August 2008

Playing this September 12th at Club Underground in NE Minneapolis.

Go watch them. DO IT.

As part of the Cinema of Urgency series at the Walker Art Center this month, we went to see the film Secrecy.

From an artistic perspective, the film was well done and incredibly engaging. Secrecy is not a very visual topic, so it was fascinating to see how the filmmakers took on this challenge and addressed it.

From a topical perspective, the film is pretty unsettling. Some of the stories told illustrate how significant the amount of secret information is compared to the amount of available information. It costs billions of dollars a year for this information to stay secret and the cost and amount of secret information is growing at an alarming rate.

The film tries to balance the stories of secrecy ’saving’ and secrecy ‘corrupting’. The cost of secrecy is high in terms of our foundational way of living and thinking. If something is secret it cannot be part of the fundamental checks and balances that the founding fathers of this country put in place. Having the secrets means having the power. Power corrupts.

One of the concerning things about this to me is that overall people aren’t aware that much of this is happening. So I’m doing my part on my blog and talking about the movie.

Here are a couple of additional links:

• Secrecy: Official Film Website
• Review from Sundance
• Link to Walker blog post

I really believe we need to elect Barack Obama. So tonight I decided to state it loudly and clearly here on my public forum.

Vote for Barack because he is going to be an inspired leader. It will be a nice change.

I’ve been thinking about what success means in life lately. I came across this quote today as I was thinking these thoughts. I was paying attention and the inspiration showed up.

In the words of the great Maya Angelou

“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”

I’m going to ponder that one for quite some time. It seems simple, straightforward. But if you peel back the layers, there is great depth and a meditative quality to the words.

If all advertising was like this, I’d say, bring it on. Kudos to Rhett and Link for their amazing Alka-Seltzer adventure.

I just got an email to join OpenSalon. It’s a social networking and blogging site. The idea is that you can blog there and get people to pay you for your work.

From the site:
“Open Salon is a publishing platform with a built-in audience. It was developed for writers, photographers and artists of any stripe in need of a smart home for their work (and not one of those giant, anonymous blog networks), and who are hoping to be rewarded for it. After a quick, free registration, you can immediately begin posting your words, images or videos to your blog, start building an audience and even earning money.”

This sounds like a great idea, right? I always question things that sound too good to be true. So I started a sign up process and decided it was probably important to check out the Terms and Conditions of the site before posting any content.

There was something I found in the Terms that reminded me of the following,

In life, there is no FREE LUNCH.

“By submitting or posting User Content using the Service or the Site, you grant to Salon an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license to: (1) use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute the User Content in or through any medium now known or hereafter invented, for any purpose; (2) to prepare derivative works using the User Content, or to incorporate it into other works, for any purpose; and (3) to grant and authorize sublicenses of any or all of the foregoing rights.”

It goes on to say that if I remove my user content, Salon still retains the above rights. They don’t own it, but they can do whatever they like with it. This sounds like a situation rife with unintended consequences.

Gotta be careful out there, I’m telling you, read your TOUs! (Terms of Use agreements)

I don’t often have photos taken of me because I am usually the photographer. Earlier this summer, I was at Pride with my friend Greg who is also a photographer. So I got some wonderful shots from him with my friends Les, Alison, and Beth.

Thanks Greg!

“Language is a virus from outer space.”

-William S. Burroughs

We evolve our language to allow us to communicate with each other. As there has been a great deal of change brought on because of the Internet, we have needed many new terms to describe this change. These terms have helped us to frame larger concepts. Our technology has given us abilities that alter our reality. I can communicate instantly with anyone in the world. This changes the game.

We’ve come up with all kinds of ways to describe what is happening. We might well have just gone back to McLuhan to find that this has all been predicted. But we must, because we are human, redefine it for ourselves.

I’d like to share some examples regarding what I mean when I say, we need this language.

Jesse James Garrett coined the term, AJAX. As I understand the story, he was trying to think of a way to communicate to a client some complex concepts. The technology for what he was describing had been around for awhile, but nobody had framed it as Jesse did. This framing made it a much more accessible concept and desirable as a tool for business and design.

Tim O’Reilly came along with his Web 2.0 conference. I don’t think I’ve met a marketing professional that doesn’t use the term, ‘web 2.0′ multiple times a day to attach the concept to the work they do.  We need to understand the significant shifts that are occurring right now. Language helps us grok the bigger concept and discuss that concept and its details.

These words and phrases help us ‘contain’ something. They help us to understand it and communicate about it. Even though it’s not specific, it is useful.