When I walked into Pearl Street, I had no idea I would soon encounter Mick Jagger’s incarnated self in The Booze’s lead singer Chaz Tolliver; watch a musical giant (quite literally) in Earl Greyhound’s Matt Whyte; or get blasted in the face by OK Go’s confetti canons.

When I walked out of Pearl Street, I had a new expectation for how head-shakingly fantastic every other Tuesday night show should be.

If you get a chance to see any of these bands, I highly recommend it. I can assure you, hearing a recording does not do any of them justice.

Read the entire review here…

And special thanks to @nagelface for the pass hook up and for taking this shot:

myself with drummers extraordinaire PJ Curtis of The Booze + Big Ricc Sheridan of Earl Greyhound

image via http://www.justgetthere.us/blog

If you’ve read my thoughts on ubiquitous music or have been paying any attention to my twitter feed it’s pretty easy to understand why this article by Babak A. Parviz gets my geek up.

Let me visualize, without aid of a mobile device, meta data on things around me and embed a music player in my ear so I can have a constant soundtrack and I would be one happy camper. Really happy. You could cancel my birthday and Christmas for the rest of my life and I’d consider that a fine trade.

Bonus features of the night included talking shop with Ryan’s Smashing Life and Music Savage and meeting videographer Steve Legare.

Read the entire review here…

This morning my buddy Steve shared this @wired video on how they plan on answering everyone’s questions about magazines moving forward in a (hopefully) profitable way in the ever changing face of today’s technology and in the wake of the green movement. Check out the video, more after the jump…

Now what Wired is showing here is by no means shocking to most who might read this, but they are at least at the head of their industry and thinking about not only the content they produce but the medium for which they’re producing it. They talk about controlling the UI with gestures (on devices developed for those types of interaction), contextual linking and interactive, immersive advertising. All great stuff!

But please Wired, don’t stop there. Partner up.

Take a look around at existing services and companies and incorporate them into your product. Take @Jkretch out to lunch and talk about incorporating LiveFyre as a way to implement immediate live conversation about an article or other piece of content, keeping users involved with your brand longer. Grab a drink with the fine folks from Nikon and their social media goldmine Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk ) and discuss using their Virtual Touch software to bring functionality you have available on a few devices (ipad, iphone, etc.) to even more devices, the laptop / home computer / television. Increase your penetration.

One hurdle for these kind of partnerships is the attitude that you need to do everything “in house.” I can’t believe this train of thought will persist too much longer. Given the rate at which technology moves forward (props to Chris Teso of TheGood for hammering Moore’s Law home many, many moons ago) it’s going to be, or is already, a nearly impossible task for a company to remain at the forefront of every technology that it needs to understand and incorporate to truly be a leader in their industry.

There are good reasons why the opensource community is so popular. People share their work, ideas and philosophies so others don’t have to start from scratch or at least to give others an idea of where to start. Why re-invent the wheel when the guy down the street is already riding an Indian motorcycle? The world gets more and more impatient, deadlines get shorter and shorter and projects need to be more and more advanced. Finding qualified partners is the smart thing to do.

The other huge strategic upside to these partnerships is an immediate increase in qualified and interested audience. Instead of using only the Wired portals to start conversations about your new product, now you’ve got a chance to hit Ashton’s 4.5 million (!) followers with a push to go check out what you’re offering.

It just makes sense. And it makes sense for more than just the magazine industry. But perhaps that’s another post.

This slide show is from The Builders and The Butchers record release at the wonder ballroom in PDX with Loch Lomond & Ah Holly Fam’ly.

Check out the entire review right here…

We were lucky enough to get a Kodak Zi6 HD Pocket Cam from my parents for the occasion of Luke’s birth. We didn’t receive it in time for his actual birth, so I wanted to make the first proper video taken to be of him just to kind of christen the camera.

The cam was set in macro mode, which accounts for the natural lens blur. The shaking was added in naturally by lack of sleep + caffeine.

Soundtrack: goodmorning | william fitzsimmons

This series of sites, developed for Regence BCBS, was intended to show that the efforts of one individual can in fact have an effect on the cost of health care in today’s world. Through a series of movies and games, the user is asked to make decisions and unearth information to help them to become more informed patients and consumers.

The campaign also features a social media campaign, out of home, print and video.

roles: concept, producer, strategy, social media

I think it’s partly human nature, for some of us at least, to want to be right all the time. Heck, that trait has almost cost me dearly on a few occasions. But knowing when to raise a hand and spout “mea culpa” is a vital part of building strong relationships in today’s “eyes-on-me” world of real-time communications.

Here’s an example:

This past week, a friend of mine brought me out to see a favorite artist of his, Andrew Bird (side note: is there a more entertaining musical individual out there right now? I’d put him up against almost anyone) and in the very first song that he performed, at probably THE musical climax, the most embarrassing thing that can happen to a singer in front of a packed house happened… he f**ked up the lyrics.

True to his professional reputation, he pushed through the verse and into the instrumental break. During that break, he took the opportunity address the crowd and admit his fault. Immediately thereafter he turned his back to the crowd and hung his head, seemingly in shame.

You know what happened next? The audience burst into applause so loud you couldn’t hear the music. Their musical hero was human and they loved it.

Now, this is an extreme example and obviously Mr. Bird was in a place filled with worshipers in the first place, but the effect of dealing with a mistake appropriately is something that can produce dramatic results and really that should be the objective.

It’s a simple thought really, a vital part of being successful in social media is being authentic. Whether you’re an individual or a large company being represented by individuals, people want to be able to relate to you. Nothing helps people relate like seeing that you make mistakes just like they do. The difficult part comes when you have to decide how to deal with those mistakes. These decisions are especially important when a member or your community has been the recipient of the short end of the stick because of something you said or did. When confronted, some people tend to react quickly in a knee-jerk style that will inevitably make the situation worse. To try and help with times like those, here are a few suggested steps that might be useful:

• Breathe: Take a step back. If you can, approach the situation as if you were a 3rd party. Re-read or re-live what happened to get you to the point you’re at currently at and allow all the information to sink in. If you have the means, maybe even ask a third party for their unbiased opinion.
• Listen first, talk second: Most likely, the person(s) you’re dealing with are passionate about what you’re discussing. Let them know you want to come to a resolution and allow them to state where they’re coming from without getting defensive.
• Common ground: Once you’ve heard what they have to say, proceed to try reach a solution to satisfy both of you. Or, if it’s clearly your fault, make amends.
• Keep it real. And keep it public.: Perhaps one of the most important things you can do is keep the issue public, if that’s the way it started. Like it or not, you’ve got an audience for the whole thing and going off-line for a resolution deprives them from seeing what kind of approach you take to getting there. This is a key chance for you to show people what you’re made of… use it wisely and use it to your advantage.

Having a mistake or fault brought to light in a public manner is never comfortable, but it is a significant chance for you or your brand to turn those involved (and those observing) in enthusiastic brand advocates and fans.

So don’t be afraid to be unperfect.

Agree? Disagree? Have other thoughts as to important things to keep in mind when dealing with this type of situation? I’d love to hear it all. Leave comments here or get @ me on twitter

Currently working with design legend and all around bad ass Austin Howe on getting the word out about his new book Designer’s Don’t Read, preaching and practicing some interactive and social media strategy with Matt @ Factory 25, helping out Pascal @ booquet, cranking out ridiculous iPhone apps with Kyle from Big Sprocket and just accepted a post as an associate editor (as well as photographer and writer) with melophobe.com ( @melophobe ). Honestly, I think I did that more to remind me what to do tomorrow than to tell you all whats going on.

OK, back to the point of this post. I was discussing a social media strategy with Matt from Factory 25 today and he asked if there was a good rule he should be following on twitter for the ratio of personal content to content relating information about his products. There are a ton of posts about twitter’s golden ratio being friends to followers, but isn’t the real golden ratio to be found in the ratio of the kind of content you’re putting out?

My first reaction to Matt’s question was to recoil in horror. OK not horror, but I’ll admit it hurt a little. I hated to think that something that I feel is so organic and based on relationships could have a “golden rule.” I mean it’s all about conversations and not campaigns right (thanks for that @mzkagan)? Be genuine and passionate about what you’re talking about and good things will happen. Surely this is more art than science right?

I’m sure there will be both scientific and go-on-your-gut approaches to this question, but before we go that far we really need to define the kinds of content a little further. Matt originally thought that there were two kinds of content, marketing his goods and relaying information. I know some reports have broken twitter content down into 20 or so themes, but really that would make for one messy ratio. To make it easier, lets say there are three kinds of tweets, ones that are:

1. marketing something (even if it’s yourself)
2. relaying relevant & interesting information
3. expressing personal feelings or things unrelated to what you’re marketing and having conversations

Even writing that I realize that if what you’re marketing is yourself then 1 & 3 are pretty much the same thing, but for the rest of this post, let’s assume that what’s being marketed is goods and not personal services or a personality.

While I haven’t done any solid research on the subject, my initial response was to try out a ratio of 1 (marketing someting) : 2 (relaying information) : 2 (personal & conversational). Going on the idea that even on a heavy day Matt would probably be posting 10 tweets, that would mean two of them were product related, four were industry/entertainment related and four were personal & conversational.

Would love to hear other kinds of crazy math pertaining to this subject…