I’m laying out of the next session. The marketing track was supposed to be about “Maximizing Your Internet Marketing Results” by CUnet. Turns out it’s little more than an infomercial on lead generation. I haven’t the foggiest interest in obscure, third-party lead generation companies (they are always the most car-salesman-like folks at these conferences). The [...]
I’ve just gotten out of the first full day of sessions. I feel beaten. I wonder if the hotel would frown if I carried this nice desk chair from my room down the elevator to the conference area for tomorrow? Sitting in a hard little chair all day has near killed me. Anyhow, the first [...]
I’m laying out of the lunch session on podcasting to charge some batteries (literally and figuratively) and because I don’t think that medium is appropriate for Warren Wilson at this time. While the camera phone and PDA are getting juiced up, I’m going to give you a quick report on the beginning of the conference [...]
This is my report on “Breaking the Frame of Web Design” Presented by Fritz McDonald. Fritz is the Creative Director at Stamats. He supervises web and print designers as well as writers. His ideas regarding breaking out of the web design “frame” are influenced in part by author Brendan Dawes. (Fritz McDonald begins his talk.) [...]
I’m scheduled this afternoon to attend a pre-conference seminar. From the conference website: Breaking the Frame of Web Design Presented by Fritz McDonald, Creative Director In terms of innovation, the Web is opening up possibilities in a way it hasn’t done since the great dot.com age. Yet, in spite of these gains, many Web sites [...]
I’ve arrived in Philly. I left this morning, boarding one of those tiny turbo-prop planes with seats made of concrete and about as much foot room as a VW beetle full of clowns. (The Swannanoa Valley from the air. Warren Wilson is in the middle-ground, left edge of the photo hidden by clouds.) After the [...]
Tomorrow I’m flying to Philadelphia to attend the Stamats’ Generating Successful Interactive Marketing Strategies Conference (that’s quite a mouthful). I’ve attended two previous conferences put on by a somewhat similar organization–Carnegie Communications, but this will be my first event with Stamats. I’m hoping that it’s a worthwhile experience. I’m passing up going to Rochester for [...]
For better or worse I’ve been buried in video-land for the past several days. Bossman and I decided that it would be nice to have some video content in time for the new design launch. Being that I’ve never done anything with video, I’ve been cramming. It’s been a lot of fun. I’m using a [...]
Elaine pointed out this short piece by journalist and cyberpunk author Bruce Sterling. Its evocatively disjointed, almost stream-of-conscious narrative imagines a teen world in the near future where electronic media and technology have taken the next step in saturating daily life. Imagine helicopter parents meet ubiquitous wireless/cellular connectivity, RFID tagging, and databases not unlike a [...]
The Washington Post has some expanded coverage this morning on the speech that US Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings delivered yesterday. (Read the original Education Department advisory committee’s report.) I highly suggest you read the article, and I hope no one has any confusion about how much a federal college report card would change and [...]
There is an argument made against privacy that says someone who isn’t engaged in criminal behavior has nothing to hide. This method of thinking allowed the US government to slowly sap away our civil liberties in the wake of the 9/11 attacks–many have just accepted that trading privacy for security is acceptable and used the “nothing to hide” argument to rationalize what was, essentially, a decision based on fear. However, limiting the government’s ability to intrude in our private lives is easy compared with attempting to control how personal information spreads on the internet via gossip. Rather than spies or wiretaps, gossip is often gathered by those we trust and spread online by people who don’t understand or appreciate the potential for the damage it can do. In reality, privacy is about much more than concealing wrongdoing.
Internet-based abuse (‘cyberbullying’) and privacy / relationship issues are still massively misunderstood. The complexities of online sociality are probably the biggest ‘generational divide’ between modern teens and adults. To help put it in perspective a bit, here are some numbers…
