I had a spark of inspiration today that I can credit an article by Beth LaBreche in the Minnesota Business magazine. The piece was about business news strategies. It made me think about the basic question from Journalism School in a context I hadn’t thought about before. Is it (Social Media) newsworthy?

The biggest complaint I hear from my professional and personal networks regarding social media is that it is not news to have had a Coke today or to be enjoying the sunshine. I have to agree most Social Media items are not newsworthy (unless you didn’t know it was sunny out).

In our current society, it seems as though individuals have lost the ability to self edit (to know when not to share). It is important that your business knows how to do this and does it well. Want to lose your followers on Facebook or Twitter, stop editing yourself or edit yourself too much and stop having anything to say at all. Your audience wants clear, concise, pertinent information that is meaningful to them. Your followers want to hear from you or they will stop being your followers. Balance is essential.

Before posting anything on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube (well, maybe not YouTube) ask yourself a few simple questions about the content. Who are you writing for (who cares)? What is the point? How does it effect who cares? When is it going to effect those who care? If you can’t come up with a compelling answer for any of these questions, consider not posting until you do have the answers or direction.

I have contemplated whether or not to toss my old Journalism text books because the industry has changed so much they don’t have the same value. But the more I think about it the arguments from my text books are still just as compelling. The big difference is Twitter and Facebook have a character limitation.

What do web design & marketing have in common with yummy sandwiches? Quite a bit as it turns out.

Last month the Arcstone employees banded together, some more reluctant than others, with a vision to create an informative and entertaining company services video. I never thought I would be getting paid to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but a day working at Arcstone is never uninteresting.While some were getting ready for their acting debut, others continued business as usual amid numerous laughing fits and flashy dance poses that would give Swayze a run for his money.

In the end, those of us who weren’t sold on the original idea were convinced and all agreed the video communicated a clear message to potential clients and would make them hungry for more.

Check out the video for yourself!

Your company website needs a purpose both for you and your clients to truly be effective. Most companies need a website that does three simple things:

1. Grow your business by attracting new customers
2. Give existing customers tools that will keep them as your customers
3. Attract new talent to your company

The question needs to be asked, is your website working for you? Most answers aren’t cut and dry as they relate back to these three core principles. Including website initiatives should be part of your internal review of procedures and products annually. But what is a website initiative? It should be any planned enhancement to your site, whether that be a new page, color scheme, form or an entirely new site all together. How do you determine if you need to spruce up your existing site or start over? Take this website inventory.

1. Do you feel the colors and design are attractive? Yes / No
2. Is the menu and page system easy to navigate? Yes / No
3. Does each page have its own URL? (Meaning is xyzdomain.com/pagename unique.) Yes / No
4. Does your website work, as intended, on each of the modern browsers (Firefox 3-6, Internet Explorer 7-9 and Safari)? Yes / No
5. Your photos: Are they in focus? Do you see a finger? Can you see your images load on the page? Yes / No
6. Is there background music? Yes / No
7. Do you have a website visitor counter in the public areas of the site? Yes / No
8. Is the copyright date in the footer show this year’s date? Yes / No
9. Do you have an unused or underused blog? Has there been less than 1 post a month in the last 3 months? Yes / No

Answers (1.yes, 2.yes, 3.yes, 4.yes, 5.no, no, no, 6.no, 7.no, 8.yes, 9.no)

If you answered no to questions 1-4 it might be easier to start over with a website design. If you answered Yes to only a few of Questions 5-7 and 9, or No to Question 8 then you probably can do with a decent amount of web-sprucing. Congratulations if you answered the questions according to the key. Congrats, your website is modern and easy to use!

There are other things to consider when talking about rework and redesigning your website. Everyone touts social media (Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn) integration, but that doesn’t make sense for every situation. Think about your organization and your potential customers and act accordingly.

How do you update or plan to update your website? Adding a content editor is the easiest way to ensure you (or virtually anyone with computer skills) can keep website content up to date. When adding a content editor, like WordPress, scheduling a redesign to correspond is most cost effective effective in the long run. Plan for content updates quarterly, at the very least. Inaccurate or old content will alienate potential customers.

The most important rule is to always keep your website up to date. Your website is a reflection of your company. How do you want to be portrayed?

Email is a modern Sisyphean tragedy for many of us. The mythic Greek King Sisyphus received a unique punishment to roll a rock almost to the top of a hill only to have it slip and roll back down to the bottom. Then he’d have to do it again and again. Sisyphus was cursed to have this back breaking, rock-rolling punishment in hell for eternity.

Sounds a little like email, right?

I get about 200 messages per day to roll back up the hill. If you know it’s going to go on forever, you may as well get good at it.

For ArcStone’s weekly staff meeting, I assembled a few tricks that I’ve been using to help me roll-up my inbox. Here are the eight tactics I shared to help ease the pain of email purgatory…

1. Adopt a habit of “Inbox Zero”. Inbox Zero is an email practice of reducing your inbox to zero messages on a regular (read daily) basis. The main set of tactics are to immediately to: do it, delegate it, defer it, delete it, or file it. The strategy is simple – but the practice takes practice. A cool new plug-in (if you use gmail) is the email game – it teaches good email habits in a fun, funny way. Also check out David Allen’s Getting Things Done for his inbox clearing strategies. 
2. Only check your email at designated times with full awareness. Once or twice per day if you can get away with it. Hourly if you must. But don’t do it all the time and fracture your focus.
3. Use a to-do list for your tasks – not your email inbox. There will be fewer dropped balls and less clutter in your inbox.
4. Use the subject line smartly. Start informational emails with FYI: (Subject) and actionable items with Action: (Subject).
5. Be concise. Three lines max if possible. Email is meant to convey short messages. Think about the long six or seven paragraph emails you get versus the short ones – which do you actually thoroughly read? Save your readers’ time – go for concise, punchy messages.
6. List actions first and also number them. Don’t put a big block of text first and then put the tasks at the bottom – put the actionable stuff up top. Don’t assume people with 200 + messages per day are going to scroll down, they’re gonna be scanning.
7. Don’t “Reply All” unless everyone needs to truly see it. This will save your team members a lot of time and insure that they read your messages when you send them.
8. Never, ever send emails with a lot of emotional content. No angry, contentious or hurt emails – ever, ever. Emotionally fraught emails tend to create additional rounds of long, angry, hurtful, legally damaging, time sucking email. Seriously, don’t send emotional emails unless you like to painfully waste your time.

Any other tips? Please comment!

You can’t get to wonderful without passing through all right.

-       Bill Withers

I love this quote.

The thought works on both a macro and micro scale.

Over their lifetimes our great artists, writers, musicians, and designers all went through “all right” before they came into their genius.   The arcs of their careers contain at least one or two periods that aren’t as good as others.  The important thing is that they did the work.  They got it out there.  They kept going.

On a smaller scale a well-executed project typically goes through multiple iterations – it never pops out fully formed, perfect, “wonderful”.  Impactful creative people all sketch, prototype, and make drafts.  Their individual works travel through the land of “all right” on their way to wonderful.  The rough drafts and requisite wrong turns help create the happy accidents and intuitive leaps that make something great.

So – do the work. Then make it better. Travel through that land of all right on your way to wonderful.

I don’t have a bank account because I don’t know my mother’s maiden name.
Paula Poundstone

OK – so I feel a little weird with this one, very much like an old grumpy dad giving his kids unsolicited financial advice. I can feel the virtual eyes rolling even now, knock it off.

ArcStone has a 401K plan.  We don’t do any matching, but the vehicle is there for saving if anyone wants to participate.  I was reviewing our quarterly report and I realized that the level of staff participation is barely over what we pay each month to have the plan in place.

I’m going to try a few things to see if I can get participation up – I hate paying for a benefit that people don’t use.

Anyone have any reasonable ideas?

I’ll post what we came up with as a follow-up to this.

Now off to my bully pulpit to lecture…..

I did something new when we ran an ad for an administrative assistant last week.  I asked three questions;

1. If you could have a super hero power what would it be?
2. What was the last book you read?
3. If everything went according to plan in your life, what would you be doing 10 years from now?

I will forevermore ask questions like this in every job post we do.  I was very pleased with the outcome.

Asking the questions did a number of things….

1.  I was able to weed out the people who didn’t answer the questions.  They didn’t follow the directions.
2.  I was able to see a genuine, off-the-cuff writing sample.  Clear and concise written communication is vital in our business.  This was an effective, simple test.
3.  I was able to see if they had spelling or grammatical errors in their answers – indicating to me a lack of attention to detail.
4.  I could check for personality fit and sense of humor.
5.  I could insure for myself that their personal longer term vision of themselves fit within ArcStone’s longer term vision.
6.  The questions enabled candidates to get a feel for us before responding.

If you’re tasked with hiring for your organization, ask some questions like these up front.  This is a wonderful way to begin a hiring dialogue.  Let me know how it goes….

One of the great achievements during the dawn of history was the religious text called the Rigveda.  Passed via oral tradition from father to son in the ancient Indus Valley, the Vedas contained a collection of the earliest recorded religious wisdom.  Large portions of the Rigveda are dedicated to the mysterious drink Soma.

Scholars today disagree about what Soma was, but we do know a few things.

It was derived from a plant, it gave power and energy to those that drank it, it was highly recommended that one consume it before battle, and it was considered the drink that created the gods.

From the Rigveda’s Ninth Mandala:

We have drunk Soma and become immortal; we have attained the light, the Gods discovered.

Now what may foeman’s malice do to harm us? What, O Immortal, mortal man’s deception?

Is coffee America’s soma?

-

No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee’s frothy goodness.  ~Sheik Abd-al-Kadir

Over second and third cups flow matters of high finance, high state, common gossip and low comedy.  [Coffee] is a social binder, a warmer of tongues, a soberer of minds, a stimulant of wit, a foiler of sleep if you want it so.  From roadside mugs to the classic demi-tasse, it is the perfect democrat.  ~Author Unknown

Way too much coffee.  But if it weren’t for the coffee, I’d have no identifiable personality whatsoever.  ~David Letterman

I believe humans get a lot done, not because we’re smart, but because we have thumbs so we can make coffee.  ~Flash Rosenberg

You will always return to your dark master.  ~Nick Longtin

Health Benefits of Coffee:

• Coffee contains antioxidants that help prevent cancer and heart disease.
• Studies indicate that regular coffee drinkers are up to 80% less likely to develop Parkinson’s disease.
• Drinking two cups daily could reduce the risk of colon cancer by 25% and halve the risk of gallstones.
• Emerging evidence suggests that coffee may help manage asthma, stop a headache, boost mood, and even prevent cavities.
• Decaf coffee has been found to provide the same stimulative effect as regular coffee, without the caffeine.

So consume coffee my friends – unashamedly with vigor and gusto.

And check out our newest robo-staff member the Jura Z7 – sweet!

Since the iPad was starting to (mostly) live up to it’s incredible hype I decided to start throwing more challenging tasks it’s way. Another major paper waster I had in my sights was sketching. I love sketching. I sketching all kinds of things, and I love to present my clients with concept sketches for video designs before we put ideas into pixels.

Since I try to give clients exceptional bang for their buck I hate to waste time redoing complicated graphics and animations that might not ever be used. I have found doing sketches with the client is a great way to do preliminary design work and deliver a first draft that is very close to the mark on what the client is expecting.

Success!

I found a fantastic app for simple sketching called Penultimate. At two bucks it’s a bargain, and filled my need of a sketchpad replacement. Even with just my finger I’ve been able to explore and sketch concepts with clients that later end up turning into refined Photoshop mockups.

The Sketch

The Refined Mockup

Failure!

A little while ago Google added video support to Google docs. This my friends, was a great day. It gave me a FREE and easy way to share in-production video drafts with clients in a secure and simple fashion. It also appeared to be based on YouTube technology which meant pretty much anyone with a modern browser and Flash could view the video. Gone were the days of having clients download Quicktime player and large video files.

Google Docs Video Sharing

Unfortunately Apple has developed a strong stance against Flash, and therefore the Google docs video features are useless on my iPad. This is a real shame, and something Apple should remedy immediately. In fact, I would go so far as to say Apple is blatantly misleading people when they call the iPad “the best way to browse the web”. It clearly is not, at least to anyone who has used an actual computer to browse the web (and use Google docs).

A side note fail you may want to know about if you plan on using the Google docs video features is that it doesn’t seem to understand Apple ProRes videos. Most professional editors using Apple Final Cut studio probably do a fair amount of work in the fantastic ProRes file format. If you plan on uploading your videos to Google docs for conversion and sharing be forewarned your ProRes files won’t convert. Opt for H264 instead, which works fine.

Stay tuned for more trials and tribulations exploring the usefulness of the iPad in video production. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

The first day with a shiny new gizmo in my video production kit is usually a mixed bag, and the iPad was no exception. Since I have never had an iPad before I decided to start simple and give it only a couple tasks to accomplish.

Success!

One thing that has always driven me nutty is the excessive use of paper in video production. Scripts, storyboards, release forms, it’s a never ending tree massacre. I never understood why we can put microchips in our pets and help the blind see again but we still store information on dead trees? The iPad seems to be the device that may change this, and I found an inexpensive app to get me on my way to a paper free production.

Form Tools PDF is a fantastic, simple application, that lets you take PDF files and turn them into data capturing forms. Setting up my video release form was dead simple and I was capturing digital signature in minutes. Once a form is filled out and signed, I can also add a photo with the iPad’s built-in camera and then email it off to anyone who needs the completed PDF. This is not only a paper saver, but a time saver and easy way to manage my growing pile of forms.

Here is what my filled out form looks like after having our new intern Taylor sign away the rights to her image and voice recordings:

Double Failure!

On most video shoots I capture HD 1080i60 video with a Sony camera. Even though these video files are large and beautiful looking, most modern computers have no problem playing back the video. Although the iPad’s built-in video player doesn’t understand this format, (even though Quicktime on the Mac does?) the free VLC Player for the iPad will play it.

I was hoping to be able to dump video straight onto the iPad for review in the field or on the go but despite it’s dual core processing power, the iPad 2 can’t reliably play back 1080i60 HDV video. I have played back HD video before with VLC but not the HDV format, which must be too robust for the iPad’s video processor.

Day one of using the iPad 2 is a very sad double failure because Apple has removed the incredibly useful and popular VLC application from the app store. I downloaded it when it first came out for the iPhone so luckily I was still able to install it on my iPad.

I’ve got loads of shoots coming up so check back soon for more posts on using the iPad 2 in video production. Let me know if you have any questions in the comments!