Chris Abraham » boston

DC Avoided the Blizzard Proving Secret Weather Machine

Chris Abraham — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 14:13:50 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

On No Agenda and DSC, crackpot Adam Curry talks about the secret weather machine that controls the weather and attacks with earthquakes, famine, and the like. Well, both Heather Goss and I think maybe Adam’s right, according to D.C. Had Its Snow Shields Up Yesterday

We have to give credit to the Capital Weather Gang for noting this hilarious image of yesterday’s snowstorm from NOAA. Yes, that’s a big blanket of white stuff coating the hundreds and hundreds of square miles over the entire northern half of the United States … everywhere except the tiny pocket around Washington, D.C

Well, I was in DC as the December 2010 blizzard hit to the left and right, leaving a small pocket of complete snowlessness! I mean, check out this NOAA map — see that wee little green dot? That’s DC and Northern Virginia!

What Do You Tip Your Hotel Maids?

Chris Abraham — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 15:51:17 +0000

What is your rule of thumb for tipping hotel maids? The New York Times suggests $5/day. What do you tip? Four nights at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in Cambridge, Boston, Massachusetts. Is it flat-fee, based on nightly rate, based on city?

The Boston T Subway is So Self-Referential

Chris Abraham — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 18:00:15 +0000

Boston T is so self-referential: either away from Boston Common or towards (Outbound/Inbound). Not based on end-stations like DC or NYC, but direction related to your commute. So funny. Like Mauka and Makai (towards the mountain or towards the sea) in Hawaii.

Gary Vaynerchuk Reveals How to Crush It!

Chris Abraham — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 17:22:23 +0000

Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk is for sure written by a motivational speaker; however, it was also written by a phenomenally-successful self-made businessman and social media maven. Rare is the motivational business book with an actual flight plan and pre-flight check list.

The book was written by dictation, is very spoken-word and accessible, and ends up mixing cocksuredness with earnestness in such a way that is very appealing.

What makes this potentially hubristic book work is that Gary throws open all the windows, doors, closets, and cabinets in his life and his business, revealing his entire coming up, his relationship with business, his passion for sports and for finding unfulfilled markets and fulfilling them.

What is revealed is that there is no overnight superstars and you cannot make money fast and that the real world doesn’t goIPO 18-months after launch. He reveals that you need to roll up your sleeves and go for the long haul and in reward you’ll probably be able to make fifty-grand for all your hard work — but, doing what you love and what pops you up first light and puts you to bed just before dawn.

Even though this book will motivate you to ignite your passion, here’s some insight into some of topics based on chapter titles: 1: Passion is Everything, 2: Success is in Your DNA, 3: Build Your Personal Brand, 4: A Whole New World, 5: Create Great Content, 6: Choose Your Platform, 7: Keep it Real … Very Real, 8: Create Community: Digging Your Internet Trench, 9: The Best Marketing Strategy Ever, 10: Make the World Listen, 11: Start Monetizing, 12: Roll with It, 13: Legacy is Greater Than Currency, Conclusion: The Time is Now, the Message is Forever, Appendix A: Did You Forget Anything?, Appendix B: Five Business Ideas I Won’t Get to — They’re Yours.

The book starts with three rules that set the tone and are echoed again and again throughout the book: Love you family, work superhard (sic), and live your passion.

What Gary offers in very casual, spoken, everyman prose is the answers to how to channel your passion, what real hustle looks like, how to attract advertisers, why building a personal brand through social media is crucial, why your business should be build on your personal brand, how social networking can find your next financial opportunity, how companies should use social networks to share their story and brand, how to build legacy — worth more than money — to build a successful brand.

One thing I found interesting — and unique — in a motivational business book is that Vaynerchuk spent the entire book insisting on a long-game. He tends to offer the sort of advice my grandfather might offer: take care of your family and make sure your family and you are happy, through hard work and through devoting your life to your career and your business — build it up and keep working your entire life, if that’s what it takes.

Do not buy the house in order to flip it, buy the house to live in it, restore it, and give it to your children.

This is sobering advice from someone who often sounds like he’s trying to get us rich quick. In other words, I am amazed and impressed by this moral motivational treatise that is actually antithetical to most modern passion-fueled motivational business books.

The book is almost entirely self-centered. The brands of Gary Vaynerchuk, WineLibraryTV, Wine Library NJ, VaynerMedia and the Vaynerchuk family are the source of all of the narratives, which is fine because that’s what Gary knows and what Mark Twain recommends, “write what you know.” I know that while I couldn’t help but see this self-made man and think about that hackneyed NYC joke,

Q: How do you make 50-million dollars?
A: Start with 5-million dollars

When Gary tells of how he turned his father’s $5M liquor store into a $50M wine super-store, but even these contradictions don’t work against the narrative and good advice because theVaynerchuks are a very tight clan and Gary was there all the way from the beginning and the beginning includes emigrating from Belarus in 1979 as a family, immigrating to Queens with nothing, his dad take a job as a stock boy in a liquor store, and then buying the store, buying another store, building a business, and passing his DNA of work and family to his son, Gary.

This really is an American rags-to-riches story and Gary is a rare bird for exposing himself so completely and sharing his successes and challenges with a great deal of earnestness.

I must admit that I am not a wine connoisseur so I never cottoned to watching Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) every week on his WineLibraryTV video blog. Shame on me because I really never got to know “Gary Vee” until I heard him speak at the end of August at the Gravity Summit in Boston at Harvard. It was then when I asked him for a preview of his upcoming book, Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion.

I was inspired by his talk (watch it on YouTube, part 1 , part 2). Gary motivated and delighted me with his passion and old-world advice: love your family, work hard, and follow your passion. If you like his keynote and you feel his passion and if you feel your heart race a little just thinking about dumping your current job and crushing it through passion, blood, and sweat, this book’s for you.

If you don’t end up falling in love with Gary, though, this might not be the book for you.

This is a very personal book that will help break everything down for you. He doesn’t just tell you that you can do it, Gary actually breaks down his entire brand, all the successes he has had, and all of the processes and habits and hard work he does — yes, he even gets to all of his email via gary@vaynermedia.com (try it) — and tell the reader which social networks to use, which video-sharing sites (he likes Viddler because the signal to noise ration is better), and the kind of detail people will find rewarding such as how to monetize, how to find sponsors and advertising dollars, and how it is essential not to obsess about traditional media metrics, analytics, and web site hits — to think longer-term — not how many people visit but who.

Gary saves a gift for the end Crush It! Appendix A offers what I like to call a “pre-flight check-list” wherein he creates a list (a wine-reduction, if you will) of all the steps that you should go through and check off — 21 steps you really should take on your way towards building your own personal brand.

Hell, the book is wee — only 137 pages — and I read it in one-hour at the gym on the machines. Was it worth my hour? Well, for $13.49 on Amazon it’s a no-brainer. Even for the $19.99 listed on the dust jacket and what you’ll pay at your local bookstore, it still will get your juices going and I am told that these days anything that can get your juices going in this economy is priceless.

Via SocialMedia.Biz and Marketing Conversation

Virtual Communities are Authentic and Real Families

Chris Abraham — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:37:15 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

“As long as the roots of relationship are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the community’s garden. There will be growth in the spring!”
– Chauncey Gardiner, from Being There

Online communities are not virtual. They don’t exist only in the bits and bytes on the series of pipes known as the interwebs. To the contrary, I have found, in the 26-years that I have been online, that the relationships and bonds that people form online are not only real but in many cases are more authentic because they’re chosen by each member rather than being thrust upon them by history, family, or cultural expectations.

Connectivity
Before the advent of the Internet, folks needed to physically move places to find birds of a feather—people like them. Affinity groups were hard to come by, so if you were smart, you’d go away to college; actors went to LA, writers went to New York; if you happened to be alt-boy or alt-girl, then the cities called, or Europe. Birds of a feather flock together, after all—everybody hungers to find others like them. Post-internet, nothing has changed for some people—plenty of smart kids still flock to Boston every year—but everything’s changed for lots others.

I bought my first computer in 1983 and even back then, folks were in search of each other at the end of the beep beep beep tone of a 300 baud modem. That beep beep beep screech was the sound of folks searching for and finding each other.

Online communities are an extension-of-reach of this same desire to find people and connect with them. Even if the person you see when you wake-up doesn’t get you, even if your parents and those losers at school don’t get you, even if you have a deep secret, you are never stuck—you can supplement the demands of your daily commitments with people who don’t merely come close to meeting you on the same general ground of interest but your exact twin.

When you meet your twin—when you meet lots and lots of people just like you—you are then free to be open and honest. Everyone understands you . . . better than your own mum. You have time to bond, connect, and simply spend time together.

Evolving beyond Second Life
I’m talking about self-organized, self-sustaining communities of purpose, communities of action, communities of circumstance, communities of interest, communities of inquiry, communities of position, communities of place, and communities of practice—real people, bonded into a tribe, protective of the members of their family. I will say that the Second Life Community takes care of its own. They love each other, they protect each other, they take care of each other, and they stick up for each other.

Second Life is the modern exemplar of how and why online communities are authentic—even though one can (and often does) hide behind a posh and dead-sexy avatar and a posh and dead-sexy nom de plume. Second Life might even be more authentic because it allows members to cast-off the shackles of family names and the genetic inheritance of body and shape, and redefine oneself as one desires to be—arguably, as one is more authentic on Second Life, where one may become the man or woman (or purple pony) that one is on the inside.

Marketers need to recognize that every Second Life (SL) and World of Warcraft (WoW) avatar is a person pouring time and resources into community, that every tweet by every tweeter through every Twitter handle is a person who has taken finite time and resources and poured it into community, and every blog post by every blogger are time, energy, and resources that could be spent elsewhere and elsewise, are spent on the blog and this time and energy is shared with the blogger’s community in comments and conversation.

These are really wonderful people who actually are willing to meet you halfway towards friendship. They’re not an exclusionary boarding school, they’re an “inclusionary” public school—open to everyone! I’m not playing “tra-la-la” here, however, because even in a school with open admissions, there are groups of smart kids, cool kids, quiet kids, trolls, lurkers, and losers. As a marketer or as a corporate entity, you enter the online world as the new kid. Folks are, by their very nature, skeptical and you will probably be approached and challenged to see where you are in your intent, where you are in the pecking order, and which table you’re going to have lunch at.

That’s the good news…
If you want to become part of the conversation, if you want to market or engage with online communities and online citizens, if you want to leverage their reputation and tap their community and influence, you need to make the same sort of real effort that you would if it were neighbors in your new neighborhood, if it were parents in the PTA, or even all of the editors, writers, and journalists you currently covet in the big rolodex cheese wheel you still maintain on your desk as the only representation of how powerful your years of work have made you.

What does it all mean?

Virtual community is not fun and games, really—it’s serious business just the same way that the Red Sox might seem like a game but it’s serious business. Mess with the Sox and you’re messing with Boston.
When someone enters a community online, you’re not just dealing with people who happen to live in the same city or neighborhood, you’re dealing with people who have filtered to that online space from around the entire globe.
Finally, if you engage, you’re not on holiday—even when you’re on holiday you’re not on holiday because all of the people you meet wherever you are—even on holiday—are real people. Just because the people around you in Hawaii make you feel loved and adored, you’re still a paycheck to them.

I promise you that if you’re willing and able to do the above, you will have a rich and rewarding experience—you, your brand, and your company.

(Via the Communispace blog & Socialmedia.biz & Marketing Conversation)

Thank You Half-Marathon Fresh Air Bloggers

Chris Abraham — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 13:31:32 +0000

The response by bloggers to Fresh Air Fund‘s call to help promote the Fresh Air Fund-Racers has been amazing and inspiring, well before the event on August 16. Both the Fresh Air Fund and Abraham Harrison are always amazed and grateful at all the earned-media support we receive from bloggers. Thank you, each and every one of you! We’re much obliged! (Via Abraham Harrison)

Thank You Fresh Air Fund Camp Counselor Bloggers!

Chris Abraham — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 21:06:19 +0000

Fresh Air Fund not only needs host families, donations, and children every year, FAF also needs camp counselors to staff the summer camps every year. The Fresh Air Fund and Abraham Harrison LLC reached out and over 120 bloggers and Twitterers responded to the call. We thank you all very much and we appreciate all of your hard work on Fresh Air Fund’s behalf! Much obliged!

Fresh Air Fund Looking for Help via Three Rivers Episcopal
Hiring Camp Counselors for This Summer! via The Abraham & Harrison Blogger blog
Fresh Air Fund via All Said and Done
Fresh Air Fund via Reflective Ponderings
banner via Spectrum, Apex College
Now Hiring: Fresh Air Fund Summer Camp Staff via Assertagirl
Old-School Fun via Half the Sins of Mankind
Fresh Air Fund Looking for Summer ’09 Counselors via Best View in Brooklyn
Wednesday, February 11, 2009 via Ghana for a While
Fresh Air Fund, Non Profit, Now Accepting Applications from Gen Y for Summer Jobs via The Orrell Group
Fresh Air Fund Needs Counselors for Summer 2009! via Chris Abraham
The Fresh Air Fund via Brilliance or Madness
Hiring Camp Counselors for This Summer! via Chris Abraham Social Media PR & Blogging Expert
Hiring For Camp Counselor Jobs via Chris Abraham’s Weblog
The Fresh Air Fund! via Around the World in beautiful Shoes
the fresh air fund JOBS via Around the World in beautiful Shoes
Information via Because I’m Cool Like That…
Fresh Air Fund Now Accepting Applications for Counselors via Danny Fisher
Fresh Air Fund via Chen Chow
Hiring Camp Counselors for This Summer! via April 24th Blogging Basics
Hiring Camp Counselors for This Summer via My Blog
Hiring Camp Counselors for This Summer! via Chris Abraham
Hiring Camp Counselors for This Summer via Chris Abraham Ceci N’est Pas Un Blog
Help inner-city kids enjoy a summer vacation via Christifideles
Fresh Air Fund and saying no to buracracy via My Time in Cape Verde with Peace Corps
Hiring Camp Counselors for This Summer! via Official Colexica Blog
The Fresh Air Fund Needs Counselors for the Summer of ’09 via Make it Happen
Senator John Cornyn;Texas’ Embarrasment! via Dicky’s Doodles &Scribbles
Michael Steele; The Putney Swope Of The GOP via Dicky’s Doodles &Scribbles
From the Mailbag: Fresh Air Fund Needs Counselors for Summer 2009! via Epluribus Media
Rethinking Fresh Air via Rethinking Life
The Fresh Air Fund: Needs Counselors for the Summer of ’09! via Faithful Progressive
Your Money: The Fresh Air Fund via Cute, Cuddly, and Cannibalistic
Hiring Camp Counselors for This Summer! via Fresh Air Fund
Hiring Camp Counselors for the Summer via Fresh Air Fund Blog
Do Something Good: The Fresh Air Fund via Gingerbread Latte: The E! True Hollywood Story
2009: THE FRESH AIR FUND: VOLUNTEERS NEEDED via Tom Glover’s Hamilton Scrapbook
2/4/09 PRESS RELEASE: Fresh Air Fund via Greenwich Roundup: This Just In ……
From Ashton Kutcher to Soup: Super Bowl Giving via Have Fun Do Good
Fresh Air Fund via The Common Room
Fresh Air via The Hosanna Road
Link via Whole
Fresh Air Fund via Rickety Contrivances of Doing Good
Wednesday, February 11, 2009 via In the Direction of my Daydreams
The Fresh Air Fund via About.com Internships
A Peal via Jakartass
Wednesday, February 4, 2009 via Happy at HFC
The Fresh Air Fund Needs Counselors via Jewels of My Heart
The Fresh Air Fund via Following My Heart
THE FRESH AIR FUND 2009 via Whykay’s Happenings
Fresh Air Fund via Keokuk Radio News Blog
Kill Jill Turns One! :D via Kill Jill Goes to College
Volunteering= Good for the Soul via La Petite Fashionista
The Fresh Air Fund Wants You! via I Say Hella
Hiring Camp Counselors for This Summer! via Memes.org
Looking For A Summer Job? Give Back! via Micah Jesse Blog
via Mind Warriors
Fresh Air Fund Needs Counselors for Summer 2009! via Blah Blah Babycakes
Fresh Air Fund via Money Amulet
Philanthropy: The Fresh Air Fund via Movable Hype
The Fresh Air Fund via Beyond the Clouds
Fresh Air via Neringa’s Corner
The Hot Club of San Francisco takes audience to a simpler time via Ocolly.com
Make a difference this summer: leave home via Our pdx Network
Monday Afternoon Dept of Failures & Such via Page One
Long overdue… via Fijate que…Life of an El Salvador RPCV
My Favorite Links via Peace Corps Diary: Botswana 2008
Link via Pine Ridge Reflections
Fresh Air Fund Needs Counselors: Summer’09 via Pro Equestrian World Edition
Fresh Air Fund Needs Counselors: Summer’09 via REVISTA PROEQUESTRIAN ROMANIA
Get a Job! The Fresh Air Fund via Punk Rock
Fresh Air Fund Looking for Counselors via Ned Resnikoff
Hot fun in the city… via RoadTurn: Reflections on Life
Hiring Camp Counselors for This Summer! via The Russell Pike Blog
Banner via Salamu Kenya!
FRESH AIR FUND COUNSELORS via Samotalis
Make a Difference – Support the Fresh Air Fund! via In The South, We’re Not Crazy…We’re Eccentric!
The Fresh Air Fund via Shamazing
Hiring Camp Counselors for This Summer! via SMNR Social Media News Room
Wanted: Counselors who enjoy Fresh Air via Star City Harbinger
FYI – summer camp counselors needed via Steph in Burkina Faso
Volunteer as a Fresh Air Fund Counselor via System 13
Banner via Tangocherie
Link via Livin’ la Vida Loca: Peace Corps DR!
Sure, I’ll Support Your Camp, As Long As It Isn’t Jesus Camp via The Political Blog For Cynical Millennials
“Fresh Air” for Children via The Buddha Diaries
LINK via Third Mom
Fresh Air Fund is looking for a few good counselors via Left of Centre
Tweet via Blog Business World
Who says there are no jobs? Get a summer one! With Fresh Air Fund. http://tinyurl.com/6qkwwp via Young Manhattanite
Tweet via Lindsey Pollak
Tweet via Thoughts from Meggie Poo
Tweet via Deb’s Search and Rescue Stories
Fresh Air Fund Job Opportunities via Volunteer Boston: Get On Your Feet
Fresh Air Fund via Winny & B
Fresh Air Fund Camp Counselor Opportunities via Boarding School Blog
The Fresh Air Fund via Novel Inspiration
Camp Out & Change Lives! via Bare Essentials
The Fresh Air Fund needs Summer Counselors via Blogging for Business
banner via Bloody Brilliant
Counselors for 09 Summer Camps Required via Cop Recruiter
Change a Young Life this Summer via Everyday Giving Blog
The Fresh Air up There via Laura in Botswana
HIRING CAMP COUNSELORS FOR THE SUMMER! via Peter Geisheker’s Small Business Marketing Blog
For the kids… via Golfgal
Banner via Gotham Unleashed
Fresh Air Fund Is Hiring Counselors via Granby 01033
banner via Jewish Donor Blog
Doesn’t Everyone Deserve a Breath of Fresh Air? via Mamanista
The Fresh Air Fund is Looking for Camp Counselors via Math Me Thinks
So…what are YOU doing this summer? Here’s an idea…that pays! via The Online Degree Dorm Room
Fresh Air Fund Needs Camp Counselors via Outskirts:Life and Times in Charlottesville
General Discussion Message Board via Ram Nation
THE FRESH AIR FUND IS SEEKING COUNSELORS FOR THE SUMMER OF ’09 via Republica Update
Summer jobs with Fresh Air Fund (now accepting applications) via Secrets of The Job Hunt
Fresh Air Fund Counsellors via Servant of Chaos
A Breath of Fresh Air via TMT
Fresh Air Fund Needs Camp Counselors via The Diva Network
The World Needs Camp Counselors via Thoughts from Meggie Poo
SUMMER OPPORTUNITY: FRESH AIR FUND via Writing on the Mall
Hiring Camp Counselors for This Summer! via The Xyience Diet Resource
Fresh Air Fund via Yoga and Judaism Center
Fresh Air Fund Needs Counselors for Summer 2009! via Young Manhattanite

McKinney is a Website You Can Talk To

Chris Abraham — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 19:44:11 +0000

Othersource in Poland partnered with McKinney ad agency to build a Flash 3D engine with artificial intelligence for the McKinney website that’s launching this week.

Compared to other sites in the Semantics category, this one has an unusual level of interactivity. Users can ask the site questions, via the keyboard, using everyday language and expressions, and the proprietary “conversation engine” will decipher them and then fetch relevant results.

This means the user becomes liberated from the navigation. You no longer need background information to search the site – you just ask it a question.

Also, the site is completely index-able, bookmark-able, etc… from every page – even the video thumbnails have a unique URL. And every single page is a printable PDF, laid out for A4 or newsletter.I also found a nice blog post about it over at AdLab, Agency Site With a Chat Bot:

McKinney has built a Pandorabot-based chat bot (aka “conversation engine”) into its brand new site with a somewhat trippy interface. See if you can catch answers that were pre-scripted to make the machine sound particularly intelligent as opposed to the generic chat bot cop-outs like “Say what?” or “Come again”. – thank you, Michelle

Here’s the proper press release from McKinney.com:

McKinney.com – A Website You Can Talk To

Warsaw, Poland (February 10th, 2009) — Warsaw-based interactive agency Othersource announced today the launch of McKinney.com, a groundbreaking website created in partnership with the awardwinning advertising agency, in Durham, N.C.
Conversations with a website
Using cutting edge technologies, the new McKinney.com is reinventing the conversation had between the ad agency and its audience. Compared to other sites in the Semantics category, the site possesses an unusual level of interactivity. Visitors are able to ask the site questions, via the keyboard, using everyday language and expressions, and the proprietary “conversation engine” will decipher them and then fetch relevant results.
The functionality is groundbreaking. The back-end employs a 3D Flash engine with artificial intelligence, and the interface design is cutting-edge, making it one of the most experiential and unconstrained agency sites on the Web.
Unique tech mix
Othersource worked with linguists who understood, on a high-level, the structure of language. They also enlisted programmers familiar with semantics to help develop the sophisticated algorithm. “Creating the conversation engine’s ‘brain’ was quite labor intensive,” said Othersource Managing Partner Thomas Krotkiewski. “We enlisted two linguists (one a PhD from the University of Oxford), to analyze questions provided by McKinney, and to supply us with all possible ways the questions could be posed. If this search method fails, a backup proprietary tag search function will launch and search matching content. And finally, if the answer is still thought to be inadequate, the question is forwarded to McKinney for human processing. To be sure the conversation engine learns from its mistakes, there is a conversation history log on the proprietary Content Management System. This level of integration between conversation engine and website is completely unique,”
“We were looking for a production partner who would not only bring our vision to life, but enhance it,” added Keith Ciampa, who served as McKinney’s interactive creative director on the project. “Most true innovation happens on the fringes of the industry, by people who are passionate about what they do and willing to take risks. When we explained our vision for a conversational site, based on a completely open architecture, which could grow and become smarter the more it was used, Othersource knew we were asking for something that had never been done, and they couldn’t have been more excited to help us figure it out.”
Conversation-driven search
A proprietary tag search was built into the back end of the new site so search results can be presented dynamically, and not just direct visitors to a static page. For example, a visitor can ask a question like, “show me TV campaigns for client X from November last year” and an animated 3D tunnel will appear, with search results as moving thumbnail images, that the visitor can fly through. “As far as we can tell, this functionality is unique,” said Krotkiewski.
Like gas molecules
The site has an advanced 3D graphical interface. “The key to the 3D interface is the ‘cloud view,’ which shows a cloud of graphical thumbnails, moving like molecules in a gas, bouncing randomly off each other while also reacting to mouse input. The cloud can be filtered by the visitor to only show thumbnails representing certain types of content,” said Martin Ignaczak, Account Director at Othersource.
Flash without drawbacks
The site has overcome the limitations of Flash: “The site is fully searchable by Google, each page can bookmarked and linked to, and each view can be downloaded as a printable PDF,” continued Ignaczak. Working in the virtual
New technologies were key to organizing the project. Othersource used video-conferencing, VoIP, instant messaging, e-mails, and other electronic means of communication to coordinate the work with McKinney. “We only met face-to-face after the launch, which proves we are able to run even very complex projects completely in the virtual,” added Krotkiewski.
“We are honored by McKinney’s decision to partner with Othersource for the production — we were competing with some quite well-known US interactive agencies in the pitch. Being chosen in spite of being based overseas is quite a feat. We hope this project is the beginning of a long relationship with McKinney. We also expect it will generate more opportunities for us in the US overall,” said Krotkiewski.
“Partnering with Othersource on this project was both a rewarding and challenging experience,” said McKinney Interactive Technology Director Trevor O’Brien. “The biggest hurdle was taking existing technologies and customizing them to work together in ways they were not initially intended to. Othersource helped deliver a site that is an experiential and innovative place to interact online. It’s exciting to see what two like-minded teams can create together.”
About Othersource
Othersource provides interactive services from strategy to production to companies around the world. In 2008, the agency participated in projects for companies such as MetLife, The National Constitution Center in Boston, Accenture Poland, Puma, Imation Europe and others, in Poland, Sweden, Holland, the UK and the USA. The majority of its clients are Advertising and Interactive agencies that need support in creating campaign strategies, creative concepts and interactive production for their clients. About McKinney McKinney is an independent advertising agency that’s focused on reinventing the conversation between people and brands. Our goal is to lead the convergence of offline and online (today, 35% of our revenue is interactive and 88% of our frontline staff is actively engaged in the digital space), to identify relevant applications for new technologies and to deliver game-changing ideas that deliver extraordinary results for our clients, their customers and our people.
Founded in 1969, the Durham, NC-based agency’s clients include Coldwell Banker, Gold’s Gym, Major League Gaming, The NASDAQ Stock Market, Partnership for a Drug-Free America, ProShares, Qwest Communications, Sherwin-Williams, Travelocity, Virgin Mobile USA, Virgin Atlantic Airways, and Brown- Forman Corporation brands Bonterra, Chambord, Sonoma-Cutrer, Southern Comfort and Tuaca.
Most recently, Virgin Atlantic Airways and McKinney took top honors at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s MIXX Awards that celebrate the “mixx” of creativity and effectiveness in digital marketing. Virgin Atlantic’s experiential launch, “Love from Above,” won a Gold MIXX in the Mobile Platforms category for the company’s first-ever WAP site.
For more information, visit our website at www.mckinney.com or the McKinney Newsroom by contacting Janet Northen at janet.northen@mckinney.com.
Additional information:
Thomas Krotkiewski
Managing Partner
Othersource
+48-601-145398
thomas@othersource.com
Timezone: GMT+1
Janet Northen
Partner & EVP, Director of Agency Communications
Janet Northen
Partner & EVP, Director of Agency Communications
McKinney
+1 919.313.4062
janet.northen@mckinney.com

I Actually Am “That Guy”

Chris Abraham — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 21:30:57 +0000

According to an online quiz on Details, “Are Your That Guy,” I am totally that guy: a total douchebag, apparently.

1 You initiate fist bumps.
Yes
No

Someone told me that high-fives are passe so I have replaced them with bumps and regular, manly, handshakes.

2 You order foreign dishes in an accent.
Yes
No

I ask for foreign dishes, yes, properly. If the dish is French then I order it in French and if it is Mexican, I pronounce it in Spanish. And in Germany, I sort of need to order it in German. If you do it right, you don’t really draw much attention to yourself.

3 You shave your head at the first sign of balding.
Yes
No

I would totally either shave my head or crop it close if I started balding.

4 You use any word Stephen Colbert invented.
Yes
No

I use as many words as I can remember if they were coined by Stephen Colbert.

5 You have an elaborate bedtime ritual on planes—with neck pillow, sleep mask, and noise-canceling headphones.
Yes
No

People with sleeping rituals of any kind need to lose their guy card immediately.

6 You have a downloaded ring tone.
Yes
No

I am quite amused with classic, normal, default ringtones; however, I really enjoyed sporting the “bring out your dead” skit from Monty Python.

7 You wave someone along even though they have the right of way.
Yes
No

I think I have forgotten who actually does have right-of-way at 4-way intersections, so if I feel like I arrived a millisecond later than another, I will wave and wave.

8 You say the name of the town where your Ivy League alma mater is located instead of the name of the school.
Yes
No

If I had actually gone to an Ivy League school, I would totally say New Haven or Boston or wherever.

9 You own a Manchester United jersey.
Yes
No

No, I am afraid not. I almost bought a Norwich Canaries jersey but decided not to.

10 You quote Borat, Zoolander, or Anchorman, or reference “TPS reports” and “pieces of flair.”
Yes
No

I don’t have the best memory for these things but I made a Zoolander reference just the other day — a Blue Steel reference.

11 You put your BlackBerry on the table when you sit down at a restaurant.
Yes
No

Yes. In fact, all of my friends deBerry and dePhone the moment we sit down for food — not to show off but because I always have too much shit in my pockets.

12 You talk baby talk to your girlfriend on your office phone.
Yes
No

I don’t have a girlfriend presently but all indicators point to “yes.”

13 You offer to buy a cigarette from people outside bars.
Yes
No

No, I have too much of a problem with entitlement — I would never offer to buy.

14 You order “off-menu.”
Yes
No

Food isn’t really my bag and restaurant-going isn’t my bag, and I am pretty much omnivorous, so, like a diesel, I can run on anything.

15 You own a reptile.
Yes
No

Spike, God rest your little soul

16 You say “My bad.”
Yes
No

I hate that I say this. My bad.

17 You describe your relationship status by saying “It’s complicated.”
Yes
No

With me, it always is.

18 You say “We’re pregnant.”
Yes
No

I would love to say this — I will totally be that guy, if that guy says, “we’re pregnant.”

19 You have destination-related car stickers like MV, NTK, PVT, HMP, or NPT.
Yes
No

I might actually get myself a vanity plate. I never have, yet, but I aspire to.

20 You make a show out of tasting wine.
Yes
No

I tried to make a point of being fussy over coffee and cheese, but what’s the use.

21 You preface statements with “spoiler alert.”
Yes
No

I am Mr. Online and have been beaten down by spoiling, so I have learned my lesson.

22 You don’t wash last night’s admission stamp off your hand.
Yes
No

I am not likely to scrub off the thing. Does that mean I am preserve it or am I just dirty?

23 You use abbreviations like TBD, ASAP, and BFD in conversation and sign off e-mails with “thx” or “cheers.”
Yes
No

I have been signing emails with “Cheers, Chris” forever.

24 You wear flip-flops, Croakies, Crocs, or board shorts in the city.
Yes
No

My only excuse here is that I grew up in Hawaii and I never used to wear flip-flops (rubber slippers) in the city until it because ubiquitous.

25 You have a nighttime wardrobe that includes a going-out shirt, concert merchandise, or limited-edition sneakers you bought in Tokyo.
Yes
No

I pretty much wear a uniform, no matter what the situation. I have “dressed up” and “dressed down” and “dressed up with jacked.”

26 You say “I need my Starbucks.”
Yes
No

It might sound a little prissy until I tell you that most of the coffee you drink, especially from Dunkin’ Donuts, is really a lot lot worse than Starbucks. You may think Starbuck’s coffee is “burnt” but the truth is, you just have poor taste in coffee. You’re decidedly “truck stop” class.

27 You refer to the woman you’re casually hooking up with as a “friend with benefits.”
Yes
No

28 You pretend not to know who Spencer Pratt is.
Yes
No

I actually don’t know who Spencer Pratt. How do I answer? Yes or no?

29 You offer advice to women on their “form” at the gym.
Yes
No

30 You call friends and colleagues by their last names.
Yes
No

I call David Gelles “Gelles” — but one is enough. I should start colling Andrew Curry, “Curry,” but I don’t.

31 You refer to a date/girlfriend’s having done some “print work.”
Yes
No

I am not much of a modelizer.

32 You describe anything good as “sick.”
Yes
No

I have referred to things as “sweet,” — where does that fall?

33 You refer to your wife as “the ol’ ball and chain” and say “I’ll take the request to management.”
Yes
No

I might never refer to my wife as my wife. She is “Stephanie” or “Michelle.”

34 You refer to a trip to the gym as a “legs day.”
Yes
No

35 You go to a show to see the opening band.
Yes
No

If I like the opening band, I go to a show for the opening band.

36 You think Hayden Panettiere is hot.
Yes
No

As a huge Heroes fan, who in the hell wouldn’t think that Hayden Panettiere is hot?

37 You put your kid in a Che Guevara T-shirt.
Yes
No

I love Che.

38 You include the names of your kids and pets in your home outgoing message.
Yes
No

I would, the moment I can find a woman who might be willing to breed with me.

39 You refer to money as “Benjamins,” “dead presidents,” “ducats,” or “coin.”
Yes
No

I like to be as colloquial as possible when it comes to coin.

40 You bitch about your contractor at parties.
Yes
No

I totally bitch about my contractors, who are actually employees! Not a lot of bitch about these days — they’re a well-oiled machine, yo.

41 You talk about a record “dropping.”
Yes
No

I am actually old enough to remember when you would stack records on a record player and they would drop down, get played, and then another would drop, and it would be played, too. The “record” version of a multi-CD player.

42 You half-tuck your shirt.
Yes
No

I think the half-tucked shirts look cool but I am not cool enough to pull it off.

43 You have a goatee.
Yes
No

I am either clean-shaven or I have a beard — sometimes, just scruff. Never a goatee. Back in the day, though, my girlfriend Michelle demanded her beoyfriends have goatees (what’s up with that) and I complied.

44 You refer to anything as “small-batch” or “artisanal.”
Yes
No

Like I mentioned before, I was well into cheeses and into hams and into other foodie things and I was very much into getting as many whole milk cheeses as possible. And, when you want to get whole milk goat cheese of and elite quality, you need to go “artisanal.”

45 You refer to any last-stop bar as “the 19th hole.”
Yes
No

I refer to as many things as possible as “the 19th hole.”

46 You’re a Caucasian with a tattoo in Asian lettering.
Yes
No

Tatoos appal me.

47 You Evite.
Yes
No

I have Evited people for years and year by now. I love it.

48 You own a wine Rabbit.
Yes
No

I am a huge fan of the very basic “Waiter’s Friend” or the Laguiole knife/wine opener.

49 You proselytize about carbon footprints.
Yes
No

I am very anti-climate change hypocrisy.

50 You name your kid after a character in To Kill a Mockingbird.
Yes
No

My son or daughter will surely be named after some character or actor. I am a huge film-lover and also have a degree in American Literature with a minor in creative writing. It is bound to happen.

51 You use the phrase flyover states.
Yes
No

52 You use the word bicoastal.
Yes
No

Yes, but when I use the term bicoastal, I mean American and Europe; Washington, DC, and Berlin, Germany. Bicontinental, I guess.

53 You pretend to like country music.
Yes
No

I actually do love country music, especially bluegrass.

54 You wear DJ headphones.
Yes
No

Nope. Just simple buds.

55 You use a Bluetooth headset.
Yes
No

I drive in Washington, DC, and do most of my conference calls enroute. I own two bluetooth headsets: a Motorola and a Jawbone.

56 You call muscle groups by shortened versions of their technical names, like “lats,” “traps,” and “pecs.”
Yes
No

I used to be a wrestler and also a college rower, so you sort of just do call them traps, quads, lats, pec, etc.

The Unofficial Tina Fey Primer

Chris Abraham — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 11:44:33 +0000

Currently, Tina Fey is best known for her portrayal of the Vice Presidental candidate Sarah Palin. You can watch a lot of Tina Fey all at one time if you go grab the streaming full episodes of 30 Rock from NBC. The show is appalling, but Tina Fey is, in fact, the perfect woman. And only two month younger. Sadly, married.Elizabeth Stamatina “Tina” Fey (born May 18, 1970) is an American writer, comedian, and actress. She was a cast member and co-head writer of Saturday Night Live.

Career
After Fey graduated from drama school at the University of Virginia in 1992, she moved to Chicago, getting a day job at a residential YMCA to take night classes at The Second City. She made what she later described as an “amateurish” attempt at stand-up comedy, and learned that the key to improvisation was to “focus entirely on your partner. You take what they’re giving you and use it to build a scene.”

By 1994 she was invited to join the cast of The Second City, where she performed in the Jeff Award-winning revue Paradigm Lost. She is also a veteran of The ImprovOlympic.

Saturday Night Live

With then-head writer Adam McKay’s help, Fey became a writer for NBC’s Saturday Night Live (SNL) in 1997. By 1999, Fey was SNL’s first female head writer, a milestone she downplays by pointing out that the show has had few head writers.

As co-head writer of SNL’s 25th anniversary special, Fey won a 2001 Writers Guild of America Award; she and the writing staff also won a 2002 Emmy Award for their work on the show.

In September 2005, she went on maternity leave after giving birth to a daughter, Alice Zenobia Richmond. Her Weekend Update role was covered by Horatio Sanz for several weeks before her return to the show on October 22, 2005, noting:

“I had to get back to work. NBC has me under contract; the baby and I only have a verbal agreement.”
Fey confirmed during a July 2006 Tonight Show appearance that she would not be returning to SNL for its 2006-7 season.

SNL sketches
Some recurring sketches written by Fey include:

Parodies of Live with Regis and Kelly and The View
The Girl with No Gaydar, cowritten by Rachel Dratch
Boston Teens, cowritten by Dratch

She is also credited with:

Colonel Angus, portrayed by Christopher Walken in a sketch filled with word play on the colonel’s name
Mom Jeans commercial
“Talkin ‘Bout ‘Ginas” (Parody of The Vagina Monologues)

Weekend Update
In 2000, Fey and Jimmy Fallon became co-anchors of SNL’s Weekend Update, a pairing that ended in May 2004 when Fallon last appeared as a cast member. (Fey also was co-writer of the Weekend Update segment). Fallon was replaced by Amy Poehler. It was the first time that two women co-anchored Weekend Update.

Celebrity impressions
Barbara Pierce Bush
Bea Arthur
Janice Dickinson
Kathleen Willey
Mary Ann Mobley
Paris Hilton
Paula Zahn
Vanna White

30 Rock
Fey developed a situation comedy, 30 Rock, for NBC’s fall 2006 schedule.. The show is produced by NBC and Broadway Video, with Lorne Michaels and two former producers of The Tracy Morgan Show, David Miner, who is also her manager at 3 Arts, and Joann Alfano. She also writes and stars in the sitcom, said to be based on her experiences at SNL. The show’s title is a reference to 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where SNL is produced.

Similarities between 30 Rock and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip led to speculation that only one of the two shows would be picked up. Alec Baldwin, who played the network executive in the 30 Rock pilot, said “I’d be stunned if NBC picked up both shows. And ours has the tougher task, as a comedy, because if it’s not funny, that’s it.” Kevin Reilly, the president of NBC Entertainment, was supportive of Fey, describing it as a “high-class problem”:

I just can’t imagine the audience would look at both shows, choose one and cancel the other out. In some ways, why is it any different than when there have been three or four cop shows on any schedule, or Scrubs and ER, which are totally very different?

Evidence of the overlapping subject matter between the shows (as well as the conflict between them) is the fact that Aaron Sorkin, the creator of Studio 60, asked Lorne Michaels to allow him to observe SNL for a week, a request Michaels denied.

It’s just bad luck for me that in my first attempt at prime time I’m going up against the most powerful writer on television. I was joking that this would be the best pilot ever aired on Trio. And then Trio got cancelled.

In spite of the overlap in subject matter, it was announced on May 15, 2006, that NBC had picked up both shows.

The show debuted to mostly positive reviews, however ratings its original timeslot on Wednesdays at 8 PM were weak. Rather than cancel the show, NBC moved the show into a revamped Thursday Must See TV comedy lineup at the end of November sweeps. After its first episode in its new Thursday 9:30 PM timeslot on November 30, 2006, the network picked up the show for the entire season

Other work
She partnered with fellow cast member Rachel Dratch in the critically acclaimed two-woman show Dratch & Fey at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York City, the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado, and the Chicago Improv Festival. Lorne Michaels saw her at one of the performances, which led to her becoming the co-anchor of SNL’s Weekend Update.

She also appeared in Martin & Orloff, a surreal comedy which premiered at Austin’s SXSW.

Fey wrote the script and co-starred in the 2004 movie Mean Girls. Characters and behaviors in the movie are based on Fey’s high school life at Upper Darby High School and on the non-fiction book Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence (ISBN 0-609-60945-9) by Rosalind Wiseman. The cast includes other present and past cast members of SNL including Tim Meadows, Ana Gasteyer, and Amy Poehler.

As of April 2006, Fey is working on a script for a Paramount Pictures film by the name of Curly Oxide and Vic Thrill that is said to be based loosely on the true story of a Hasidic rock musician.

Personal life
Fey was born in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia to a Greek American mother and a father of German and Scottish descent. Her brother, Peter, remembers a drawing she did when she was about seven: it showed people holding hands, walking down the street with wedges of Swiss cheese. The caption read, “What a friend we have in cheeses!”

Fey was exposed to comedy early, saying:

“I remember my parents sneaking me in to see Young Frankenstein. We would also watch Saturday Night Live, or Monty Python or old Marx Brothers movies. My dad would let us stay up late to watch The Honeymooners. We were not allowed to watch The Flintstones, though, which my dad hated because it ripped off The Honeymooners. I actually have a very low level of Flintstones knowledge for someone my age.”

Her dream to entertain first was at Philadelphia Phillies baseball games, as she wanted to become a ball girl.

Fey attended Cardington Elementary School and Beverly Hills Middle School; by middle school she knew she was interested in comedy, even doing an independent study project on the subject in eighth grade. She graduated from Upper Darby High School in 1988.

Tina Fey is married to Jeff Richmond, a composer on SNL. They met before their jobs on SNL and dated for seven years before marrying in a Greek Orthodox ceremony on June 3, 2001 . They have a daughter, Alice Zenobia Richmond who was born on September 10, 2005.

A Tony Night with Anthony

Chris Abraham — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 19:09:15 +0000

I admire Mr. Citrano. I met him at the The Fairfax at Embassy Row, where he was staying, at about half-7 on Friday. I had a great time.

We grabbed a drink in the lounge (I had a couple 12-year Dewars neat) and then walked to Lauriol Plaza, where we opened the cosmic tap while enjoying Mexifood (and I had a Margarita on the rocks with salt).

The good news, guys, is that “Washington girls are much better looking than Boston girls.” The bad news is that “girls in New York and LA are much better looking than Washington girls.” I paraphrased.

After eating, we walked to the Beacon Martini Sky Bar to say hey to Adam Dubitsky as he welcomed his birthday. I ordered a dirty martini and I have to admit that although I am not a martini drinker, that was one hell of a tasty drink.

That was one tasty martini.

Athony is one hell of a cool dude and a great friend. It was great to see him. Not often enough. Check out his blog, Cosmic Tap, and get ready to have your mind expanded.

Or maybe it was just the dirty martini.