Darryl Lai being pulled by lead sled dog Justin Smith. Both are Web Communications staff members.

You might wonder how the title of this relates to the above photo so let me try and establish the scene. Darryl (AKA “Da-REAL Deal”) squirreled himself into some kind of tiny sled. The reason this tiny sled exists still evades my comprehension. Justin then attached this strange sled to his waist much like a sled dog. This weird setup was an attempt at getting a tracking shot of a cross country skiier. The idea was that the skiier would come at them while justin ran along pulling Darryl on his tiny sled.

The trouble was that it absolutely sucked. The motion was so rocky that it really didn’t turn out well. Now I didn’t watch further than the first 30 seconds and they are very good at post processing so maybe it will be usable. However, I kind of doubt it. The purpose of this post is to show you what it takes to make really high quality work (in any field). You have to be excited about the possibility of failure. You have to continue to try new things, take leaps of faith, screw up and hopefully do better next time.

This isn’t supposed to be a warm and fuzzy motivational pitch this is just simple fact. If you want to do anything great (doesn’t matter what it is) you have to try everything. No matter how crazy or weird it might seem. You have to do whatever it takes to get that epic shot.

-Kegan

I just got back from Austin. Here are my notes from some fantastic panels and keynote speeches. There is a lot to get through, but hey, stick with me.

The Real Responsive Process

These guys talked about the theory behind it, why we should be doing it, and most importantly admitting that it’s okay to not completely understand it. It’s new, give yourselves a break.

Here are the speakers, you can follow them on Twitter and check out what they do in the responsive world.

Steve Fisher @hellofisher

http://hellofisher.com/secret.php

http://republicofquality.com/projects/interactive-style-tiles/

Samantha Toy @SamanthaToy

http://styletil.es/

http://www.samanthatoy.com/

Yesenia Perez-Cruz @yeseniaa

http://happycog.com/  

http://www.cognition.happycog.com/article/one-size-fits-none

Aaron Gustafson @AaronGustafson

http://easy-readers.net/books/adaptive-web-design/

He mentioned this site as an alternative to Bootstrap http://foundation.zurb.com/

“Still discovering, still don’t totally know what we are doing, if I’m honest.”

“Knowing that you don’t know everything is key.”

Tina Roth Eisenberg

@swissmiss

http://www.swiss-miss.com/

Scroll down a while on that site and you can watch her keynote, I like having it on in the background while I’m working. She founded and runs these businesses:

http://www.creativemornings.com/

http://teuxdeux.com/

http://tattly.com/

http://www.studiomates.com/

She’s a pretty cool lady, it’s a Swiss thing I guess. I like how a company she founded goes on to produce more great companies, must be a pretty great feeling. E.g. Studiomates are responsible for:

http://symbolset.com/

http://editorially.com/

She said something that really stuck with me… “Stay away from people that are fond of disliking things.” I like that.

Dennis Crowley – Foursquare CEO – The Future Of Location

@dens

https://foursquare.com/

He talked about something that I have never really thought about, location visualisation. The shape of a place can be defined by check-ins. E.g. JFK airport isn’t just a dot on a map, it is a space defined by the location of people within it. Areas defined by density of people.

This is a video he showed, it illustrates the point well. https://vimeo.com/52883962

Let Conscience Be Your Guide, Moral Design.

@rjowen

http://www.convercent.com/

The things we use change us. 6 principles of moral design.

 1. Moral design is restrained.

- “Good design should be as little design as possible.” Dieter Rams.

- Respect restraint and constraints.

2. Moral design improves harmony.

- Sustain and improve balance and order.

- Never solve one problem by creating others.

3. Moral design is dynamic.

- Value the imperfection that comes from crafting real things.

- We should have a healthy fear of perfection. If it is perfect, it is static.

4. Moral design requires craftsmanship.

- Good things come from good craftsmanship.

- Think about people when you are creating things for people.

- This was made for me.

5. Moral design is honest.

- Does not pretend to be something other than what it is.

- Design is a promise.

- Is it achievable?

- Will it make people better people?

6. Moral design is organic.

- Treat the user, design, brand, environment as one organism.

- What is healthy for one thing has to be healthy for all other parts.

- Nothing good can come to the brand at the expense of users.

If your values are not being practiced in tangible ways, then they are bad for you. They are meaningless.

“Do the right thing, it will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” Mark Twain

Here is what I got out of this crazy week. People always say things like, “music was better in the 60′s”, “this restaurant used to be good, then it got popular”, “SXSW was better before the corporations arrived.” Yeah well thats great, personally I think it’s lazy. Here are some reasons to be cheerful about where we are, right now.

- crowd-funding, see this

- collaborative workspaces

- CEO’s admitting they are still learning, and that being okay

- definitely this

One thing though, sitting in a room with 3000 people all looking at their smartphones / tablets / laptops is scary. The bright glow and glazed eyes. Hug a tree once in a while.

- Oliver

I went to the Oregon Zoo earlier this week. The hope is that we can work together and form a partnership around the beaver habitat. Maybe some day we will have livebeavercam.edu available for you to go to (official title still to be determined). Anyways it was also quite enjoyable on a personal level because this was my first trip to the zoo. The highlight, of course, were the beavers, but there were lots of other great animals and educational opportunities as well. I strongly urge you to visit if you have the opportunity.

Things Kegan learned at the zoo

• Melody, our marketing director, has a reoccurring nightmare about bears.
• The beavers are way bigger than expected. We are talking like 20-40 lbs.
• Inside the beaver den is a magical looking place, that is warm and cozy. I really wanted to crawl in there.
• Elephants have huge bladders and well, for lack of more eloquent speech, “drop a massive load when they urinate”.
• While we are on the subject, Polar bears urinate in the their own pool, which if I remember from growing up is a big no no.
• The baby elephant lilly is incredible cute and I could watch her run around for hours.
• Monkeys are arrogant and think they are better than me (constantly plotting their escape).
• Lions are definitely king of the jungle.
• Some bird (that I don’t recall the name of) acts as a scout for the mongoose while it hunts. While the mongoose scares up insects for the bird to eat. The perfect form of animal teamwork.
• The Oregon Zoo is awesome.

-Kegan

Here are three things you can learn today.

The Grande Super burrito at La Rockita (downtown Corvallis) is too big. I know wouldn’t typically ever think of saying that phrase, but the thing is just way to big. It broke open and spilled every where. Quite tasty, but a big disaster. Sorry I don’t have any pictures to back this up (was a hot mess). You are going to have to take my word for it.

The Cannon 5D Mark (mark I) is almost eight years old. It is easily the most seldom used camera in our office. Since it has no video functionality it is typically left in the drawer, as we don’t do very much still photography. However, we have been doing a ton of time lapses lately and the fact that it is a full frame camera (not cropped sensor like most of our other DSLR’s) means you can do some really brilliant time lapses. There are tons of options out there as far as cameras, but if you are an in-house production unit and are looking to ramp up your time lapse capability getting your hands on an original 5D would be well worth the investment. You can pick up a refurbished one between $500-$800. Like I said, it doesn’t shoot video, but can really bang out some stunning time lapse scenes.

The University Marketing Department at OSU (in our division) has recently put up new banners around downtown Corvallis. They depict all the many things that make up Beaver Nation. I think they turned out great. On the way to the aforementioned  burrito lunch (still too big) we snagged a picture outside the lovely Benton County Courthouse.

Kegan-

The sites are simple, small and feature a responsive layout. They also feature an updated video tour of campus, as well as a new photo tour experience.

If we can make the transition process a little more smooth to those new to Oregon, then I’d say that’s a success. Now it’s time to watch how it works, gather feedback, test, refine and repeat.

Here are a few of the state-specific sites:

• California
• Illinois
• Texas
• Washington

- David

A graduate of Oregon State’s College of Business, with a minor in New Media Communications, Darryl worked at Planar before coming to OSU. He excels at storytelling across a range of media. He brings an excellent body of work, solid web skills and positive energy to our group. We’re looking forward to great things from Darryl.

- David

I just learned that this project will be earning gold recognition at this year’s upcoming CASE event. It always feels good to be recognized by our peers for our team’s hard work and creativity. Congrats to the whole crew, and our partners at the OSUF.

- David

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Every year as a part of our paid sponsorship with Athletics we get to create a short video to be played during football games. Yes, that is accurate we (the university) have to pay to get a 30 second message up on the Jumbo Tron at each of our home football games. I understand it, but I certainly don’t respect it.

Anyways it is a typically fun, but challenging project. One thing that stands out, as a positive, is the collaboration it takes to make something like this happen. We work closely with the Marketing office on messaging, style and delivery. We also rely on Media Services to help us get the technical specs correct and to do all the work during the actual game.

Pretty much everyone in our department gets to work on these in some way or another. We also pull in random staff members from other units on campus to be our “talent”.

The shot above is from the one we did for the 2012 football season. It is an ESPN Sports Center style spoof.

-Kegan (aka Kevin)

Oliver Day joined Web Communications on June 4

And, since people are our greatest and most important resource, our biggest recent success is adding a new interactive designer to our team. Oliver Day has joined us, bringing a world traveler’s perspective and work experience ranging from web retail to winemaking in two hemispheres. We’re excited to have his creative eye and excellent portfolio of work on our team. And we also won’t mind if he shares some of his home brew with his officemates.

It’s a strong, compelling piece that has already earned both a commercial award at CASE (our higher ed industry PR/marketing professional organization) and an artistic award at the Reel Wheel International Film Festival in Knoxville, Iowa. Like our formula team, the film is two for two in competition. And it straddles the line between marketing content and pure entertainment.

Web Comm filmmaker Justin Smith on stage with the OSU formula students at OMSI's IMAX theater

We’re pursuing deeper storytelling for several reasons. First, we have a talented filmmaker on staff. But also, times have changed. You can’t load marketing content onto your YouTube channel and hope that people will choose to watch it. Your feature content needs to stand on its own and provide either entertainment or educational value in the opt-in environment of the Web. We need to find new ways to tell stories.

We probably could have created dozens or even hundreds of short YouTube videos in the time it took to make Relentless. But we’re betting that we’ll make deeper connections with the results of this project because it’s a great story told in a compelling fashion.

I feel there’s a strong case for investing in this type of feature documentary content. Universities and even corporations are filled with great stories. And a well made film can be used in a number of ways beyond Web streaming. We’ve created nice packaging for this film and used it as giveaways for our engineering alums who come back to campus to receive awards. We’ve held three events, two on campus and one at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Portland, where there was a sizable crowd of family, friends, prospective students and race and auto fans. There was even a troop of Boy Scouts in attendance, and we hope a future engineer or two in the group. These events were bolstered by a display of the car and a Q&A with the team after the film’s screening.

Beyond events and online streaming, we’ll also be sending copies of the film to high school robotics clubs. We’ll be screening it for recruits, staff and alums in the future. A film project like this is a powerful format, and I think it’ll have a future in the work we do as communicators.

– David