Bev's Blender Brain Blog

Audible cues on a teleconference

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I was in a meeting this morning with a client, which included remote participants who dialed in via conference call. One of the key participants also dialed in from his car as he was driving to the office.

I was struck by the audible cues we all had as he approached.

We heard the car door open, and the ding ding reminding him his keys were still in the ignition. The building is near a small airport and we heard the putt putt of a private plane engine through his Bluetooth, at the same time we heard the muffled sound of the engine penetrating the confines of the of the conference room window.

We heard the echo of his voice and his steps in the stairwell, then the soft thuds as he unpacked his briefcase in his office. I found myself counting silently, to see how long it would take him to enter the conference room. I hadn't picked up on his stop at the kitchen to grab a muffin.

This is not judgemental account, just an observation. It was not distracting to the meeting - just an observation that I made.

On the other hand, I was on a non-profit board teleconference last week with about 10 people. One of the participants was 15 minutes late to the call (someone had to ping her by cell phone to remind her) and when she arrived with a flourish, the background noises were deafening. She was out to dinner and called in from the restaurant.

When I suggested that she mute the phone when she wasn't talking, she asked "how do I do that?"

Conference calls with more than 3 or 4 particpants are hard enough without constant noise and distraction. Is it too much to ask for people to be aware of how they are affecting the dynamics of the larger group? Literally, and figuratively?

Can Technology be Funny?

I think the key to humor is not taking yourself too seriously, and avoiding laughs at someone else's expense. Oh, and rising above the cheap and taudry laughs that appeal to 13-year olds. I like my humor on the intelligent side.

Here are two videos that I shot and edited recently for my client, FaceTime Communications. My colleagues Larissa and Sarah developed this idea and wrote the scripts. As Larissa explains in her guest post on the Bright Blue Marketing Blog, maintaining a marketing presence through an economic downturn requires some out of the box thinking.

So far so good, with more than 700 You Tube views for episode one in just one week and 125 views of episode two in the past two days.

Let me know what you think, even if you have no idea what URL filtering fees are!

The campaign of change, in so many ways

I'm watching the Democratic National Convention, like millions of others tonight.

My husband Greg was in Chicago during the 1968 DNC. To say we've come a long way is an understatement. There is the obvious milestone - that we've nominated the first African-American presidential candidate. But this campaign is about so much more.

It's about young faces in the crowd in Times Square tonight. Faces that are decided NOT all of European descent. Its about my 20-year-old step son who is bummed because he has to work so he can't watch the convention live, and making us promise to DVR the entire evening so he can watch every minute when he gets home.

Mostly it's about the much needed change that Barack Obama will bring to our country, and in no way do I want to diminish the importance of that fact.

But I'm also struck by the social and cultural changes that are unfolding before our eyes. I know I'm not the first person to compare Barack Obama to John Kennedy, but my reasons are a bit different. I'm reminded of the 1960 presidential campaign that we discussed in my mass communications class at San Jose State University.

John Kennedy was the first Roman Catholic to be elected president, and that was a very big deal. It was a big deal to people who were afraid, and found it easier to think what they were told to think rather than to think for themselves. John Kennedy was the youngest presidential candidate, and he was flanked by an older, experienced running mate in LBJ.

And in 1960, the new medium of television made a tremendous impact on the election. The Kennedy campaign was all over it, the Nixon campaign was not.

And so in addition to the revolutionary change that Barack Obama promises, here we are at another communications revolution as well. This campaign is also about Twitter, Facebook, text messaging and blogging. Its about the entire country being exposed to the new communications revolution of social networking.

Its about the fact that I got this picture off a TwitPic update from @bongofury, an Internet radio broadcaster I don't know, who is sitting at Invesco Field tonight uploading photos from his mobile phone.

Unified Communications and my iTunes Playlist

Here's one of those Blender Brain moments that I named my blog after.

My client has a phone and voice mail set up for me at the office. Its a very cool, newfangled unified communications system that digitally records incoming voice mail and forwards it to my email so I can listen to the message on my computer wherever I am.

This would be the computer that defaults to iTunes to play .wav files.

The iTunes play list that has all my music in it.

I got one of those messages this morning, and it automatically opened up in iTunes and played. Then iTunes, being all about wanting to keep me entertained, went to play the next song on the list. It was Dennis McGregor's tribute to America's #1 Cash Crop... Wakey Bakey. Luckily I was alone in my home office. ROTFL

If you have never experienced Dennis McGregor singing Wakey Bakey, you must take the time. Right now. Put on your ear buds and here you go...

Go here to order Dennis' CDs, including Front Porch to the Moon (on which you will find Wakey Bakey and many other fine songs).

fine print: by posting this blog I am in no way endorsing the growth, production or use of illegal substances. I'm not sure about Dennis.

A BlackBerry Evening

We just got back from dinner at Slice in downtown Campbell. I had a pizza craving.

During dinner, I achieved the following with my new BlackBerry:

• requested a recipe from a friend on Facebook that I want to make for our potluck on Saturday
• called a friend who's coming up from LA this weekend to tell him we won't be home for an hour in the afternoon
• texted back and forth with a friend about Stephen Colbert's interview with Crosby Stills & Nash
• told my son he can't go to "Taco Friday" with his friends tomorrow
• got a report from my daughter who ran against the men at the Los Gatos Invitational Track Meet and got a PR (personal record) in the 100 m hurdles
• checked Twitter to find out that @larissagaston is still having trouble with her Twitter Feed showing up in her blog
• laughed at an email from a fellow house concert presenter about how most artists don't understand that we schedule around OUR lives, not theirs
• deleted SPAM off my email server so next time I login it won't be there
• updated my Facebook status to say "Bev had a productive evening on her Blackberry"

... all while eating a margherita pizza and conversing with my husband. Really. We talked a lot.

I must say that since I've gotten my BlackBerry, it has definitely improved my quality of life. That's because since I wear so many hats, I simply MUST monitor email at all times. That used to mean hours and hours in front of my computer, often getting lost in surfing Web sites while checking and responding to email and working on client and music business projects.

I've now established "office hours," during which I work on projects and monitor email on line. But during my "off hours," I don't open my laptop. I monitor client, music business and personal email via my BlackBerry and if there's something that I need to attend to I can make the decision as to whether I have to open the laptop, wait till later, or if I can take care of it via my BlackBerry.

It didn't make me a slave to staying in touch, because I already was. Instead, its freed me from being a slave to the wider influence of the Internet.

So, its pretty much working for me.

Social Media - will the boomers ever get it?

Working with a client that's focused on securing enterprise networks in the face of the changing internet, not to mention a changing workforce, my perspective on social media is admittedly different than most middle-aged workers. (did I just admit that I'm middle aged?)

I cant' tell you how many times I hear "why should I be on Facebook? I don't have time!" Or Isn't it creepy to have people want to be your friend when you don't know them? And "why do I care what you had for breakfast?"

I get all of that, really I do. But I think Greg Rollet nailed it in his recent blog post Why Do I Have to Eat My Vegetables? Greg is a musician, and a marketing guy.... definitely not middle aged.

"As kids, we didn't want to eat our vegetables because we had a perception that vegetable were supposed to taste bad. Boomers and Gen-X have a preconceived notion that the Internet is bad and everything that comes with it, the YouTubes, Myspaces, Facebooks, Twitters and all the rest of the Community building applications that are considered time wasters by their biased opinions."

I have jumped into MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, blogging and all the social media avenues largely because I need to understand them to do my job. The by-product is that I understand how these tools can benefit independent musicians. And the suprising result is that I am enjoying the online conversation and its making me better at what I do both in the music world and the high tech marketing world.

In short, YES I do enjoy knowing what my friends had for breakfast, that the VP at our PR agency hurt her foot rafting over the weekend, and that the executive director of the San Francisco Chapter of NARAS is tired of the painters on the scaffolding outside his office window. 

Case in point - I'm currently working on a project with an industry analyst whom I've never met. A couple of months ago, we became friends on Facebook. We haven't thrown any sheep at each other, or given each other good karma or Lil Green Plants. I haven't even written on his wall. But just by being connected, I know a little more about him as a person... and he knows a bit more about me.

The result is, our email conversations about this project, while never directly referencing anything from our respective Facebook profiles, have been smoother and more comfortable. At least that's my perception.

So I agree with Greg Rollett that when it comes to social media, Gen Xers and Boomers, especially those who are corporate leaders, need to "just try it."   

When worlds collide

One of the catalysts for starting Bev's Blender Brain Blog was to somehow unite my seemingly disparate worlds of high tech marketing, independent acoustic music and family life with teenagers.

Sometimes these worlds collide.

Today I'm working from home but my office is still being renovated, so I'm sitting in my bedroom with my laptop. Being the first week after school got out, my 16 year old daughter and 17 year old step daughter are draped across my bed, being lazy. Its a bit like having a couple of Labradors hanging around, but the girls are much cuter.

Anyway, I received word this morning that one of our researches discovered and reported to the Internet security community that Photobucket had been hacked. I thought the girls would laugh at the headline of the article that appeared in the Channel Register, Photobucket Tipped Over by Turkish Hacker, so I read it to them out loud.

One said "So THAT's what happend to my MySpace... I used to have a picture there and now it just says Photobucket." The other one said "yeah, that happened to lots of people."

Then they feigned interest in what caused it but when I started my explanation with "the DNS was hacked so that when you type in the Photobucket URL it redirects..." but they were gone by that time.

At least now I can get some work done without them sighing about being bored.