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May 31 2009

Creative Process Has Many Interruptions: My Songwriting Self-Examination – Buzzie

Category: about me,musicjmacofearth @ 12:24 pm
Buzzie - On The Inside (EP) Cover

Buzzie - On The Inside

[This post is excerpted from the Buzzie RockBand Blog.]

There are three parts to songwriting. (Of course as I write that I am challenged to keep it to three, so here goes.)

  1. The music (tune, harmony, instruments, players)
  2. The words (idea for the song, an image, a story, a title, a chorus that won’t let go.)
  3. The recording (is the gear ready to go? I just spent 4 weeks trying to get the shock mount for my vocal mic fixed.)

But there’s a whole additional series of sub-texts for actually WRITING the song.

  1. The emotional idea (something has triggered an idea in your mind, a word, a tune, a memory, a desire)
  2. The energy to actually do it (oh crap, I’ve only got 10 minutes until the kids get home)
  3. The courage to write a crappy song (what if it sucks?)
  4. Some goal for the creation of the song (or why are you writing and recording music anyway?)

And then there are some pieces of the equation that are even more intangible:

  1. What am I trying to reveal about myself?
  2. Is this for fun or healing?
  3. Am I singing to someone?
  4. Am I performing this song to get something in return?
  5. Am I full filling something by the creation of this song?

And last, as I am trying to understand, there is the BIGGER vision that pulls us along like a sail on our creative boats.

  1. Am I creating a project, does it have a vision, a name, an image?
  2. Do I want to perform this song, as a band, as a singer songwriter?
  3. Will I get something by creating this song? How can I be loved more? Will this bring me love?

@jmacofearth

Read the whole post: http://blog.buzzie.com/archives/12

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May 28 2009

City of Austin Website to be ReBid: Austin Developers and MeterThis Celebrate!

Category: community building,teaming & leadership,tech opinionjmacofearth @ 5:23 pm

MeterThis.net WIN

Brewster McCracken says, “City is scrapping prior website proposal. Will move to open architecture, customer-focused structure. No more Plone. New bid released soon." 7:21 am Thursday, May 28, 2009.

We can’t declare victory for all, but we have prevailed in an unclear system to illuminate the process just a little bit. I look forward to the discussions now.

We will update you as soon as we have more info. I have emailed Gail Roper and Doug Mathews, the city leaders on this project, for a comment and will update this page as necessary.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/open-austin

Additional Resources:

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May 28 2009

Twitter Is Just Cresting the WAVE: Google Brings The Goods: Google WAVE

Category: community building,executive learnings,tech opinion,toolsjmacofearth @ 12:08 pm
wave

Google's WAVE Logo

From Webmonkey's coverage of the Google I/O Conference today, 5-28-09:

SAN FRANCISCO — Google has set out to rewire the e-mail inbox with a new product called Wave.

Wave is a web-based application that marries multiple forms of communication and collaboration, including chat, mail and wikis, into a unified interface. Everything inside Wave happens in real time: You can even see a comment being made as the person is typing it, character-by-character.

Google Wave, which was demonstrated Thursday at the Google I/O developer conference taking place here, is now live as a private developer preview. Conference attendees can start playing with it now, and Google has its eye on a public beta launch within a few months.

It’s a peculiar model we haven’t seen before, sort of a “chat inside e-mail” approach that has the potential to profoundly alter the way we share information and collaborate with one another.

So I will ask again, what does Twitter have that Google would want or need to buy?

As we jump from platform to platform, iGoogle, NING, Twitter, G-Talk, G-Mail, IM, FriendFeed, phone-based IM or Twitter clients, voicemails on your cell phone or delivered via the web (Google Voice) what is becoming abundantly clear is PEOPLE DON'T CARE WHAT THE TECHNOLOGY IS. People just want to chat, hookup, network, commune.

Yes and they want to Spam as well. And that may be the app/platform killer. How well your app of choice can filter the crap that is spinning up in response to social media becoming mainstream. If Twitter continues down the fail whale lethargy of it's current strategy, there will be nothing left of their advantage as soon as Google gets their WAVE around us.

So thinking about Twitter for a moment, what is it that makes it so remarkable?

  1. Real Time. (Provided Auto-Tweet or Tweet-bot apps aren't used. And they ARE BEING USED.)
  2. Real People. (Not so much any more. Everybody, every brand, every scam has a twitter ID and a strategy to win your heart.)
  3. Being real. (How idealistic I am. A follow from me does not mean I trust you. I handle that in Tweetdeck.)

So if we take those elements and wrap another "platform" around them, Tweetdeck being a good example, what is left of Twitter, the company? At the basic level of engagement 90% of Twitter's server load is processing API calls. It's as if the idea has gotten away from them. They are keeping their servers up only to relay the information regarding our tweets from one API to another.

So, if Twitter the site, the company, the app, went away do you think Google would be able and willing to put up a server solution to handle the growing traffic demands? And if you agree that they can, then why wouldn't they go ahead and do it? WAVE may be the first step in putting the Tweet back into the data stream as just a series of addresses and short messages to be relayed from one server to another.

What's known is, WE DON'T CARE WHAT TECHNOLOGY IT'S RUNNING ON. [Okay, perhaps I would put up a fuss if everthing tweet related became an Azure ping, but barring Microsoft trying to own the Twitterverse, I am not too worried about Google. Maybe I should be.]

So here comes WAVE. An application that "marries multiple forms of communication and collaboration, including chat, mail and wikis, into a unified interface" Do you think WAVE will handle Tweets? And why would they leave that key form of communication out of the discussion, at least at this point?

WAVE Browser

I can assure you Google is merely waiting until the uber fail of Twitter. The revolution will not be televised. Twitter will not be bought. Probably Facebook will not be bought, because after you strip off the positioning of WAVE, you can see Facebook-like connectivity being at the heart of the system.

I'm guessing EV and Biz are at the Google conference sitting in great confidence listening to the new unfolding Google-Verse. And perhaps they have a trick up their sleeve that we have not anticipated. Perhaps.

But I bet it will run on Chrome better than anything else. *smirk*

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/WAVE-Twitter

WebMonkey: Google Waves Goodbye to E-Mail, Welcomes Real-Time Communication

Mashable does the WAVE GUIDE

Mashable shared TWave – Twitter + Wave:
Today, the Google (Google reviews) team showed off a few extensions for their new communication platform. One of the most interesting ones, though, was Twave, a Twitter (Twitter reviews) extension for Google Wave. The integration makes sense: Google Wave and Twitter are both forms of real-time communication, so why not bring them together? The result, though, speaks to the potential applications of Google’s newest product.

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May 28 2009

Internal Brand Confusion Study : Notebooks – Can Branding Actually Hurt Your Brand?

Category: about me,executive learnings,speed the web,tech opinionjmacofearth @ 10:42 am

Every executive of a major company should have the experience of going to their company's web site and making a purchase. It might be easy if you know exactly what you want. But when pricing, features, and even internal branding becomes confusing, imagine where the business will go.

Perhaps there are reasons for maintaining and building a lot of brands within a brand. I can think of some pretty good examples of how Nike has "owned" certain markets with their brands: Nike Golf; Michael Jordan's shoes and clothing line, even Nike Golf for Women.

But when the product is a commodity, like what kind of cheese to buy, or deciding between the house brand and the name brand? Sometimes BRAND can actually hurt your awareness.

I am working on developing this presentation to explore how complex branding and deep siloing of market segments or vertical markets can kill the purchase decision. A few of the questions I hope to explore:

  1. If we make it hard for the consumer to find what they want will they keep trying beyond a few frustrating minutes?
  2. Does Best Buy do a better job of laying out the choices?
  3. What are the differentiating features in various computer brands when faced with the wall of choices? Price, screen size, processor preference and ram/hd configs are king.
  4. If we make things confusing within our own brand, how will the customer decide when even more options (other manufacturers) are brought into the mix.
  5. What will we lose by simplifying the choices?

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/notebook-brands

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future posts

A Collaborative Space: WebEx, Go-To-Meeting, Skype, Basecamp (Teaming/Meeting Tools)
Twitter Problem: How do you find enough interesting people to follow? Then how do you keep up with them?
The Agile Mind: Construction, Evolution, Care, and Feeding Instructions for Mental Flexibility

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