Spinal Tap and Engineers
This is Spinal Tap has become such a cultural touchstone that everyone knows it goes to 11.
We Got That B-Roll!
If you have ever edited a video and wanted to drop in some footage while the main speaker or narrator continues, that’s called b-roll. The name comes from film editing where your main footage is the A roll and you need to cut in some footage from a secondary roll, or the B roll. This shows that any business function can be pitched as an informercial, especially with tongue firmly placed in cheek.
(Thanks for Greg for tweeting this)
Sleeping Grace on the Couch
I used to take pictures of Grace while she was asleep. Click here to see all of them. Anyway, the other night she said she wanted to sleep on the couch. I’ve never slept on the coach before, she said. So I let her, and I had to take a picture of her.
Peter and Grace in Florida
Here are Peter and Grace on our Thanksgiving trip to Florida. I didn’t take too many pictures on the trip, but here’s a link to the ones I did take.
The End of Movember
Here I am shaving my heavy metal / biker moustache that I grew for the fundraising efforts of Movember to raise money and awareness for men’s cancer health issues through Livestrong and Prostate Cancer Foundation. Donate here.
The final moustache after 30 Days:
FullSteam Backyard Beer Fest
Recently, the under-construction FullSteam Brewery in Durham, NC hosted a Backyard Beer Festival featuring local homebrewers. Learn more about this brewery scheduled to open in early 2010 from owner Sean Wilson, and hear from some homebrewers who served their beer to strangers.
If you have trouble watching this video, you can watch it on YouTube.
Fallen Princesses
Photographer Dina Goldstein has created a series of photographs called Fallen Princesses where she looks at the next chapter in the lives of fairy tale princesses, but set in the modern world.
Weird Al Helps Explain Auto-Tune
Rocketboom continues their series of Know Your Meme with special guest Weird Al, explaining the tired musical trend using a software treatment called auto-tune, which corrects a singer’s pitch and makes them sound like a robot. From Wired.
Dilbert Doesn’t Shake Hands Anymore
There is recent trend going around where people don’t shake hands for sanitary reasons. Dilbert follows this trend.
Social Media in the Classroom
I recently had the opportunity to speak to a Social Media class for MBA students at NC State. The 2nd year class is taught by Claudia Kimbrough and she worked with Chris Moody to arrange an awesome lineup of guest lecturers. I was excited to be included on a syllabus that included Joseph Jaffe, Andy Beal, Wayne Sutton, Katie Morse and Camden Watts.
I arrived at the class on a particularly busy day, between final preparations for our business conference the next day and heading to the State Fair for a Tweetup. I was asked about slides or presentation, and I replied that I didn’t have any. Some people call this “going rogue,” but I just call it speaking. All I needed was an internet browser to show examples.
My general topic was using social media to build community around a business or organization. I talked about various projects that I am working on, as well as answering questions along the way. Claudia took great notes and posted them on the class blog. The high level takeaways are listed below. Read the blog for the detail under these points.
- Figure out who and WHERE your customers and prospects are
- Content is still King
- Use Google Analytics and some other cool tools
- RSS feeds are inherent to blogs
- Start a blog for Personal Branding
It was fun to speak to a class about social media, because these are the next group of business leaders. Everyone assumes that the digital generation knows all about social media, but that’s really not true. They understand it as a personal communication tool, but there’s a big leap transfering that knowledge to business applications.