Dark was the Night

Came across this compilation album yesterday. I’m a bit late to the party, though I think everyone else is too or I would have heard about it about it from somebody. Instead I randomly caught an Arcade Fire song on CBC3 I’d never heard and went searching for it. I’m a musical Sherlock.
This album is incredible. I’d never heard The National Song on it and it’s gorgeous. “Take a bath and get high through an apple” is one of the best visuals found in a line I’ve heard in a while. All of it is good.
Check it out.

Nigel

In my final semester at Guelph, for my directing class, I had to direct a show.
The assignment was a funny one: we were to start a play from the middle, and direct it to the end, doing our best to make it make sense.
Never one to over achieve, I found a play that would make sense from any point it started: A Norm Foster play.
When Nigel came into Lower Massey for his audition, sunshine trailed in after him.
Had Nigel been reading a paragraph directly stolen from a first year sociology text, casting him would still be an obvious choice.
I remember that nobody had met him earlier… I think it was his first semester at Guelph. I remember laughing with my classmates at the flare this blond boy performed with.
I remember after he performed his piece, speaking to him and asking questions as a group, but somehow it felt personal, probably for each of us. Nigel spoke with charm, he made eye contact, he smiled… there was that sunshine again.
When Nigel answered one person’s question, he aimed his gaze at each of us, so that no one was ignored. From what I’ve read on his facebook page, he’s never ignored a single person.
Rehearsal was a lot of fun. The cast, my stage manager and myself became quick friends, and I can only attribute this to Nigel’s genuine kindness.
Everyone trusted him almost immediately and told him their life stories at his request, with the rest of us listening and taking his lead in making connections.
I remember the week of performances.
Backstage can be a place of tension, a place to let fear creep in and doubts get the best of you.
But not with Nigel there. I’d head backstage to check on my cast, and they’d be jovial and ready to put on a show. Again, Nigel’s doing. He was stealing my job… I didn’t mind.
I don’t remember the wrap party. Go figure. But I do remember that Nigel spent a great deal of time talking to my girlfriend. I think they had just met that night, or shortly before, and they seemed like they’d been friends for ages. I think they shared the same smile and sunshine trail. I realize now that Nigel had this effect on a lot of people. You’d meet him and feel like you knew him already… why else would a stranger be so friendly?
With Nigel’s help, I was able to take a silly little play, start it from the middle, and make it make sense through to the end. He stole the show, though I know everyone’s already made that assumption.
I met Nigel in the middle of his story. I didn’t know where he came from or the events that shaped him, but I see now that it was a lot of love that made him who he was. And I suppose I could have made that assumption myself, as that sunshine trailing after him that I mentioned before, must have been the love he carried around with him, and poured onto everyone lucky enough to know him.

 

Judging Books

Everyone judges books by their covers. It’s impossible not to. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I don’t think we need to strive, as so many teachers teach, to not judge a book by its cover. If we didn’t have a preconceived notion of what a turnout’s going to look like, we wouldn’t enjoy the surprise as much when the unexpected happens.
The obvious most recent rewarding example of a judged-book surprise is Susan Boyle, the hobgoblin that dropped the jaws of Britain’s Got Talent judges and soon thereafter exploded the internet via YouTube. The judges were prejudging, as was the world, and everyone got shocked and awed. When I was forwarded the link (thanks Joey for being on top of that), I was convinced that this would be the new William Hong (American Idol). Prejudged, Susan Boyle would be a reinventing of Hong, likely an even more hilarious audition, a catastrophic car wreck of a performance for my amusement. But when the opposite hit, and the surprise was induced, it was so much more. More enjoyable, more rewarding and more memorable than any right assumption of the book’s cover could have been.
I can’t stop watching this new surprise. At first glance, in the opening seconds, I prepped myself for a drug corner police take down, a turf war shootout. A real life scene from The Wire is what I had hopes for. “Y’all Gon Get Ur Minds Blown the #### Outta This World” is the title given to the video by its uploader, a friend of a friend of a friend on Facebook.
There’s not much out there that’s immune to over hype. But some things are. This is. Enjoy.

seizure

for a second you’ll think someone’s being funny
having a laugh making others laugh
but nobody’s laughing
so you’ll realize only a second later
that someone’s not doing so well
this moment
is one of someone’s worst

he’s on the ground when you turn the corner
still making those sounds so clearly now not meant to be funny
and probably everybody’s mind is at the same place yours is
realization
but because of those swimming lessons
first aid classes with practice scenarios
you’ll be looking for something soft
asking for a pillow while everybody stands there
in curious wonder

later you’ll feel embarrassed for taking your shirt off

like some wannabe hero

but if you didn’t get something soft

under his head

sooner than later

you would have failed that scenario

and this is an easy one

no surprise chunk of a hot dog lodged in his throat
or exposed electrical wire you forgot to check for
just the blood from his mouth that frightens you
until you realize he bit his tongue
and the terrified (terrifying) eyes
of a man that’s lost all his control

and is fighting for its return

BP Cares

I’m a bit of a Tshirt junkie. Which means I’m more likely to give money to a cause if you give me a Tshirt that says I did so. Especially if the shirt has a little pop culture mixed into it.

Have you heard of http://twitter.com/BPGlobalPR ? It was started by a guy using the alias Leroy Stick who believes that turning anger into satirical laughter is better than just being angry. If you’re funny about being mad, you get a lot more attention than if you’re just mad.

So, taking to social media he’s been able to get a lot of eyes on the problem at hand by tweeting out little tidbits about this giant human catastrophe in a humorous way.

I’m not saying there’s anything funny about this situation, it’s downright the saddest thing to happen to the earth maybe ever. But I’ve paid more attention to this guy than I have to Obama’s PR or any of the real BP PR (which smells like poo, btw) that’s come out.

Here is an amazing letter to the media from Leroy Stick, the guy behind it all. In it is also a link to the BP cares Tshirt site. I encourage you to buy one and give a little to support clean up efforts.

http://streetgiant.com/2010/06/02/leroy-stick-the-man-behind-bpglobalpr/

SXSW

Didn’t hit the blogger room at sxsw like I should have. But man, there were a lot ofsessions and panels and keynotes to attend. And when I wasn’t listening to something there were a lot of things to go see and a lot (a lot) of meat to eat. Also there was a Sobe tent serving free mixed drinks that people didn’t really pick up on until the last day when it was finally as rammed as it should be. So that’s what I was doing – listening, getting sun, eating, drinking. In that order.

You can follow my tweets to hear about what I saw. Couldn’t tweet from everything because signing in and out of tweetie and checking out the sxsw app constantly ate through my battery mighty quick and as well took up a lot of my very expensive US data plan.

But there was a free recharge station – way to go Chevy and Fleishman.

I tried to hit as much community manager stuff as possible but found they were always in the smallest rooms. Also, and I thought this was a big flaw – everything started back to back, so I was never on time for anything. So small room + being late = me left out of a couple things I wish I wasn’t.

I think I tweeted the most from the #futureofinfluence panel. Some wicked good insights came from that session.

But Danah Boyd from Microsoft found a place in my heart over anything else. Man, she can talk. She spoke on privacy and publicity in the social media space, touching on every hottest trend going plus looking back to see where we’ve come from. I found her interesting, not at all pretentious, super down to earth and real chilled out despite the massive room she spoke to.

The Evan Williams keynote was garbage and @anywhere was announce but was really @boring. Still, cool to be in the room for a big announcement even if nobody liked it.

And then there was Austin. What a town. If I ever live in the US it’ll be there. Super Vancouver like. Even found a disc golf course on Sunday, the slowest day of the conference, and got out for a full 18. Weather was around 25 the whole time. People are really friendly, parties are pretty sweet, and bars just have great bands all the time. Plus they’re big so you’ll find pool tables and the like in most of them. Something seriously lacking in Toronto.

I have more to say but need to run. Just thought I wouldn’t neglect this little blog for one day more. It’s been too long but it’s to be expected. Days are getting nicer, what can you do?

Maybe I’ll jump in with more posts on my sxsw expedition soon.

HootSuite

Today I made the move to HootSuite. Pretty fucking snaztastic. I wish it wasn’t baby blue. I don’t see colour settings though. That’s too bad.

But it is pretty great. I’m managing a mere 2 communities right now. One grown nicely (I can’t take hardly any credit for that, there was an exceptional creative director that got it started) and one that is just getting going. In any case they have their own tabs now, so I can switch back and forth. Tweetdeck had me scrolling across multiple panes in one window. Eeeesh.

But I’m being super boring.

What’s entertaining is that I’ve linked other accounts to it. Facebook (I’m not a big facebook status updater, I think it’s sort of fufusheshe to update that shit) but it’s there, and I can see what everyone who does get down on facebook updates is saying with the click of a tab. I don’t know what LinkedIn is there for but I suppose I can update what I’m working on. I need to invest a little more time into LinkedIn. But it’s such an un user friendly platform, I think. And I have this blog attached but don’t know what that does either.

So there you go, HootSuite. My new go-to work thing. Hope it does me well. I’ll probably tweet more for myself too since it looks so pretty. Baby blue and all.

60 Inch Listening Tool

They’ve moved us to new area of the office. It’s very showy.

We’re promoting the listening capabilities of the social media team. So we needed a command centre. A mission control. A minority report-esque dealy.

I’m not a listener, though I’m taking lessons. But we have 2 dudes that are listeners. Hard trained in sysomos, radian 6, white noise, other shit.

I like google alerts.

But really I like communicating to the people that these dudes find with their hard trainedness. Let me get these people onboard and excited to talk about our campaign. Let me build a community. That’s my steez.

We’ve sunken a lot of dollars into these tools and we’re getting pretty good at exhibiting their value. Clients are impressed.

Exhibiting is the key word here.

They’ve put in a 60 inch screen (not to mention some nice big monitors) to display our tools. It looks, well, sick (I’m under 30 and will say it at will).

It’s exciting to see a team grow. To see my team grow. To see our spot grow.

I just hope we’re not taking viagra here. If that makes sense.

Because you can take viagra and be awesome. But you need more. It’s true, sex isn’t everything. You need to have a shoulder that’s inviting for hanging out on after the show. You need to make them smile. And laugh. Or they’ll never love you.

Did I just use sex as a metaphor to winning ad pitches?

I did. Enjoy that.

So as sexy as we are now, over here in our social media command centre, we need to make sure we have the rest.

But we do. We do. We’re full service. I swear. We’ve been performing without a little blue pill for a while now. The pill, that 60 inch screen, just gets us in the door. Hopefully.

here’s a haiku

February woes.

I didn’t see you coming.

February. Whoa.

The Fear of Starting at 0

Got a funny reaction to twitter this past weekend.

In passing I told someone I found something due to twitter. I find a lot due to twitter. I should, tweetdeck’s open on my monitor all day.

This guy, a friend of a friend but one that’s been around for some good times enough so that I’d back him in a fight, had this to say on my mention of twitter: “You use twitter? You just went down a bunch of notches in my book.”

I explained that my job actually leads me to handle upwards of 3 or 4 twitter accounts at one time.

I went down a bunch more notches in his book.

But I didn’t bother asking why his views on twitter are as they are. I sort of know. It’s a scary world for a lot of people.

There’s a misconception that you need to have friends already at a party in order to show up late. That’s not true. Just show up with some conversation starters.

There’s a need to have a lot of friends, there’s a global fear of being alone. Friends are stacked up on facebook. Acquaintances, one time dates, friends of friends – are all mashed into a greater number so we feel validated that we’ve been around, meeting people, connecting at one point or another.

Why start from scratch, without even a starting base of friends around to make you feel at home?

There’s a fear of starting at 0.