Last Monday I watched, what would otherwise have been, the season finale of NBC’s Chuck. If you’re unfamilar, here’s the short, SHORT version:
Geeky guy works at a Best Buy-like store with his high school best friend, gets all the combined secrets of the US Military downloaded into his brain, and for four seasons he has used this information to help take down bad guys. Insert nerd references to video games, movies, and other forms of celebrated (or obscure) Geekdom and serve!
I promised when I started this back up that I would post more regularly or I would quit altogether. I was doing fine for a short (ok, very short) while, but then I was distracted by an internship I received at a local area web design firm. It was supposed to be for the summer, but after about a month of managing the companies’ client’s social media sites and developing their brands, it dawned on both parties that I wasn’t their guy. No, that’s not a polite way of saying that I got canned, but the honest truth. They wanted someone to handle their SEO, do some graphic design work, develop promotions and all of the social media.
For some, no problem. For others, well, I’m not a graphics guy. I raised one client’s reach by 20% on Facebook and close to 50% on Twitter. I increased overall retweets, mentions and shared messages. I put together a great FB ad package to go with one of four promotional concepts. After meeting with the client, they decided that everything needed to be cut back (essentially) – the type of promotion and the activity on the social media sites. That combined with increased graphic work headed in my direction made it clear that my interpretation of social media is quite different from theirs. It was a good month, and I wish that it could have turned into something more, but they need someone whose skills are greater than mine graphically and who is willing to ignore suggestions by WOMMA, Ogilvy and other SM experts in favor of what the client thinks is a good idea. (Yes, without clients an interactive media company can’t thrive. But they hired you for a reason.)
So I am back to square one – professionally delayed.
Things aren’t so bad, though. I know now that I don’t want to work for a web design firm and that the things I learned while earning my master’s do work, i.e. I used my knowledge to achieve real-world results. I also have a new puppy (3mos old) that I get more time to play with, and there is a possibility of another social media internship at Blue Mountain Artists where my brother works. It would be unpaid like my other one, but again, it will enable me to build more experience with the added bonus of incredibly flexible hours and dress code.
I guess the lesson here is while the internship to hire dream is a good one, sometimes forgoing what you have for what you need (and knowing the difference between the two) is the best for everyone.
Good luck everyone. It’s rough out there.
Video of the Week
“Friends and Enemies” - Burn Notice Season 4 Premiere, Thurs at 9p on USA Network
I’m up in PA right now visiting my girlfriend’s folks and celebrating her brother’s 23rd birthday, so that plus the dial-up connection I’m using will require that this be short.
Since last December I’ve jumped on the Guitar Hero bandwagon and last weekend picked up Rock Band. As an audiophile, I love everything that music is and can be. A book I read Spring semester 08 discussed the history of the phonograph and the impact it had on our culture and county. For instance, women sold records for two reasons: 1) women were the caretakers of the home at the time the phonograph was released and 2) women were less likely to invite male strangers into their home, so companies hired women to sell the records and the players. Women were able to work their way up from seller to executive in the recording industry because of their involvement and quite possibly helped the woman’s movement because of it. The book also discusses how music can develop collective memory with a group of people – enabling you to hear a song which takes you back to a specific moment in time, almost allowing you to relive the experience.
Anyway, driving up to PA yesterday we listed to a recently compiled playlist of songs used in the Guitar Hero and Rock Band series that we ourselves own. One of my favorite on Rock Band was the DLC track Zero by The Smashing Pumpkins. I’m not a huge fan of them, and didn’t get to see them when they came to Baltimore for Virgin Fest nor during their short, small venue tour but something about their music always takes me back.
Last night, driving down I-78, belting Disarm at the top of my lungs, I remembered a party held by my friend Jamie back in middle/high school. I can’t remember if we were friends then, but later became quite close until I moved. From my doorstep, I could hear the songs of The Smashing Pumpkins wafting through the trees from her backyard where a live band, made up of our classmates, played. I mostly remember hearing Today sung by…Emily?…I think, but my other friend Damien was on guitar at the time. He was another close friend in school that I’ve lost touch with. He introduced me to The Smashing Pumpkins, and I can remember vividly driving down the road in his Volvo listening to Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Damien later played Siamese Dream for me where I heard Today, Cherub Rock, and Disarm (which would become my favorite track). Damien opened my ears to a lot of music (Future Sounds of London, Orbital, Garbage, The Prodigy – to name a few) and he was a great friend. For a while, and maybe it had to due with the close proximity of our houses, but Damien, Jamie, and I spent a lot of time together – especially the summer Jamie was under parental house arrest for someone else’s mistake. We had a lot of good times hanging out, watching tv, eating chinese, and listening to music. I can’t remember why I never went to that party – maybe we weren’t friends then, maybe i wasn’t invited, maybe I was just to damn awkward for my own good – but I’ll always have the memory of the music.
Anyway, that’s my little random trip down memory lane. I’ll add links when I get back to broadband, assuming of course that the hurricanes haven’t flooded our apartment.(Updated 9/8/08 – with sights AND sounds) Enjoy your weekend, everyone, and if you can – put on some old records. See where those take you.
Since I decided to share my paper examing the meaning of images and their relation, and use, in a digital medium, I figured what the hell – I’ll share with ya’ll my paper from my MP3 Culture course.
It’s an examination of cultural theorist Walter Benjamin‘s belief in the destruction of the aura of art through mechanical reproduction. The concept being that all art is a representation of an object so what you see or hear is not the object itself, but the artist’s rendering of that artist. Even photography is merely a representation of the viewpoint of the photographer on the object being photographed.
My assuration is in an age of digital distribution, the aura of music may not only be preserved, but revived. Artists such as Fort Minor and Nine Inch Nails have allowed, at one time or another, fans access to multi-tracks of their respective songs allowing new creations, or new renderings of the artists work. So in this case, the art (music) isn’t losing its aura, so much as its identity is being recreated.
I’m hoping to take the concepts within and expand them into my thesis, so any thoughts would be appreciated.
Tomblin and I would like to invite our audience to participate in a round table discussion on New Media Music Distribution. This program is about discussing all things media, including but not limited too, how technology impacts our lives and helps us to tell stories.
If you have Skype, and want to play along, call me (Sprzzatura) and join in.
Hope to hear from you soon….otherwise, egg on our face.
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Please keep in mind that we will be using your voice, thoughts, and ideas for our own personal gain and you relinquish all rights to your identity(face), uniqueness, and by extension, soul, by participating.
