Those of you who've been visiting this blog for awhile may have noticed the sidebars that went missing a few months ago.
First off, congrats to you for noticing!
And secondly, yes, I'm working to get them back.
For those of you who didn't look much over to the side, that's where the Local Events Page lived as well as the list of Food By The Printer and Blogroll.
I thought I'd take a minute to run the local events Jamie and I have gathered. We figured you my need to line up an air conditioned place or two to be in the upcoming hot months.
Just click on the title of the event to go to their site.
WITI presents Exploring Your Life Mission This series will help you to gain a clear understanding of your unique gifts, passions, needs, and values, so that you can discover what you want to do with the rest of your life.
Multi-week class.
WITI presents Success Strategies for Life & Career This series of two one-hour teleclasses is for those who already have a specific goal and want to learn the strategies and tools that successful achievers use to achieve their goals.
PRSA presents Southern California Educational Conference
Anyone wanting to gain a competitive edge in the hospitality industry will benefit from HSMAI’s half-day educational conference, including lunch and a networking reception.
September 9, 2008
IABC presents Power Networking with Barbara Gibson, ABC, IABC Chair
This practical session teaches networking skills that you can put to use immediately to begin building a powerful network of professional contacts, resources, mentors and friends. You'll learn basic networking techniques, as well as advanced tips. Bring plenty of business cards!
September 16, 2008
In case you've been away from your email for the last month or so (and, curiously, are visiting my blog) you may not have heard about SoCalAMA'sRed Hot Marketing Connections 2008 being held next Tuesday at the LA Times Building.
There will be food, hosted beverages, fun, and an Aquent table, staffed with friendly Aquent people (our Area Manager and VP of Membership, Susie Hall and Account Director and noted Pokemon authority Diana Scott and a few other staff members).
Your ticket includes a free VIP tour of the Times' news room and networking with colleagues from the Direct Marketing Association of Southern California (DMAsc), Public Relations Society of America (PRSA-LA), and the Women in Technology International (WITI).
You may even get an Aquent pen!
It works better than a regular old pen, believe you me.
Flashforward2008 is rapidly approaching. Well, not exactly approaching, as it will be in to San Francisco, but you know what I mean. As ever, Aquent is sponsoring, along with Lynda.com.
During the event Lynda's company is premiering Creative Inspirations: Big Spaceship, which is their documentary series which looks "at the inner workings of one of the web's most innovative firms." True enough, they've done work for Nike Air, Adobe, HBO, and a host of others.
You can watch the first three movies gratis here on the Lynda.com site. For the rest, I believe you have to subscribe to their Online Training Library. But heck, for $25 to get inside the heads of the staff at Big Spaceship, that's a very small price to pay.
If you're currently on assignment through us, you probably get a number of emails from your Agent about what's going on around town during the summer, but I've been WOEFULLY poor at keeping up on events on this blog.
I'm sorry, so very, very sorry....
To try to make up for my lamedness, I'm giving you the hip tip on tomorrow's designer roundtable down at Barbara's at the Brewery. It's a group called Kernspiracy and is hosted by our friend Spencer Cross, and is absolutely free.
Okay, you have to buy the drinks.
But the friends, networking, business advice, and cold AC are all included in the price of admission.
The 2008 AIGA Leadership Retreat was held in my home town of Omaha, Nebraska for "three days to connect with and be inspired by other chapters across the country."
And it's odd to think of AIGA leaders from NYC, LA, and SF, going down to Johnny's for the country's finest steaks, a restaurant conveniently located right above a stockyard. (No, I am not kidding. My prom was there. A scene in "About Schmidt" was filmed there. Years ago a steer got loose while everyone was dining quietly on martinis and New York Strips.)
Regardless, the current president of AIGA LA, Michael Lejeune gives a great blow-by-blow on what he learned on the Omahablog portion of the site.
If you're interested in where AIGA is headed, including AIGA China, you should definitely take a look.
If you're looking for up-to-the minute stuff like: "Spotted at SOFA opening: Niels Diffrient, Helena Hernmarck, Jack Lenor Larsen"and"Going to SOFA? Don't miss Shin Sang Ho's stunning "Fired Painting" (2006) at Loveed Fine Arts. Glazed ceramic never looked so good."
Then this is for you.
Hey, the UnBeige staff admit to not being fans of Facebook.
Well, guess they've never visited my page.
Maybe they're mad I didn't invite them into "my network".
(A Lego depiction of what it’s like to be bloggin’ in a coal mine.)
I don't know about the rest of you, but the first thing I try to do when looking up an old college buddy or lost childhood friend is "google" them.
This is something I do before I even attempt to search through the myriad of social networking sites where I am a virtual card carrying member (MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Meetup.com - you name it).
It seems as though Google has caught onto its popular use as a virtual friend finder with its very own social networking tool called "Friend Connect" which basically can make any mom and pop blog its very own Facebook.
I like how Google is capitalizing on the desire of winning the Internet popularity contest for the public at large.
But - wait a minute, last I checked, weren't they a search engine or something?
Sometimes relationships with vendors (that includes staffing agencies) don't work out the way you like.
When you're counting on someone to provide so much, having them fall far short is enough to make you pick the phone up and give them the old "what for". (I was going to go for something more offensive, but after all, this is a PG blog.)
Stop! Do not pass Go, Do not collect $200.
The recent issue of iMedia has an interesting article on ending business relationships graciously.
The first caveat?
Lesson #1: The interactive space is one where people jump around from company to company on a regular basis.
Which means you could be calling a new company for help only to find you're dealing with the rep you let have it 6-mos. ago at the old company.
Insert frownie face.
The lesson, no matter how hard it may be, don't burn your bridges when it comes to important business relationships.
But don't just take it from me, read the whole article here from Sean Cheyney, VP of Marketing and Business Development for AccuQuote.
Not that you need my lame excuses... but now I'm back and raring to go.
An interesting thing about camping with a group is seeing how each person adapts to the environment, especially when that environment has no water and the weather can vary by 70 degrees in a day. If one person has a great idea, the others will probably use it the next time. (We learned a couple years ago from someone that it was just as easy to pack an espresso maker as it was drip coffee maker. Man, that's a nice lesson at 6am.)
Which brings me to the Core 77 1 Hour Design Challenge. Industrial Designers are given an hour (or so) to take on a design challenge and post their work.
"Can you design a better bike lock in one hour or less? Push aside that looming deadline and pick up your Sharpies….its 1HDC time again! What can you bring to the table to prevent [the stolen] Huffy Heartache?"
No, I don't know Bama. And this is the second time I've told the folks at Yaari I don't have an interest in getting messages from their members.
Though I think there's some pretty tight controls on social networking from legitimate companies, I wonder how many of these young upstarts will start barraging us with messages from "friends"?
Since messages from Yaari come from Gmail and not the company itself, these may be harder to control than, say, messages from Friendster.
On a personal note, I think the whole social networking scene has reached a critical mass for "protected categories" folk like myself (read: old). Suddenly, all my college friends are hitting me with LinkedIn requests. And the parents at my kids' school are contacting me through Friendster.
If I felt inundated with my To Do list at work, now I've got 26 Action Items on LinkedIn.
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Post Script: One of my college friends called me to the floor on this post. For good reason. I was joking about my "lazy college friends who've gone on to lead semi-productive lives" hoping that you and they would understand I consider myself among them. Which, in retrospect, was not so funny.
I've since amended the post.
My point was not railing against anyone using LinkedIn, Friendster, or the like, but rather finding out people that I never, ever expected to see on social networking sites were using them to reach out to me. Which is a phenomenon I still don't quite understand.
But which really didn't need to be the point of a post.
My apologies go out to all those who thought I wanted to LinkOut, hope you'll accept them.
If you're into the Flash world at all and missed this year's FITC Hollywood, you can get a flavor of the event through this clip from blip.tv. (I don't quite no how to turn down the volume of the background so I can hear the interviewees better, but maybe your selective hearing is better than mine.)
If you're interested in learning more about Flash and its capabilities, I highly recommend seeing what events and classes are being held over at LA Flash.
This Saturday at the Henry Fonda Music Box, eight Designers will go head to head to showcase their talent in three, single-elimination rounds in front of a live audience.
Called Cut & Paste, it's a two-year old competition that now spans 12 cities around the globe.
And happily sponsored by AIGA/LA while in town.
All the work will be Webcast globally and projected in real-time for the audience, who can vote on-line for the winner.
And what kind of design-related event would this be if there wasn't an after party? (I hope they're serving something stronger than Keystone Light.)
If you're worried about being slashed by an X-ACTO knife, you should know all cutting and pasting will take place digitally.
Saturday, October 13th, 2007
Doors open at 7pm
Competition from 8 - 11PM
After party from 11PM - 2AM
Better, I say, to dance with the robots... (four prototype robots dancing to Beck's "Hell Yes", that is.)
Or the myriad dancers and choreographers from around the world.
I'm referring to the Slow Dancing exhibit down at the Los Angeles Music Center, which features:
"43 larger-than-life, hyper-slow-motion video portraits of dancers and choreographers from around the world, displayed on multiple screens."
Each dancer does a 5 second dance movement, which is captured on a high-speed camera shooting 1,000 frames per second. The 10 minutes of extreme slo-mo are amazing to watch.
If you're in the ADD crowd, there's a choice of four screens to choose from at any time.
If you're thinking about improving your Flash skills, then you might want to start bugging your boss now for two days off in October. That's when FITC Hollywood, the Rich Media Entertainment Festival will be happening in Universal City. This is THE place to learn, brush up, and network with everything Flash and Rich Media related (thus the name).
Aquent will be sponsoring, as well as Walt Disney Internet Group, Adobe, MTV, our friends at Almer/Blank, and a host of others.
Sessions include:
AfterEffects CS3 for Designers
Flash Animation Workshops
Pricing & Contracts for Digital Media Professionals
AS2 to AS3 Migration
And a lot of workshops I can't even begin to pretend I comprehend.
New this year is a Get a Job Festival in which both freelancers and studios will be given 5 minutes on stage to strut their stuff. For freelancers, that'll mean sharing portfolios and studios (and us) telling you want opportunities they (we) have for you. This is free if you're a freelancer or an attendee.
AIGA OC and Adobe are presenting OC/DC, a one-day CS3 training Saturday, Sept. 22nd down in (where else?) Orange County.
If you're unable to Aquent Graphics Institute's three-day CS3 event in LA on September 11-13 (I can pass along discounts if you're an Aquent Talent or Client) this might be just the thing for you.
Just think, you could be spending your Saturday sweating on the beach or inside an air conditioned auditorium sucking up CS3 info until you pass out from overload.
The choice is up to you.
Discounts not given for people dressing up in school uniforms ala Angus Young.
Oh the promises of CS3! Smoother layout and production workflow,new Find/Replace capabilities, and importation of multiple files at the same time...
Problem is, how the heck are you going to learn all the new bells and whistles when you actually get to sit down at a Mac loaded with CS3?
Happily, I have an answer (but you knew that was coming, right?), go to the 3-day training session on Photoshop, InDesign, Dreamweaver, and Flash run by the Aquent Graphics Institute.
The whole thing's going to be September 11-13, downtown at the Sheraton from 9a to 4p each day. (That is a Tuesday through Thursday thing, in case you were wondering.)
We've got discounts, in case you're a current Aquent Talent or a Client of ours: $79 each day or the full 3-day course is $237. Contact Susie Hall (by clicking here) for details about the discount.
Here's the lowdown:
There are only 90 seats available per day, and they are first-come, first-served.
Since this is a seminar, it's geared towards note-taking and following along, so no need to bring a laptop (in fact, if you do bring a laptop, bring an extra battery - the room is not set up for power for 90 folks)
You will receive a book when you walk into the seminar (more information is on the Web site)
On a side note, I'm in Philly and the Jersey Shore next weekend (I never get to go the beach here), so posting will be sketchy. Not that I'm saying Philly and New Jersey are sketchy places, just that I'll have spotty computer access.
BTW, if you've never seen the Philadelphia Mummers Parade, you should watch this footage. It's, well it's very hard to explain....
Whenever we get together for our Back to School Training every year or so, there's a theme party at the end in which offices are encouraged to dress up.
Previous year themes have been: Dress to Represent Your City. College Daze. Dress Like a Trucker. (Wait, that last one was my birthday party.)
This year it was a question:
What will the people working at Aquent look like 150 years from now?
Tim is right here, at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in Boston, MA with 200 of his favorite colleagues!
It's Aquent's annual group hug with half of the company participating in learning, eating, camaraderie, and the kind of silliness mixed with business Aquent is known for.
Well, I'll post pictures so you can see what I mean.
I could go on and on (and on) with outdated Beastie Boy references, but then I wouldn't be able to tell you about the Craftivism event being hosted by AIGA/LA.
Encouraging artists to get out from behind their Macs and get dirty (hmmm, maybe I could put that better), this event promises to let Designers "exhibit your genius, make
some cash and redesign your community" by selling your handmade wares. See, there's the 'dirty' part: glue, paper cuts, ink.
Booths are really inexpensive, $35 for members and $50 for non-members.
I will be selling paperweights made out of ice cream cake. The million dollar idea I've always dreamed of pursuing.
If you're more Consumer than Crafter, you can get in for a mere ten bucks, buy a bunch of stuff, and tell everyone who comes over to your place that you made it.
Once again, has to be seen to be believed. If you have 8 minutes (exactly) you will see an amazing Photosynth demo from Blaise Aguera y Arcas at Microsoft Live Labs, that will blow your mind.
Watch how far he can zoom into each photo (close enough to see each letter of a newspaper, not the pixels) and the power he has grabbing tagged photos from Flickr.
Thanks to the folks at the TED conference in Monterey for posting the link (and Emily for passing along!)
Here's a fact I didn't know, and me a UCLA Extension student (from AIGA's site):
In 1990, UCLA Extension creative director InJuSturgeon approached a
75-year-old PaulRand with a request to design the cover of their
winter quarter catalog. After much persuasion, Rand replied with a
snow-covered orange that ended up making graphic design history. Since
then, Sturgeon has recruited legends of design to contribute their
interpretation of Southern California culture, resulting in one of the
most sought-after continuing education catalogs in the country�some
people collect these as if they were design magazines themselves.
Thanks to all who showed up at the Kernspiracy Portfolio Review that we sponsored last night.
Far as we can figure, 60+ people were inside and out of the newly expanded Machine Project in Echo Park for two hours of a minglin', reviewin', and wine/beer/water sippin' good time.
Everyone I talked to came away with (far as I can tell) some pretty insightful info about their books. Thanks to Spencer from Kernspiracy for putting this shindig together.
If you went, feel free to email me or leave a comment (in case I didn't talk to you last night), I'd love to hear what you thought.
(And boy do I hate Typepad's ability to lay out pictures. Apologies to all the Designers among you.)
Thought I'd let you know about this Aquent sponsored happening as it's next week! Please use the RSVP address on the invite below if you want to have your book reviewed.
Even if you don't want your book reviewed, feel free to come by (just email me that you're coming!)
Our friends down at LA Flash are hosting two "nanocamps" this Saturday (4/21) on CSS for those in the Web world.
The first is Adobe User Group Manager Chris Charlton's encore presentation to to his popular "Intro to CSS". Immediately following that will be a second-level "Advanced CSS" workshop.
You can get in for the incredibly low, low price of $79 for each workshop with the code 'LAFLASH'.
It's cheaper than filling up your Hummer and much, much less expensive than summer camps for kids. Believe me.
Here's the full skinny:
Date: April 21st Instructor:Chris Charlton Location: Rich Media Institute - 525 Venezia Avenue, Venice, California 90291
Hit the links below to jump to the class page.
Intro to CSS, 9a-1p Students will be shown the pretty faces of CSS. We will cover the What, Why, and How of CSS - theory, code, and practice.
Advanced CSS, 2p-6p Students will take CSS up from controlling styling to controlling layout. Web Usability and Accessibility tips will also appear throughout the course. Workflow and production techniques are fully covered, and students walk away with a more detailed orientation of how CSS is used for every day web design.
And if you haven't signed up for the free Aquent/AMA Webcast on Creative Briefs ("Successful Creative Briefs: Linking Business Objectives and Creative Strategies") be sure to go here and sign up!
The folks over at Rich Media Institute are holding what looks to be a very good two-day workshop this weekend down in Venice.
They've flown Tom Green (the other Tom Green) to help "Flash designers, animators and developers to learn how to use and harness the amazing powers of After Effects." Tom's the author of the brand new book from Friends of Ed entitled 'From After Effects to Flash: Poetry in Motion'.
Let me know if you're interested, because they'll pass along a two-fer-one deal to you.
If your "special someone" is also a Flash designer, animator, or developer, then it looks like you've got Valentine's Day in the bag!
Seems like it was just last week that we moved in and had all the Aquent Talent over for food and drinks.
Wait, it was last week.
I should be thankful, because I hadn't put up the pictures yet. Or maybe you should be thankful, just in case I'm putting up one that you're not so proud of.
It was hard to fit all 168 people in one picture, so we tried to do little groups.
Okay, those are the normal-looking pictures. But we wouldn't be the company that brought you a Mafia-themed holiday party without including a few "not for the corporate newsletter" photos, would we?
It was a happy occasion, but there were sad moments, too.
Even though it had little to do with the theme, Olivia insisted the deer clock score a prominent position for the festivities.
When asked who spilled the red wine on the new carpet, many guests were quick to point the finger.
(It turned out our own Erik spilled it, however, then quickly cleaned it up with a guest.)
Amy's got the look. I think. I think she's got the look. I'm not sure if I remember what the look was.
Maybe it was Myke who had the look...
Here's a party trick: say something offensive to your guest (in this case, Tony), then quickly snap their picture. It's fun!
Some took the Mob theme really to heart. Which was nice to see during the holiday season.
If you weren't one of the 100+ people at APALA's Bowling night at Lucky Strike Hollywood, I'll have to say you missed out on a pretty good time.
Well, aside from the abysmal Hollywood traffic.
The food was plenty and good (more deep fried mac and cheese anyone?), the company friendly, and the bowling... Well, let's just say one Aquenteer dropped the ball behind her causing peals of laughter from her teammates. Happily, she picked it up and quickly bowled a strike.
If you're interested, APALA is hosting a Holiday Party on December 5th (not on their site yet), which they said is going to be chock full of 500 of your favorite Print Production, Traffic, and Creative Studio Managers as well as quite a few vendors. Maybe us, too?
In the meantime, please enjoy some very amateur photography.
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