Category Archives: Uncategorized

Housekeeping, life updates and other bits without a natural fit

Why I decided to stop posting to Tumblr

With a presence on various platforms – here, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr – I’ve been wondering how to balance  them all without publishing the same stuff in every space. In particular, I’ve been wrestling with the question of how to get myself to blog more. If you’re a writer, you tend to write because you have something in you that needs to be expressed.  And writing it – as opposed to putting it in a song or delivering a monologue – is the best way to express it.

I have those moments and Twitter, for the better and the worse, is the way I usually do it.

For the better because, as an outlet, Twitter is immediate and anywhere, if my phone is available. The laptop doesn’t need to be opened nor do I need to bother with logging in to WordPress, writing a headline, etc. And if it’s only a thought then that’s just fine. No need to climb the hill of composing a full essay.

For the worse because, honestly, becoming a better writer and having some permanence to my writing would be nice. Sure, Twitter forces you to omit needless words, but really digging in on something and not having to scroll back through countless posts to find it would be virtues. How best to take the good and leave the bad?

The “if this, then that” statement I’ve come up with here is if I’ve got three tweets or more to say on a subject, then it’s probably worth a blog post. Not a blog post instead of tweets – and probably not a Storify of posts either unless I’m feeling lazy as that still leaves the problem of having work I’ve done locked up in someone else’s space – but a blog post after the fact, using Twitter as a first draft. Three tweets seems a good number because that’s around 50-100 words which could stand on their own or easily extend into 250 with a few additional thoughts (I’m hitting about the 300-word mark now, for instance). With WordPress’s app, I could even do most of the work on my phone and save it for editing later. This process seems like a good way to encourage blogging without holding myself back from tweeting on the regular.

Even a comment on Facebook might end up as a post, which is what happened when my browser crashed as I was leaving a comment on a Facebook link Marcus posted to his story. Jolted into a realization that I was once again putting a bunch of time and thought into creating work on a platform that wasn’t mine, I threw together a quick post, which got picked up here and here. It’s always the stuff you toss off in a hurry that ends up resonating. There’s something to be learned there.

Seeing what happened with that post was the last push I needed to officially step away from Tumblr. I started on Tumblr in 2008, but mostly used it as an RSS feed from my blog (this post was an exception) until I was canned from Playboy and then really got into it, mostly because I had plenty of time on my hands. The Tumblr bookmarklet allowed me to combine the speed of Twitter with the weightiness of blogging. I’d grab a quick pull quote from a piece and respond without the concern of 140 characters. Loved it.

After a while though the constant outages made me wonder if I was spending a bunch of time on something that was too ephemeral. The last one in November lasted two days and prompted my break. Even now, I tried to find a few posts of value there and got hung up on its lousy search function. (It’s 2013, Tumblr, why don’t you have a decent search function? Compare this keyword search on Tumblr with this search I ran on my Tumblr via Google.) Then I figured out how to create a similar WordPress bookmarklet and create posts like this and that was the death knell for my posts there. I’ll still keep an account there because even in the three-month break from writing on Tumblr, I still enjoyed reading posts from people I follow there.  But it will likely be little more than an RSS feed to this blog.

It just became too important to me to own as much of the work I was doing online as possible. I’ll still post regularly on Twitter because what it gives me is as great as what I feel I’m giving to it. Tumblr stopped delivering on its end of that bargain so I found another way to keep writing.

Curious though: Am I alone here? Have other folks who publish on various free platforms thought about any of this?

UPDATE: Kiyoshi Martinez posted a thoughtful reply to this post here – on Tumblr (heh). He cites the lack of maintenance, the reblogging and the inherent social networking features as reasons that drew him to Tumblr after a less than ideal WordPress adventure. On my Facebook page, Jaime Black praised many of these same features, especially Tumblr’s speed. All solid counterarguments and reasons why I was initially drawn to the platform.

Also on Facebook, I reiterated the outage-induced ephemeral feeling I’d been getting from Tumblr lately and John Morrison said he felt similarly about what he’d done on Gowalla and wondered if Everyblock fans were feeling the same way now, a point I hadn’t thought about until he said it.

And in case you didn’t see the pingback, Matt Wood had some things to say about the above. Interestingly, he notes his post was initially going to be a comment here but he decided to make it a blog post for himself, which echoes what I was saying above about wanting to have more of an owned archive of what I create online. (Incidentally, this also led me to create this page.)

If you’re interested in this kind of discussion, you should come to this event on Monday. I’ll be on the panel there and Jaime is hosting it so we’re sure to get into more of these kinds of issues.

 

A few more words on 2013 Super Bowl ads and social media

This week, I participated in a live chat about 2013 Super Bowl ads and social media’s influence on them. Today.com writer Ben Popken and I discussed whether previews of the ads detract from the “big reveal,” why companies  spend so much money for a Super Bowl ad and how negative publicity affects ads.

As usual, I over-prepped and I had a few more thoughts that we didn’t discuss so I’m dropping them here.

Lots of television programming can be time-shifted; the value of them doesn’t go away when you watch them an hour later, a day later or even months later. You feel a little left out of the conversation but you get caught up.

Live sports events and awards shows, on the other hand, have way more cachet as they’re happening – both in social and offline. People move on from a discussion of these events much faster than, say, a show like Breaking Bad, which has so much time in between seasons that you can get “in the know” again and still be ready to go when new episodes start up again.

All this – plus a stat that says 36% of people will use a “second screen” when they watch the game this year – helps to explain why so many advertisers are going after the social media/digital audience in the Super Bowl this year: Lincoln had audiences help write its ad, Volkswagen created a teaser filled with viral video personalities, Psy is in a pistachios ad and Coke has an ad fueled by a real-time hashtag.

Advertisers want to say X people saw the ad or participated in the campaign and they want that X number to be as big as possible. It’s not enough to just get the passive TV audience, they want eyes from everywhere including those that are attached to an active social audience. The glut of post-Super Bowl ad conversation only room for the top 3 or best/worst ads. If you’re an advertiser, you don’t want to have to depend on making those lists, you want to get people talking about the ad prior to the game, during the game AND after. So a preview ad, the actual ad and a hashtag help to drive all that (it’s more complicated than I am making it sound but that’s the gist).

A few things I’ll be keeping my eyes on this year:

* Sexy ads are always a given (check out this list of racy ads; I’m quoted in the PETA discussion) but the real winners this year will be the ones where the sexy woman is the one controlling the action instead of being manipulated by it (as in this Fiat spot). I’m not sure, but I bet the Mercedes-Benz ad with Kate Upton will break that way.

* Shazam had a good 2012 Super Bowl but this should be the year it goes wide. They’ve been a bit quiet about their Super Bowl presence, which I don’t get at all so they may be going for the surprise factor.

* GIFs will probably jump the shark in 2013 but this year’s Super Bowl coverage will be lousy with them.

And some ads to watch for during the game:

The ads for Lincoln, Best Buy (with Amy Poehler!), Mercedes Benz (with Usher and Diddy) and Coke ads will all do well and as I said in the chat, the “Fashionista Daddy” ad will end up winning the Doritos contest. But the Hyundai ads will have a solid impact, too, even though they’re not flashy. The Flaming Lips song featured in one of them is aimed at the social media crowd and the Don’t Tell Mom ad has a nice punchline. The Soda Stream ad will likely make an impact, too, as they’ve had a buzz due to their first ad getting rejected. View them both here. Getting an ad in the Super Bowl definitely gives you some prestige so 2013 will be the year you hear about lots of folks getting one at home.

Other ads to watch for will be from M&Ms, Anheuser-Busch (featuring their famous Clydesdales), Chrysler, Oreo, Walking Dead, and Cars.com. None of them were previewed online except for Cars.com so they’re all hoping to make a big splash. Even the Cars.com ad preview played it close to the vest.

The ads that will probably end up on a lot of worst lists? Axe, E-Trade and GoDaddy. They’re all mining stale territory, though GoDaddy promises to redefine sexy somehow, which is totally what you expect from a Internet domain provider.

For a complete list of who’s buying what in the Super Bowl, check out this Ad Age list. Most of the previewed commercials are on this Facebook page.

End times

I’m taking this week off before I start the new gig. A few stray observations that have been floating through my head on the crossover of work and personal lives.

* My list of things to do on my last day included five tasks that involved deleting cloud-based software programs (for productivity and file management, mostly) from my work computer that contain a mix of personal and professional data. Not counting removing work email access from my personal cell phone. Or removing access to work accounts from my social media tools. I’m not the first person to note the intertwined nature of work and personal time but it does seem for certain kinds of jobs it’s impossible to separate one from the other, especially if being “good” at your job means being aware of potential work issues quickly. There’s a longer post in here somewhere.

* It took me only 15 minutes to pack up my personal stuff in my office like photos, desk items, business cards and the like. I still had to sort through paper and electronic files and emails, but any trace of my personality was in a box in less time than it takes to watch a DVR’d episode of The Daily Show. (A co-worker compared the look of my office in the last week to a dorm on move-out day.) Armchair psychology might say this is the result of getting canned from a job prior to this one and never quite settling in the way I did there. For crying out loud, I got to select artwork from my office in the last gig. So maybe on a subconscious level, I wanted to keep the outward appearance of personal involvement in this job to a minimum in case it was suddenly taken away from me. Or maybe I’m just really good at packing when it doesn’t involve clothes.

* If it’s possible, find a way to make your last day a victory lap. Don’t schedule any meetings, don’t have any major tasks to accomplish, have your workspace and hard drive cleaned up already, etc. Just leave your final day for has-to-be-done-on-the-last-day stuff like turning in key cards, deleting the last of your emails and what have you

What’s new here

As I mentioned in the previous post, I’ve made some tweaks to the site that brought it more in line with what I wanted when I moved to WordPress: a better showcase for the work I’m doing across many platforms. The navbar at the top of the site will take you into pages on ourmaninchicago.net that show you what I’m doing on Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram (you can also see my LinkedIn profile or grab my RSS feed). Widgets in the right rail will also display that content. I’m pretty pleased with the Tumblr and Instagram widgets (these are powered by the WP Tumblr and Instagram for WordPress plugins, respectively) but the Twitter widget is a bit of an eyesore. Tried a few different ones without much success and landed on Twitter Widget Pro because it was the only one that allowed me to filter out @ replies and actually worked. It’s not perfect but as my wife says “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

I’m doing all this not to create a walled garden but to provide a peek at those spaces for people who are interested and might want to follow me there. (I’m ourmaninchicago on Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram if you do.) It also keeps the site from looking so dead and me from looking so lazy.

I don’t want to duplicate here what I’m doing in those various spaces – though you can see I experimented a bit with creating posts from Instagram pictures (Instagrate for WordPress makes this really easy). I’m a big believer in writing or creating content specific to a platform, which is why I’ve decided to mostly reserve this space for longer-form content or stuff that doesn’t seem to fit anywhere else.

Welcome back

As I said, I’m still making changes here but I’m officially relaunching this blog as a place for longer pieces about the professional and the personal. When I first started this blog on Blogger in 2007, it was media-focused. Around 2009 and into 2010, the frequency of my writing here decreased. I’d been spending more time on Twitter and most days it was enough of an outlet for me. Plus, I was pretty unhappy at my job at this time and after a day spent in media I wasn’t much interested in writing about it. When I got fired, I really got going on my Tumblr blog and I kept this space for more personal posts or text versions of readings I’d done around town.

I’m hoping to bring all of this together here now, including my work on Twitter and Tumblr.

The categories are, for the most part, self-explanatory. Uncategorized is a place for housekeeping matters, life updates and stuff that just doesn’t fit anywhere else.  Some things aren’t quite in their right places after the move but that’s life.

Speaking of, my efforts to redirect all the links from my old blog to the new were for naught despite three nights of trying. So I’m leaving the old blog up until I end up in the hospital with a broken leg and have so many hours to kill that I fix all the links manually. Until there, here is a selection of posts from over the last four years of this blog (links for which have all been updated).

The day my daughter Abigail was born.

When Erin and I got married on the Internet (not really).

My Paper Machete pieces on the Chicago mayoral race and Rahm Emanuel.

The evolution of my thoughts on the color pink, why comic books are for girls and how to find superheroines for your daughter to emulate.

Why I think social media is important for journalists.

How I learned to stop worrying and love the Christmas.

I might be the reason why Lady Gaga is blonde now.

Open letters to a guy at my gym, Marilyn Manson and Nine West.

The time I met Faces keyboardist Ian McLagan and he was really nice.

A deconstruction of the announcement that a guy in a Filipino Journey cover band would be the new lead singer of…Journey.

My issues with R. Kelly, Parts 1 and 2.

1000 words on The Ultimate Coyote Ugly Search.

The time I offered free non-alcoholic beer on Craigslist. And who I gave  it to.

80s metal, starring White Lion and Lita Ford.

A really good recipe for salmon burgers.

My "Who Knew?" Essay for 20×2 10.5

20×2 is an annual event (it started in 2001) at Austin’s SXSW with some “half-year” events in other cities. Each 20×2 event asks 20 presenters to answer the same question through video, song, spoken word or some other form of expression.

Last night, I read the following at the first Chicago 20×2 event co-organized by Andrew Huff and Gapers Block and held at Martyrs’ in North Center. I was blown away by how talented everyone was at 20×2 10.5. It makes me so proud to live in a city that can host a stellar event like this. I’m lucky and honored to be counted in their number.

Each presenter was asked to create a two-minute piece that answered the question “Who Knew?” This was what I read:

This afternoon, my fellow presenter Claire Zulkey and I were discussing what we were going to perform tonight and I said I was still a bit adrift because I’d discarded my initial idea: reading a fictional letter from Who Knew Reputation Management Services, a company hired by a potential candidate for elected office named Ron Wellington. The letter I was reading was the result of their findings. The main reason I’d stuck with the idea for so long was I had what I thought was a great joke about the company flagging a potential trouble spot for Ron Wellington’s campaign: The fact that he’d liked a Facebook page called “Who Wants To See A Picture Of Ron Wellington’s Balls.” And the kicker was he’d created the page himself.

[By the way, if you’re paying attention, you’ve now realized this was just a cheap way to include the balls joke and still discard everything else. I’m sorry, I have a really juvenile sense of humor and I think the word “balls” is hilarious.]

Anyway, I told Claire I was having trouble coming up with an alternate idea and she suggested Googling the phrase “Who Knew” and using that as inspiration. In doing so, I found a book titled Who Knew: A Continuation of You Never Know: A Memoir which I found really impressive because I didn’t realize you could get two colons in a book subtitle.

But in trying to answer the question “Who Knew?” I kept coming back to what initially sounded like a very pompous answer: “I knew.” And by that I meant “I knew the answer to a question even though I pretended like I didn’t.”

For example, when I asked my first wife if she missed me after we’d spent a few days apart and she said “Mmmmm…no, not really,” I didn’t think I knew. But I knew.

Then when I met a woman who liked drinking Maker’s Mark and thought the word “balls” was funny, I knew. I didn’t think I knew. But I knew.

When I was at Metro and felt this really peculiar rumbling in my stomach and wondered if I should leave the show then, instead of waiting it out and hoping for the best, I knew.

Ten minutes later when I was running like hell down Addison and trying to keep from crapping my pants, I really knew.

The point is: The more you try and distract yourself, the more likely it is that you’re avoiding the answer you already know. And it’s an answer that’s as obvious as a joke about Ron Wellington’s balls.

Diving off a different platform

In the month since this happened, I’ve been keeping myself busy with a few things:

1. House-husband-ing
2. Lawn care
3. Beer
4. Tumblr

You can see my work on the latter here.

Why there and not here? The simple answer is that Tumblr allows for quicker publishing of small items that I don’t feel are worth a post here because I usually reserve this space for longer discourse or because the subject matter isn’t quite apropos to what I cover here.