The unnaturalness of silence

At Taylors, we have been working on a new sermon series artwork. We developed the concept, executed it, and were happy with the result:



Sunday morning we played it for the first time in a worship service, and something was very different than when I watched it in my bedroom after making it or even in the media minister's office. The silence was almost deafening. The room is so big and so vast yet there was no noise, just silence. After that experience, we made a few modifications for this coming Sunday:



I say all of this to say this. There is a big difference in the impact of sound in a large audience and in a small room. If we had setup this video very dramatically, the silence might have worked to contrast that. But as it were, we have to flow from whatever we are doing before into that video. The silence just didnt work.

Always be sure you have tested your video in the context and setting in which it will actually be played before launching it. It can be the difference between awkward silence and an otherwise good video.

Autism: An alternate form of consciousness?

A lot of reading i have been doing latelly has brought up the idea of Autism as an alternate form of consciousness rather than a mental illness to be cured. Check out this video:



While watching this, i couldn't help but think that our new age of media might be giving all of us slightly autistic traits. What do you think?

"Everything I need to know about Social Media I learned in Kindergarten" via Amy Haywood

Check out this new post by Amy Haywood, she is a producer at Lifeway in the T&E Productions department and had some good thoughts about social media!

INTERRUPT PEOPLE
I was reading Chris Brogan's blog the other day. It was interesting (as usual). They were discussing Twitter etiquette. Should you follow every person that follows you? --I know I don't and honestly, I don't want to. Most of the people that I follow are Designers. I'm interested in what they're interested in.

Chris's basic point was that he follows everyone that follows them so that they can direct message him. However, just because you can't direct message someone, doesn't mean that you can't contact them. That's what the @ is for. Therefore, when you're looking at someone's Twitter profile, don't look at home many people they're following, but rather, look at how many posts include an @, how active are they in the conversation?

That's a huge for me and the way I use Twitter! The more that I've challenged myself to get involved in conversations and to interject my opinion, the more I feel like I'm interrupting a conversation that's been going on. I feel like I've walked up to a crowd of people and I'm trying to find a way to get noticed. -- and I guess, in a lot of ways, that's what we're all doing. But, I think it's only in that risk are we really able to make and find new friends.

ENCOURAGE CONFLICT
One of my favorite people to follow is Jason Fried at 37Signals. I've talked about him before. Brilliant. I'm really looking forward to his new book, ReWork, coming out in March. But one of the reasons I like him is because he has an opinion. For some, I'm sure it comes across as arrogant. I would argue it demonstrates leadership. In his book, Getting Real, he talks about creating opinionated software. Make decisions for the user. For example, have 25 results on a page. Allowing the user to choose how many results they want to see on a page doesn't drastically alter their user experience. However, for the programmer, implementing that preference is lines of code. Not only to implement, but maintain as well. No need. Make that decision for them. Be done with it.

Let's take this concept a bit further. If we all agreed that there should always be 25 results on a page, then there would be no conversation. There would be no tension, no sharpening, no challenge, no growth. By nature, I flee from confrontation, from conflict. However, I wonder how many opportunities for growth, to make myself better, have I missed because I've chosen the path of least resistance?

DON'T LISTEN TO YOUR TEACHER (ALL THE TIME)
Sometimes, it's better to step outside the box and try something different, something no one has ever tried before.

I've been making my way through Linchpin, by Seth Godin. Basically, Seth Godin challenges the way that we do approach our jobs. Doing exactly what you're told is good, but not good enough. Better is going above and beyond what is expected. Excellent, is being creative. He talks about how everyone is an artist and we all have the ability to create something beautiful. This isn't just graphic designers, like myself, it's marketers, customer service agents, salesmen, cashiers.

Taking a risk is scary, because it means going into the unknown. Ironically, though, at the end of the day, our job is more secure because we've made ourselves indispensable. We can do what rule follower Joe doesn't: think for ourselves. Your employer can always find another rule follower, but he can't find another you.

See the original post here:
http://www.amyhaywood.com/index.php?/blog/post/everything-i-need-to-know-about-social-networking-contradicts-what-i-learne/

The fUTure of Tennessee

I was looking around the Tennessee website earlier and found their page about their brand. It was very interesting discussion and information about how they are purposeful with their brand and how they are trying to use that to steer the direction of the university. The website states:

The University of Tennessee is at the center of Tennessee's future and is uniquely positioned to improve the lives of Tennessee's citizens every day. Through our statewide network, UT is the leading provider of education, research, and economic development, and our impact drives the state's economic, intellectual, social, and cultural advancements.

Our goal is to build a clear and compelling brand identity for the University of Tennessee to create a greater understanding of the role UT plays in helping the state and its citizens thrive in the local, regional, and global environment.

It is out of this campaign that the FUTURE commercials have been produced:

The website details more information, and can be found here:

http://future.tennessee.edu/book/

Ice Cream explain's Social Media

I picked up this video from Lance Strate's social media class blog. I think it fairly well explains the business implications of social media and services. Check it out!

Favorite New Website

So one of my favorite new websites is http://whatgoogleknows.com. I just love that type of humor. Check it out, it will give you a laugh!

A Story Culture via Frank Chimero

I have recently been trying to read some new blogs about design, communication, and thought to expand my working knowledge of those fields, and I cam across this guy named Frank Chimero. I started reading a post from him he titled “The construction of a story has very little to do with writing. It has to do with the semi-magical process of you taking disparate pieces of information, combining them into something new, which includes your experience and understanding, and then giving them to someone else.” It refered me to another blog by Rands In Repose titled A Story Culture

The thrust of this post was about the nature of our culture and information in our culture, discussing how the different idea of information create different levels of... for lack of a better word... stuff. He proposes that information comes in levels,

• Data — Raw material. Facts. Got it.
• Information - Organized data. See what happens here? Someone showed up and organized the data into something else. Why’d they do this? How’d they know it was the right thing to do? Let’s keep moving.
• Knowledge — Information seen, heard or read and understood. To me this is when information is transformed by the understanding of why. Our data is organized into information and that is passed onto someone else who can now recognize the value in the information and thinks, “Oh, wow. Now I understand how a trash compactor works. Slick.”
• Wisdom — Distilled, integrated knowledge and understanding. The idea here is that higher order constructions of information are based beyond our ability to consume, combine, evaluate, and interpret information. The information becomes a catalyst for creation. Think of it like this: maybe a lot of people understand trash compactors, but you know so much about trash compactors that you could build one yourself and perhaps advance the art of trash compacting in the process.

Its very interesting stuff and i highly encourage reading it all. You can find it at the links above. I challange you to continually expand your understanding of things to eventually build more knowledge upon those ideas. To truly have wisdom as it were.