internet meme: Seven Random Things About You
I’m normally not a chain letter type of girl, but I like any excuse to blog for my personal site… which gets often neglected under the weight of daily routine. Although come 2009, I have a “gut” feeling that I might have a lot more personal stuff to blog about. Anyway, back to the meme. Pretty simple, you get “tagged”, you write a blog with seven unique/weird/random facts about yourself, and then you tag seven more people. Let the person who tagged you know (in my case Stacy “that damn redhead” Lukas) by linking and commenting on their blog, and please let the people you tagged know so this meme can thrive on.
Here we go… seven random things about Marta Strickland:
1. I LOVE bad horror movies. I know that I’ve put this on quirky bios and social networks, but I really don’t think people understand that I really love bad horror movies… or actually just bad movies in general. And it doesn’t count if they are trying to be cheesy, like all the Troma films out there, that just ruins it. These movies have to actually try to be good, and just completely fail. It’s an acquired taste, but is a huge part of my life. I know not everyone willingly went to see Catwoman (not recommended) complete with wine in thermos and chocolate in purse. Not everyone has fond memories of curling up on the couch and sipping champagne with their now husband while watching Chopping Mall (recommended) or almost convincing their brother-in-law to fly in from LA to see Black Roses (highly recommended!!!) on the big screen.
2. I have suffered no broken bones, but have had a few organs removed. Despite continually rolling my ankle, I have not suffered any broken bones in my life. Maybe I can blame this on being an only child, with no other siblings to rough house with. But I have had my appendix explode, which according to LOST means that you’ll die. Actually it is pretty serious if it has already ruptured, but now I have a cool story and a scar. Also had my tonsils removed, and hopefully that will be it for now.
3. I dream of bugs, they crawl my walls. Not trying to sound creepy or goth with that statement, although I was pretty goth in high school… although I will always deny that and say that I was “glam rock” as exhibited by my platform shoes, boas, obsessive love for all things Bowie (test me on my Bowie knowledge, I dare you), and intense amounts of glitter… wait, what was I talking about. Oh yeah, I have mild night terrors and wake up (eyes actually open) to see bugs on my walls or covers quite frequently. My husband hates it, because I usually push him off the bed in an attempt to scoot out from dangling spiders or what not.
4. I didn’t eat vegetables until after college. Either I was too stubborn or my parents were to lax, but veggies did not become part of my normal healthy diet until after college. I didn’t like anything green, anything that a five year old would find “icky”, and I was actually pretty embarrassed about it. I wanted to change, but my taste buds wouldn’t let me. Slowly but surely, they changed, and now I am the foodie I am today. I actually think I might have always been a foodie and just never known it. I didn’t (and still don’t really) like “salads”, but wait I love some fresh spinach with goat cheese, toasted almonds, aged balsamic, and dried cranberries… yum! Oh I don’t like tomatoes and lettuce on my burgers, wait but I love roasted red peppers and zucchini, caramelized onions maybe and sauteed mushrooms. Drool… I’m hungry now.
5. I am in love with Carl Sagan. I have seriously considered the name Sagan for my children and a quote by Sagan’s wife Ann Druyan was read at my wedding. There are no two ways about it, I am a big geek when it comes to science, and Carl Sagan is my hero. My favorite book of all-time is Dragons of Eden, although it has had to fight furiously with long time champion Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy to claim that spot. Science inspires me. At it’s best, I find my peace and my solace and my hope for humankind, and at the least it just makes good reading… I take breaks to read some fiction on occasion, but I usually dive back into string theory, the study of consciousness, and brain science pretty quickly. Shout out to the SGU!!
6. Two of my front teeth are false. How does this sound for an explanation: tobogganing accident? I smashed head first (bad way to sled) into some kids foot or face or sled and sheered two of my front teeth to the gumline. They are replaced today, you’d probably never know, but I also like to drink wine… red red wine… which has the habit of staining real to fake teeth at an uneven ratio.
7. I am a westsider for life. Born and raised on the Michigan West Coast. Actually, I moved out east when I was 8 years old, but you can’t take the birthplace away from the kid. I remember those beautiful beaches. I remember the woodland hikes. And I still get warm fuzzy feelings whenever I visit the westside. After enduring a cold and long winter in Metro-Detroit, on slippery roads and in a depressed economy… it makes you seriously considering following the thousands of other people exiting the mitten state. But then the sun peaks out from behind the clouds, the warmth comes back, and most Michiganders make their way up North, where the sand is beautiful and towns are quaint. No matter where I live, I will always have a fondness for the Lake Michigan coastline.
So who is next… who do I pick on for the last day of 2008:
If you’ve already been tagged, let me know so I can choose a new victim.
Happy New Year!!
life: deciding it’s time to join a cause
A lot has happened in the past month. Some of which has changed my perspective on the world I live in… but let’s start where we last left off:
I spoke at my first conference, Web 3.0 in Santa Clara, where I met many semantic web enthusiasts and interesting people. I walked away buzzing with all sorts of ideas and ended up writing a 5 part series for ThreeMinds, Organic’s blog, which might lead to a feature for Advertising Age (stay tuned).
Then, we elected our first ever YouTube president:
My opinion to the now president-elect has gone from curiousity to true hope-filled inspiration. During the campaign, it seemed that all people could talk about was the economy, while I sat patiently wondering if Obama’s technology plan would ever come to fruition.
Now that the campaign is over, it seems that technology is ALL people can talk about. How the internet changed the race? How will Obama use social media to change government? Let’s just say, it’s a good time to be a blogger in the social media niche.
The day after our monumental US election, I attended the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. It would be an understatement to say that the conference inspired me. Smart people from around the world were putting web 2.0 tools to work to not just sell products and services, but to actual make the world a better place… to create transparency in areas that are lacking, to make consumers smarter about the choices they make, and to bring people together to solve problems they couldn’t have solved on their own.
Obama talks in his first YouTube address about:
“…new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and not only look after ourselves but each other.”
Some might view a spirit of looking after each other as akin to socialism. And still others will see it as the American way. We help each other out in times of need, and come through for those who have been our allies. I’m not going to get into a political discussion, so much as to say that I am feeling an itching desire to DO SOMETHING… something actually useful, something helpful, something worthwhile.
I also realized something else at that conference. I love Michigan… I really love it, and in case you haven’t heard, it’s not doing so hot right now. I’m about ready to root myself and my future family in this area for good and the economy is collapsing to all sides of me. And I am not terribly confident that government, including our new YouTube president, is going to be able to do anything about it.
We are on our own, and that might be for the best. The change Michigan needs is going to come from the groundswell, from movements like CEOs for Cities and the dozens of pro-Michigan blogs online. We need tools that connect online enthusiasm to offline activity, like Obama’s social network managed to bring local people together for events and grassroots efforts. It’s a good time for social media tactics to really have a positive impact, and I’m not talking ROI on ad dollars.
For the first time, I feel really proud to be in the industry I am in and proud to be living in this sad, but beautiful state. So sign me up. I’m ready to join the Michigan brigade for change. I’m ready to put my social media strategy skills to the test. Who else will join me?
web concept: wine tweets
I haven’t written something about the interesting combination of web and wine for a while, but I was recently inspired by an article someone posted on the ThreeMinds blog called Wine Tastings Are Now Just A Tweet Away.
“Twitter has been used by a new wine company, Bin Ends, located in Braintree, Massachusetts, to facilitate online wine tastings. Dozens of people, armed with their Twitter accounts, participated recently in the now-monthly tastings that will be held on the third Thursday of every month.
To do this, Bin Ends first sent out the list of wines that were going to be tasted weeks in advance to allow the oenophiles the chance to go out and buy them - preferably through Bin Ends’ online or brick-and-mortar store. Then, tweets were sent by Bin Ends from their Twitter account to the other Twitter users that were “following” them to spread the time and date of the tasting. Finally, when the day arrived, additional tweets were sent out from Bin Ends telling the tasters which wine to taste next as well as thoughts from the distributors about the wine.”
The merger between Wine and Web is one of those things that never fails to impress me. When I got a chance to talk with Gary Vaynerchuk at FOWA this year, I actually asked him why he felt that was. He didn’t have too amazing of an answer for me besides… there is a lot of wine and a lot of web on the west coast. I think there has to be much more than that. Maybe it has to do with the highly social experience wine tasting can be. For some reason, wine just tastes better when I’m drinking with my husband than when I’m drinking alone.
From personal experience, I have also been noticing that “wine tweets” are growing in popularity. I follow several wine bloggers on Twitter, and in addition to getting good restaurant recommendations for business and persona trips, I enjoy seeing their dialogue between each other as they taste wines and compare notes.
Some of my favorite wine Twitters:
http://twitter.com/craigcamp
http://twitter.com/LENNDEVOURS
http://twitter.com/drvino
http://twitter.com/Catavino
Catavino is personally painful to subscribe to, because you get to hear how beautiful Spain is just about every day and what he’s drinking with his delicious tapas.
I also keep a personal wine tasting Twitter: http://twitter.com/winelovers
Which I used to document my trip to France and Italy, but have since just turned into tasting notes. I haven’t really thought of an extension for that. It is merely a personal documentation at this point. But whenever the phrase “personal” is used to describe something in the “social” medium, you know that it isn’t realizing its full potential. Using Twitter as a way to coordinate a wine tasting event across the nation, however, is definitely an example of using what Twitter is best at… real-time sharing. In fact, just this week it was used to report the Southern California earthquakes faster than any other news outlet.
Final interesting tidbit for those not addicted to Twitter… as maybe another sign of how web and wine go together, there is actually a word for a tweet sent while drunk called “dweet”. I have on occasion dweeted. It’s the new “drunk dial” of 2008.
technorati tags: twitter, wine tweets
video: To School We Go (1998 version and 2008 version)
From the digital age came the web age. From the web age came the social web age. Each of these movements in recent history have supported and propelled the growth of something known as the Remix Culture. We have taken entertainment out of the hands of studio executives. We have taken broadcast channels away from the hands of networks. The social web represents a platform based on “letting go of control, sharing ideas and code, building on what others have built, and freeing your data”. Something that the copyright establishment sees as derivative work.
For those still clinging to their traditional ideas, they see a copyright infringement epidemic brought on by big bad Web 2.0. For many it is an issue of money and for others an issue of pride. It takes a lot to create an original work, and it is up to the eyes of the originator whether they see a remake or a remix as flattery or a threat.
But for those of us on the internet bottom, those who run low traffic blogs serving our closest friends and family, those of us who create silly videos perhaps seen only by a few hundred people… this remake/remix culture is a wonderful thing. It allows us to get our few minutes of glory remixing a famous movie trailer, make our fan music videos to famous and obscure songs, and even to compliment/ridicule each other’s work.
And so without further ado, I present my personal case for the value of the Remix Culture. If it weren’t for the internet, if it weren’t for YouTube, if it weren’t for the ever growing engagement of the social web, if it weren’t for Generation Y’s total disregard for copyright and original works… THIS WOULD NEVER EXIST:
“To School We Go” 1998 Version
“Graduation” aka “To School We Go” 10th Anniversary Version
technorati tags: remix culture, copyright infringement, social web
life experience: Camp Organic
“Life is moving at 500 mph, but I feel like I’ve been put on pause.” - Stacy
I can identify a lot with Stacy’s feelings. It has been more than month since I’ve put up a new blog post, but that isn’t from a lack of things going on in my life. What it has been missing is a lack of things that inspire me, things I’m passionate about, and certainly a lack of time to write about them. Intense workload, social schedule, and a few weekends of marathon gardening have left me sunburnt, tired, and passionately paused. Still, life is good… I’m young… the opportunities are exciting… and spending many hours last week analyzing the troubles in Stacy’s life, I have returned home humbled and inspired to appreciate the freedom I have.
So, who is Stacy?
Stacy is 39, a working mother of 2, living in Elmhurst, Illinois. Stacy is drowning in the hectic schedule of everyday life. She has a really hard time admitting she gets angry, and instead distracts herself with retail therapy and convinces herself she is invincible, after all she’s a super-mom. But lately, she’s been wondering why it has to be this way, where is her help, and why she has to always be the one “put on pause”.
Oh… and Stacy isn’t real. Her story is the result of an intense Las Vegas training exercise Organic puts its employees through called CAMP ORGANIC. It’s probably the best 72 hours without sleep that I have spent in my life. Painful, exhilarating, draining, challenging and everything I love about Organic with none of the limitations (no clients!).
The Story of Camp Organic
It’s much like a reality TV show challenge. In fact, when explaining it to my friends, I started using terms like “QuickFire Challenge” and “Elimination Challenge”. Organic sends 40 employees out to Vegas a couple times a year and gives them 36 hours to develop a product. Like every good reality show, there are limitations and surprises along the way. The ingredients are a demographic, a sin, and a product. The product is the only thing that is the same between the 7 competing teams. And at the end of the time limit, you must demonstrate an inspired presentation (in a semi-delirious state) to a room full of your peers.
The idea is to practice what Organic preaches, empathy inspired web experiences. It’s to encourage as many employees to drink and rejoice in the Organic brand kool-aid, and come back inspired to do better work. But rather than try to explain the idea in detail, you could just watch the documentary:
Our Assignment
Our Demographic: Female, 35-45, Married, Kids, 100K+ HHI
Our Sin: Anger
Our Product: Well… that’s where it gets interesting
The “twist” this time is that there is no product that we need to create. In the past it has been anything from energy drinks to timepieces to financial programs. However, this Camp Organic, we needed to create a BRAND MOVEMENT. Confused yet? Think Dove’s Campaign For Real Beauty. Think GE’s Ecomagination. The idea is to take a brand and make it more than a brand… make it not just something people purchase, but something that people rally behind, gather around, spread, live, breathe.
Tough enough? Now add in a tight deadline and a city of people who are not terribly interested in talking to you.
My Not-So Typical 72 Hours in Vegas
(Not the full story, just the good bits aka what I would have Twittered given time)
WED MAY 14th
9:00 AM
My team looks tired, maybe we’re just conserving energy? Allard is an EM from NY, previously Netherlands. Andrew is a copywriter from Toronto. Govid is IT from San Fran. We’re like the united nations of Camp O.
11:00 AM
Quickfire Challenge to create a decked out basement for family of four, but ceilings only 5 feet high. We forget the constraints, don’t leave time to develop a presentation. Ouch we are rusty, maybe we are just saving our good ideas for the real challenge?
3:00 PM
Trip to the Boneyard under 95 degree sun. Diversion or inspiration? Whatever the intent, the heat is killer and we are all ancy to get our sins.
5:00 PM
The twist this season is “Brand Movement”. Sounds reasonably complicated. Brand movements require common values, community support, growth mechanisms, authenticity, and a solid launch plan. Just think for a second how easy that truly is to build for your current clients. Piece of cake!!
5:15 PM
Whatever it is, don’t let it be anger. Don’t let it be anger! Team 7 = ANGER.
6:00 PM
Talking about planning a plan. My strategist weakness is revealed. Until I have a diagram or timeline on paper, my heart is not going to start beating at a normal rate.
7:00 PM
Phew!! We have a plan, and some timeline goals… but wait, here comes counselor Sam. He says we are already ONE HOUR BEHIND all the other groups. Way to get us scrambling early. Time to diverge.
7:30 PM
At the airport, who’s brilliant idea was it to interview people at the Airport (Organic). They are interested in coming or going, not talking.
8:00 PM
First interview a smashing success, probably best of the whole lot. Woman going on a girls’ vacation for the first time in 13 years. Today her babysitter cancelled and her father scheduled a surgery, she barely made it to the airport and one of her friends didn’t. She is probably sitting on the beach in Santa Barbara right now having Margaritas. I wanted to give her a hug.
8:30 PM
Dual interview with interior designers. One young mother gives us the golden quote that she does 80% while her husband only does 20%. Way to hit it home with percentages. Airport is fertile ground for mom’s alone, without social influence.
10:00 PM
On Sam’s suggestion, on the hunt for mom’s in packs. Waitress suggests some clubs. Use the power of Twitter to get some more recommendations.
11:00 PM
Found a pack at the lounge in Caesar’s Palace on their yearly vacation to Vegas. They are happy and ready to talk. They don’t get angry, they can’t get angry. They need to teach their kids not to dwell in angry. Instead they escape. One lady goes to the gym everyday although she works 65 hours a week. Retail therapy. I don’t know that I believe that these moms don’t get angry, but they sure seem convinced with cocktails in hand.
11:45 PM
Regroup with rest of team, converge near jumping bugs outside Bellagio. They had a completely different experience. We are still energized to find some more mom groups while there is still time.
1:00 AM
Party is dead at Pollyster’s at Stratosphere. No mom’s in sight and quite a ways off course. It hurts to feel like you’ve wasted so much time, and the mom packs are thinning out by the minute.
1:30 AM
Have an anti-persona interview at the Wynn that proves more useful than you’d think. 2 young women just graduated college admitted to having the least responsibility now than they have ever had in their life. Nobody expects anything of them, except what they expect from themselves. They are in-between places with such specific hopes and dreams and expectations for the future. They sure don’t have a problem talking to strangers and are also getting hit on more and more by the minute.
3:00 AM
Unload onto the wall. Look for patterns… motherhood is a pressure-cooker, anger is present when things go out of balance. Anger is resolved through denial or escape. Either the anger is buried or the mind is distracted. We build questions tomorrow to delve deeper. We need to get these mom’s to admit they get angry. When was the last time you cried or yelled? Who was it at, strangers, loved ones? What gets under your skin?
3:30 AM
We are getting a little moody. Time for bed.
4:00 AM
Can’t sleep. Mind races with tomorrow’s events.
THURS MAY 15th
8:30 AM
Can barely eat hotel breakfast. Ready to get moving. Not a moment to spare. Today’s plan is to find moms actually with their kids, observe and probe deeper. Sam freaks me out again saying we need artifacts. I forgot completely about artifacts. Diverge.
9:30 AM
Apparently Casino day care doesn’t get hopping until the evening hours. Scratch that plan.
10:00 AM
Hunting for mom’s in Macy’s. Rejection, rejection, rejection. “I can’t talk, I have kids”. We get physically mom-blocked by a stroller. Moms are either non-existent or not interested. Tick, tick, tick.
10:00 AM (meanwhile for Andrew and Govid)
Children’s museum does not take too kindly to our social experiment and kicks my teammates to the curb.
10:30 AM
Getting my skin analyzed while I interview a young mom who works at the mall. Sam suggests “you have to give a little to get a little”. No real insights here, only that her escape is into a journal. Will not admit she gets angry.
11:30 AM
Adventuredome at Circus Circus. Finally caught a mom sitting down. She is so distracted by watching her son, she cannot answer the simplest questions. “So, what do you like to do to stay calm? what do you like to do in your alone time?” She fidgets and is physically uncomfortable, as if saying “are we done yet? are we done yet?” with every inch of her body.
12:00 PM
Observe Mommy-radar in full force with the stroller brigade. It’s like driving a car, check mirrors, check speed. Only it goes left, right, baby, straight-ahead, baby. Sam says we should hard stop at 1:00 PM. He says we have much more than we think we do. With no good interviews at all today, I hope he’s right!!
12:15 PM
Even taxi time is valuable time. Allard tries an IM interview and I e-mail Julie, a colleague and friend of mine. Trying all angles.
12:30 PM
More nervous moms at GameWorks and M&M store. Body is always positioned with an escape route in mind. They read books, sometimes they yell at the dog… there has to be more than this. One tidbit from shy mom, says she is always in control of her emotions, angry people show a lack of control. Her body language says “am I answering this right? is this what you want?”.
2:00 PM
Converge over room service. Unload more stickies onto the wall of various colors. We don’t even know where to begin. There is so much left to do.
3:30 PM
Starting to put stickies we really like on one wall away from other stickies. Is this progress?
4:00 PM
Our main feeling now is that our insight has to revolve around loss of self. Denial and escape are both methods to satisfy anger, but they both don’t help this “loss of self”. Starting to feel a movement in here somewhere.
4:30 PM
Still hunting for the gift. Think we have it narrowed down to a couple solid thoughts. “I’m on pause”, “I can’t talk I have kids”, or “It’s not about me, but it can be”.
6:00 PM
Time is flying, but it feels like not much is happening. We have tested out our three gifts with some 100 mph brainstorms. Feels like we are swirling and just putting up more stickies on the wall. What does it mean to be paused? Is this helping? No… let’s pick and go. We decide on “It’s not about me, but it can be”. Phew, time for a break!!
6:30 PM
Sam says our “gift” is not a gift but a tagline, but we can worry about that later. We should have fun and think about our presentation. Sigh.
7:00 PM
All we know about our presentation is that we want drama and as few slides as possible. I guess that’s a consensus.
7:30 PM
Ooops… can’t forget to flush out that persona in full. I distract us for about half an hour to do that.
8:00 PM
Swirling, swirling, swirling. Andrew wants to get into product, Allard wants to talk about launch, Govid probably wants to go home, and I keep saying “wait, wait, wait”. My strategist brain is killing our momentum right now, so I decide to diverge myself out of the picture.
8:30 PM
Somehow our diverge turned into a nice sushi dinner for two of us (not me), and food court food for the rest of us.
9:30 PM
Too happy, sushi-filled teammates come back to the room with a notebook full of good ideas. The Great Mommy Strike of 2008. Detailed integrations with lots and lots of products. OMG!!! Yeah!! I can do wonders with clutter, but I freak out at a blank slate. This is where I feel comfortable. I’m starting to think for the first time all competition that we are on the right track (yeah, I’m a pessimist).
10:00 PM
The room is filling and filling with really useful stickies. We are flushing out ideas rather than creating new ones. We are pulling weeds rather that rototilling a new garden.
10:30 PM
The room is filled with counselors. I present the persona to some happy faces. We decide to not even delve into our master plan. Yeah… we are filling that confident. To our joy, the counselors don’t question it too much, but offer some good advice. CREATE DRAMA. Teresa says she loves our persona already, we just need to bring her alive.
11:00 PM
After I go to the bathroom for the 10th time today to wipe the tears out of my eyes… not due to stress, but due to the dry Vegas air and stale smoke, the team decides that my red-eyed female voice is probably the best voice to embody Stacy. We have now moved on to creating the presentation.
12:00 AM
I put up the all important “Path To Bed” stickies on the wall. Structure to presentation, build slides, assign roles, rehearse, improve (that’s a good one!), then BED. We all agree to the plan.
1:00 AM
Allard brings out our inner actors. My Acting 101 classes come rushing back. He challenges me to embody lettuce. Are we geniuses or madmen at this point? Definitely both.
1:30 AM
Take our acting challenge out into the hallway. Keep getting interrupted by elevators full of hookers. Only in Vegas.
2:00 AM
Time to diverge. I work on scouring Flickr for those lovely full-slide images. Keep it simple. 6 slides, one picture, one caption. That is all.
2:45 AM
Did Allard fall asleep? Where is he?
3:30 AM
He emerges just in time to do a few rehearsals before bed. We are getting better and better each time, but we are dangerously close to that 20 minute mark.
4:30 AM
Nitpicking breaks out over each other’s sections as we try and make sure we are under 20 minutes. I call bedtime. We need to keep the spirits high. Each person responsible for rocking their own territory. I’m certainly excited to rock mine.
5:00 AM
Too excited to sleep. Dammit brain.
FRI MAY 16th
8:00 AM
One more rehearsal before breakfast. We meet our timing mark, but we are low on energy this morning. We’re just conserving right? I get nervous again.
9:00 AM
Energy slows to a crawl. Call Sam over for a pep boost and sufficiently freak him out. No, really… we are solid on our presentation, we are just a bit tired. We’ll come around (I hope!).
10:30 AM
Two presentations in. One with an Elvis impersonator!! Found the excitement again. I’m ready to present now. No luck, the honor goes to Greed and Gluttony.
11:30 AM
Two more presentations… one that took us out into the hall for a diversion, one with a great punchline “why does she feel so worthless?”. Impressive. One more presentation to squeeze in before lunch, I hope it isn’t Anger. Oh… so of course it is. I need to keep my mouth shut.
11:40 AM
Team begins pacing around the room. Pacing and pacing and pacing. Alright… I feel the energy, it is show time!!!
12:15 PM
Phew!! Feeling good. Channeled my inner-mom. The whole team was even better than last night. Govid saves the end, doesn’t go over. We use every last second of our 20 minutes. Now we can relax.
2:00 PM
Presentations done. End on some great skits (someone found time for humor) and interesting artifacts (letters, blogs). Spend the judge’s deliberation taking all the stickies down from my room. So much less rewarding coming down than going up.
3:00 PM
Yes, yes… best Camp O ever. They say that every time. Don’t make us wait any longer!!
3:30 PM
They drag out more time by analyzing each of our presentations individually. Probably the most rewarding part of the experience, sure sure, but still on to the winners.
3:45 PM
Drum-roll please. The top team is… ANGER!!! Wooooooooo.
4:00 PM and beyond
A blur of experiences recounted, sharing, congratulating, and winding down from one of the most intense experiences of my Organic life.
Am I glad I did it?
Hell yeah!! Not for the faint of heart or people who can’t easily swallow the kool-aid. But, definitely an amazing and empowering experience I couldn’t have had anywhere else.
Would I ever do it again if I could?
Camp Organic is much like a wedding. When it finally comes together, you feel pride and excitement. But for all of the blood, sweat, and tears, it will probably take you a couple of years out before you feel up for the challenge again.
idea: good design makes for good usability
I found myself getting into an interesting discussion the other day, after posting my plea to make CellarTracker “prettier”:
“The first thing a good interface designer learns is how to use design clues to help guide the user experience. Design can help tell a user what a site is, what’s important, where to go next. It isn’t just pretty for pretty sake.”
I thought it was worth reiterating in another blog posting, because I feel like we’ve come a long way in the world of web design in the past few years. With the launch of Web 2.0 came a need for new sorts of experts in the field. It is no longer purely information architects, designers, and engineers. There are information designers, experience designers, and interaction designers. There are experiential marketers, design thinkers, and experience strategists. As new technologies (AJAX, Flash) make the experience, on one hand, seemingly more holistic to users, but on the other hand, incredibly more complex to build, every person is having to become smarter about how design informs the user experience. And no matter what grumpy purists like Jakob Nielsen say, this has caused major improvement to the overall web experience.
How Web 2.0 Has Improved Design
1. A rich interface allows for a more natural web interaction
Drag and drop utilizes what cognitive psychologists would call an “affordance”, or a clue that communicates to users how to use an object. It’s natural. From the minute the users sees their cursor turn into an open hand, to when their mouse down causes that hand to grip an object, it feels more connected to real world behavior than endless amounts of up and down arrows.
Many people are making a case for the physics of the iPhone as being a revolutionary step in incorporating more lifelike gestures into the browsing experience. With other technologies, such as Microsoft Surface, taking the hint and offering similar experiences, the future of physical gestures and computing is truly gaining forward momentum. Web 2.0 AJAX and Flash interaction is moving users in a more intuitive direction, getting them away from the past of “point and click” and pushing them towards the future of touch, pinch, and grab.
2. Design clues can communicate purpose
With Web 2.0 sites launching daily, each offering their new twist on a perceived audience need, the marketplace is and has been overrun and overloaded. The only way to gain traction against the competition is to position your site as a simple, yet powerful idea backed by an intuitive web experience. Design clues can help users understand the flavor of your site and how they are supposed to interact with it. It should give them simple direction and set them of running.
3. Good design structure can organize and prioritize content
Successful social content sites (Yelp!, Travelocity, Flickr, etc) offer a wealth of valuable content. However, for a user the content is only as good as how it can be used. This is where good design and information architecture really pay off. By bucketing similar content under easy to understand headers, a user can skim the page, allowing them to understand the content landscape “at a glance” and decide what is important. Futhermore, by using color and icons, design can visually prioritize calls to action and common tasks.
Improving CellarTracker’s User Experience
Since this whole train of thought began with my wish for CellarTracker to take some clues from all those pretty faces in the Wine 2.0 world, I thought I would have a bit of fun and see if I couldn’t put together a slightly improved user experience. My point was not to try and create a gorgeous mock-up that uses AJAX technology and tons of graphics. Not only would that be hard for CellarTracker to implement, but I recognize that really isn’t the desire or need of their audience base. So, with my amateur design skills, I tried my hand at a very minor facelift.
Before / After (click for larger image)
I envision CellarTracker as becoming my portal into the wine web, much like NetVibes is my personal start page for all things web. To do this, the home page for logged in users would need to be more customizable. There should be an ability to turn on and off content. What is important to a wine newbie still learning and exploring is going to be very different than the wine auction aficionado who needs to keep tight tabs on his cellar. The main page should not try and make compromises between these audiences, and instead enable them to craft an experience that is optimized for their needs.
Similarly, I think that sort of philosophy should be applied to sidebar navigation. Certain tasks are more important than others, more frequently used. Right now, all the links carry the same weight and there doesn’t seem to be a logical organization scheme (although there probably is). Visual clues such as icons and more pronounced separation of tasks will empower users to browse more efficiently and more confidently. And as Kathy Sierra can attest, the faster users can get confident about what they are doing, the sooner they can “kick ass” and become passionate about the experience.
web sites: Cork’d vs. CellarTracker!
The record of my wine life for the past 2 and a half years has survived in various and progressively more modern forms… a hand-written journal, a scrapbook of labels, a large deck of alphabetized index cards, an Excel spreadsheet, and finally this blog. No source is an overall authority. In fact, most that live in one form, do not live in any other. Considering that I have built an entire web site around combining my love for “vinology” and “technology”, it was beyond time for me to take my wine lifestream and digitize it. And once I go digital, I never plan on going back.
Almost a year ago, I wrote a blog about what my dream wine web experience would be, in fact, a “web 3.0″ version of a wine site. But lately, my need has become so immediate that I’m willing to seek a more realistic solution while I wait for my dream one to arrive.
There are pieces of my dream out there… there are recommendation engines (Snooth), social networks (Cork’d), and robust organizational tools (CellarTracker), but each are failing to live up to their full potential. Cork’d was at one point a segment darling, but the platform hasn’t been updated in many months. In an effort to be very user friendly, the site is severely limited by it’s simplicity and user generated content. Snooth, in an effort to be more robust than Cork’d, suffers from a less than intuitive user experience. And CellarTracker? Well, it is just plain UGLY.
So… I decided the only way to really commit was to try them all.
Using Snooth, I only got about five entries in before giving up. Honestly, it was just a personal preference, and maybe I will end up trying it again. But, I wanted to give Cork’d priority because of its WineLibraryTV associations and use of the industry standard 100-point system. I built my Cork’d profile to over fifty wine reviews before throwing in the towel there. I was loving the AJAX form entry goodness and I was having fun tagging my wines with words like “zesty” and “musty”. But, as my list grew and grew, it became really unmanageable. No sorting ability? Really? What happens when I get up to my full 350 wine history?
The other big problem with Cork’d is that it all relies on user entered wine data. They are not connected to the big wine database in the sky, so they are completely dependent on user discretion and whim to fill in data accurately and remain consistent (although Cork’d offers them no “best practices” there). A wine entered by one user as “2005 McManis Petite Sirah” and another as “McManis 2005 Petite Sirah” are ultimately the same wine, but because of platform limitations, they will appear as though they were two separate wines.
Frustrated, I left the world of Cork’d, plugged my nose and began my adventure with CellarTracker, my last option left. Why does it have to be so very ugly? It looks like something ancient, something Web 0.5, with blue links, black text on white, and non-existent margins. But, to my pleasant surprise, the functionality was all that I needed and then some. A huger than huge wine database that allows me to easily review, rate, cellar, buy, and add to my “wish list”? Unlimited customizable wish lists? An easy to use mobile version? The ability to tie my blog entries to wines I’ve rated? Wow!!
You can really make the site what you want (well, except pretty). You can even save your favorite review sources and wine shops.
There are still some limits that seem easy enough to fix:
1. Make it a little more like my NetVibes. Allow me to feed in my own favorite wine RSS to populate expert reviews, wine articles, and industry news. Why should I have to manually add articles?
2. Give me the ability to do some limited skinning. If you aren’t going to make it pretty, at least let me!!
3. Take some learnings from Cork’d. Can I have a profile please, just to add a little flavor and make things a little more social? Oh, and you definitely need to hop onto the tagging bandwagon. Wines are not just regions, varietals, and 100-point ratings, they are flavors, smells, and experiences.
I can’t believe I’m saying it, but I think that stinky ol’ CellarTracker has the most opportunity to become the ultimate web wine tool. With the lack of updates and robust personalization on Cork’d, they wouldn’t even have to try that hard. It’s no longer about social for social sake, but the ability to personalize the tools and experience. If CellarTracker can just add a pretty face and some extensions, they could really be a force to be reckoned with.
presidential candidate: Barack Obama
Politics is intensely complicated, and I find it a shame that the powers that be still want to propagate the idea of this false dichotomy, this “two party” system, when it is so clear that we live in a world of “varying shades of gray” (as my mom likes to say). This presidential primary is just a perfect example of that concept. We have Republicans saying they will vote for Clinton, because she is more conservative than McCain or that they don’t want McCain to make their party look bad. We have a kooky Libertarian running on the Republican ticket, when his views are so clearly opposite from many of his running mates. It’s all over the board.
The illusion of the two parties becomes clear the minute you take a political quiz with any true thought. Here I am registering Barack Obama and Rudy Guiliani as my top two candidates. Say what? But they are on different sides, right? Well if you really break it down on the many axis of political thought, it isn’t so crazy. Apparently, I am a socially-progressive pacifist who is moderate on economic and government control issues… maybe I lean a little Libertarian and a little Capitalist. If I look at where I map out, there is actually no candidate running who takes on my exact pattern, and there probably never will be, so long as the two-party system remains that is.
So, how do I choose who to support? Well, I started by prioritizing my issues. I usually put social and science issues on the forefront of my mind, but with tax time hitting us hard, the stock market down, and our need to refinance our house during a time of complete housing market bust… its really hard to ignore the economy. And this is where it gets really complicated. The most beneficial economic plans that effect me directly come from people who are so polar opposite with me on social issues that I can’t possibly vote for them. The candidates that I agree with most when it comes to social issues seem to leave people like me out of their plans altogether… I’m not wealthy, but I’m not struggling enough.
Then add into the equation that the “fair tax” proposal, one of the most interesting ideas in tax reform, is on the table of Michigan’s government and in the hands of the House and Senate in Washington. That begs the question, will the president be the catalyst of tax reform, or are there many players involved? So if economy is off the table… and if you really start to think about it, a lot of issues are determined in this complicated checks and balances system… what is left?
Inspiration, passion, direction, unification. A glorified figurehead of how we want to be perceived and where we want to go.
And I have to say… Barack Obama inspires me. I think he is a cool dude that speaks well, yes. But there is more there than that, and to anyone who doesn’t think there are plans underneath his lingo, they just haven’t dug far enough. What really pushed me far over the edge was this website that compares candidates views on science and technology, and this amazing 30 point plan from Obama (Hilary Clinton’s was a 1 point plan by comparison). I can’t believe some of the stuff in here. Making government policies available online for public comment before they are voted on, requiring representatives of government to hold online “town hall” meetings, and using social network technology to promote cross-agency communication within Washington.
This guy gets technology, and he gets why it is important and how it can change the way we live. And a guy who gets that is just more interesting to me than a boring old white dude who probably gets uncomfortable when people talk about what they twittered today.
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