Here I lay in bed thinking, nine years ago Saturday…I was boarding a plane for Houston. Katrina was slamming into New Orleans and I was on a plane with a bunch of my colleagues…headed right into the aftermath.
Meet my friend Sarah…I met her this past Friday at the SC Mission 2014 event in Columbia, SC. She is 62 to years old, walks with the assistance of a cain, and needed glasses. Yes…her vision is not good, but she knew that if she could find her way across Columbia…she could have the opportunity to get a new pair of glasses.
As an undergraduate student at Clemson University, I majored in Mathematics and worked on a minor in Art and Architectural History. It appealed to my desire to blend my creative pursuits with my interests in mathematical proportions. One of the artists we studied was Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. He was a religious painter, one that many times spoke to my soul, especially inside a public institution like Clemson.
In the mail today was a package that made me think back to my undergraduate days…and even challenged me to connect with my work today as a communicator.
Look at the image above. I love this image! Meet Miles Thomas Haren…son to Tom and Jennifer Haren. This is their third child and the first boy our family has seen in a few generations.
Miles is my little nephew and I spent the afternoon helping Tom and Jennifer take his newborn pictures. Tom used to be a baseball player, catcher for Erskine College. You can see in the picture above his bat and glove from his college days.
There is something awesome about these pictures…something so normal. This is my brother-in-law, sister-in-law and their children. They just had their third child. These pictures showcase their most recent appointment with the physician that delivered their third child, baby Miles.
Here we have one doctor’s visit with lots of smiles.
I was sitting and meeting with a dear friend…and a great client. We were chatting about an upcoming group of projects, talking about the creative approach, budgets, logistics, etc. The more we talked, the more we began critically thinking about the visual message, the scripting, and the overall impact.
I have you noticed video auto-playing in Facebook when using your laptop, desktop computer, or even your mobile device like a tablet or smartphone. I have noticed the these auto-play videos on my iPad, iPhone, and my desktop using my MacBookPro.
The videos that are auto-playing are those uploaded directly to Facebook. This auto-play initiative is also a part of Facebook’s Premium Video Ads offering set to release to brands this fall, possibly October.
Why are we using them? Are they fun? Are the cute? Are they just what we do…hashtag everything?
They were meant originally to help organize conversations, allowing like minded people to connect inside conversations. Now…there is a hashtag for everything…just because.
I am not sure what Payne Stewart has to do with #blogchat, but it was a part of a verbal spat during the Twitter chat on Sunday, June 15, 2015. I was sitting watching television while following the chat when this little verbal disagreement broke out. Nothing more than a few heated words, but still this raised a concern for me. Why, I have help clients build communities using hashtag chats. I would hate for something like this to unfold during one of my client’s Twitter chats…but it could happen.
Look above…that is the number of school shootings since Sandy Hook Elementary School incident. That is 74 school shootings since December 14, 2012.
The biggest debate right now:
- 2nd Amendment
- Access to guns
I have one for you…how about the access to media, social media, and the velocity of the social share. We are content consumers…actually we are hungrier than a pack of wolves in the middle of winter. We crave content, we crave to share, we crave to be the one to post it to our news feeds…first.