number 1 priority - ruok?

So, tons of cool things from the conf in LA, eating at Koi when Becks and Posh were there, and a summit on CGM in NYC yesterday - but first and foremost.... Tracy - are you OK re fires?

Our SD office is in Rancho Bernardo - closed all week and many evacuated - at least one guy lost his home.

Trying to connect - want to party tomorrow?

Arrrgh! Bummer! I fly out on the red-eye Wed. I was going to call you tomorrow am to see if you wanted to join a party I'm going to at the X Bar here at Century Plaza tomorrow night. These guys are pretty crazy and fun. Tonight we went to Koi. Excellent food and I heard Beckham was there, and potentially others, but I really didn't recognize anyone.....

I think the presentation went really well. I had people stopping me all day to say they were there and enjoyed it, so that was cool. Oh, and freakiness of freakiness - I ran into a chic I worked w/ 11 years ago and really hadn't seen since. She's now in LA working for a small media research firm.

Time flies, stress spikes, life goes on

It's been too long! Lots of stuff I could update you guys on. The YPulse Mashup was good - a very different, more conversational format than the Mega event. The CEO of Jones Soda, in his closing keynote, used a Kodak video (check it out)....


And Mortified is really entertaining, you should go see if you have a chance.

Anyway - I'm coming to LA Saturday! I'm presenting at the IIR Market Research Event. We were going to do an excursion to Santa Monica on Sunday but that got canceled, so I have the day on Sunday open and dinner on Wed (conf ends around 4:45, on the red-eye home so don't need to be at airport until 10ish).
Tracy, let me know if you're around! I'll be at the Hyatt Century Plaza (2025 Avenue of the Stars).

same old

its the same old crap, our company is working pretty autonomously.

I miss you guys, i so want to come on a vacation. what are you doing this summer? any stories?

Hiiiiii!

Hey guys!
I just checked your posts. Glad to see you checked in Sid! Jeeze! Hey, Aprille...let me know who the Boost guy is attending the YPulse conf. and I'll give you the dirt on his cool factor. Sid, how's Microsoft treating you?

Boosted Mobile on YPulse

BoostMobile is among the leaders for what Anastasia terms "bottom-up brand building". Supporting artists is always cool.

look who is here

how are you fellows? enjoying summer? Chicago is so different in the summer..

I want to go to these events too, but my company is not going to pay a dime more on my training this year.

and did you guys hear..our company got bought out by Microsoft a month back?

Quick PS

Oh, BTW - I'm going to the YPulse Mashup in SF on the 16-17th of July. I saw some dude from Boost was going - is he cool? I'll get you the name from work tomorrow.

I'm here, I'm here...

Well, at least the two of us are still trying to keep at it!
Does the Cassandra Report cost anything to subscribe to? Sounds cool....

So - first things first - labels are easy. As you type a post, just below where you're typing you see "post options" and "labels for this post", with a text box next to it. Type in labels that you feel characterize your post - they can be serious or tongue-in-cheek - separated by commas.

To include links in a post is a little more "code", but not too bad.
For a link, you open the code with (I need to spell this out so it doesn't just make a link) - "less-than" a space href equals, then paste the web address, enclose it in quotes and a "greater-than". Then type the text that you want to be clickable, followed by "less-than forward-slash a greater-than". - So, like, the "less-than, greater-than"s serve as brackets - "a" starts the string and "forward-slash a" ends it.

Similar code for inserting images from other sites. You open with "less-than img src" (minus the quotes), insert the web address, enclosed with quotes and a "greater-than". To get the web address of the image, right click it and go to properties.
Let me know if that's confusing.

How are things? Weather here is gorgeous, though we could use some rain. Sunny and 80s. Summer in Rochester isn't all that bad. I've been very busy at work. I finally realized that to get away from the feeling that I was banging my head against a wall - producing great insights that seemed to go nowhere, I needed to do some switching up in the job space. Email me if you want to chat more on this. It's a good thing.
Because of this, I'm taking another trip to CA, but just a quick "hop" to SF June 26-27.
July travel - SF for the 16-18th, arriving in SD 9:30pm on the 18th, in the office the 19th & 20th, then leaving for home early the 21st. What times does SurfDiva do her thing? If it was evening, then I could do it... Or maybe we can connect somehow anyway. I'll be in the Rancho Bernardo area - kinda on the North side of SD, with a car....

Well, I have to go help my husband prep dinner. We picked strawberries today - he's promised me a strawberry-rhubarb pie, yummmm. We've been doing a bunch of work in the yard and enjoying our space of late.
Hope all is well in the OC. More soon, promise.

How to...

Hey there!
Aprille, I think we've lost the boys...
Bummer about your June travel. Still let me know when you do make it out here cuz I'd love to see you!
Hey, can you tell me how to create labels and permalinks when blogging? I am a computer retard and have no clue where to even start!
As far as exciting updates...I don't really have any except that summer is here! I haven't been to any new events/conventions. I'm learning how to navigate through Claritas for some segmentation research (ugh!) and I just got the Intelligence Group's Cassandra Report (love love love it!) But that's all I've got to report so there you have it.

P.S. Thanks for the site reco's. I'm about to check them out now.

A movie... about a font

Not much has been up lately - haven't heard much from you guys either?!? Sid, any changes that will impact you now that Microsoft owns you?? Not sure if the June trip is still on the books, but it looks like there's one brewing for July - that could include San Francisco, the YPulse Mashup, and San Diego.

A few weeks ago, we went to see Helvetica. Yes, I have many design-geek friends who were excited - nay, nearly giddy, to see a movie about a font. A couple even got autographs from Hermann Zapff. It was a good film - well done with quirky designer personalities spicing it up a bit, but let's face it - 1.5 - 2 hours all about a font is just too much. My husband and I bailed on the Q&A and met up with our friends again after.

Here are a couple of links I thought you guys might be interested in:
Worthy tween sites - do you remember my ranting about Cheese and Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends? They have a tween online community space - teehee!
Online community list - not totally all inclusive, but some good ones
The customer owns the brand - echoing Kevin Roberts and others at the conference....

WTF??!!

When did Ian leave? And why hasn't he/you blogged about it...that's exactly the type of event God created blogging for...jeeze! Um so can I have his job?! Sid, can't you score me a marketplace planning position at Avenue A in Austin? Do it, I already have a house to move into...NOW.

So I said my interactions at the conference were interesting but I cannot say they were exciting...the whole thing was a lame, boring, and weird mess. I couldn't escape the bar from some old dude from Verizon who insisted on detailing his days back in 89 when he was an engineer on the east coast. You guys, it was really bad. The only satisfaction I got was skyping with Lauren about my deranged conversations and run ins with seriously odd (but not in an intriguing way) people.

So gimme the dirt on you guys (you too Ian, dammit)...anything outside of work that's exciting???

All I got for y'all is that I've been doing focus groups for a new product we just launched. One of the guys in one of the groups said I remind him of the "crazy drunk rich fag-hag" on Will & Grace. I take this fine dreadlocked fellow's portrayal of me as THE Karen Walker as a compliment. That's the most exciting happened to me this week and it happened just a few hours ago. The end.

Leaving, chocolate, bunnies

I hope that leaving avenue a Razorfish does not mean Ian will stop blogging!

Random links:
To make Tracy's mouth water - Vosges chocolates - we're very intrigued by the Mirabelle Orange - mirabelle plums, orange flower water, dark chocolate, nasturtium petal...yum!

Amusement in 30 seconds - Angry Alien productions - your favorite films re-enacted in 30 seconds or less, by cartoon bunnies

all i am doing

is nothing super like you guys. Just hanging out. Played tennis all weekend. And you know what..Mr Ian Watts is quitting. booooooooooh...i will miss him...its making me sick.

How are you all? It seems so long ago..so what "interesting interactions" did you have Tracy?

Goody goody

Last Friday, I went to a lecture on a new model of leadership. Pretty common sense stuff - but also stuff that just doesn't happen in large companies and I think people need to come back to.
The fundamentals:
Leadership is different from management. It's about vision, getting others to commit, anticipating breakdowns, and managing them.

As Jensen (the speaker) spoke of "breakdowns as an opportunity to breakthrough" and his colleague who said "oh, goody, we're having a breakdown" - I thought back to Jeremy's presentation from the conference. Expect some of your innovations to fail. Without failure you become the best typewriter company in the world.....

And I'm all wrapped up in Heroes! I've been checking out the "360 experience", the convergence system of stuff they have on their site - it's pretty cool. Check out this site - not only is it fun to get involved in the speculations and theorizing, but it's fascinating to see the layers they've built around this....

Ummm hellooooo....

What is up people? Where have you all gone? Has Number 1 Gang fallen to shambles? If so I'm not only disappointed but I am here with the glue.

I'll have you know I attended another conference earlier this week and I was reminded of how special Number 1 Gang is special is. I made not even one friend...I had a few interesting interactions (to say the least) but the conference itself and social exchange overall was nothing more than a cheep imitation of what we experienced in Huntington Beach, people! Or at least this is what I thought...and now I am left to wonder...

Some one write something in response or I might throw a complete fit! Get the toilet tag pumping...NOW.

Links

here are a couple of cool things I came across recently:

Second Life's impact on customer service

The anti-MySpace site Kevin Roberts mentioned. Quick poking around looks like it could be cool. Will have to login and explore more.

Saw this on Frontline last night - a microlending organization. What a cool concept!

Still typing - I'm up to about 1/2 way through Kevin Roberts. I'll send my file around once I finish....

Presentation huddle co co continued

Oh hello you guys! So let's get on this thing. Not sure even where to start. I typed up all my notes last weekend but that's as far as I've progressed. I need to get the presentations too. Do we just email the speaker or what? I'm going to need help understanding more about this labels phenom. I get the gist of it but I need some rules of engagement before I jump on the bandwagon. Word...

off the radar & smith corona

Hey - sorry I missed any collaboration over the weekend - I sometimes fall of the radar when escaping from work mode. Got a new car (pick it up tonight) and visited family and whatnot.

Jeremy G from Trendhunter.com went to Surf Camp after the conference, but not Surf Diva - something in the jungle! Pretty cool. Anyway - he's posted his deck from the conference. I also have decks that were emailed to me from the ethnography session (pdf) and the Whyville session.

What's the best way to share what we've done so far? In the progression of the conference, I've typed up my notes up to Jeremy's session (Tuesday am) - still a bit of a ways to go...

Lets do this

Ok sorry, had people come in town. Lets get together and work on this for real.

Slackers?

NameSake

Just got back seeing NameSake. Beautiful movie. Highly recommended. It is based on the book by Jhumpa Lahiri. Isn't Ian reading a book by her?

Ok click both the links in my post. Please

Presentation Huddle

Yeah, I am actually planning to work on a presentation this weekend. Would any of you want to hook up this weekend? I know it's a holiday and all (BTW Happy Easter!!) but I'm afraid that if I don't get cracking on this I'll forget what the entire conference was even about.

Yes, so "downs" is short for Downs Syndrome. I'll see you in hell, Sid!

Have a fantastic Easter weekend and lemme know if any of you want to get a little group work session in.

Still missing you...
Tracy

Presentations from the conference

Well yes I did not know what "Down" was. The part of the world I come from, we do not have fancy terms for retarded kids. We just call them "Retards". Well maybe that was mean. :-(

So me and Ian have to get together a presentation from the conference. Wouldn't it be cool, that we all share the burden of work and do part by part remotely and get it together. Then each of us can present the same shit to all our companies?

What do you guys think?

Also on a seperate note, we all should be responsible and put keywords / labels for our posts. Down here. It helps in SEO, search engine optimization. Look it up if you do not know what that is.

Downs

The funny thing about your last post, tracy, was that i had to explain what "downs" meant to sid...I couldn't explain it "scientifically"...so we went right to google images and answered the question visually...and in that picture it actually looked more like "I" have it than you...so for the sake of sid's referencial education (should he be checking the blog) here you go:

Down syndrome (DS) is a condition in which extra genetic material causes delays in the way a child develops, and often leads to mental retardation. It affects 1 in every 800 babies born.

The symptoms of Down syndrome can vary widely from child to child. While some kids with DS need a lot of medical attention, others lead very healthy and independent lives.

So, tracy and i seem to be very healthy, and leading independent lives..!...well done us..!..

Aprille, thanks for the Avant Game link. Good stuff! I hope you don't think I was referring to you in the photo Sid posted. You look adorable. I am the one who looks like I belong on the short bus.

So are we all back on the treadmill? I sure am...except for when I got knocked off this morning when I sideswiped a parked car on my way to work. You guys all got to experience my driving skills so I'm sure you are not surprised. I am comfortable admitting that I'm probly the worst driver on the west coast (ok, maybe in the US of A). Luckily the enormous truck I hit didn't get hurt. My car, on the other hand, has a big ugly gouge out of the passenger side. Ooopsie. I think this is a bigger job than the dent man I usually go to for my mishaps can handle.

So I hope you are all well. I continue to wish you were all still here.

Alternate Reality Gaming

(i hate pics with my hair up, btw - and yes, way cool on the ping pong thing....)

Here's a link to AvantGame, Jane McGonigal's blog, and her project details. She's really cool and has a bunch of varied and wacky alternate reality games. (Alternate, not virtual) Her Keynote on Happiness Hacking is pretty interesting, too.

I've contemplated cookie rolling myself, when I travel, but want to come up with my own spin on it....

PS I made y'all admins on the blog, so you can play with settings, add to the lists (in the template area), etc....

who's the girl with downs???

Crap Sid, who's the girl to the right of Ian with downs??? Take that photo down immediately! I mean NOW!!!

I can't believe you have bars with backroom ping-pong tables!! Thant's like one of the 10 best things things I've ever heard of. And this silly haired ping-pong freak sounds like an intimidation project you should seriously commit to further. I love it.

You were only slurring in a minor way. I'm sure you had another few semi-composed dials in you without incident.

Recovering from 2 days of drinking

Ha ha..I was semi drunk..I did not realise i was slurring..

Last night me, Ian and some friends went to a bar called Happy Village. It is a neighborhood bar with a room at the back where there is some hardcore ping pong action going on all night. This guy had been playing for over 40 games, nobody had manage to beat him. He was getting more and more annoying every game. I was in line to play him and end his dynasty. Alas, the time comes and as I get to the table, he says I am tired. I had to offer 5 dollars as stake to play me. He agreed, we start playing. I am up 6-5, he seems worried, the ball goes into the crowd and we cannot find the ball. There are 4 other balls lying on the side table for us to play with. He refuses to play any more, says he wants to play with the exact same ball otherwise he would not play.

I was so pissed, I hated his hair, I hated his body language, everything about him. Anyways he forfeits the game. LOSER.

The action looked something like this

So its been raining the entire weekend, wish we were in California. Oh well. Reality sucks.

On that note, here are some pictures from the trip.

The Other Baby's First Blog

Ok so this is my very first blog too (thank you Aprille for bringing the world of current communication practices to #1 gang).

Sadly, I woke up this morning with a pounding headache after going to LA and having dinner (and 3 delicious mojitos) with my two girlfriends (Lauren who you all met was one of them). Did you guys experience the sharp and pathetic decline in alcohol tolerance the second you turned 30 like I have??? Sid, you don't have to answer...your slurred voice when we spoke on the phone speaks for itself...ha! J.K.

Well it's too bad you all aren't here this weekend. Sorry for rubbing it in but it is beautiful here at the beach right now. The sun is shining, there's a slight breeze, and it will be in the high 70's later today.

Aprille, you will experience this when you come back in June. We are doing Surf Diva for sure!

Ian, very nice job on your first blog. Well done. I think you should produce and market the vagina tee especially since you'd be a total fraud if you were to carry on with the internet tee now that you are a blogger (and duhh your contribution to the interactive world is what allows you to purchase high ticket items like oh I dunno Suzuki two wheelers).

Alright, so here establishes the end of my very first blog. Feels good! Bye for now.

baby's first blog...

I was talking to my friend scott a couple weeks ago and we were both nodding heads and agreeing that we hated the internet, and had been doing so for quite a while. So much in fact that we decided we'd make a t-shirt (similar to the vagina t-shirt we discussed at lunch the other day) in the style of an old I.O.U crest design that says "hating the internet since 1997"...it could have been earlier, but we couldn't remember hating it any earlier than that...which isn't actually true either, because i didn't "really" start hating the internet until late 2005/early 2006...but since this is my first blog, i'd better man through this internet blue period and think of some positive things...like mark twight's "the 300 workout" for the recent movie...!..i'm going home tonight and i'm totally wailing on my pecks..!!...

http://joshsgarage.typepad.com/articles/2006/11/frank_miller_mo.html

Vancouver billboard

be awesome
Originally uploaded by m a z i a r.

This says it all!