I’ve already scanned for electronic backup. Having hardcopy/electronic duplicates is just as important as being organized and mobile.

My only mistake with this portfolio is that I used a fancy gold marker to label the exterior. The ink didn’t really adhere to the portfolio and it made a huge mess of gold that got on my hands and other things when I handled it. It’s mostly dry and messy now.

Note that binders and portfolios are compatible with all environments.

3) Daylite Productivity Suite

This is the newest piece of technology in my toolkit and one that I both love and get frustrated by (partly because I’m still learning it and partly because there are a lot of things that could work better or important features it needs).

Daylite allows me to organize all of my electronic correspondence, notes, appointments, projects and tasks so I can manage and monitor everything more carefully. A particularly important feature is linking which allows me to create relationships between people and activities, making it easier to find and follow progress. It’s particularly handy because I’m able to also use it for work and family activities, meaning I don’t need to run additional tools. Daylite also syncs with Address Book and iCal (this is one of the areas that needs improvement) and there’s an iPhone app which allows me to use the power of Daylite when I’m on the go.

Daylite isn’t cheap and I’m not looking forward to having to pay so much for the Productivity Suite and the iPhone app when my trial period runs out. Having said that, I can honestly say that Daylite isn’t a cute piece of software, it’s a mission critical management tool that knocks the socks off Outlook and any project management software I’ve ever used.

Daylite Productivity Suite is only available for Mac computers.

Wow!

Okay… this post is getting long and I need to get ready for the day. I’ll try to make time this week to share more detail on how I use these tools.

I haven’t gotten the flu shot for about five years, around the time that Andrea and I found out that the vaccines contain mercury as a preservative. We learned this fact the day after we had our two daughters, then five and three, vaccinated. When we told our daughters we would never do that to them, again, our older daughter asked why mercury wasn’t good for them, but it was good for the adults in her life. I couldn’t argue with that logic.

This year is different. With Andrea heading into chemo, my family needs to do everything it can to ensure that we all stay healthy. Where possible, we need to eliminate potential ailments from the running.

That’s how I found myself sitting in my car outside Tom Brown Arena at 5 a.m. this past Saturday. It wasn’t that hard to get myself moving at that hour since I haven’t been sleeping through the night for the last few weeks. I expected there to be a long and established line when I arrived. It turns out there was only one person ahead of me. He had already been there for an hour expecting the same concert-event-of-the-year lineup I was.

People really didn’t start arriving until after 6am. The clinic was scheduled to begin distributing wristbands at 7:30 a.m. The wristbands guarantee you a spot for the vaccination clinic and even block you into a time frame so you can return with your family and not have to worry about a long wait.

A cheery attendant marched through the lineup tent around 7 a.m. and belted out a friendly “good morning”. He asked if everyone was comfortable and if we all knew the order of the line. His energy level re-energized the crowd and he announced that he would be back shortly to begin handing out the bracelets.

He returned and began handing out the wristbands at 7:15 a.m… 15 minutes ahead of schedule. I got my four wristbands and was told to return at 9 a.m.

I went home to my family, had a shower and ate some breakfast. When I returned for the vaccination clinic with my family, I was able to reconnect with the folks I’d been hanging out with before the sun rose and even introduced my daughters to a few of them. It was all very friendly — and not just the people waiting for their H1N1 vaccine, but the people receiving the public, the ushers, the nurses, the volunteers… everyone was pleasant, cheery and genuinely concerned that everyone feel welcome and attended to.

We left the clinic with our antibodies 9:45 a.m. We wouldn’t be reminded of the clinic until about 4 p.m. when our arms started to hurt.

So, if I’d arrived around 6 a.m. instead of being unnecessarily early with my 5 a.m. arrival, I would have waited a grand total of 90 minutes for my four wristbands. That’s it. The remaining 45 minutes was all about processing, getting our needles and waiting out the 15 minute post-vaccination “health watch” period.

Kudos to the clinic staff and a heartfelt thank you to everyone who went through hell to make our experience a great one.

Based on the conversation, I came up with three ingredients to my audio secret sauce.

1) GOOD EQUIPMENT

Not everyone has the budget of my client and can stock up on good quality microphones (I believe my client uses Hiel mics), preamps, mixing boards and recording hardware. Get the best equipment your budget can afford.

I highly recommend establishing a good relationship with a local store and make arrangements to try their equipment out, renting or borrowing equipment is that’s an option or having a decent amount of time to try it out in the store. Before making my decision to buy an Electrovoice RE-20 microphone a few years ago, my contact at a local store sent me home with five expensive microphones (almost $3500 worth) to try in my home studio and on my recording equipment.

It’s not only the microphone that makes a difference. You also need to consider the cabling ($10 dollar, 25 foot cables give $10, 25 foot sound) and the sound board and/or sound card you’re plugging your microphone into. Everything in the input chain affects the quality of the input signal you’re recording.

The same goes for your portable recording setup. Buy the portable audio recorder that offers you the best quality for your budget, not the one that you think looks cool. If you have the money, invest in a decent handheld microphone (and cable) to use with your portable recorder.

2) ‘LESS IS MORE’

This rule applies throughout the recording, editing and mixing stages of audio production and is a lesson I learned many years ago from Mark Blacher, owner of the long lost DB Recording Systems.

To start, you want to do as little input-processing as possible. In the case of my client, I know the engineer only does a little bit of equalizing to account for the room in which they record. Aside from that, I recommend doing nothing more than a little bit of limiting to prevent clipping. Limiting is done using an effects processor called (appropriately enough) a limiter to prevent music or the person speaking from being so loud that it negatively affects the recording.

My client’s engineer does a fantastic job with the recording and I’ve told him as much, encouraging him to not change anything (more on this later). His recordings are clean and warm. That’s easy to work with in post production. As Mark Blacher used to say (and probably still does), “you can’t make a bad recording sound good, you can only make it sound less bad.”

Signal processing is where people tend to make the biggest mistakes. Whether its equalizers, compressors/limiters, noise filter and gates, reverbs, delays or maximizers, the trend is to add elements without listening to how each adjustment affects the whole. The goal of using effects is generally to make all of the pieces fit together in the final mix. Of course, this is different if the goal is to be wild, crazy or a little more artistic/avante-garde.

In the spoken word and corporate audio production work I do, I use only the effects that actually add something meaningful to the mix. Then, another lesson from Mark Blacher, I add as much as it takes to audibly notice the effect over the mix, then back it off so it’s part of the mix.

To help with the understanding, let’s explore a few scenarios.

VOICEOVER WITH MUSIC: Here, we want the voice to stand out over the music and have both be elements of the mix without competing for attention. A rookie mistake is to focus strictly on bringing the music down in the mix (or worse, bring the voice up) so the voiceover stands out. The danger here is that the music gets pulled back too much and the mix loses a lot of the energy it needs from the relationship of the music and voice, together. I try to use both levels and equalization to pull the music back enough. With a little experimentation, I use the equalizer to find the dominant frequencies shared by both music and voice (voice being the primary user of those frequencies) and then pull those frequencies back from the music (depending on the music, anywhere between -3db and -12db). The goal is to carve out a space for the voice and music to co-exist.

In fact, when it comes to less is more, a supplement to that is take away before you add. This is particularly true when it comes to mixing. You’ll get far better results turning the loud things down than turning the quiet things up. And, your listener will appreciate your efforts much more (even if they don’t know it).

EVEN-ING THE ODD LEVELS: It’s not uncommon to have variances in the volume between recorded voices. There are a lot of tricks to getting the levels evened out, the most common one is to use a compressor. Compressors work kind of like a vice on a workbench (and many people use it that way), pressing everything together to hold it in one spot. In the audio world, this means that every sound below a certain audible level is amplified to that minimum, and every sound above a certain audible level is decreased to that maximum. The mistake people make is to trust the compressor to do its job without listening to the result. Common results are audio that has no dynamics (everything from a whisper to an explosion ends up being the same volume) and that there is an audible event of amplifying weak signals and crushing strong ones (think of how your ears feel after coming out of a loud concert). Telltale signs of improper use of a compressor is that ambient sounds like appliances, electronics and air movement end up taking residence in the mix. This is bad. Very bad! Where possible, do as much level tweaking using your level faders. Use compression only to bring things a little closer to each other. Moderate discrepancies in the levels are far better than overuse of compression.

ADDING SOME ENERGY: This is more of a technique used in recording music, though there are applications for corporate voiceover work, as well. I’m talking about using reverbs and, to a lesser extent, delays to add depth and energy to a voice. This is not something I generally recommend, by the way. However, if you must try it, I stand by the mantra of ‘less is more’. In fact, done well, most people won’t even notice the reverb at all. I remember when Mark Blacher introduced me to this approach of reverb use, I was irate that I was paying him to add reverb to the mix and I couldn’t hear it. Then, he muted the reverb and the song suddenly sounded empty and thin. Delays add an echo which, for obvious reasons, will be indentifiable in the mix. The real trick is to make sure the delay doesn’t become overly dominant.

NOISE FILTERS AND GATES: My best advice… get good foreground sound as far away as undesirable noises (such as refrigerators, fans, hums, etc…). Noise filters and gates introduce a lot of challenges and can really mess up a recording. The same goes for auto-ducking. Stay away! If you really must use these effects, see ingredient #3.

3) PLAY

The only way to know how to use the various dials, switches, faders, pans, pots, cables, blinky lights and especially your ears is to play with your equipment and as many different recordings as you can. Take advantage of quiet time and hobby projects to figure out how things work, how to make some things sound like hell and how to make others sound great.

There’s a million different ways to make good chilli and your job as the audio engineer and producer is to figure out which ingredients go best together, in which quantities and sequence, and how the result should sit in the bowl (and which bowl to use, for that matter). Then, figure out how to do things entirely differently.

With play comes fun and real experience.

THE NOT-SO-SECRET INGREDIENT

During our phone conversation, it became apparent that my client had ended up with processor creep (including a loudness maximizer). In an attempt to develop a sound they liked, they had moved so far away from the great source recording that there was a real disconnect between the original performance and the resulting audio.

When asked which processors I was using and how I was using them to get the great sound, I double checked and confirmed I was using only a little bit of subtractive equalization and nothing else; no compressors, no reverbs, no maximizers. The warm and full sound of the final product I produced came almost entirely from the skill and technique of the recording engineer (and the great equipment he’s using).

If I had to identify the one ingredient in audio secret sauce that makes a great product, it’s this… use your ears. Listen. Really. Carefully. Listen to the individual elements and (more importantly) how they all fit together. Everything you hear must make sense to your ears.

…each challenge we face is designed to prepare us for what comes next. We must therefore ask ourselves four important questions as we face and then assess our handling of each challenge: (1) how did this challenge come about? (2) what did I do to address the challenge? (3) what have I learned? and, (4) what will I do differently next time?

…considering challenges as a sum, not of individual parts, complicates problem solving and makes it difficult to understand what happened.

…regret anchors us in the past and denies us permission to do the next thing.

…each of us has the ability to change the world.

Except yesterday.

I opened my box and discovered a motion sickness bag that had a return address stamped on it — from Chapter1Studio. I couldn’t pass this one up. I opened the bag and found a letter that posed the question:

Does your printed material make you sick?

While I have no printed material, nor any need for it at the moment, I know that it will take quite a while for me to forget the name Chapter1Studio. Which means they’ll be fresh in my mind when I do have printing needs.

I wonder if any other companies have the courage to surprise me, today.

Where books used to lead to radio shows, Terry and Mike went the other way. On October 27th, they released their book The Age of Persuasion: How Marketing Ate Our Culture. Just days earlier, Terry, knowing me to be a fan of his radio show, left a message on my blog, making himself and Mike Tennant available for cross-examination.

Little ol’ me. I guess it’s true what they say: “bloggers and podcasters really do have influence…”

Subjects covered:

• marketing
• advertising
• collaborating
• creativity
• curiosity
• “Do This Or Die“

Issue #5: despite what you think, you’re not competing with technology

I’ve always been a fan of radio and the variety of programming it offered. When I was 13 I would wake up to the CHEZ 106 morning show. During breakfast I would listen to CBC (since it was on in the kitchen). After school I would turn on CHEZ, again. And, I would often set my alarm to listen to The Zero Hour at midnight, also on CHEZ. When I got my Sony WM-4, I listened to the radio even more. Even though I had my own cassette tapes to listen to — which I did — radio had something to offer.

Of course I also helped to raise the average daily television consumption statistics and have gone in and out of phases of being a newspaper junkie.

So, what changed when I got my first iRiver — the one with the built-in radio — and then an iPod and ultimately an iPhone? Why was it so easy for me to give up cable (beyond the fact that my wife-to-be didn’t have it and didn’t want it)? Why am I watching specific content online?

I don’t believe media organizations are competing with technology. Technology is just another delivery channel. About the only thing that portable media technology offers that the media organizations cannot through traditional delivery channels is time-shifting. The rest of the playing field is level.

I believe that the competition is with personality. Great personality breeds strong relationships.

I’ve done several informal surveys of people I know and the consensus is that radio lost its personality. As an added bonus, radio reduced playlists, over-specialized and over-homogenized their formats and programming. Portable media players allow consumers to program their own personality and expand the playlist from a limited 200 songs to a seemingly unlimited number of songs.

Ottawa’s CHEZ 106 is a great study. It’s billed as a classic rock station. If you judged classic rock by CHEZ’s playlist, you’d swear that genre begins and ends with about 250 records. In fact, I enjoy telling the story of being in my car and turning off CHEZ in the middle of Hotel California and six months later, back in my car, turned CHEZ back on in almost the exact same spot of that song.

It’s not just about the songs, either. I couldn’t find my own rhythm with the new style of on-air hosting. That applied with a number of local rock and pop radio stations. Even CBC had a few shows I left behind because I couldn’t connect with the style of the time. I’ve recently discovered new approaches and even new talent on some of those shows and have become a committed listener, again. The content hasn’t changed — the personality of the show, not just the host, has changed.

Television’s personality has also evolved. It’s a long tail coming out of the reality and pseudo-reality crazy, neither of which I really bought into. Talking with people about the reality craze is like talking about Rick Astley during the height of his fame — nobody admitted to listening to him, but his records were selling like crazy and he was playing a lot of sold out concerts. But I really didn’t listen to him.

The print publications that remain strong are the ones that have a strong macro-personality (the publication itself), or have outstanding micro-personalities (specific journalists or columnists).

In all variety of media, advancements in technology provide additional ways to reach audiences. If your personality is strong, people will continue to seek you out whether through traditional channels, through media streams online, on subscription-based content, podcasts or as programming on sites such as HULU. Each of those distribution methods offer new (possibly challenging) ways of revenue generation. How successful you are is based entirely on your personality and the relationships that personality breeds.

Suggestion: Focus on creating strong personality-based content and think more creatively about how to use technology to distribute that personality.

That approach, and others, overlook one thing: people talk and always have. It started a long, long time ago with face-to-face communications using body language, then spoken language with town criers and messenger, which led way to written language and the postal system. Don’t forget about smoke signals. Then the telephone, radio, television and this thing called the internet.

Organizations have embraced many technologies over the years to help with communications, business development and networking. None has been more controversial than the internet which offers ample opportunities to build and sometimes destroy business with a few keystrokes. As a result, an increasing number of businesses are waging war on democratized social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter.

The biggest fear is the rate at which information travels. Gone are the days when an employee would leak information to the wrong person at a social gathering and find the information reaching the press several days or weeks later. Stories break on the internet, particularly Twitter, on an hourly basis and companies don’t like that the data doesn’t know social, geographic or political boundaries.

Things have changed significantly and quickly for business. I understand their concern. Particularly since the new wave of authentic, transparent and regular communication is something the establishment hasn’t yet embraced. Old traditions die hard. We have to graduate through another generation of business leaders, perhaps two, before modern social communications finds its way into the fabric of the corporate world. Until then, communications will remain the work of an individual or specific team, not the entire company.

In my work over the last few years, I’ve become aware of a number of situations in which sweeping decisions were made with little thought about the impact. For example, many government departments I’ve worked with have blacklisted Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Those restrictions also applied to the communications and human resources department, teams that could benefit from using social media to monitor conversations, participate in conversations, recruit and check up on potential hires. Getting exceptions for these departments was/is challenging. Conversely, I’ve heard of some forward thinking companies that recognize making allowances for personal use of the company phones and internet connection means people are happier at work and don’t have to leave the office for extended periods or  sneakily try to do online banking at the office.

Some people I’ve spoken with noted that their management views social networks as unproductive use of time, apparently forgetting ill-planned and poorly executed meetings, many of which start late, end later and achieve nothing.

There are many ways social media tools can work for companies. The simple lesson to remember is that people talk, no matter which channel is available to them. The companies that create a culture of trust and provide support and education are best positioned to manage and even benefit from the use of social media.

Out, damned lump! Out, I say!

Andrea’s lumpectomy went very well. We had planned on it being a mastectomy and when we learned that the surgical date would be pushed out two weeks because of the extra time required, we decided on the lumpectomy. We wanted to get the cancer out without delay. And out it is. We’re looking forward to a good pathology report that confirms the surgeon got everything. After Andrea’s recovery from surgery, we’ll prepare for chemo.

… in The Age of Persuasion

I’ve written a few posts about The Age of Persuasion, a brilliant radio program produced by Pirate Toronto for CBC. Terry O’Reilly (host and co-creator) left a comment on one such post last week to notify me that The Age of Persuasion book (by Terry and producer/co-creator Mike Tennant) is being released today (October 27) and offering to be available for an online Q&A with me. I’ll be interviewing Terry and Mike this Thursday morning and will publish the audio shortly after.

Social media and the workplace

CHQR (Calgary) has invited me to talk about social media and the workplace later today. The discussion stems from reports that a growing number of businesses, sports organizations and entertainment companies are preventing the use of social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter as communications channels by employees, athletes and movie stars (respectively). In some cases, companies are blocking access to these tools from internal networks using technology such as firewalls. In the case of sports and entertainment organizations, the prevention is being written into contracts.

Issue #4: the risk of wearing people out or, worse, doing too many things badly rather than few things very well

When they first moved to digital, newspaper, radio and television organizations used the Internet as yet another channel to distribute content they’d already produced. There was little in the way of breaking news on the web because the media outlets didn’t have the knowledge or agility to get news on their website quickly. The Internet didn’t drive traffic to their primary channel, nor their primary channel to the Internet. They were competing with themselves and marginalizing both of their efforts in the process.

I’ll hand it to them now; they learned very quickly that the present of media and communications is the integration of digital and traditional modes of distribution and engagement. During a meeting I was in, yesterday, an accomplished and well respected public affairs professional referred to this as digital being part of the marrow of a communications campaign, not a graft on to it.

This recognition is important, yet it comes at a cost. shrinking budgets means fewer staff that are expected to do more. For people that have been in the business for a while, it’s a reinvention of their workflow and a lengthening of their day – I’m guessing at the same salary.

During a presentation he gave last spring, Ottawa Sun sports columnist Chris Stevenson explained that he is now expected to write his column, keep a blog that augments (not competes) with his column and produce a video for the Ottawa Sun website, all from the same fact finding missions. Where he used to carry a pad and pencil to take interview notes, now he seemingly has to write with one hand and operate a hand-held video camera with another. The intent is that each work he produces appreciates the value of the other.

Let’s return to my earlier study of the O’Brien trial. Here, the new normal (the integration of digital and traditional) may have been just a minor change in mindset and tools. Ottawa Citizen columnist Glen McGregor (legally) broadcasted courtroom proceedings over Twitter. It was like he was a digital court reporter for the public and the “tweets” (I’m guessing) became the notes from which he wrote is article. News junkies loved this because they followed unfiltered facts from the courtroom in real time from which they could make their own assessment of the situation. Then they could read Glen’s column the next morning to get some analysis. CBC Ottawa’s Alistair Steele (radio) and Cory O’Kelly (television) found Twitter’s 140 character limit too restrictive so they tag-teamed short blog posts, focussing their energy on their deadlines and creating strong reports for the evening news. Unfortunately, that approach meant that on many days, digital seemed like an afterthought.

Suggestion: Realign production demands and deadlines. Overloading the journalist could lead to doing too much badly, worker burnout or (worse) diminish the personality of the column or media brand. Integrate digital in a way that becomes part of the existing workflow instead of adding more work to the flow. Or, find a way to spread out some of the work.

• I will probably blog more about this than I had originally planned to
• I’m the project manager of Survivor Cancer: The Andrea Project

When it comes to this project management role, I realized that there’s a lot that corporate and government communications folks can learn, particularly in crisis situations, from people in my situation.

Communications

Andrea and I didn’t wait to tell people. Indeed, many of the people we told about Andrea’s diagnosis seemed taken aback at how transparent we were. One person told me she had always thought the best policy was to keep serious illness secret from as much family, and especially from friends, as possible.

There are three reasons we didn’t wait. First, our situation will definitely affect our normal routines, many of which involve family and friends. Second, we may need help. Finally, other people may benefit from our knowledge and experience.

We shared our news in appropriate ways, and didn’t gloss over it for any audience. That is, we didn’t do a soft delivery, leading people along as we went. We came out with it – like pulling a band aid off. There’s only one way to say “it’s cancer”. It stings for a moment and it avoids a prolonged build up to the news.

To relate all of this to the “business” world, Andrea and I were direct with our internal stakeholders (immediate family, our daughters in particular) from day one. They knew there was a concern and we answered all of their questions as they came up. We didn’t spin anything. We shared the good possibilities and the not-s0-good possibilities and told them we’d update them with each new development — which we did.

With the exception of a very select few people we consider to be trusted confidantes who are in a position to help us out, we didn’t share our situation with “external stakeholders” until we had a diagnosis. When we did make the announcement, we used all of possible channels to make it swift and clear.

Support

Our network of family and friends kicked in right away with offers of support and help. More surprisingly, many of my clients offered support and flexibility with projects. One client responded right away with an offer of regular meals delivered to our home. Members of our online communities started emailing, postal mailing and phoning from around the world with good wishes. Friends who have been through, or are going through, similar situations offered to get together with us to share experiences and strategies. We’ve also received many offers of help with our children.

As first timers with this kind of situation, we’ve suddenly found ourselves better equipped to deal with the dynamic and unpredictability of treatments, and energized to face the rocky roads ahead. More importantly, we’re able to better filter and process the information we receive from reliable resources — I recommend staying away from Internet-based information as much as possible since you can become easily overwhelmed and even frightened.

The Fringes

Tylenol shocked the corporate world when they were decisive, swift and transparent in the wake of the cyanide contamination. Everyone thought the company would fail if not because of the crisis, because of their response. Then, they shocked the corporate world a second time by coming out stronger having invented tamper-proof packaging. It’s a model that’s been followed and rejected with a full spectrum of results.

When iSTAR (Canada’s first national-scale ISP) was being sold to PSInet in the 1997, my co-workers and I found it very hard to stay motivated and supportive of the transition because it was painfully obvious that the information we were being fed was disingenuous and incomplete. Even some senior executives told me, personally, that they felt the town hall meetings were ill-conceived attempts to keep staff on board by simply telling everyone to soldier on with no rationale other than “we’re telling you to”. To paraphrase Andy Nulman, management was selling “soldier on”, not establishing an argument to buy it.

The Internet has created a global village, blurring the lines between the providers and consumers of products and services. Companies and governments have taken on personalities. People understand that crisis happens and have demonstrated that they’re willing to be patient and even help out when necessary. The delicate thread that helps organizations — and families — succeed, is communications.

…pay attention to your customers. Why? Because your children need food and as much hugs as I get in the world, I can’t eat a fucking hug.

The room, myself included, welcomed “I can’t eat a fucking hug” as a new commandment of social media. I’ve discovered that, like any good rule, there’s at least one exception.

Nearly two weeks ago, we announced that Andrea has been diagnosed with breast cancer. Life, reality and schedules change very quickly (and erratically) with this news. The outpouring of support is incredible. We’ve received a steady flow of hugs, real and virtual, and I’ve learned that while hugs may not put food on the table, they give you the will to sit down and eat and keep good care of yourself. I don’t believe that any amount of money can do that.

While driving home from the rehearsal, I started to wonder why I was so keen on this guitar stand being a part of the band’s live show. Which got me thinking about the concerts I remember. While I remember the performances and the musicianship of the bands I’ve seen, those memories get a bit foggier over time and they certainly don’t translate well in conversation.

“You wouldn’t believe the riff he played!”

“The bass player was in the groove.”

“That was the best version of their hit I’ve ever heard.”

These really sound like you-had-to-be-there moments.

I find that my most-clear concert memories usually centre around what I can easily explain and a listener can easily visualize — things like ZZ Top’s working junkyard stage during their Recycler tour, Dire Straits opening their On Every Street tour with a high tension screen that recoiled upwards in an instant on the opening hit of their first song, and Sting threatening to stop his Nothing Like the Sun concert in Ottawa because the general admission folks were forcing the people at the front into the protective fence.

We often talk about the stage layout, the pyrotechnics, the jumbo screens and the light show because we can describe it. It’s hard for us to hum back a great musical performance.

It’s worth noting that bands like ZZ Top aren’t just great live bands; they’re great live performers. They’ve incorporated incredible laser light shows with disco balls that make it look like it’s raining drops of light on the arena.  During their Recycler tour, Billy and Dusty were compacted into prop-compressed cars (midway through the show) which they burst out of wearing shiny gold jackets and new instruments.  They also walk, and seemingly slide around, on moving conveyor belts which always gets a roar from the crowd. Maybe that’s why I’ve seen the band five times — it’s more than just the music which I know they can play very well.

On the Monday two days after our performance as part of a benefit concert at the Elmdale Tavern a few weeks ago, Woody and Doc took a few moments to talk about the event on the Doc and Woody morning show on CHEZ 106. Woody wrapped up the 45-second conversation by saying Robert Farrell was “on fire” (the only band or musician mentioned by name). That sounds like a lot of post-concert reviews to the average listener. I can’t help but wonder if an elevating guitar stand would have spiced up the conversation and had listeners curious enough to come to the next show.

I’m sure Drum-Mark and I (Bass-Mark) will continue to bug Robert about his guitar stand. Come see us when we perform in November. Perhaps you’ll get to see this famed elevating guitar stand.  Our next public concerts are November 6 and 7 (POSTPONED TO DECEMBER, DATES TBD) at Buster’s Bar and Grill (2525 Carling Avenue, Ottawa).

I’m sure there are lots of sites that feature stories from cancer survivors and their support teams. Today, though, I’d like to add my site to that list. If you have a story to share, please add it to the comments of this post, or add a comment that links to the page where you’ve already shared your story. There’s 31 days in this month; let’s see if we can chart 31 stories right here!

Thanks.

TIME

“Time”, I started.  ”You need to accept that it takes time to build a community and for a dialog to gain momentum. Sustainable relationships and meaningful communications rarely, if ever, happen from a single instant or one encounter. Digital communications is about the marathon, not the sprint.” [with props to Rukhsana Khan for the running metaphor]

ENERGY

“You must put energy into everything you do”, I continued. “To run a full marathon, you need the energy to take you from the staring blocks to the finish line. In digital communications, the finish line moves ahead just as quickly as you do. If you invest only a small amount of energy, or if you spend all of your energy on an early burst, you’ll never be able to keep yourself going when the technology and nature of digital relationships and communications evolves. Besides, relationships are about the process, not the product.”

AUTHENTICITY

“Everything you do and say as an organization and as individuals throughout your organization must be authentic. That means accepting your people as part of organization’s character and voice. Pontificating isn’t welcome here, nor is corporate messaging coming from the mouths of real people. The public is much more savvy and far less forgiving than it has ever been, particularly when it comes to state and corporate communications.”

MONEY

“Digital communications costs money — whether on resources, technology, travel, etc… — though money alone will not buy you success. More importantly, you need to allocate your money on your relationships, not on a Ferrari.” [I used Ferrari because it was fresh in my mind.  This morning I saw an architect or designer emerge from one to talk to a homeowner about his renovation plans.] “You’re better off taking everyone out for a coffee and sitting down with them for a few minutes than investing in an expensive ad campaign. Use your money to get to know people, not show them how successful you are.”

That’s when it occurred to me: time, energy, authenticity and money — TEAM.

I’ll be walking the audience through an exploration of digital communications and how content in a variety of forms (text, audio and video) can be used as onramps to engage an audience and build relationships.  The session will also draw on my approach to producing engaging content — Content Paleontology.  Instead of the traditional style where a story is identified and mapped out during the planning and acquisition stages of production, Content Paleontology discovers and reveals the story through a series of iterative steps.

The best part of our list and stories is that while they were delivered with a book industry focus, the golden rules themselves are portable to any industry and community.

Here’s our list…

10. Be a champion of the industry/genre. (celebrate others)

9. Never approach a network or individual in a network with a greedy one sided agenda. –Keith Burtis

8. KNOW the site/people you’re approaching, and why.

7. Follow the site’s guidelines/policies if they’re published. (read About, FAQ, everything!)

6. Customize and personalize your message. (add value and be reasonable)

5. Address the site/people by name.

4. Never harass the site/people. (a follow-up is fine)

3. Be polite, gracious and humble. (books are not currency)

2. If the site is good enough to approach, it’s good enough to promote.

1. If you let the site/person love you and your work, they will become your champion.

Enjoy!

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’ll be performing with Robert Farrell as the headlining act at a fundraising benefit concert for breast cancer research.

The event is taking place Saturday, October 3 at the Elmdale Tavern (1084 Wellington Street W) in Ottawa.  We’ll be taking the stage around 10pm.

This week’s one-hour session, Bloggers/Podcasters are People, Too: Engaging with the social media community will feature our take on the Top 10 Golden Rules for engaging with online communities and individuals.

The series wraps up next Thursday (October 1) with a final session, Remarkable Use of the Internet to Promote Books and the People Behind Them.

To register, follow this link, put a check mark in the box next to each webcast you’d like to attend then click the “Register” button.  Your registration will apply to each webcast you selected.

Here’s another look at the state of media — traditional and digital — and how things continue to evolve in that space… Did You Know 4.0.

Hat tip: Dale Arseneault.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I reflected on that after rehearsal, wondering if my Waterstone would displace my Precision Special as my primary instrument.  A few hours later Robert called me basically suggesting that the Waterstone become my main bass.  That has me thinking even more about ways I can adapt some songs and tweak my effect chain (perhaps some octave) to create a unique sound for myself.

If you want to learn more about Waterstone guitars and basses, check out an interview I did with Waterstone founder (and Neurosurgeon by day), Dr. Bob Singer, a few years back for my Electric Sky podcast.

Thank you, Dr. Bob, for an amazing bass!

I first met Robert in 1989.  I had become good friends with his younger brother, Jamie.  Jamie sang and played saxophone and still does both. After finishing high school, I suggested that we start a band.  Jamie introduced me to Robert and, shortly after, Millennium was formed.  It was a loose outfit, seven members strong: Jamie (vocals and sax), Robert (vocals and guitar), Graham (guitar and vocals), me (bass and vocals), Linda (keyboards), Danielle (vocals) and a revolving door of drummers (Rob, Al, another Al, Jessel and one or two others).

Millennium played songs by the Scorpions, Smithereens, Jethro Tull, ZZ Top, Sting, Van Halen and others, and a few of our own.  We were all over the place musically. When the band wasn’t playing, Robert and I practiced, wrote and recorded music.  When we weren’t working on music, we worked for the same company and hung out.

That seven-piece pop/rock band went through a number of turbulent transitions.  Robert and I remained the core of the band.  Eventually, with a drummer named Eric, we became a tight and energetic three-piece blues/rock band, Thunderbird, with a decent following.  Our music repertoire made more sense: Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, ZZ Top, The Arc Angels, B.B. King, Buddy Guy and others, and a few of our tunes.

Lots of stories later…

The Wellington Roadhouse gigs (with Lorenzo on drums) came at a time when I couldn’t keep up with Robert’s ambitions.  Since then, we’ve talked several times over the years about playing in a band together, again.  The reason has always been that we had fun playing music together.

I’ve actually been in a few bands since my last gig with Robert and I’ve enjoyed working on music with other people.  However, there’s a chemistry that I’ve never found in any other combo I’ve been a part of.

After a long break, Robert and I hooked up with yet another drummer — another guy named Mark.  The three of us opened up our first rehearsal, today, with Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Cold Shot.  It felt great.

Rehearsals will continue and there’s talk of some gigs.

Issue #2: focus on content, not delivery, in the “Age of Niche”

It’s not fun when “your” industry finds itself under huge external pressures that are well beyond your control.  The music industry has been struggling with this in several stages; first with MP3 files and then when Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks made file sharing simple.  If you consider the reasons for this shift, you realize it had more to do with portability and ease of distribution — both of which came with simplified user interfaces — than it did with the product and the price.

Niche interests in news and entertainment is nothing new.  Music, movies and the media have organized their content by categories for years.  The distribution, though, has been largely about targeting the masses, not the specific audience that would most appreciate the specific product.  That’s the difference between a garden hose on spray or stream — there’s a lot of wasted water in the former.

These new technologies have made it easier for individuals to make choices specific to their own tastes.  In many respects this means further segmentation of the news.  More importantly, this means ensuring the delivery is structured so that each audience receives only the content it wants.

It takes more to reach the audience on its terms than just organizing the content by subject, it takes genuine knowledge of human interface and user experience — be that online, in broadcast media or print publications.

Suddenly the media organizations need to think a lot more about availability, accessibility and design in a variety of media channels, each of which has its unique features and challenges.

Suggestion: Spend the time to design your website and produce your media (traditional and digital) in a way that appeals, individually, to a large number of diversely focused interests. Pay special attention to the interface and the way you engage each audience — if it’s ugly, confusing or not engaging, noone will be interested.

It was his role as Arthur Fonzarelli that both propelled him to fame and overshadows the amazing work he’s done in the entertainment industry and for humanity.  A small portion of those accomplishments were highlighted in an introduction that took nearly as long as Mr. Winkler had for his own speech.

It was an inspirational evening.  The Fonz told stories about his own amazing journey through life, stories that illustrated a journey tied to the idea of “If you will it, it’s not a dream” — a powerful message Mr. Winkler has always lived by without realizing it until receiving that exact message on a card from a fan.  All of his stories illustrated a life that seems to have taken place as if by design and certainly too amazing to be a Hollywood movie.  And yet, despite his fame, Mr. Winkler’s life and work seems completely relatable — it really seemed as if I was spending an evening with a close friend.

While he may have had the audience completely engaged during his 35-minute talk, by far the biggest reaction he received was when he quoted The Fonz, in character: “Hey Ritchie, you can get a library card, and they’re free.” The theatre went wild.  That one line in an episode of Happy Days resulted in a 500% increase in library registrations in the United States.  Mr. Winkler used that story, and others, to illustrate how simple it is to make a positive difference in the world.

After a passionate standing ovation, Mr. Winkler wound his way through the audience, happily speaking with and signing autographs for everyone who took the opportunity to approach him (yes, I was one of them).

I had the privilege of interviewing Henry Winkler last year about his Hank Zipzer books and the challenges he’s faced with Dyslexia.  You can listen to that interview by CLICKING HERE.

I produced this video for EDC which documents the victory of their Export THIS Plane Pull challenge team as they pulled a 193,000lb Fed/Ex Airbus A310, 12 feet in 5.529 seconds, to take the cup.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The trick was to call each other, collect.  The phone company had an automated attendant which prompted the “Collect Caller” to say their name after the tone.  The system allowed maybe 3-5 seconds of recording time, during which we could blurt out a brief communication.  The system would then tell the caller to wait while it sought to get the charges accepted.  When the call was answered, the automated attendant would kick in and say “You have a collect call from…” and it would play the recorded message.

This back-and-forth exchange sometimes went of for an hour or more.  As annoying as it may have been, it was the only free mode of quasi-real-time long distance communication at the time — several years before the Internet.

Like many endeavours, it has its dark side.  We’ve had to deal with pushy and “entitled” members of the book industry.  This has been happening with increasing frequency over the last few months.  The approach of these people suggests they believe we are their paid subordinates.  This takes a lot of fun out of our personal efforts to help the industry with its own financial gain at our expense.

When the dark forces start to overshadow the good, you start to batten down the hatches and rethink what you’re doing and how you’re doing it.  All that to say, we’re considering what it would mean to us if Just One More Book!! was no longer a part of our family. Although, we have briefly talked about possible changes to the format including a gleeful suggestion for a “Book Industry Knob of the Week” segment.

For the time being, we’re going to honour our existing interview commitments and then take a break to rethink things.

Photo by Bob Goyetche (be sure to read his post My new book!).

Issue #1: Celebrity and personality are two very different things

Media is about relationships.  Relationships depend on individual personalities.  Just because a celebrity is admired by an audience, doesn’t mean the audience will relate to the celebrity.  The audience needs to feel as though the celebrity understands them, not that the celebrity is simply aware of a common person, place or thing.

More importantly, relationships take time to grow.

Radio stations used to break in talent in the overnight timeslot.  Young newcomers that could prove themselves and win an audience overnight would find themselves getting a daytime or evening slot, eventually working up to the coveted morning show.  With each progression, the host would achieve increased celebrity status until they finally became so good that they left the station.  This was the way the host and the listeners became connected in a way that meant radio went on when the host started their shift.

Such was the case with the CBC.  I spoke about this with former CBCer, Jowi Taylor.  We recounted the days when CBC bred cool in house with people like Peter Gzowski and Stuart McLean.  More recently, in an effort to buy what they thought was cool, they hired established celebrities like Jian Gomeshi and Randy Bachman.  Both have proven themselves over time, but in CBCs claim of the hunt for a younger audience, neither is a draw except on the budget.  Don’t get me wrong, I do listen to both because, over time, they’ve become the radio personalities I can relate to.  Basically, they had to earn their chops like anyone else.

On TV, a lot of what we see that makes a splash is hype.  In a few cases, we can relate to the people — people like Susan Boyle.  Notice, though, that Ms. Boyle is an everyday person, even more so because she was clearly the underdog and appeared to be overcompensating for seeming awkwardly out of place.  We don’t relate to the regular hosts of Britain’s Got Talent or American Idol, we’re entertained by them.

Over the spring and summer of this year, I followed the influence peddling trial of Ottawa Mayor Larry O’Brien.  The court granted permission for live text updates to be transmitted from the courtroom.  The most prolific out of the gate was the Ottawa Citizen’s Glen McGregor.  Following his Twitter stream was like watching the tape come out of the court stenographer’s machine.  It wasn’t news, it was voyeurism and Glen was the vessel.  Then, Glen started to inflect his updates with fun comments, observations and even a game with his followers.  He began each day wondering what people would wear to court and offered his thoughts on which celebrities would play the real people in the movie version of the trial.  All of this while covering a very real and very important event.  Suddenly, the people that were following the text updates found themselves connecting with and relating to Glen and all of the people in the courtroom.  The stream became as much of the story as the trial was.

Some may argue (and successfully) that this blurring of the line between reporting and interacting was inappropriate or unprofessional.  I suggest that this made the trial and the people in it that much more relevant for the community.

Suggestion: find a way to breed cool in house and establish a relationship between the content producers and content consumers.

The series, How Social Media Can Help You Sell Books: Guidance for the book publishing industry and its stakeholders, begins tomorrow (September 10 at 12pmET) with Finding the Conversation: Who’s talking about you and what they are saying.  In this first session, Greg and I will explore search and alerts to monitor the digital conversation.  We’ll focus on effective use of Google and IceRocket with references to Technorati and Twitter.

The rest of the program is:

SEP 17, 12pmET - Twitter: More than “What are you doing?”

Why use Twitter, how to engage and craft your message, using hash tags and a few Twitter stories.

SEP 24, 12pmET - Bloggers/Podcasters are People, Too: Engaging with the social media community

Recommendations for meeting, relating to and collaborating with the social media community.

OCT 1, 12pmET - Remarkable Use of the Internet to Promote Books and the People Behind Them

Storytelling and interesting examples of effective book promotion in the digital age.

To register, follow this link, put a check mark in the box next to each webcast you’d like to attend then click the “Register” button.  Your registration will apply to each webcast you selected.

Media organizations (including the CBC, Canada’s public broadcaster) have invested heavily in celebrity hosts in an attempt to shoehorn their idea of personality into ever shrinking program time slots. To save money, many radio stations have replaced live bodies with Voice Tracking (pre-recorded programming). Media organizations (newspaper, radio and television) have been forced to slash budgets, and with that, headcount. That means fewer people are being asked to do a lot more with a lot less.

I met one sports columnist last spring who explained that, in addition to having to meet and interview people for his column (for which he traditionally takes handwritten notes), he’s expected to shoot some handheld video of his guest to publish on the newspaper’s website as well as write a blog post to supplement, not compete with, his column.

While on a recent evening visit to a local radio broadcast centre from which four separate radio stations transmit, I observed that only one of the four had a live host at that hour and that was only because there was a planned competition between two rock songs for which a live host would be required to take callers’ votes. Two of the four were Voice Tracked following the evening news until the morning show. The remaining station has only one on-air host for the morning show; it’s Voice Tracked for the remaining 20 or so hours of the day.

In talking with a number of Program Directors, Journalists and Producers, I’ve heard a common mantra — the media organizations are competing against portable technology (iPods, etc…) and digital downloads. Then, as if to point out the mistaken approach by the conglomerates that own them and have driven much of the homogenization, they all point out that the key to success in this industry is appealing to local interests.

To keep my posts to a reasonable length, I’m going to spread my thoughts on the mistakes made by the media organizations and some possible solutions over the next few days.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’m teaming up with Greg Pincus to deliver a series of FREE webcasts that will give book publishers, publicists, authors, illustrators and enthusiasts social media savvy for outreach and promotion.  The series is titled How Social Media Can Help You Sell Books: Guidance for the book publishing industry and its stakeholders and each installment will seek to answer the question: How does this help me sell books?

Don’t miss the first four free sessions.

SEP 10, 12pmET- Finding the Conversation: Who’s talking about you and what they are saying

Understanding search and alerts to monitor the digital conversation.  This session will focus on effective use of Google with references to Technorati, Twitter and IceRocket. (REGISTER)

SEP 17, 12pmET - Twitter: More than “What are you doing?”

Why use Twitter, how to engage and craft your message, using hash tags and a few Twitter stories. (REGISTER)

SEP 24, 12pmET - Bloggers/Podcasters are People, Too: Engaging with the social media community

Recommendations for meeting, relating to and collaborating with the social media community. (REGISTER)

OCT 1, 12pmET - Remarkable Use of the Internet to Promote Books and the People Behind Them

Storytelling and interesting examples of effective book promotion in the digital age. (REGISTER)

UPDATE…

You can now register for the entire four-part How Social Media Can Help You Sell Books webcast series (or more than one webcast) in one easy step.  Follow this link, put a check mark in the box next to each webcast you’d like to attend, click the “Register” button.  Your registration form will apply to each webcast you selected.

Here is the comment, with the name of the target removed.

As a parent, I am very concerned about the moral character of authors who make school visits. [Name deleted] is of extreme concern! He is currently involved in an adulterous relationship with a married woman, and has been lying to and deceiving his own wife, who is also his coauthor! I strongly object to having this type of person influence young children. I feel that schools and libraries have an obligation to check references of visiting authors, and to avoid inviting those, such as [Name deleted], who might be a bad influence on our children.

Wow!  Who knew children’s books could be so exciting?

If we take this comment at face value then there are millions of adults (among them divorced parents and parents that have at one time or another taken home a sticky-pad from their office) who should have no influence on children.  Even Rev. Martin Luther King was accused of adultery; yes, the same person who led the Civil Rights Movement that paved the way for the first ever African American President of the United States.  Clearly, Rev. King’s personal life is not the reason he is admired, nor is it the reason for his influence.  By the way, Barack Obama was just eight years old when Rev. King was assassinated.

Malicious in intent and execution

The point of “Concerned Parent” is not to change the process by which author visits are arranged with schools.  The comment is not intellectual or logical enough.  It’s simply malicious in intent and execution, an attempt to destroy a career and life because of personal views about objectionable conduct.   Perhaps “Concerned Parent” is herself, a jealous lover of [Name deleted].

Take issue with whomever you wish in your own space and with your own name.  If you’re not proud enough to take credit for the cybersassination in your own space, don’t be cowardly enough to anonymously plaster it on someone else’s.

The program was built around the idea that leaders need to look beyond their own communities and disciplines for strategies and tactics to become better leaders.  The summit was meant to reach leaders of the Evangelical Christian community and other church groups, though the conference was not exclusive to that audience.  The founder of Willow Creek and The Leadership Summit, Pastor Bill Hybels even started the conference by noting that leaders of all communities are welcome whether or not they are Christian.

With a lineup of speakers which included Chip and Dan Heath (authors of Made to Stick and the upcoming Switch), David Gergen (advisor to four US Presidents), Bono (singer from U2) and Tony Blair (former British Prime Minister), it was a consciousness-expanding event.

Here are some of my key takeaways from the summit.

Bill Hybels used the metaphor of rogue waves to describe the unexpected challenges leaders face and prove themselves through.  He cited the economic crisis as one of those significant rogue waves that really put leaders to the test.  The key takeaway from his session is that leaders need to make time to replenish themselves, that they lead at best when their buckets are filled up.  Leaders need to build time into their daily schedule to re-energize.

Pastor David Gibbons explored where good leaders come from.  Leaders come from the fringes.  They’re the misfits, not the masses.  More importantly, David said that too much energy is put into selecting leaders that are visionaries.  The world needs fewer visionaries and more relationairies because relationships trump vision.

The biggest mind shift for me was Andrew Rugasira.  Andrew is from Uganda and founded the Good African Coffee company.  He is incredibly passionate that trade, not aid, will save Africa and wants to change the world view of Africa of being generally bleak to one that is filled with opportunity.  “No country in the world has developed through handouts”, he said.  Trade is the only way to build economies and trade pulls community out of poverty.  It’s something I’ve heard many times before though never so powerfully.

Wes Stafford delivered an emotional speech.  Drawing on his horrific experiences as a child who was abused by missionaries that were doing a job they didn’t want to do, nor were they trained to do — teaching in a boarding school — and took their unhappiness out on the children, Mr. Stafford choked back tears and explained just how powerful children can be.  His organization, Compassion International, aims to eliminate child poverty.  Mr Stafford’s book Too Small to Ignore goes into greater detail. [UPDATED]

Perhaps the most engaging session was with David Gergen.  Mr. Gergen was an advisor to four US Presidents (Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton).  His insights into the qualities and weaknesses of those leaders was fascinating.  The most valuable piece of advice he gave was to “go fishing”, using the example of Theodore Roosevelt racing away to go fishing for one week to collect his thoughts before coming up with the idea for Lend-Leasing.  Oh… he also said to not confuse motion with progress.

Chip and Dan Heath told a number of stories they gathered as part of the research for their upcoming book, Switch.  Among their stories was one about Tiger Woods, who, even after he made his mark in the PGA, wanted to improve his stroke.  Leaders need to excercise their skills like a muscle.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that the comfortable decision is the wrong decision to make.  He also said to know your irreducible core — the thing you will not go back on.  Your irreducible core is the thing that is so important to you that you are willing to walk away from your role as a leader if being forced to turn your back on your belief.

Remember to look outside of your area of interest and discipline when working on expanding your horizons.  Looking inward reinforces your weaknesses.

Two months ago, David was diagnosed with stage four terminal lung cancer.  That was more than a bit of a shock.  This past weekend, I went to Oshawa with Bob and Jamie to visit Dave in the hospital and do some work around Dave’s house.  It was the first time in maybe fourteen years that the four of us were in the same room at the same time.  It was bittersweet, as you can imagine.

In addition to Dave, another dear friend was recently diagnosed with cancer.  This is not the kind of summer we ever anticipated.

We are very committed to helping our friends out as much as possible.  That means making adjustments in our plans so we can be available for routine and even emergency help.  As such, I’ve decided to cancel my plans to participate in PodCamp Montreal, PodCamp Philly and the annual Kidlit Conference.  In some ways this was a difficult decision to make.  In even more ways, it was a quick and easy decision to make.

On a related note, Bob has plans to pull together a multi-band cancer fundraising concert for September.  If that happens, he and I will perform together on stage for the first time in about twelve years.  I’ll keep you posted.

The first episode features a discussion on myopia.

That’s precisely what happened to me when I sat down with Artist/Illustrator Raul Colón at AJL09 a few weeks ago.  So, I unpacked my audio gear, reconnected it all, pressed record and held the microphone up to Raul and basically re-created the conversation we’d just had — and it was just as interesting the second go ’round.

If you work or play in a creative space, you should hear what Raul has to say about arming yourself with inspiration and exercising your creative muscles.

MORE RAUL COLON:  Click here to listen to Raul Colón talk about illustrating the intersection of two lives in one event, getting excited about a book project and striking the balance between fact and fantasy.

Certainly, as far as media on the web is concerned, when an interviewer is able to limit his or her focus to just managing a microphone and becoming engaged in a conversation, the results are far better (and more interesting) than trying to become engaged in a conversation while keeping someone in frame.

I had hoped that the coin would arrive before PAB09 so I could show everyone how cool it is in the presence of 6SN founder Jowi Taylor (Jowi’s powerful keynote presentation at PAB09 will be the subject of an upcoming episode of the Canadian Podcast Buffet).  The coin actually did arrive the day before the conference.  Unfortunately, I didn’t know it had been delivered to a neighbour’s until last week.

The 6SN coin is available in limited edition.  Only 30,000 have been minted.  Mine is 11,191.  Which number do you have?

VIDEO: An introduction to Six String Nation guitar and the recently released Six String Nation book

Click here to view the embedded video.

VIDEO: The Canadian Mint’s video about the Six String Nation coin

Click here to view the embedded video.

I wrote a second time to say that United Airlines was withholding $1800 of my money, some of it from expenses incurred after they cancelled a flight I was on and refused to provide me with accommodations, transportation and meal vouchers.  A majority of that money relates to a second incident when UA lost my luggage and my family and I were forced to go shopping during a vacation to buy clothes, toiletries and a new suitcase.  UA has reimbursed me for my emergency landing fiasco.  I’m STILL waiting for the money from the luggage fiasco (now going on 8 months).  I was assured in March that the money was on its way.

While I’d very much like to recover my money, I’d at least appreciate it if United Airlines pretended to care how inconvenient and expensive the situation is and how unfairly they’ve treated me.  That is to say, I’d like to recover my losses though I’ll never recover the amount of time I’ve had to sit on hold and re-explain the situation only to be told there’s nothing they can do.

Like many people I took pleasure in seeing musician Dave Carroll’s song United Breaks Guitars posted on YouTube.  After seven days it’s been watched over two-and-a-half million times.  Dave’s posted a follow up video in which he notes that United Airlines has agreed to compensate him for his damaged guitar (see STATEMENT).  That’s not the point of the video, though.  Like me, Dave was trying to give United’s management a head shake because they obviously have no idea how badly they treat their clients.

I’ve seen that United enjoys the video and told Dave they plan to use it internally for customer service training.  The question is, will it be used to create a culture of customer first?

“Besides,” this person added. “I can just listen to the sessions when they’re published.”

I loved the challenge to consider what makes PAB an incredible conference.  I’m sure others in the PAB community have their own thoughts.  (Feel free to share them in the comments to this post, or post your own thoughts)

SIZE MATTERS

One of the early hypotheses adopted for PAB is that the impact of an individual’s experience is inversely proportional to the number of people gathered.  That’s to say, the smaller the conference, the better the experience.  PAB is the only social media conference we know of that is structured around a small capacity.  This bakes in the possibility that everyone will have a chance to meet, if not connect with, everyone else at the conference.

PUTTING THE PROGRAM BACK INTO CONFERENCES

We’ve heard far too many people say that conference programs are meaningless to them so they spend their time in the hallways socializing.  We have nothing against socializing at conferences and believe that there should be ample time to do so built into the program (at PAB, we allocate 15 minutes of each hour to socializing).  Socializing, though, can happen anytime and anywhere — you don’t need a conference (fee or free) to bring people together to socialize.

Bob and I strongly believe that a worthwhile conference has a meaningful and engaging program.  We put most of our time and energy into making sure that each PAB has a program worthy of other people’s time, energy and money.

COMMON EXPERIENCE

PAB’s one-room, one-track program means that everyone who attends gets to experience the same speakers, same sessions and same ideas.  There are no difficult decisions to make on which sessions to sacrifice to be in the audience of a particular session.  Everyone can participate in the common conversation about program content throughout the weekend and after the conference wraps up.  The opinions and interpretations are all unique and that brings extraordinary value to the “one-tent” approach.

HOUSE GUESTS

Bob and I decided to craft the experience of PABsters being guests of a home.  This means we act as hosts, working hard to ensure that everyone is made to feel welcome.  We do the fussy stuff, operate the sound system, help speakers connect their equipment, introduce them and run the microphones around during the interactive part of the program.  Our guests can sit back, relax and enjoy the weekend.  Based on feedback from previous years, we enlisted the help of five people this year to serve as Ambassadors, making sure that PAB newcomers were made to feel welcome and that anyone looking lost, lonely or confused would be helped.

The couches and round tables helped, too.

RE-ENERGIZING LUNCH

In order to keep the program moving and to make sure that the community has the physical and cerebral energy to keep going during the Saturday afternoon, we’ve always made sure to provide a good lunch.  We’ve kept people at the conference site by offering a fantastic buffet each year.  Lunch includes options for the vegan and meat sets, and a great dessert table.

I’M ON A BOAT!

The annual boat cruise has been a highlight of the social part of the program.  Nothing brings people together like being out on scenic Lake Ontario for two hours.  For the last two years, we’ve included an open-mic on the main level of the two-storey boat.  Partners and family members of the PAB community are invited to join us on the boat cruise at no charge.

SECOND TIER

With the exception of PAB06 (our inaugural year), the PAB program has steered away from the basics of recording, publishing and distributing content.  We’ve worked hard to make sure the program offers opportunities for new media and social media enthusiasts and professionals to think differently about the tools and how to use them.  The hope is to challenge the community to do something new.

Newcomers are reminded that there’s a room full of people with podcasting experience and favourite tools and toys, all of whom are eager to share their ideas over a coffee or beer.  It’s not the equipment you use or how you use it, it’s what you want to communicate and how you communicate it that matters most.

MMMMONEY

Money was an unwelcome discussion topic for the first three years of PAB.  This was largely for two reasons.  First, making money from new media and social media should be an advantage, not a catalyst.  That is, producers should focus on doing something remarkable, then figure out if there are opportunities to make money.  Second, and more importantly, we believe that new media and social media were not at a mature enough state to have a meaningful conversation about money, monetization and business models until this year.  PAB09 was the first year in which money was programmed into the discussion — and the dialog was definitely productive and respectful.

CAMPFIRE DISCUSSIONS

I hadn’t considered this until Adam Gratrix mentioned it during his recent appearance on John Meadows’ On The Log podcast.  Adam pointed out that the original idea for PAB was to meet at a campground and to share ideas around a campfire.  The magic of PAB, according to Adam, is that the community has managed to transplant that campfire conversation from the outdoors to a conference room.

BEING THERE

We often hear from people who are thankful that we publish the content of each PAB as audio programs in the months following each conference.  We do this to help advance the conversation and provide added value for the community.  Anyone who believes they’re attending a conference by watching or listening to the verbatim content from the program is only cheating themselves.  It’s the experience of being present for the sessions, discussion and socializing that makes the conference a reality.

HAS ITS OWN PLACE

Among the feedback we received so far about PAB09 is the comment from one person that PAB is what this person had hoped Mesh would be.  That kind of feedback reinforces the value of PAB and makes it okay that Bob and I volunteer hundreds of hours each into planning and running each PAB conference.

Really, we never created PAB to compete with other conferences.  Our goal is to hold an annual conference that fills a void left by, even augments, the other conferences.

PAB IS ABOUT NOT SETTLING

It becomes comfortable planning PAB on a solid foundation each year.  With the exception of PAB06 (our first year and the most risky of all of them — just organizing a conference), we’ve been able to tweak and refine the conference approach each year and build on the previous year’s success.  When things become rhythmic and comfortable, people will settle.

PAB is about trying new things, exploring new ideas and making things more engaging.  PAB is about figuring what the limits are and how to get beyond them.  We must practice what we promote by constantly improving.  That’s why we made the decision to move PAB to Ottawa, and to shake things up a bit.  We’ll still work from the same foundation; it’s just time to test its strength.

While we may have conceived it and taken the reins PAB is a community event.  We value that the community trusts us with this event and providing direction.  Perhaps that’s the most unique component of PAB.

YOUR TURN

What makes PAB unique for you?

Oh yeah! We take a group photo each year. (photo: Bob Goyetche)

As part of my session, I had the entire room participate in adopting a Curiosity Manifesto:

1. Asking one question is only the beginning.
2. Seek a greater understanding, not a solution.
3. A curious attitude will set you free.

I will be blogging about PAB09 in the coming days.

This marks the first time PAB has had a taste associated with it.  Which means that you can enjoy PAB all year round and show your appreciation to Molson at the same time.

The PAB09 program begins tomorrow with a video workshop from 2:00-4:00pm, and the kick-off and keynote speech by Jowi Taylor at 8:00pm.  There’s still space so register and be a part of Canada’s premiere new media conference.

That photo makes me want to have a cold beer!

The real issue is that city council had initiated an international design competition which was suddenly and unexpectedly terminated by Lansdowne Live.  A small group of city representatives are in closed-door negotiations with Lansdowne Live and have already begun approaching the federal government to explore funding options for the project — all without public consultation.  The plans seem to be something of a moving target and what the public has seen does not look good.  This includes turning a quiet residential street into the primary access route for a major box-mall shopping development and theatre complex, reduced parking for increased business and residential, and the expansion of seating in a vacant football stadium that has housed two failed CFL franchises in the last 15 years.

Jean Pigott calls Lansdowne Park the Living Room of Ottawa.  It’s been a gathering place for more than 130 years.  It’s where rural and urban came together for the first time at the Agricultural Fair, where Ottawa’s first professional baseball team played and where troops gathered before being shipped overseas.  It’s 40-acres of public land next to the UNESCO World Heritage Rideau Canal.  Lansdowne Park is such a heritage site that when city council voted many years ago to tear down the Aberdeen Pavilion (also known as the Cattle Castle) and a city manager unilaterally overruled the council’s vote, he was praised by the city as a hero for having saved the heritage and spirit of Lansdowne and millions of dollars were invested into the restoration of the pavilion.

Basically, the City of Ottawa and Lansdowne Live are endorsing a closed-door, sole-sourced development project for a major piece of prime public property.  The same municipal government requires competitions for sidewalk construction.  This makes Lansdowne Live a city issue, not just an issue for Glebe and Ottawa South residents.  As one of the speakers at yesterday’s rally said, Lansdowne Live may be one of the best or perhaps the best option for developing Lansdowne Park.  However, without an open and competitive process that embraces public input, noone will ever know.

The press was out en mass for yesterday’s rally and CJOH news ran a piece about it.  If you pick up today’s Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa Sun or Metro you won’t know the rally took place.  There isn’t a single mention of the rally.  With all due respect to the Ottawa Citizen and Lanark County, I would consider this issue to be significantly more important (certainly more current) than the 50th anniversary of the Inferno in Lanark, the Citizen’s front-page story.  The rally did make front page news on 24 Hours.

Developer control of the city agenda is not really news here in Ottawa — at least, not for the last 30 years — nor is the absence of transparency or integrity in our elected officials.  However, a major issue like this escaping the papers is a bit unusual, particularly on a semi-slow news day.  Conspiracy theorist would suggest there’s developer advertising dollars at play.  I think the local newspapers have failed to live up to their responsibility.

For more information, follow Friends of Lansdowne Park.

Here is a quick summary of the program:

Friday, June 19, 2009

• Make Your Camcorder Sing Like a Canary (Paul Lyzun)
• Keynote (Jowi Taylor)

Saturday, June 20, 2009

• What Have We Lost? (Bob Goyetche)
• JOLT! Now Here This! (Scarborough Dude)
• Curiosity Thrilled the Cat (Mark Blevis)
• JOLT! JUICE: Get Your Creative On (Tod Maffin)
• While You Weren’t Looking: From the Visibile to the Audible (Valerie Hunter)
• JOLT! Reach Out and Touch Someone (Daniele Rossi)
• Unkempt – The Creative Workflow of a Storyteller (Tim Coyne)
• JOLT! Podcasting Through the Side Door (Rob Lee)
• Why Monetization is Vital to New Media (Chris Penn)
• JOLT! Search Engines and Trust (Jay Moonah)
• A Good Picture is Worth a Thousand Words (Marko Kulik)
• JOLT! You Will Not F&*^#*g Talk About Me In Your Podcast (Tim Coyne)
• Develop Samurai Skillz to Help You Change the World (Rick Claus)
• JOLT! Are You Building or Are You Coasting? (Chris Brogan)

Sunday, June 21, 2009

• Pecha Kucha (community-organized)
• Spice Up Your Life: Creativity, Community and the Art of Masala Film-Making (Katherine Matthews)
• JOLT! Where Do You Want Your Content, Today? (Rick Claus)
• A Healthy Mistrust of Authority (Neil Gorman)
• JOLT! Alice in Podland (Yvonne Erlichman)
• We Are All Shanachies (Connie Crosby)

Have you registered for PAB09, yet?  If not, click here.

And it worked.  I believe the success of BookCamp TO was largely due to the energy people brought with them and Hugh McGuire’s brilliant kick-off speech in which he said that the goal of the event was “not to find solutions but to be equipped to ask better questions”.

Clearly BookCamp was long overdue. It was electrified as people who love books were given the opportunity to express their concerns about the current state and the future of the publishing industry to people who were similarly interested in hearing what was being said.

I find it interesting that the challenges being faced by the book publishing world are the same as or similar to the struggles faced by the music industry, radio, newspapers and now television. It seems to be a time of universal renewal.

There were three recurring themes that I found particularly interesting.

BRANDING

Noting that the market is strongest for personalities, most publishing houses invest their energy in promoting their authors (this is great if the author is a known entity). However, publishers are forgoing their own identity and personality.

This, of course, it not true of all publishing houses. Harlequin, O’Reilly and Oxford all serve specific niches for which there is an obvious branding opportunity (and one they’ve all worked very well). For generalist houses like Key Porter the opportunity for branding is not specifically obvious. This was the subject of an interesting and ongoing discussion. At one point I suggested that publishers need to do more to create their own brand and identity — promoting authors, particularly those that aren’t signed to a long-term deal, is gambling with the publicity budget. When Key Porter expressed concern about the idea of passing on a particular title because it doesn’t match with the house’s brand, Nathan Maharaj asked “what’s more important; brand equity or publishing a book?” Eden Spodek suggested that houses like Key Porter could focus on vertical niches within its catalog and build imprints with their own communities (e.g. Key Porter Cooks, Key Porter Travels, Key Porter Business…).

DESIGN

Books have always been as much about form as they are about content. Print publications allow publishers to control the form of the book and increase their impact through the visual experience. Of course, this is particularly true of textbooks, photography, business and children’s books. The move to electronic ink means rethinking the form and publisher control over it.

There are two types of electronic publishers: the gatekeepers of literature and culture; and, the curators of literature and culture.

Amazon’s Kindle (only available in the US) is a gatekeeper of literature. For the power of publisher control over form and design, the Kindle requires Digital Rights Management (DRM, something the music industry once required and is now abandoning) and Amazon decides what will be published on its platform. This means that individuals are not able to create their own books and make them available on the Kindle. It also means that the books you buy for the Kindle cannot be viewed using any other technology.

The OpenEBook.org project is working on an open standard for electronic books and readers. The standard uses coding which offers limited control of form by book publishers. This means that things like images and kerning have to be considered (or excluded) for the whole of electronic readers with their various screen sizes and resolutions. The advantage is that individuals and organizations (York University being one example discussed in the session) have the ability to make their works available electronically for all platforms including iPhones. BTW, Sony has embraced the open standard for electronic books (yes… the same company that created Betamax).

PROMOTION

Publishers have long depended on authors (and illustrators) to participate in the process of promoting their books. Until recently, most of that promotion was done through word of mouth and book tours. Now we have blogs, podcasts and social media networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Ning, and communications tools such as Twitter.

The problem is that the how and why to use the tools is too often an afterthought. Publicity departments think of these tools tactically, not strategically. They tell their authors without thought that they need to use everything and the kitchen sink. The result is disjointed and confused and becomes a nightmarish headache for the author to maintain. Furthermore, the author’s efforts may have nothing to do with the marketing strategy or worse, could work against it.

There also seems to be a misunderstanding of the tools. Someone said that it shouldn’t mean “you suck” if you can’t build a network of more than thirty people around your book to which Mitch Joel said quite bluntly, “yes, you suck”.

PARTING THOUGHTS

If we don’t breed young readers now, there will be noone interested in books no matter what form they’ll be available in twenty years from now. That’s why I read The Carrot Seed aloud to kick off my session on book, author and publisher promotion. The idea was to get people away from thinking “if you build it they will come” to understanding that “if you attend to it and nurture it no matter what people tell you, it will grow”.

BookCamp was invigorating and, I believe, just the beginning. The conversation needs to continue. Publishers need to work smarter and maybe a little harder to reshape what they do in the digital age; they need to think carefully about their own brand as well as the brands of the people they work with; they need to consider if they want brand equity or to just publish books; they need to understand the digital tools and why and how to use them; and, they need to look at the industries that have already dealt (or are currently dealing) with similar struggles in an effort to stay relevant and ensure their future.

There’s a lot to learn and an abundance of creative ways to keep the publishing ecosystem strong without dictating how the ecosystem will look and feel.

Books have the ability to involve readers in the story in a way that no other media can.  With the exception of storytelling, books are the original hot (and niche) media and remain strong to this day; whether fictional stories to which we can relate, non-fiction books that spread original ideas or children’s books that open young minds to amazing possibilities and creative ways of thinking.  It is this unique and important role they play that has made the discussion about books and their future a recurring theme of late and the subject of a growing number of conferences and forums including today’s BookCamp Toronto.

In my session, The Carrot Seed: A new model for book, author and publisher promotion, I will be exploring some of the creative ways books have been promoted and how communities have formed around books and their creators.  While the focus of my session is on ways to raise awareness of books, the underlying message of my session is that the publishing industry’s greatest challenge isn’t the technology through which books will be made available, but the continued development of talent that will attract new audiences, keep growing literacy levels and inspire readers of all backgrounds.  Without that foundation, the entire book industry will fall down.

My session draws on three assumptions (while there are more, I’m focusing on three):

• books have always been recommended by trust agents
• review space in traditional media is shrinking
• economics demands that publicists do more with less and book creators are now an integral part of the promotion strategy

I’ll be highlighting a number of promotional approaches that I feel are particularly interesting and I will share some dos and don’ts to help the publishing industry work with book bloggers and podcasters.

Here are some of the specific campaigns that I will reference in my session:

• The Graveyard Book and its video tour (Neil Gaiman)
• The Best Laid Plans (Terry Fallis)
• Pow! Right Between the Eyes (Andy Nulman)
• The Softwire (P. J. Haarsma)
• 30 Poets/30 Days (Greg Pincus)
• Rock Stars of Reading documentary series (Just One More Book!!)

Relevant links:

• CRTC announcement
• Michael Geist’s analysis

I wonder if my old CHUO friends Tom Metuzals, Natalie Lalonde and George Regan will be on hand.

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit, more so this weekend while I spoke at and attended the Radio Without Boundaries Conference in Toronto. My theories are still in development so I’m treating this entry as a way to better understand my thoughts and possibly hear from others who have their own ideas.

Let’s open with a tour I recently had of the Rogers radio facility in Ottawa. Four radio stations broadcast from the building:

• CHEZ 106 (Classic Rock)
• KISS FM (Top 40/CHR)
• Y105 (New Country)
• OLDIES 1310 (Oldies)

The tour took place at 7pm so the radio station was empty — even the studios. Well, not all of the studios. CHEZ 106 had on-air talent that evening in order to take phone calls for their 10pm music face-off. The other three stations were voice tracked.

If you’re unfamiliar with voice tracking, think of it as an iTunes playlist on the radio. Earlier that afternoon someone sequenced some music and ads, recorded the voice interjections and programmed the whole night into a computer. The studios were empty because the computers were playing that program; like a robot. In fact, Oldies 1310 uses voice tracking for the entire day with the exception of the morning drive (probably 3 or 4 hours out of a 24 hour day).

Let’s consider what that means. Overnight time slots were historically reserved for rookies to develop their talent during the hours that listenership was down. If the talent became good, they were considered for other timeslots — evening, midday, afternoon drive and eventually the coveted morning drive. It was like the farm system in a baseball organization; you start in the minor leagues and eventually work your way up as a starter in the majors. Overnight voice tracking means radio stations no longer have a farm system to develop talent. Who will replace the pros?

More importantly, how do you appeal to the younger audience? How does a radio station cater to the 18-24 market with a Program Director and a jockeys that grew up wearing bell bottoms (or perhaps pastel colours and thin leather ties) when they first became a fashion craze? Research? Ratings?

As near as I can tell, the 18-24 market is listening to their iPods because they can program what they want to hear. Why?

• They don’t have to hear the same songs every 90 minutes.
• They can hear more than 200 songs.
• They can use the shuffle mode and be surprised by which songs come up.
• They don’t have to listen to long commercial breaks.
• The person that’s programming their local station may not even live in the area so the programming decisions being made may not accurately reflect the interests of the area.

By picking formats that may be cost effective now, radio stations have established what I’ll call auto-obsolescence — as the people who grew up listening to radio when it was a significant player continue to… well… grow up, there’s very few people who will take their place as listeners. Radio isn’t going to die, it’ll just outgrow its purpose.

MAKE OLD NEW, AGAIN

I have this crazy idea. I don’t know if it would work. Certainly, some people I’ve shared it with think it’s too risky and wouldn’t be profitable. I’ll share it anyway.

What if one radio station in a particular metropolitan area replaced voice tracking with real people around the clock? What if that radio station expanded its playlist from 300 to 3000 (or more) songs? What if that radio station trusted its on-air talent enough to collaborate with programmers and make something fresh and exciting? What if that radio station thought of 18-24 year-olds as more than part of the CPM formula (to attract advertisers) and having a more important role at the station than just being interns that do the jobs nobody else wants to do?

I think those ideas could put personality back into radio. The novelty alone should make the radio station attractive to those who care about radio and intriguing to those who haven’t yet become interested in it. Advertisers might similarly be excited about being part of something out-of-the ordinary and might commit to be a part of the change.

The shift might buy the radio station six or twelve months of time to prove that this format could work. It could die miserably or it could eek out profit enough to continue. It could be wildly successful, marginalizing the competition and transforming radio in the process. It could put the soul back into private radio, something Paul Ingles claims was sucked out in full back in 1999.  Not that saving private radio is something people are lining up to do, though I do wonder if the death of private radio could have a cascading effect on all radio.

Public radio (which I love) suffers from different challenges and I’m still working on my thoughts about those. Thankfully, though, there appears to be a healthy group of 18-24 year-olds actively involved in public radio.

That’s why I grabbed a front row seat for Oh, Shut Up! Who needs a narrator anyway?, a session by Chris Brookes‘ at the Radio Without Boundaries conference.  Chris was connected by Skype from his home in Newfoundland (a family emergency kept him at home) and with the help of Paolo Pietropaolo at the conference, played clips of radio news coverage dating as far back as 1937 (the Hindenburg disaster) and 1939 (the King and Queen leaving by boat from Newfoundland), through to some very recent documentary programs which used a combination of sound and sparse narration.  We explored the role of narration in each clip, paying particular attention to how the narration makes the audience either a spectator or participant and how much authority the narrator assumes.  We also discussed some cases where the narration was gratuitous.

Like the Jens Jarisch session The Inner Sound of the Outer World at Third Coast, Chris’ session will have me exploring new possibilities in my production work.  Either that or I’ll be self-consciously stuck where I am.

The segment relates to the coverage of Ottawa Mayor Larry O’Brien’s criminal trial.  I’ve been following the trial closely and have noticed that there are three categories of online coverage by the media.

DIGITAL COURT REPORTER

Ottawa Citizen reporter Glen McGregor has been exercising his home-row key skills through his live “Twittering” of the trial.  His role as an online digital court reporter has meant he has to run two Twitter accounts (obrientrial and obrientrial2) as the flood updates sometimes violate a limit Twitter has set on the number of posts one can make in an hour on a single account; while one account recovers from the sanction, Glen jumps over to the other.  His 140-character or less updates are a mix of observations, paraphrased comments, verbatim quotes and the occasional humourous reflections (like who might play a particular witness in the movie-version of the trial).

BLOG UPDATES

The CBC’s Cory O’Kelly and Alistair Steele took a few days to find their rhythm with their blog coverage of the trial.  Their posts range from extremely short (less than 200 words) to medium length and include factual accounts or light analysis of cross examination, testimony and procedure.  While the titles of their posts have become more attention-getting, there is still the occasional ”Up Next” and “Cory O’Kelly writes…” which weakly invite me to find out what’s going on.

The Ottawa Sun is also in on the action.  Susan Sherring and Derek Puddicombe have taken a more snappy approach to their blogging, using imagery and a little humour in largely one-sentence paragraphs — a digest style.

ONLINE JOURNALISM

Then there’s traditional and thoughtful journalism.  Most of the analysis and pure journalism is coming from the CBC which probably explains why Alistair and Cory haven’t been as thorough and regular in their blog.  Because they still have to file radio and television stories, and write reports for the CBC.ca, their focus is on their journalism background.

VERDICT

This is an exciting time for news junkies.  Glen feeds my need for immediacy and unfiltered facts from which I can develop my own assumptions and make my own judgements.  He’s truly doing it better than anyone else.  Alistair and Cory provide me with analysis and observations in a style I’m familiar with and that allows me to test my assumptions and judgements.  I feel like I’m in a better position to trust the media when I can get both the unfiltered details and the analysis on the same story.

Now, if the websites could only be overhauled for the user experience so that the information is easier to find, faster to navigate and that uses more contemporary ways of highlighting audio and video content!

My session is from 2:15 to 3:05, immediately following Hugh McGuire and before Mitch Joel.

UPDATE (May 28): My session has been moved to 3:15pm on Saturday.  Follow the BookCampTO website to see the schedule and monitor any updates to the program.

The next day, Marc took his plan to the streets for the annual Great Glebe Garage Sale.  Decked out in a homemade sandwich board that read “Need a hand?”, Marc socialized with people, spread good cheer and handed out 4000 cards he made up the night before to promote his established photography business and his new venture doing odd jobs including (as indicated on his hand outs) yard work, painting, gardening, washing, scrubbing, lawn mowing, poop pick-up and spring cleaning.

Marc’s approach is that spreading good cheer and shaking people’s hands is a great door opener — the original social media.  It allows you to eliminate doubt about the person you are, something that is always open to question if you launch your business exclusively on the web.

That philosophy works.  Marc’s already booked business.

In my view, Marc did seven things that work very well:

• he never panicked
• he devised a simple plan
• he acted on the plan
• he met people face-to-face
• he stood out
• he spread good cheer
• he struck while the iron was hot

Good luck, Marc!

Before I share some of the lessons I learned, here are some statistics that help illustrate the scope of the project:

• source video recordings:  13hrs
• source audio recordings:  25hrs (includes sync-audio)
• source photographs:  1200
• editing time per video episode:  330 hours (averages to just under 16 hrs/episode)
• produced video programs: 2 hrs and 56 mins (13 episodes)
• produced audio programs: 2 hrs and 18 mins (8 episodes)
• total production: 5 hrs and 14 mins (21 episodes)
• the project is completely self-funded (no advertisers, sponsors or grants)

CAMERA WORK AND VISUAL EVIDENCE

There’s a lot to be said about spontaneity and capturing the moment.  Rock Stars of Reading depended on the recording equipment being the eyes and ears of the event.  Having said that, it would have been helpful to plan some of the camera work to ensure steady shots and good visual evidence.  In fact, the biggest hole in the documentary series was the abundance of b-roll at the expense of sufficient and effective visual evidence.  I didn’t know the distinction when we set out on the trip; I’m painfully aware of it, now.

I should note that we only bought our “spur-of-the-moment” video camera 12 hours before we set out for principle photography so starting with some basics like shopping around to pick out and buy the best camera for the job would have been a good start.

SUPPORT CREATIVITY WITH HEALTHY HABITS

Rock Stars of Reading was a hobby project so most of the editing and production work was done between the hours of 9pm and 3am.  That means I limited myself to three hours of sleep quite a bit and once pulled that 9-3 shift six days in a row.  I have nothing against being hard core about work you get paid for and hobbies you don’t, and I know about the power of working on creative projects when the world around you is still.  However, it’s important to eat well and get plenty of sleep, particularly if you’re engaged in demanding creative projects.

CONNECT WITH THE PEOPLE AND MATERIAL

Because I spent so much time (virtually) with them during the editing and production phases of the project, I became tightly connected with the people featured in the documentary series.  I became intimately familiar with their ideas, manners and words.  This offers a significant advantage since I was able to ensure that the messages they delivered were properly communicated in both video and audio (remember, they delivered them in person and the messages are received differently through a viewfinder than when two people are in the same physical space).

The disadvantage to this type of connection is you can feel artificially close to the characters and after 330 hours hanging out with them, you feel an absence when you realize you won’t be up with them from 9pm-3am tonight.

REVEAL THE STORY

At PodCamp Toronto I delivered a presentation called Content Paleontology: One approach to media production workflow and creative process.  The concept is that I don’t decide what the story is nor do I draft it, write it or tell it.  I go to where I believe the pieces of the story are and uncover them, record them and organize them in the way they reveal the story to me.  It’s an amazingly invigorating and exciting process that I as an editor/producer participate in — I don’t lead it.  Being a good editor means being able to identify the pieces that tell the story through their presence or absence from the final production.

KNOW WHO THE STAR IS

The star of the video is the combination of people, content and context that form the subject of the documentary.  As cinematographer, sound recordist, director, editor and producer, you are merely the vessel through which those stars shine.  Be minimalist in your appearance on the screen and how much of your voice appears in the final product, even if the documentary is meant to be fun and interactive.

By way of example, Michael Moore often places himself at the centre his controversial films which makes him as much of the story as the targets of his films.  That might have worked well in his personal essay Roger and Me, but the line blurs when it comes to his more critical films which Barry Hampe refers to as Docuganda.  Conversely, the only time you see or hear from Ken Burns in his brilliant and epic documentary films including Baseball, Jazz and The War is in the opening and closing credits.  His award-winning films are respected because they’re reflective, powerful and they let the people, places and events that shaped the world tell the stories themselves with minimal narrative.

In the case of Rock Stars of Reading, I reserved my appearance as the main character for the first and last episodes of the series which served to set up and conclude the purpose of the documentary and considered what changes our experiences have had and will have on us.

And those are five of the many lessons I will take with me to my next project.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Which reminded me of another ad I’d seen which takes place on an escalator.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Then I remembered this video.  Who knew elevators could serve as such an effective channel for a creative ad campaign?

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s like having a digital court reporter.  The information is coming, unfiltered, from journalists with fast moving thumbs and decent data plans for their mobile devices and laptops.  They’re approach has been to quote testimony (Kilrea said O’brien told him “We could have just rat fucked you.” posted by @obrientrial) and provide occasional observations (Clarification: Sherring was allowed in the first two days because the argument over cameras/berries wouldn’t effect her testimony. posted by @obrientrial) and updates (We are recessed for lunch. posted by @obrientrial).  There’s even a dialog between the folks following from home and the journalists in the courtroom (Folks, if you want to message me, DM rather than reply b/c I’m not following anyone on this account. posted by @obrientrial).  They even add a personal touch and levity sometimes (And please join me in toasting my grade 9 typing teacher at Glebe Collegiate. Here’s to you Mrs. Homerowkeys. posted by @obrientrial).

Before the trial, one journalist told me that he found the 140 character limit of Twitter to be too restrictive, so he would be focussing on longer-form blog reports.  I respect his reasoning though I have to admit that the immediacy of Twitter has made his blog posts somewhat redundant and the delay leaves holes in the information for us in the virtual gallery — unless, of course, his blog posts offer a quality summary that includes the context that’s missing from the Twitter stream.

Steve Fischer from CBC Ottawa Television stopped by to interview me about this new phenomenon in courtroom coverage for tonight’s newscast.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ottawa Citizen reporter Greg McGregor included the following two paragraphs in his coverage of Judge Cunningham’s groundbreaking decision:

Cunningham said he was aware it would be difficult if not impossible to stop the instantaneous transmission of private or protected information that came up during the trial.

“That’s a risk I’ll have to take,” he said in his ruling, which allowed that instant transmission to the blogosphere is now a reality. “That is the world in which live.”

In the midst of all their excitement to report that they have permission to tap away at their electronic keyboards in the courtroom, none of the media coverage I’ve read to date has provided links to websites or blogs featuring live coverage of the trial, nor do they share the hashtag they’re using for Twitter updates from the courtroom.

Missed opportunities as of 6:30am, May 5:

• CBC
• Metro News Ottawa
• Ottawa Sun
• Ottawa Citizen
• Globe and Mail (national)

As you can expect, hospital bills can get quite expensive and health insurance doesn’t cover everything.  That’s what inspired Jone MacCulloch to rally a group of people together for a fundraising auction for Bridget.

I’m participating in the auction by offering audio production and creative direction services for a single ten-minute audio production.  Depending on the type of work I do with the winner, the value will range between $450 and $1000.  Bidding begins at $100.  To read the details of my auction item or to make a bid on my auction item, follow this link and leave a comment.

For more about about Bridget Zinn, click here.

What makes the Amazon “glitch” so significant is not so much that it happened but that Amazon and its public created a situation in which it could happen.  Amazon has become an Internet-retail-monopoly-of-sorts.  It has earned its status by very strategic and effective business decisions and a consumer community that endorsed its approach.  Let’s be honest, shopping on Amazon is more convenient and easier than going to the nearest box store or shopping mall, you don’t have to deal with bad customer service, there’s a wider selection and it arrives at your door.  Who wouldn’t want to take advantage of that?

Many people question why the public is so worked up about the glitch and Amazon’s response.  To me, the answer is obvious; Amazon has a responsibility to its merchandise, the people it represents and the people it serves.  Even if there was a glitch in their computer system (and I don’t know anyone who has given this suggestion even passing endorsement), Amazon amplified a huge mistake into a public relations nightmare by dismissing it as a technological problem.  Did they learn nothing from Tylenol???

Amazon made no fans except, perhaps those that are assumed to have lobbied Amazon against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender literature — adult and children’s books.

If this was indeed a glitch, Amazon needed to very quickly:

• admit that they made a mistake (it doesn’t matter that it was technological)
• admit that this mistake goes back to as early as February
• admit that there is a lot of evidence that supports the claim that a conscious decision was made
• assert that the mistake looks very bad for them
• admit that the public will be able draw many damning conclusions about the mistake
• assure the public that they have no biases against LGBT literature and art
• assure the public that they are working to identify and correct the mistake
• apologize to everyone whose work had been discriminated against by “glitch”
• apologize to the public for not being more careful
• apologize for not taking their responsibility more seriously

This is a classic case of a company dismissing the first rule of PR: “mess up; fess up”.

Instead, Amazon has provided ample evidence to support the common belief that it consciously made a significant and discriminatory change in their policy regarding books about alternative lifestyles, regardless of content.  They’ve also opened the door to scrutiny about their more open policy for books that incite racial and religious hate.

This should serve as a wake up call for everyone that makes online purchases — share the wealth, spread the risk and buy from companies that take their responsibility seriously.

You will no longer find links to amazon.com on this site.  I encourage you to make your online purchases from an online retailer of your choice.  For books, I recommend both Powell’s Books and Chapters.

As more companies flock to social media and discover the power of text, audio and video content on the Internet (whether podcasted or streamed) we’re seeing more of that same approach to corporate communications.  The difference is the public has more power to choose the content it wants and very few of us want to listen to or watch a senior executive talk at us from his or her expensively decorated office — particularly in an age when many of their peers are in the press for unusual accounting practices, bankruptcies, use of corporate jets for personal reasons and, what the heck, Ponzi Schemes.

People relate to other people, not companies.

As exciting as a company may be, its personality is actually the personalites of its people and their ability to engage with others.  In my view, dressing the company and its management team in Hollywood production actually buffs off the humanity and showcases the marketing budget.

Having said that, many companies are actually making great efforts to embrace the social media culture.  I’m not talking the ones that are using every available tool (and there are many) and pumping out as much content as possible.  I’m talking about the companies that understand people want more meaningful information and ideas and they want the presentation to be engaging; even entertaining.

Be real.

One such example is Microsoft.  They began publishing their audio-based IT Manager Podcast in February 2007. The IT Manager team’s purpose is to be the connection point (with no strings attached) for the broad ICT community in Canada, from student to CIO. For about a year-and-a-half, they delivered slick and informative interviews which were scripted and read by both the hosts and guests, all of whom are experts in their fields.  The programs were recorded in an acoustically pristine studio and the performances were directed, sometimes requiring participants to do multiple takes of what was supposed to be a natural dialog.  You can’t disguise that as real.

I was contracted to reinvent the IT Manager Podcast and I’ve worked closely with the Microsoft team to transition them out of a recording studio with a script, to a meeting room using discussion points to impromptu discussions on the floor of a gaming conference.  Getting out of the recording studio has allowed host Rick Claus and his guests to relax and have a fun while adding energy to what some might consider to be dry topics.  And they don’t have a coach telling them how to be themselves.  You can hear how real it is.

Where do you connect with others?

This week we released something unusual for an enterprise-level podcast; an experiment.  Rick recorded a discussion with two information security experts in a coffee shop, the activity of which increased their energy.  After listening to the recording I suggested we make the coffee shop part of the story and pitched the idea of weaving together a narrative about the topic and guests with the sound of Rick ordering his coffee and pastry, adding cream and sugar and then waiting for his guests to arrive.  That led into a conversation about an important corporate issue in an environment where many business people like to conduct off-site meetings.  The result is real and relate-able, especially when the clerk at the coffee shop runs the vacuum — something we made light of in the show.  Mainstream media has conditioned us to think this kind of activity is unusual and unacceptable.

Don’t just use the tools to communicate; know how to use them to connect.

Just because a company or enterprise can afford to do big budget productions, doesn’t mean they should.  Certainly never at the expense of presenting real people and relevant information.  They must choose their media and tools carefully and then produce something as authentic as possible.

The real fun is in revealing the personality while delivering the message.  Making that happen and working with people that care about relating to their audience is why I love my work.

Maybe I’m small
but I have feelings
and they can get
hurt and right now
they feel that way
hurt

I’ve cross posted this photo at GrowingEnthusiasm.com, which our daughters may use to share some of their art.

Also, there’s a review of a book called I Am Small on the Just One More Book!! children’s book podcast today.  The discussion about this fantastic and gentle book is what reminded me of this photo.

The question of how we consume media resurfaces on a regular basis.  I believe this is because the way in which we consume media evolves (more than changes) as technology advances.  So, I’m kicking off my polls with the ever popular… How do you consume media?

In answering the question, please consider the majority of your media consumption.  That said, you may select as many of the available options as apply to your media consumption habits.

I’m never satisfied doing what I can already do.  It’s important to me to constantly explore new ideas, new tools and new techniques.  That trait led me to produce a documentary video series on an under-served niche, drawing on my audio production background and some of the production techniques I’ve observed in the media — particularly by some of the most interesting documentary producers.

Yesterday, I published the first video, which sets stage for a series of intimate and insightful videos that showcase creativity, the creative process and the inner workings of the children’s book industry.

The entire series will be available here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Next challenge?  Perhaps a full-length feature.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Of course, the applause may have also had something to do with the presence of cinematographer Mark Ellam that the film’s creator, Brett Gaylor, was on hand for the screening.  You’d think he was a rock star the way the audience carried on.  And perhaps he is.  He’s a hometown boy, the movie is on a hot-button issue and the work he produced (like many of the works featured in the film) is a mashup in its own right.  And to prove RiP is part of the culture, not just paying lipservice to it, the entire film is available for remixing through the site OpenSourceCinema.org.  Representative mashups created by the community using footage made available during the production of the movie though that site found their way into the film.

RiP proposes a manifesto based on four assertions.

1. Culture always builds on the past
2. The past always tries to control the future
3. Our Future is becoming less free
4. To build free societies, you must limit control of the past

The assertions are then supported using some very interesting studies about several people including Girl Talk (the talented, creative and iconic remix artist), Larry Lessig (the forward thinking remix lawyer), Cory Doctorow (the popular remix activist) and Gilberto Gill (the Brazilian musician and progressive remix politician).  I particularly enjoyed learning about Gilberto Gill because he represents the first time I’ve heard of a federal Minister of Culture (for the administration of former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva) who was a contributor to culture, not a controller of it.

RiP is not a about making all things free and destroying progress.  The movie is about the changing times and how balance is needed to ensure that innovation is encouraged, not stifled; beneficial to all, not just the powerful; and becomes a matter of social and civil cooperation, not criminal justice.

Creators and consumers of social media are the best positioned to raise awareness of this movie and its message.  I highly recommend that you make an effort to see it so you can understand why.

I had really wanted to speak with Mark after the movie.  The line to collect our Mouse Liberation Front membership cards was long.  I collected mine, gave him my phone number and offered him a beer for the opportunity to speak more to him about the movie and how it was made.

What I’ve noticed over time is that children’s books and their creators have been treated very traditionally in the media.  In fact, I’ve even noticed this on the web where some of the most interesting interviews with authors and illustrators have been low on production value (e.g. ten-minute video interviews of a talking head).  There is so much talk about the importance of children’s books and literacy and how fun it is to learn to read and to read aloud, but the way we promote this in the media suggests otherwise.

That’s part of my thought process as I’ve been producing a series of (roughly) fifteen-minute videos about the amazing people behind children’s books.  It’s been a six-month project and will likely be another two before I’m done.  Why so much time?  I’ve drawn on some of the most entertaining and engaging ways to produce programs that I’ve experienced to date, and have come up with a few ideas of my own.  The result is a series of videos which give the children’s book industry the pop-culture treatment enjoyed by niches such as fast food, the environment, movie stars, sports, music and technology, to name a few.  My hope is that this approach will make the videos and the subject interesting to everyone, from those that are passionate about children’s books and creativity, to those that aren’t particularly interested in books at all.

The video series will be published on the Just One More Book!! website beginning on March 31.  I’ve already produced ten videos and I expect there could be as many as another ten by the time I’ve finished the production work.  There are also a few audio programs as part of the series and I expect I’ll do a short “making of” documentary once I’m all done.

In an effort to help promote the series, I extracted a short section from Part 1 which kicks off our road trip and highlights images and short clips that will appear later in the series.  What I enjoy most about this particular clip is that it uses energetic music to illustrate that childen’s books, their creators and events are exciting enough for a six-day road trip.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Photo: I am Legend Movie Shoot New York uploaded by Michael McDonough

One of the ways I motivate myself to think critically and creatively about my production style (and the meaning of the projects I produce) is to constantly ask myself questions throughout the production process.  My toolbox is filled with old standards such as “so?”, “so, what?”, “what’s missing?” and “what would be better left unsaid?”.  Like a jazz musician, the old standards must be in my repertoire as a foundation and in the event my stuff doesn’t land.  The real art, though, comes in presenting my own ideas in a fresh way.  This means I need to expand my repertoire and toolkit with fresh ways of thinking on a regular basis.

Enter Nick Clark, the Chief Director of the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.  In November, he gave Andrea, me and our two daughters, a guided tour of the museum.

At one point, Mr. Clark discusses the museum’s approach to education.  The staff structures the exhibits and programs around Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS).  In simple terms, this involves asking three questions:

• What’s going on in this picture?
• What do you see that makes you say that?
• What more can we find?

“The Carle” strives to motivate visitors to ask themselves those questions about the art on exhibit as well as about the exhibits themselves, the layout of the rooms and the spaces in the museum.  Most importantly, the experience isn’t strictly about the content of the art on display but the context of the art on display, the context of the display and the context in which the display exists.  The questions apply to everything.

The best part is that the VTS questions apply to everything we experience on a daily basis.  This gives everybody plenty of opportunities to practice asking and answering the questions about anything and everything.

When it comes to producing audio and video programs, VTS have motivated me to think more creatively about what I’m actually hearing or seeing and how the pieces work individually and together to communicate ideas and tell stories.  I find myself identifying new connections between the various elements and how they reveal additional ideas and stories that weren’t part of the original plan.  The good thing is that thinking about the questions and their answers has pushed me in new directions.  On the other hand, that rethinking adds more production time to my projects.  That works well for the hobby stuff, but becomes expensive for someone in the business world.

The key question is number three… what more can we find?  For the project I was working on tonight, that caused me to dig through source material I’d cut to see if the newly discovered ideas were better represented in the clips I’d dismissed.

I think it would take a special person to apply VTS to their media consumption habits.  It’s my belief that most people listen to audio programs and watch videos largely for entertainment and to give their brains a rest.  Relatively few people listen to a podcasts (as an example) and try to push their engagement with the program to such a level as to think critically and creatively about the material.

Perhaps because I do more producing than consuming, I see VTS being used by media consumers with academic and artistic interests.  Mashup artists spring to mind since they seem to be the amazingly fast at pushing ideas forward with music and other content.  I suspect they naturally apply the questions to things they hear and see.

I’m particularly excited about VTS because they reinforce my belief that both media production and media consumption achieve far more through context than content.  The individual elements (the content) serve as a starting point for the ideas, but the backdrop and the relationships between the elements (the context) open many more exciting possibilities.

LESSON #1: CLIENTS AREN’T PAYING FOR THE SHOW

Chris ended his magic show by saying that he loves what he does and considers it play, not work.  His clients aren’t paying for the show, because he does that for fun.  His clients pay for the paperwork, contracts and other administravia he doesn’t enjoy nearly as much.

LESSON #2: RECOMMEND THE NEXT PERFORMER

It turns out that the organizers of this magic show also arranged a magic show by another performer last year.  At the end of last year’s show, the performer recommended Chris Pilsworth for this year’s event.

LESSON #3: EXHIBIT PROFESSIONAL COURTESY

At the end of the show, I recognized Eric Leclerc, a magician I’d seen perform before.  I approached him to remnisce about that appearance and asked him if he had any business cards with him (they’re cool… made to look like baseball cards).  He declined giving one to me noting that it wasn’t his performance and therefore not his place to promote himself.

It’s unfortunate this event has been canceled; the faculty and program was top notch!

I can’t help but wonder if this represents an overall disinterest in effectiveness and accountability in government communications.  What would make a program like this more appealing to the public sector?

Aside from the idea of doing a show together, we haven’t really decided on much, yet.  That’s part of the excitement of this project.  I’ll be able to say more about this after our recording session.

It began on October 9 with a series of mishaps I documented on my blog.  I submitted a claim to United on October 16.  After two months of calling their Customer Relations department on a weekly basis, during which I was shielded from their Claims Department, I finally received a call from Claims agreeing to pay CDN$675.03 in flights, hotels, baggage fees and meals, and US$48 in taxi fees.  They even offered me a $300 travel voucher.   That was December 14.  United has failed to deliver on their offer.  Each time I call, I’m told that they will look into the status and get back to me.  They never do.

For some reason, I decided to fly with United over the Christmas holidays (despite my recent experiences or perhaps because they had finally offered to reimburse me).  That turned out to be a different nightmare.  United misplaced our two suitcases for six days.  We had to shop several times to keep our family of four in fresh clothes, toiletries, shoes (we arrived in boots), swimsuits (it was a holiday after all), hats and mits (we could have replaced snow pants for a snowshoeing expedition, instead we canceled it), replace misplaced holiday gifts and even buy a new suitcase to carry everything home.  Despite how frugal we were, that total came to US$873.64.  I submitted a claim for that amount on January 5, 2009 and have heard nothing from United on it.

In all, United is in possession of US$921.63 and CDN$675.03 of my personal funds.  That doesn’t count the time I invest in the numerous phone calls to their customer relations department at a minumum of 20 minutes a piece.

I get the feeling that United is trying to wear me down from reclaiming my money and wonder how many other people are in a similar situation.

Radio Without Boundaries is a conference about radio and transmission arts.  The seventh installment is taking place May 28 through 30 at the West Studio, Artscape Wychwood Barns, Toronto.  I hope to see you there!

Mike Z has invited a significant amount of scrutiny.  His allegiances have been well documented in a series of critical blog posts, news reports and, most recently, a series of scathing yet humourous videos on YouTube.

As with most of the scrutiny, the videos poked fun at Mike Z’s routine use of the Nortel corporate jet for personal travel, loading his executive team with GE buddies (all very well paid), his famed internal ‘ZMail’ and the canceling of all active and future severance packages while trying to hang on to executive salaries and bonuses (Mike Z himself refused to reduce his salary from $9M to $1, something that is customary among executives of financially troubled companies).  One of the seven videos has accumulated nearly 36,000 views in just one month, more than twice the number of views boasted by an official Nortel video posted on YouTube one year ago.

As the company continues to restructure, laying off thousands of people at a time without a penny of severance or compensation, Mike Z has been pushing for $46M in retention bonuses for the same executive team that brought Nortel to its knees.  Meanwhile, employees, fearing for their future, are anxiously looking for new employment opportunities as far from Nortel as possible.  The same innovative and hard working people that Mike Z is counting on to repair the hull and run the bilge pumps long enough to make Nortel business-worthy, again, are the one’s jumping the rails and swimming to less turbulent waters.

Which means that either the retention money is going to the wrong people, or the mass exodus is part of Mike Z’s grand plan to keep the money for him and his GE buddies.

As the husband of a Nortel employee, watching Nortel pitch downward used to be painful and stressful as each round of layoffs went from being a periodic possibility to a daily reality.  Now it’s unavoidably comical.  The once mighty darling child of Canadian high tech and innovation, bursting with talented people and patented visionaries, is now the Titanic.

Fortunately, today is cause for celebration!  After twelve years of faithful and committed service to Nortel, Andrea took a new job and submitted her resignation.  It’s an exciting time and the celebrations will be going on for a few weeks, yet.

And now we can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that the captain can go down with the ship and our family was fortunate enough to have made it safely to shore.

Today, that changed.  I received an update from the group which identified the 10 bestselling CDs for February, a list of upcoming releases and some staff picks.  Suddenly, I find myself curious about this music and wanting to check it out.

I probably shouldn’t be as excited as I am about these notifications.  But, what I like most is that the people (employees and customers) that compiled this list and sent it to the group are real people that I see in my neighbourhood everyday (sometimes even the store).  This means that I know where the recommendations come from.  They’re real!  It’s not based on sales statistics, click-throughs and record company promotions.  It’s based on the musical tastes of people I can relate to.

And here’s what the message says…

Subject: Compact Music UPDATE

Top 10 Best Sellers (February):

1) Jenn Grant “Echoes”
2) Slumdog Millionaire Soundtrack
3) M.Ward “Hold Time”
4) Jill Barber “Chances”
5) K Naan “Troubadour”
6) Jeff Beck “2007: Performing This Week…”
7) Beirut “March of the Zapotec/Realpeople Holland”
8) Keith Jarrett  “Yesterdays”
9) Dan Auerbach “Keep It Hid”
10) Antony & the Johnsons “Crying Light”
————————————————————————————
*COMING IN MARCH*

Neko Case
U2
Catherine MacLellan
Bell Orchestre
Great Lake Swimmers
Diana Krall
Arvo Part
Joel Plaskett
Swan Lake
Bruce Cockburn
Handsome Furs

+ SO MANY MORE!!!
———————————————————————————-

*Staff Picks*

Ian:
Soundtrack of our Lives “Communion”
Von Bondies “Love Hate & Then There’s You”

J-Dawg:
Steven Wilson “Insurgentes”
M.Ward “Hold Time”

Rex Knightlington:
Beirut “March of the Zapotec/Realpeople Holland”
Malajube “Labyrinthes”

Alexander:
Erik Satie “Composer”
Nash Ensemble “Beethoven: String Quintets Opp 4 & 29″

Rockstar Liam:
Morrissey “Years of Refusal”
Lily Allen “It’s Not Me It’s You”

Megan:
Neko Case “Middle Cyclone”
Slumdog Millionaire Soundtrack

The digital revolution: on one hand it’s facilitating the ubiquitous creation of art; on the other it’s displacing art with science.  Warm analog recordings made way for clarity of sound and smaller products meant smaller, less substantial art.  While I love my iPhone and the convenience of MP3s, they’ve amplified the de-coupling of music and visual art from products.

I was pleased that John Meadows covered this in the Direct to Disc episode of On The Log, largely because it made me think about the changes to book publishing and how the move to digital ink is affecting book buying and book reading habits.  The biggest casualty of this evolution will be books that depend on visuals as part of the reading experience — children’s picture books — which depend on the vibrancy of colour, the warmth of tone, the use of space and the overall design which includes the dimensions, size, shape and materials.  It would be quite an impressive piece of palm-sized technology that would translate that to the digital world.

Photo: Iconic (whiteboard) album covers uploaded by Simon Lieschke.

As part of my session, I plan to highlight several book creators I learned about through social media, including Richard Michelson.  Ironically, Richard will in another room at the same time as I’ll be presenting, talking about The Sydney Taylor Awards.  Richard is the laureate of two Sydney Taylor’s this year marking the first time in the 40-year history of the awards in which one author claimed both The Sydney Taylor Book Award (equivalent of a gold medal) for As Good as Anybody, and The Sydney Taylor Honor Award (equivalent of a silver medal) for A is for Abraham.  The awards are being handed out during a banquet on the Tuesday evening.

See you in Chicago, Richard.  And, congratulations… again!

UPDATED to correct an error I made in reporting about Richard’s session.

Where most media production workflow and creative processes front-load the work and effectively write the story, Content Paleontology back-loads the work and reveals the story through a series of steps.

EXPEDITION: The Paleontologist begins by venturing into the field to find new material.  Sometimes there’s purpose to the location of choice, other times it’s based on a hunch.

UNEARTH: It’s important to work in a wide area and gather as much material as possible because you never know which pieces will be needed to form the final work.  An organized Paleontologist will do some high-level cataloging of the material that was gathered.  I did this for one specific project for which I gathered 13 hours of video, 25 hours of audio and over 2000 photographs.  Oh… and in the case of (digital) Conent Paleontology, back up your material to multiple disks!

CONTENT: Back in the lab (er… studio), the material must be reviewed for relevance.  In this step, I review all of the content and look for the pieces that feel to me as though they are part of a larger story.  I keep those pieces and discard everything else.  While keeping the good stuff is the end goal of this stage, I tend to think of this as the first of several subtractive steps, the main goal being to remove the chaf.  I call this “editing for content”.

FORM: This is where the like pieces are organized into groups.  I take all of the little elements that feel like they’re part of a larger story and put them together.  In many respects, the Content Paleontologist is just a medium that is doing the bidding of whichever stories reveal themselves.  There are many different stories that will want to be told.  The Paleontologist’s job is to identify the most interesting stories and help them along.  I call this “editing for form”.

ASSEMBLE:  This is one of the most involved steps in the process.  It requires understanding how the pieces fit together and then sequencing them in a way that reveals the story/ies in a compelling way.  There are many millions of ways to do this and ultimately it’s the job of the individual to make some tough decisions.  It requires a bit of science and a bit of creative interpretation.

CONTEXT: Sometimes elements such as narration, music, and audio or video processing are added to help embellish the important parts of the story.  The result of this stage is not to manipulate the story, but to help accent the story in a way that helps the audience understand what they’re looking at and/or listening to.

EXPERIENCE: The result should be more than just a finished piece of work.  Someone who listens to or watches the program should share some of the same experiences as a member of the audience that you did during the production process.  In addition to the story that reveals itself, the final work should highlight some of the things that can be learned and include universal truths.  There’s a little bit of each of us in the audio and video we consume.  That’s why we enjoy listening to music, watching movies and reading books.

Photo: Pig Dig uploaded to Flickr by MomPOM/Jenn.

Amid fears that Canada’s culture is being drowned in a sea of online video from around the world, federal regulators are looking at setting up a $100-million fund to support homegrown programming on the Internet.

If I have my facts straight, that assertion is incorrect.  ACTRA proposed such a fund in their written submission and presentation to the CRTC’s hearing on Canadian broadcasting in new media which began yesterday.

I wouldn’t consider reading a report, listening to a few people speak and then engaging in a debate with them over their thoughts to be “looking at setting up a $100-million fund” any more than hearing Alain Pineau say “broadcasting is broadcasting no matter which platform you use” means the CRTC is planning on making every Canadian who produces content on the web get a broadcast license.

Day two of the CRTC hearings begin at 9amET today.  You can watch a live video stream on cpac.ca.

I learned about one particular site which boasts the tagline “If it’s worth reading, we’ve written it.”  Of course, they haven’t written anything.  The site creators are automatically pulling down content from the legitimate book review site Becky’s Book Reviews and presenting it as their own.  As with many Flogs, they’ve attached Google ads to the site (by the way, you can probably report them to Google and have their Google ad account terminated).

Today, Becky blogged about the unscrupulous site in a post she titled “Don’t be Fooled by Imitations” and, as you probably guessed, her post was pulled down to the Flog site.  Too bad it’s an automated site and the post probably won’t cause the site owner any reaction.

1. Defining broadcasting in new media
2. The significance of broadcasting in new media and its impact on the Canadian broadcasting system
3. Are incentives or regulatory measures necessary or desirable for the creation and promotion of Canadian broadcasting content in new media?
4. Are there issues concerning access to broadcasting content in new media?
5. Other broadcasting or public policy objectives
6. The appropriateness of the new media exemption orders

As part of its public notice announcing the intent to hold public proceedings, the CRTC identified preconditions that suggested a need to review the environment for broadcasting in new media.  These include:

• insufficient levels of Canadian content on the Internet
• evidence that the new media environment is having an impact on various aspects of the business model of traditional broadcasters
• increased availability of high-quality video programming on the Internet

For the purpose of the hearings, the CRTC has provided the following assumptions:

• Canadian content: Historically, the creation and presentation of most professional Canadian content has required some form of production subsidy. Generally, Canadians are the primary audience and consumers of Canadian content.
• User-generated content: As stated in Broadcasting Notice of Public Hearing CRTC 2008-11, the Commission is not concerned with user-generated broadcasting content. That is, the Commission does not seek to inquire into the content, quality or availability of material created by individual Canadians in a personal capacity.

It’s easy to get excited about all of this setup information and the framework which has been established for the public hearings.  For example, many hobbyist and amateur producers of new media content (user-generated content) are likely to get worked up that user-generated content is being specifically excluded from the proceedings.  It’s not.  And, anyone who plays or works in new media knows that user-generated content is intrinsically intertwined with all other media production and distribution methods in the world of new media.  That became clear during the first two presentations at the CRTC hearings on Canadian broadcasting in new media earlier today.

The CRTC has front-loaded the hearings with submissions from the arts communities.  Alain Pineau spoke on behalf of the Canada Council for the Arts (CCA).  Among other things, his presentation identified concerns over fees charged by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Wireless Service Providers (WSPs) for access to an increasingly rich pool of content that demands comprehensive data plans using infrastructure, much of which has been built using taxpayer money and government concessions “for the public benefit”.  At one point, Mr. Pineau suggested that these are “new money” not “new media” proceedings and proposed that ISPs and WSPs should be contributing to the development of Canadian content, noting that some of the same organizations that have a say over Canadian content are the same organizations that own the infrastructure over which new media content is transmitted.

While his presentation was filled with insights such as (and I’m paraphrasing, here) everything old is new again and questions including what is the difference between professional and hobbyist user-generated content, Mr. Pineau was decidedly under prepared for the cross-examination that followed.  When asked to elaborate on his request to measure the various aspects of new media, Mr. Pineau was unable to offer any concrete thoughts.  That was during the gentle and conversational part of the discussion.  Then he faced Timothy Denton’s very concise, very focused questions.  Mr. Denton cornered Mr. Pineau on the issue of the requirement of broadcasting licenses for average citizens that may create new media.

While it was hard to know exactly what CCA’s specific concern was, the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) was clear in their message.  With actors Colin Mochrie, Bruce Densmore and Charlotte Arnold on the presentation team, ACTRA was unapologetic in their efforts to solicit more money to support the creation of Canadian content.  Mr. Mochrie pointed out that a “3% levy of the 2007 ISP residential broadband revenues of $3.3 billion would generate $99 million annually” from “very substantial profits” made by businesses that “are obligated to give back to the system that serves them so profitably”.  They also pushed for regulation of new media while opposing the inclusion of amateur user-generated content in such regulations.

ACTRA was far better prepared for the debate that followed their presentation, a debate that explored the relationship between professional and hobbyist user-generated content.  Mr. Mochrie and Mr. Densmore agreed any content they created personally that promoted their work and appearances in commercial and public media would constitute professional user-generated content that would be subject to regulation under the terms of their definition.  While I applaud that, I also fear its ramifications since many people (myself included) have promoted their appearances on radio and television, as well paid speaking engagements, using audio and video programs that fall under the definition of new media.

I’m disappointed in the definition of and discussions about Canadian content, so far.  Canadian content need not be funded, nor created by established media production facilities nor experienced professionals.  There’s far more content published by Canadian citizens on a daily basis than the combined efforts of the media houses.  Dismissing amateur productions is denying the very nature of the Internet that fostered the creation of new media.

I believe we need to invest heavily in professional productions to sustain an industry that informs and entertains as well as sustains our Canadian culture and identity.  Does that mean that a levy shouldn’t also go to people that are generating popular amateur user-generated content?  Should ISPs be required to pay someone for the privilege of distributing the content that’s helping to convert an increasing number of people to broadband services?  Does creating content turn the average person into a broadcaster requiring a license?

I hadn’t intended to be so interested in the hearings.  Now, with more questions than answers, and the concern over the nature of the presentations and the level of preparedness of the speakers, I will be glued to the hearings as much as possible.

That’s because of the restrictions I set for myself.  I decided that if I couldn’t deliver an entertaining and information message in ten minutes, it wasn’t worth telling, and also that I should maximize the use of the time to deliver as much detail as I could, noting that too many radio shows skim the surface of an issue instead of refining their line of questioning to dig deep into a single issue.  I suspect that’s to appeal to a broader audience.

Like many podcasters, I wanted a large audience and decided the best way to attract one was to be completely self-indulgent; if I wasn’t enjoying myself and fulfilling my own passion and selfish curiosity while learning something new from the content and its creation with each episode, why would anyone else want to listen?

That’s worked for the most part.  I’ve found that catering to my own interests and letting MY passion drive my media production effort results in something worth listening to.  I suppose my informal mission statement is “if it’s something I wouldn’t invest the time to listen to, why would I expect that of others?”.

It’s not an easy approach.  It takes time, energy and a lot of creativity to produce the finished result.  Most of all, it requires me to make a lot of tough choices; choices that result in internal conflict.  It’s quite possible that I’ve aged more as a result.

I’ve presented and blogged about editing techniques (read blog posts on the subject of editing here and here), and I’ve also shared some ideas on how to make editing decisions.  However, I find myself thinking a lot more about what I do these days because of a presentation I’m working on at the moment and the fact that I’m immersed in a video production project that’s forcing to think more carefully about the editing decisions I make.

I’ll be talking more about this during my Workflow and Creative Process session at PodCamp Toronto this coming weekend and will blog more about the subject after the conference.  In addition to exploring the production approach of another podcaster and a radio production team I’ve interviewed, I’ll be sharing some of the main elements of my own style.  In order to help me organize my thoughts (and perhaps build a buzz and dialog about the presentation before it happens), I thought I’d put some of the main headings I’m considering here.

• Be a student
• Production restrictions
• Delivery
• Inform and entertain
• Engaging
• Story
• Tough decisions
• Listening/watching

With all of the different things there are to talk about, thirty minutes will probably fly by very quickly.  In fact, I’ll probably have to limit the number of topics I bring up in my session.  Following a recent request to conduct a webinar on interviewEE skills, I’m thinking that I may have to create a series of webinars on the art of production.

Publishing giant, Random House joined Twitter on April 11, 2008.  Their bio claims that they are the “World’s Largest English Trade Publisher”.  They haven’t issued a single Twitter update (that’s right, ZERO updates) to their awaiting audience of 577 followers (amazingly large given they’ve done nothing), and they aren’t following anyone.  That, despite a healthy number of references to Random House in Twitter.  Sadly, Random House would look a lot better if they hadn’t opened the account at all.

Little Brown Books may not be as big as Random House, but they have a vibrant community and conversation on the go.  Their follower:following ratio is almost even (2640:2655) and they’ve issued 865 updates since they joined Twitter on July 28, 2008.  Unfortunately, and perhaps due to their Twitter success, they’ve been unable to keep up with the conversation and following a recent call for input on their upcoming newsletter, failed to acknowledge a number of responses.

Social networking is an amazingly inexpensive communications tool and a fantastic way to reach out to your audience.  However, it is a commitment which carries with it a public declaration.  As marketing and communications becomes more rooted in the digital world, companies will be judged by their actions and inactions using, among other things, tools like Twitter.

We recorded the show on Wednesday.  It includes nine comments in all, each one exploring a different approach to making money from social media.  That makes each model proven.  To what degree?  We cannot say since, as Bob pointed out, only one person shared their actual gross revenue.  I will say this, though; none of the models shared was based on CPM (Cost Per Thousand impressions, an approach that pays money based on the number of groupings of one-thousand downloads).

I’m very excited about this show because it really does push the conversation forward and provides an informative destination for the people that (on their first awareness of podcasting) ask the question “how do I make money from it”.  I think that it will be to the money conversation what our September 2006 car episode with Julien Smith was to the Social Networking conversation.

CPB episode 130 will be published at 6:00pmET tomorrow (February 15).

A day care is a parent’s boldest move into a trust relationship.  You put the trust in the staff to make the best decisions for you and your child, your child puts their trust in you that you will return at the end of the day and you put your trust in the child for forgiveness.  Like any relationship, it takes time to build that trust.

But it’s a different type of trust than the kind that exists between friends and partners.  It’s the kind of trust that affects a child, and the child-parent bond.  It’s the kind of trust that depends on the staff’s capability to to the needs of a wide variety of people (personalities, energy levels and ages — in both the children and parents).  It’s the kind of trust that helps independent consultants understand it when a client entrusts their business to them and says “this is my baby; take care of it”.

Leaving “our” day care will be hard because of two people in particular.  When we dropped off our daughters in the morning, we always felt that there was a real hand-off and that our daughters were in their care.  On the odd occasion when we’d had a rough morning or that one of our daughters was upset, they knew what to say and how to say it; sometimes all they had to do was share a smile or empathetic look, other times they gave us each a hug and said nothing.  These two people just know.  It’s intuitive and in many cases they can’t even explain how they do what they do.  Regardless, it worked.  And it changed our day.

I’ll miss the day care and its community.  Most of all, though, I’ll miss interacting with these two people on a daily basis.

If you’re looking for case studies in trust relationships and the people who exemplify customer care under complex conditions, seek out the elite in day care staff and take them out for a coffee.

One specific sentence in the session description caught my eye:

If properly implemented in practice, the fair dealing doctrine can facilitate access to the raw materials creators need to make documentary films while fulfilling their own reasonable requirements for copyright protection.

It sounds like it will be an incredibly informative event featuring panelists Peter Jaszi and Sean Flynn from Washington College of Law, Tina Hahn from the Documentary Organization of Canada, and David Fewer and Jeremy de Beer from the University of Ottawa.

I’m sure the discussion will have relevance to those in social media as much as it will for traditional filmmakers.

RSVP to techlaw@uottawa.ca or on the Copyright Culture and Documentary Films event page on Facebook.

For more information, visit the University of Ottawa’s Law and Technology Faculty website,
the Law and Technology at uOttawa Facebook group or the website for this panel, http://letsdoccopyright.ca.

I am honoured to be among the “Distinguished Faculty” that includes Mike Kujawski (Best Practices to Market Governmental Services on the Web), Brendan Hodgson (Practical Crisis Communication Strategies in a Web 2.0 World), Patrick Cormier (Choosing Collaborative Technologies to Improve Internal Communication in your Office), Gord McIntosh (Getting Feedback from the Media: Improving Communication Strategies with the Press), Meghan Warby and Colin McKay (Transforming a Crowd into an Audience: Creating Online Campaigns to Promote Social Awareness), and Parker Mason (Be Proactive, Not Reactive – Best Practices In Monitoring the Media and Understanding How the Media Now Monitors You).

The title of my session is Moving the Conversation Online: Reaching the Public Through Social Media Tools and the summary is as follows:

There are public and private sector offices who have found that implementing audio and / or video digital media files within their internal and external websites is a cost-effective way to transmit information to and engage with the public. Easily transferable to mobile devices, they are useful for those who do not have regular access to the Internet and for citizens with disabilities. In this session, learn the costs and benefits and lessons learned from others who are using audio and / or video digital media files, on:

• What content is suitable to transmit?
• Best tips on marketing your podcasts to the public
• The importance of targeting a demographic before you begin
• Measuring the success of your audio and / or video podcasts: Who is listening and are they getting the most relevant information?

The event is taking place April 21 and 22 at The Westin Hotel in Ottawa.  If you’re interested in attending, please contact me and I can provide you with a 15% discount code.

As part of my preparation, I paid particular attention to the audio programs I’m most fascinated by and made note of the production and storytelling elements that made those programs interesting, compelling and engaging.  Then I examined the audio programs I’ve made to-date to discover how I incorporated the elements I value the most.  This was particularly interesting because I think I did most of that intuitively, not methodically, and hadn’t yet examined the pedigree of my artistic development.

Video is a very different media.  While I’ve done some video production work over the years, the documentary project I’ve taken on is far more complex and ambitious than anything I’ve done to date (audio or video).  So, I watched a number of documentary movies and made notes about the things the filmmakers did and how they did them.  I’ve also been influenced by short video clips, trailers and interviews I’ve found on the web.  Anything that captivates the viewer is meaningful to me because I believe that video is a media that should only be used to tell stories in a visual way.

My hope is that my production efforts achieve three storytelling goals:

• The audio and video stories offer some synchronicity
• The audio and video work together to tell slightly different stories; stories that one medium can tell better than the other and that could be consumed in isolation
• The audience is engaged by the final product and, after each video program is viewed, finds itself thinking about the content for a while afterward

This all sounds very scientific, and perhaps this is true about creating the individual elements within the production.  However, I find that the whole process is about creating something based on feel and art (which I suppose sounds a bit… something I can’t place my finger on).

Of course, it takes significantly more time and energy (by an order of magnitude) to properly edit compelling video than just audio alone.  I value that time.  I’ve always felt the finished product is a trophy of a process I find enjoyable, frustrating, fascinating and educational.

Thanks!

On one particular occasion, we’d decided to take the quality of our audio recordings to the next level.  I’m not sure how that decision came about.  It was probably me (the Gear-Head that I am) wanting to use some spiffy new equipment even though my own gear was quite good and we’d perfected ways to capture the best sound from various instruments with it.  On the other hand, my tape deck limited us to eight tracks of audio so it may have been that we mapped out the arrangements and decided we needed more tracks.

We regularly rented microphones and effect processors and had on a few occasions even rented ADAT systems — digital tape recording machines that made it possible to record up to eight tracks of audio on each tape.  For this particular demo recording session, we rented a whole mess of equipment including high end Drawmer, dbx and Eventide processors, fantastic mics, preamps and two ADATs.  We made one ADAT system the master and the other the slave which gave us sixteen tracks of audio.

The recording sessions went very well.  Bob’s musical ideas were free flowing.  Combined with my occassional musical idea (or mistake that was turned into an idea) and my lyrics, the sessions were a creative success.  To make the most out of the time with the rented gear, I had programmed the drum machine the night before and then during the session I’d quickly get through my bass parts and then spend my time at the console.

On one particular day, the slave ADAT unit lost its mind.  As we worked on one particular song, the slave unit would get to a certain point in the song and begin rewinding which killed the recording.  It would rewind the entire length of the tape unless we stopped it.  Then I’d have to re-sync the two units and start over, again.  This went on for quite a while — always the exact same moment on the tape, always the same quirky behaviour.  It made recording the song impossible and the session itself amazingly frustrating.

We tried turning the machines off for short periods thinking they needed a break.  Apparently, they didn’t.  This went on for four hours.  Then, just as suddenly as this quirky behaviour had appeared, it stopped and the systems all began to play nicely together.

I’ve always been a Gear-Head.  On reflection, though, despite the improvements in sound quality and sleek new features that new technology offers, the best work I’ve ever done has been with equipment that I’ve spent hours working with.  It’s not just about figuring out what the equipment’s designed to do and how to do it, but how to make the equipment do things the way you want them to be done.

Despite the failings of my M-Audio Firewire 1814 audio card, failings that can only be overcome by using a beta driver that’s two revisions old (M-Audio promised me a fix back in August and fell silent since, which makes sense since it now looks like they’ve discontinued it) and the necessity for a USB dongle to make my Cubase software work, I love my studio.  I love that I’m able to use the same equipment in my home, office and on the road.

Podcasters should be come very close with their audio gear, learn its idiosyncracies, how to work around them and take advantage of them, the sonic qualities of their headphones and speakers and how to refine their production techniques.  Most of all, especially for the important projects, use the gear you know, not the gear that’s cool.

(I may dig through my old tapes and find some recordings I can share.)