Today is undoubtedly the quietest Saturday this video-blogger has enjoyed in quite a while. And since it's the day before Palm Sunday and Holy Week, it's fitting.
The idea of a visit to church is at least in my head; let's see if I will at least translate it to action. Frankly, the feeling of not being pressured to be somewhere at a certain time - for an event or a plane flight - is a nice one. I think God will forgive me.
If memory serves (and it should serve well, even after one-too-many glasses of scotch on during a fun Thursday evening I can still remember - can't do that anymore - and courtesy of my friend Mr. Tagami), two weeks ago, Thursday, I hit the ground, running:
1) Got off a plane from Georgia, where I was visiting Mom and has become my second home, and was off to a Flip Video Camera presentation meeting that I was told was cancelled via email, and as I was in the air. And we now know what happened to Flip Camera at the hands of Cisco. (Save Flip.)
2) Went to WonderCon the next day, Friday. If you're not familiar with WonderCon, it's a 25 year old convention of comic book publishers and artists, that's morphed into a pop-culture gathering of such size, talk is that it's going to expand to take up all of the space at the two main sections of Moscone Center, north and south. The event presents me with the chance to meet and interview people I've only seen on TV and the movies, like Jim Kelly, Cindi Morgan, and Celeste Yarnell, or who's work I've read, like MAD Magazine's Sergio Aragones. Cool guy.
WonderCon was three fun days of being around people who call themselves geeks and nerds, including me, but really now aren't any different than the rest of us, and because "geeks and nerds" have become so mainstream, it's time for another term. Now, I'm not complaining, because it's cool that the rest of the World's caught the fever. It's just that it's almost, well, you know, cliche. It's become a term for a demographic marketers target to push movies. But a deeper discussion of that - let's place on the backburner. Bottom line: WonderCon was a blast, and a good warm up to ComicCon 2011.
3) The next week, I interviewed Courtney Ruby, who's Oakland's City Auditor, and at a place called Disco Violante. If you're an Oaklander and didn't see the video, it's here...
Ms. Ruby's a fun person under a lot of pressure I think she puts on herself, and to maintain an office under the threat of a huge potential budget cut. Given all she's facing, I know Palm Sunday's welcome.
4) I'll get back to more local blogging today. But frankly, there's so much to blog about, that I'm considering adding guest bloggers - so if you're up for it, and don't mind my bugging you to use the Zennie-style of blogging, send me an email.
5) The next week, I was to be interviewed for NBC's Caught On Camera, and about my video called Fight On Fillmore. That was a fun time. Plus, the NBC people made me think about what videos "go viral," and it seems like we're attracted to either kids doing something funny or cute, or adults doing something bad. I don't know why that is, but the exception was the success of Susan Boyle. Perhaps because we expected to see a train wreck, and got a woman who sang like her life depends on it, and in a way, now it does.
6) Later that week, I also had it in mind to attend something called Reality Rocks, a first-of-its-kind expo of Reality TV, and thanks to a set of out-of-the-blue press releases from the good folks at Rogers and Cowan. R and C is the largest entertainment PR firm in America, and handles a lot of Hollywood's A-list talent. So, I figured a day trip to LA would be fun and profitable on a Saturday. Heck, I'm not saddled with dad duty, because I'm not a father (but would love to be one), and I don't have any relationship obligations (yet at this point) to keep me nailed down, so off to LA I went.
What a blast.
I've discovered that I needed to meet, know, and be around entrepreneurs. What's cool about LA, even though I don't desire to live there (there's nothing better than a Georgia summer), is the number of people who are interested in doing deals and partnerships around entertainment. Plus, given the mistakes I made with Sports Business Simulations, namely learning someone's esoteric programming language and then being trapped by them - dumb, stupid, idiotic me - I needed to be energized again.
See, I love being creative, and I think what drives me to video-blog is that I'm both making something - each blog post, to me, is a program. And using it to meet and talk with people and help them get their message out there. But for the Tech side, I'm nervous about finding the right partners for my next venture - no luck yet.
But I digress.
Meeting Dallas Maverick's Owner Mark Cuban and FUBU Founder Daymond John, was part of the tonic. The energetic Guy Kawasaki and Arianna Huffington completed the process at AdTech, and that was to name just four of the many people I met who gave me new energy.
Then, I completed the week at the office of The Bay To Breakers, where another set of fun folks reside. Race Director Angela Fang was kind enough to open her working digs and let this video blogger in for a spell. Here's the video from that visit:.
Ok. That's enough recapping. Time for two more blog posts, then to pay attention to the National Football League and the NFL Draft. (Oh, and the President's coming to town.)
And unplug for a while.
Stay tuned - and happy Palm Sunday.
And for those of you who asked, my Mom's fine, thank you. I just have the duty of being the only child at 48 years of age. And while I may look 20 years younger, I'm at the point in life where spending time with her is of extreme importance, because I don't know how much time I've got with her.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Google Video To Officially End April 29, 2011
The email presented below arrived this morning from Google. It announces the official end of the Google Video division, which existed before Google purchased YouTube on October 6, 2006, and then existed along side YouTube until 2009, when Google stopped allowing uploads to the service.
For this blogger, having stopped feeding Google Video after becoming a YouTube Partner in 2007, the email is just a formality.
But for those of you who have videos on Google Video, and you want to get to them, read this and act fast:
Stay tuned.
For this blogger, having stopped feeding Google Video after becoming a YouTube Partner in 2007, the email is just a formality.
But for those of you who have videos on Google Video, and you want to get to them, read this and act fast:
Dear Google Video User,Ok, now, go do it.
Later this month, hosted video content on Google Video will no longer be available for playback. Google Video stopped taking uploads in May 2009 and now we’re removing the remaining hosted content. We've always maintained that the strength of Google Video is its ability to let people search videos from across the web, regardless of where those videos are hosted. And this move will enable us to focus on developing these technologies further to the benefit of searchers worldwide.
On April 29, 2011, videos that have been uploaded to Google Video will no longer be available for playback. We’ve added a Download button to the video status page, so you can download any video content you want to save. If you don’t want to download your content, you don’t need to do anything. (The Download feature will be disabled after May 13, 2011.)
We encourage you to move to your content to YouTube if you haven’t done so already. YouTube offers many video hosting options including the ability to share your videos privately or in an unlisted manner. To learn more go here.
Here’s how to download your videos:
Go to the Video Status page.
To download a video to your computer, click the Download Video link located on the right side of each of your videos in the Actions column.
Once a video has been downloaded, "Already Downloaded" will appear next to the Download Video link.
If you have many videos on Google Video, you may need to use the paging controls located on the bottom right of the page to access them all.
Please note: This download option will be available through May 13, 2011.
Thank you for being a Google Video user.
Sincerely,
The Google Video Team
Stay tuned.
Flip Video Camera: Cisco Action Shows It Fails At Social Media
Cisco's sudden and really awful decision to end production of the Flip Video Camera brand and fire 550 people stunned not just this blogger, who went on a rant...
But the media and the Internet. On the day of the announcement "RIP Flip" become a Twitter trending topic, and "flip camera" was one of the top 20 most searched keywords on Google Trends.
That fact should not be lost on marketers, because it means The Flip brand hit the mark of engagement with the key demographic that is most likely to use social media and micro-blogging services, like Twitter.
Most of these users employ Twitter to talk about products and events, and Cisco's sacking of the Flip Video Camera is but one example - but a big one.
So big that it shows Cisco failed at getting digital and social media. If Twitter, or that group of people called "The Twitterverse," would cry out about the Flip, why didn't Cisco have any kind of marketing activation that featured a comprehensive, coordinated Internet and social media campaign for the Flip?
I said that Cisco lacked the passion for the product, which is in the hands of two million people (give or take folks like me who have more than one Flip), and this finding buttresses that take.
Now, Cisco will obviously bristle at my claim, and because it would point to its social media effort. But the problem, as clearly evident from reading a Cisco blog entry on its social media guidelines, is that the company's use of social media is defensive.
Read this from Cisco Social Media Guidelines, Policies and FAQ:
We take social media seriously at Cisco.
Look at the words: "collaborative tool","better serve our customers","guidelines", and "employee training," and it all ads up to one word: boring. Where are the words "buzz" and "excitement" and "product" and "marketing" to make a "fan" base?
And it leads to the slide presentation of a document that's a set of bureaucratic guidelines - do's and dont's. There's nothing about using social media to generate buzz. What's good is that Cisco wants its employees to engage in social media. What's bad is that there's nothing that shows the employee how to use social media to generate buzz about Cisco products.
If Twitter is a great place for crowd activation - getting a ton of people to do something - and Cisco has its own "crowd" called its employees, getting them in the game of buzz building should be part of this document and the Cisco social media process.
It's not there.
Credit goes to Cisco for taking the passion out of social media. It's no wonder the Flip Camera's history; Cisco lacked the feel for it, and for the culture that embraced it.
Save Flip!
Meanwhile, Cisco needs a social media expert with passion and smarts, like Pepsi's Director Of Global Digital and Social Media, B. Bonin Bough:
But the media and the Internet. On the day of the announcement "RIP Flip" become a Twitter trending topic, and "flip camera" was one of the top 20 most searched keywords on Google Trends.
That fact should not be lost on marketers, because it means The Flip brand hit the mark of engagement with the key demographic that is most likely to use social media and micro-blogging services, like Twitter.
Most of these users employ Twitter to talk about products and events, and Cisco's sacking of the Flip Video Camera is but one example - but a big one.
So big that it shows Cisco failed at getting digital and social media. If Twitter, or that group of people called "The Twitterverse," would cry out about the Flip, why didn't Cisco have any kind of marketing activation that featured a comprehensive, coordinated Internet and social media campaign for the Flip?
I said that Cisco lacked the passion for the product, which is in the hands of two million people (give or take folks like me who have more than one Flip), and this finding buttresses that take.
Now, Cisco will obviously bristle at my claim, and because it would point to its social media effort. But the problem, as clearly evident from reading a Cisco blog entry on its social media guidelines, is that the company's use of social media is defensive.
Read this from Cisco Social Media Guidelines, Policies and FAQ:
We take social media seriously at Cisco.
We look at it as a collaborative tool to help better serve our customers, our partners, our investors and our employees…and to LISTEN to them as well. There, of course, have to be guidelines and employee training around the use of social media. Within our company culture of transparency, we thought we’d make our newly updated internal Social Media handbook available for everyone. We don’t claim to know everything about Social Media, but we do know that the wisdom of the crowd is generally better than the wisdom of the few. With that in mind, we welcome your thoughts, observations and viewpoints on our Social Media Policy and Guidelines
Look at the words: "collaborative tool","better serve our customers","guidelines", and "employee training," and it all ads up to one word: boring. Where are the words "buzz" and "excitement" and "product" and "marketing" to make a "fan" base?
And it leads to the slide presentation of a document that's a set of bureaucratic guidelines - do's and dont's. There's nothing about using social media to generate buzz. What's good is that Cisco wants its employees to engage in social media. What's bad is that there's nothing that shows the employee how to use social media to generate buzz about Cisco products.
If Twitter is a great place for crowd activation - getting a ton of people to do something - and Cisco has its own "crowd" called its employees, getting them in the game of buzz building should be part of this document and the Cisco social media process.
It's not there.
Credit goes to Cisco for taking the passion out of social media. It's no wonder the Flip Camera's history; Cisco lacked the feel for it, and for the culture that embraced it.
Save Flip!
Meanwhile, Cisco needs a social media expert with passion and smarts, like Pepsi's Director Of Global Digital and Social Media, B. Bonin Bough:
Zennie Abraham To Be Featured On NBC Caught On Camera
Viral videos have made for Network TV content for sometime now, and it was only a matter of time before one of this blogger's videos saw the light of television day.
Well, that's excluding my old television show, The Blog Report With Zennie62, that was on ColoursTV. What was great about that show, which aired in 2009-2010, was that it allowed the direct use of the videos made with my Flip Video Camera right onto a TV format. It's still something that's not been done before or since. I'd like to do it again, if the business details can be worked out.
But I digress.
Without any contact from this blogger, NBC took notice of the Zennie62 video Fight With Bouncer At SF Fillmore Jazz Festival: doing job with patron. If you've not seen the video before, here it is:
This video was originally made as part of a ColoursTV segment that never made it to the screen. But that's the reason for the introduction you see. The video itself was and is a kind of study of human nature, and there are stories within the overall story of the encounter between a patron who had a little too much to drink and a bouncer just trying to do his job.
The video has drawn over 3,000 comments and over 700,000 views - actually closer to 800,000 views. And it drew the attention of NBC. I met the crew for the show Caught On Camera where we filmed a segment talking about the video.
Does the almost three-year-old video put the Fillmore Jazz Festival in a bad light? No. It doesn't. By just holding the patron until security arrived, the bouncer may have prevented a really ugly melee in front of a storied establishment.
Moreover, the bouncer's actions have been the catalyst for a number of emails from former police officers, bartenders, and other bouncers, who explain how hard that job is, especially during a large-scale event, how they believed the bouncer did his job well, and how the situation should be prevented in the future.
Here's one such email from 2009:
Dear Mr. Abraham,
I just watched the video from the Fillmore Festival. As a retired police officer(Commander of Police) with 32+yrs experience with the SFPD encounters like this are common place in and around nightclubs in the City. Violent confrontations are taking place daily. The SF Entertainment Commission which oversees the Clubs have not taken a proactive approach to minimizing these actions.
Bouncers, doormen, security staff, and floor persons need training. Training should include but not limited to:powers of arrest, use of force, conflict resolution, how to call the police, handling emergency situations, etc.
In this case I agree with you additional staff should have been called and the police should have been notified immediately. The Bouncer could have place Number 3 under arrest for disturbing the peace(threatening to fight). I do think he used reasonably objective force to detain him. But once the Bouncer used any force Number 3 should have been arrested
If you decide to pursue this issue I would be available to provide additional information re: nightclub security.
Thanks and I enjoy your articles.
To the credit of the Fillmore Jazz Festival, the next year, 2010, the area where the event occurred was more 'controlled', patrons stood in a line to the side, and there wasn't the room where someone could stand and confront a bouncer, and great care was taken to make sure that Harry's Bar didn't get too crowded inside.
Harry's and the Fillmore Jazz Festival are great San Francisco traditions. This was in no way intended to harm them one bit. Indeed, it's a complement to the staff and to the bouncer.
Fitness Model Megan Avalon's Fitness Workout With Bowflex
If you've ever wondered how to get the most out of the Bowflex Fitness Machine, watch this video with Fitness Model and Personal Trainer Megan Avalon who hovers between Gold's Gym centers in the SF Bay Area.
Megan, who's becoming a famous fit model and is a regular in this space, shows us how to do lat pull downs, and how to work both the front chest area, and the back muscles as well.
But them, Ms. Avalon shows us why the Bowflex is a really special device: she uses it to work her triceps in a way you'd not expect unless you were an expert user.
Watch for Megan Avalon in upcoming female bodybuilding contests.
Megan, who's becoming a famous fit model and is a regular in this space, shows us how to do lat pull downs, and how to work both the front chest area, and the back muscles as well.
But them, Ms. Avalon shows us why the Bowflex is a really special device: she uses it to work her triceps in a way you'd not expect unless you were an expert user.
Watch for Megan Avalon in upcoming female bodybuilding contests.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
San Francisco City Clinic: 100 Years of Stamping Out STDs
This year, the euphemistically named San Francisco City Clinic celebrates 100 years of diagnosing and treating sexually transmitted diseases. That's 10 decades of inspecting orifices and creating cutting-edge new media, from all the way back when old media was shockingly new. And City Clinic did it all while making sexual health sound fun and, well…sexy.
In honor of the anniversary, the San Francisco Department of Public Health circulated this historical document, with the headline "Our Nation's Health Endangered by Poisonous Infection." Reading it, the shocking thing is not how much things have changed, but how much they haven't.
You might not believe that sexting and new media have anything in common with the way the world worked 100 years ago, back before the days of either antibiotics or birth control. But get a load of this quote from Dr. Julius Rosenstirn, chairman of the advisory committee, in the 1913 pamphlet wherein he passionately defended the work of the clinic, then called The Municipal Clinic: "The taboo that educators have put on the theme of sexual relations, on a thorough instruction in the origin of human life and its procreation, has resulted in the profoundest ignorance among the laity of these most vital matters."
He added, "Do these same good people really believe they can safeguard the fiercely dominant sex call of awakening youth with mild and vague precepts?"
So what was it that threatened the very existence of the fledgling clinic back in those days? What forced Rosenstirn to come to its defense? Was it simply talking about sex?
Noooo. It was more, much more than that. The thing that got the clinic in deep, deep trouble was a program to teach women how to diagnose themselves. And not just how to diagnose, but also how to act on that information, an approach that would resonate today with e-patients all across America.
Read more...
In honor of the anniversary, the San Francisco Department of Public Health circulated this historical document, with the headline "Our Nation's Health Endangered by Poisonous Infection." Reading it, the shocking thing is not how much things have changed, but how much they haven't.
You might not believe that sexting and new media have anything in common with the way the world worked 100 years ago, back before the days of either antibiotics or birth control. But get a load of this quote from Dr. Julius Rosenstirn, chairman of the advisory committee, in the 1913 pamphlet wherein he passionately defended the work of the clinic, then called The Municipal Clinic: "The taboo that educators have put on the theme of sexual relations, on a thorough instruction in the origin of human life and its procreation, has resulted in the profoundest ignorance among the laity of these most vital matters."
He added, "Do these same good people really believe they can safeguard the fiercely dominant sex call of awakening youth with mild and vague precepts?"
So what was it that threatened the very existence of the fledgling clinic back in those days? What forced Rosenstirn to come to its defense? Was it simply talking about sex?
Noooo. It was more, much more than that. The thing that got the clinic in deep, deep trouble was a program to teach women how to diagnose themselves. And not just how to diagnose, but also how to act on that information, an approach that would resonate today with e-patients all across America.
Read more...
Was Barry Bonds Verdict For Being Uppity Black Man?
But, it's fair to say Barry Bonds got his reality rocked yesterday and by a big-mouthed jury, where some said told Channel Five (KPIX) news they were Giants fans, and one 19-year old blonde jurist agreed with the Channel Five reporter that she thought Bonds was arrogant, even though he didn't even take the stand.
I was disappointed she said that, but not surprised.
Here we go again.
It looked, to me, like, once again, Bonds was being tried and convicted for being what some in America still hate: an uppity black man. The idea is that a black guy should not present himself as better or smarter than anyone, just stronger and faster.
Barry Bonds wants you to think he's better, smarter, stronger, and faster, and over the years, the mainstream media has crucified him for it. Now, it looks like the jury was contaminated with the same idea - except one woman of color.
That woman, again on Channel Five, was saying she was sure Bonds was not guilty of obstruction of justice. Again, that she was of color should send alarm bells going off. But remember, some major media sports writers have wanted to see Bonds 'get his' for some time.
Of course, that too has changed, which is why I can say "some" and not "all" or even point to one group of white male writers - America's changed.
But all of this casts an ugly light on the judicial system. For jurists to come out and allow themselves to be recorder saying that they thought Bonds was arrogant, and they were Giants fans, means he didn't get a fair trial at all.
Bonds should file an appeal and indeed, the judge should order the case retried based on those comments. It begs the question of what was said during jury deliberations. If the judge looks back and finds that racism played a role, a new trial can be ordered at once.
Barry Bonds Not Found Guilty Of Lying
Lost in all of this is the fact that Barry Bonds was not found guilty for lying. That's what the whole deal was about.
As Dashiell Bennet points out in Business Insider, you can't find a person to have obstructed justice if you're saying they didn't lie. Giving answers that may be "evasive" is not lying, and the very idea that an answer is "evasive" is left to personal judgement, whereas lying is more concrete.
The bottom line is the Government failed, the jury was biased and arguably racist, and the Bonds verdict should be tossed.
Let's see if the judge agrees with the rising volume of voices saying this, and tosses the case.
Stay tuned.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)