Today’s Twitter Activity for February 3, 2012

I got a rock.

HP proxy: Ray Lane’s $10 million plus comp and other fun facts — Tech News and Analysis:

Lane, who became executive chairman of HP on September 22, 2011 (he had been non-executive chairman since November 1, 2010, the start of HP’s FY 2011)  logged more than $10 million in total compensation — the bulk of it in stock and options — for the fiscal year, according to the HP proxy.

Other highlights from the proxy:

 

 

 

Meg Whitman who famously took the HP CEO position in September for $1 in salary, gets $16 million in stock and options. Former CEO Leo Apotheker walked away with $30.4 million when he was fired by HP last September.

 

Igotarock

Except for my first year tenure, when they couldn’t even afford that. (but don’t feel bad for me, according to them, I was very well compensated).

 

 

WOULD 4-ON-4 BE BETTER?

Dallas Stars Blog:: WOULD 4-ON-4 BE BETTER?:

No sport seems more at war with its playing surface than hockey.

The players get bigger and faster. Coaching keeps getting smarter, deeper and tech-enhanced. Yet the rink remains 200’x 85’. And because of this scoring, offense, and creativity is suffering.

So what should be the strategy to counter this? Make the rink bigger? Not gonna happen, those seats with fannies in them are the lifeblood of the individual teams. OK, what if they eliminated a player per side and played four on four?

Noted stick and puck sorcerer, Mike Ribeiro is in my camp on this and I’m-a go ahead and say many of his ilk would concur.

If this radical change were to be implemented me thinks the impact on the game would be both positive and profound.

At first thought, I can see the attraction of shifting the NHL to a 4 on 4 league full time. I’ve wondered at times whether the league should expand 4-4, or go to it full time myself.

Well, unless you’re a player or the player’s union. It’d likely mean losing 3-4 roster spots per team, or 100 player jobs. I can’t see the union buying into that any time soon.

But I think back to the wonderful days of Roller Hockey International, which for a few fun years was a summer distraction in NHL arenas (“Let’s Go Rhinos!”). It was summer fare populated with a few IHL/AHL caliber players, but mostly European and ECHL caliber athletes.

And it was four on four full time. And the more I think back to the style of play we saw watching the RHI for a few years, the more I remember thinking that it was hockey, but it definitely wasn’t what I’d call “real hockey”. And that there was a reason the NBA outlawed the zone for those many years….

I think the four on four discussion is a lot like the international rink discussion. It seems logical and like a good idea, but in both cases, the answers to what’s going on with the NHL is a lot more complicated, and you might solve some problems shifting the league to four on four, but you’d definitely create new and different problems, and it’s not at all clear to me it’d make the league better, just different.

Having watched RHI hockey and full time 4-4 for a few seasons, I don’t think that’s the kind of hockey I’d want to watch every night in the NHL. I don’t think it’d be better. Just different.

 

National Hockey League Jobs

If this wasn’t in NYC, this would be a fun job to chase. But it is, so I’ll only talk about it.

What struck me as much as anything about the job is how this stuff is increasingly central to any smart marketing team — and how little of the technology that you’d be involved in doing this job existed five years ago in any form anyone would have known about.

 

National Hockey League Jobs:

The Manager, Social media and Business Development will be a member of the digital media team reporting to the Director of Digital Business.  He/She will be responsible for maximizing the asset value of the NHL’s extended reach on social networks as well as creating social media activations for campaigns related to sponsorships, ad sales, partnership marketing, and league marketing initiatives.

RESPONSIBILITIES/ESSENTIAL DUTIES The position will be responsible for however not limited to the following duties: Managing the Social Media plans and activations for NHL events (onsite and offsite), NHL marketing initiatives, and NHL sponsorships / partnership activations. Developing creative campaigns for partners / agencies, implement and execute all activations on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Instagram, and develop pricing/selling models around the NHL’s extended reach on social networks. Co-develop communication plan for social media with editorial, communications and PR team (tweets, posts, pictures, etc.) Creating a pipeline of social media sales prospects and exposing the League’s extended reach via social networks to League partners, clients and prospects to deliver incremental revenue. Working with the NHL’s internal and external resources to develop brand- and audience appropriate activations on the League’s social media channels; integrating the League’s social media channels into broader partner activations to deliver incremental revenues. Sales pitches and business case development and delivery. Identifying and vetting new social networks of interest to the NHL that both extend the League’s reach and are strong candidates for monetization. Identifying and vetting social media partnerships and opportunities that grow the League’s reach, carry financial opportunity, or expand content offerings.

QUALIFICATIONS The qualified candidate for the position will be an expert in social media with intimate knowledge and contacts at the most popular and emerging social networking platforms.  They will be experienced in developing and closing sales and partner opportunities, able to develop creative concepts in the social media context and be well versed on trends and data in brand spending on social media marketing.

 

Today’s Twitter Activity for February 2, 2012

Why You Should Check All Your Layers Before Saving For Web

With some of the interesting post-processing “personal projects” I’ve seen photographers do recently, I have to admit my first reaction upon seeing this is “there’s a fun project here”.

Imagine the possibilities of selective removal in your landscapes… that tree, for instance. hmm…

(Laurie and I had a discussion about why the hair was moved onto its own layer. My best guess — they want to repurpose the image with different hair colors, so you turn it into it’s own layer so you can manipulate it easily).

 

Why You Should Check All Your Layers Before Saving For Web:

Here’s a Photoshop protip: before saving a final version of a photo for publishing on the web, make sure all the layers you want in the image are actually visible. Apparently some Photoshopper working for JCrew got careless with his layers, which led to the above catalog photo showing a model with transparent hair (in fact, the hair appeared by itself in a separate photo). The catalog entry has since been fixed, with the invisible-haired woman replaced with a boring photo of a blue blazer.

 

jcrew.jpg

A quick look at January….

1/12th of the year is gone already. How time flies when you’re having fun…

I apologize for the quiet on the blog the last week. Blame it on a rhino-virus, which took just enough out of me to make sitting on the couch a lot more attractive than other options. Tonight I’m back off sedated, off the Aftrin, energy levels almost back to normal, so I thought I’d check in and remind folks I’m alive.

I’m into my sixth week at the new gig, and things seem to be progressing well. It’s been this whirlwind of meeting folks, listening to them, offering them our views, and trying to figure out what exactly we need to do (as opposed to what we were hired to do). We’ve made lots of progress, we’ve gotten the contract with the developers approved, I’ve gotten the first round of wireframes making the rounds and the various teams looking at them haven’t laughed or cried yet. But we’re just scratching the surface; I’m already mentally planning a year out, and trying to make sure when we get there, we have what we need. Good stuff so far. My new cohort in crime and I seem to sync up well in complementary ways, and it’s nice being in an environment of yes.

January was a positive month for my online stuff and a good start to the year, despite my being pretty quiet the last week or so. Overall visits were up 60% over December with page views up 50% — and up 110% over January 2011. Traffic to my photos on smugmug rocketed to almost double my previous highest page view month. I got my first video experiment up, and it got 125+ views and good feedback and some very useful critiques. I only got out with the camera twice, but both were very intensive trips and both generated some really nice images — but I also got the trees pruned before the apricot budded and I’m making good progress on some neglected work in the yard and the house — much as I wish I could spend all my spare time out with the camera, there are other things I like doing as well. I also filed 13 reports with eBird for a good start to the year — one lifer and 114 species to the year list, my best january since 2009, which beat it by about 8 species, and if I hadn’t caught this stupid cold, I’d probably have gotten out one more sunday and caught it.

And I’ve started the redesign of this site and my online stuff, although you probably won’t see it for a while. it’s not just swapping in a new theme, from the looks of it. But that’s where my evening focus is right now (that, and skyrim and the sharks). I am working to shift to a more active creation attitude from a content consumption mentality, and so far, I think things are headed in the right direction.

Most popular pieces in the month?

Although I have decided, for the short term, to focus on blog writing and the blog redesign as the primary tasks, and photography as the third wheel. Other stuff will wait to later in the year, just so I can keep focus on things I want finished sooner.

So I’m hoping to carry this forward into February, and see what happens. It’s both nice and scary to be through January, because I feel like i’ve accomplished a lot and set things up to accomplish even more — but I’m not sure where the month went. Been good, and busy. Better than the alternatives, I guess.

 

Today’s Twitter Activity for February 1, 2012

Today’s Twitter Activity for January 31, 2012

Today’s Twitter Activity for January 30, 2012

Today’s Twitter Activity for January 29, 2012

Today’s Twitter Activity for January 28, 2012

Today’s Twitter Activity for January 27, 2012

Today’s Twitter Activity for January 26, 2012

Merced National Wildlife Refuge Video

One of the goals I set myself this year was to try to do more storytelling instead of just posting images, so one of the things I’ve started doing is experimenting with different tools to publish that help tell a story.

This is one of those experiments, a video slideshow of Merced National Wildlife Refuge, which by now you’ve probably figured out is a favorite place of mine. Nothing too fancy here, just working out the workflow and making sure I can go end to end through the tools, but I think it turned out pretty well (would love to get your feedback on this…)

Merced National Wildlife Refuge from Chuq Von Rospach on Vimeo.

 

Today’s Twitter Activity for January 25, 2012

Pescadero State Beach

Pescadero Rock, San Mateo County, California=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+This image is free to use and is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivative Works license. This allows you to use this image in a non-commercial way as long as you give proper attribution of the author and source. This license does not allow you to re-publish it for commercial use.

A weekend drive up the coast with Laurie gave me a chance to experiment a bit with the new 24-105. Afternoon sun gave it some decent light, and the wave action was picking up in front of the recent storm. The circular ND and I had some arguments, which I need to look into. Overall, a decent image, not a great one. But it’s got some interesting elements, and this is a location I love to experiment at….

Does my favorite author now have to spend a couple hours a day on Facebook?

January 24, 2012 | Trent Nelson | Photojournalist:

Tech people keep saying that artists can make it without the distribution systems, and they all trot out Jonathan Coulton as the example of someone who has made it on his own (by the way, he’s amazing). He offers his music for free, or you can buy it, and he does great. Hooray, there’s one guy making it. One guy.

Okay, you can add Radiohead and Louis CK, but both made their reputations over years in the old media system and only now have the power to make independent new media work. That’s three, so I’m still seeing a lot of artists left out in the cold.

Here’s a question to think about as a new artist-friendly distribution model evolves…

The employees of the old media distribution system did a lot of work, like promotion, financing, and obviously distribution. Who is going to do that in the new model? The artists? Does my favorite author now have to spend a couple hours a day on Facebook? Because I really want my favorite author working on the next book, not tweeting or other garbage that could be handled by someone else.

The problem with the old model was that the distribution system forgot who they worked for and started to think they were the important part. The new system will turn it around and put the creatives in charge. Maybe the band of the future will sign a record company to a deal instead of the other way around.

There are actually a bunch of people making it. But they tend to be smaller, they tend not to have a big PR machine pumping them onto the networks. The old system tended to push massive success towards a very few, whether it was Stephen King or Michael Jackson. There was a middle ground where you could grind out a living (and occasionally someone would turn that into a very lucrative business, like the Grateful Dead did). And there was a huge mass that the old systems didn’t want anything to do with at all that never got a break. And in most cases, they old system was right (ever sit down and read a slush pile in a publisher’s office? Seriously, most of it, be glad they filtered the worst of it away).

But yeah, that also limited access to some good talent as well. And as this new model evolves and matures, eventually the old system will figure out how to find and pull talent out of the pool and turn them into the next Stephen King or Michael Jackson and they’ll continue to be the promoters and publicity pushers for the elite super-earners. But their role as gatekeepers is diminishing, and will die off.

thank god (but that also means that we need to find other ways to protect ourselves from that slush pile, folks; in whatever form it takes).

Does this mean your favorite author will have to spend time pushing themselves on Facebook? When starting out, yes. But look at someone like Trey Ratcliff. He’s just hired something like his tenth employee. As his business grew and his revenues went up, he brought people in to take on parts of it. That’s always been the case with small businesses. That is the model we’ll see moving forward. The talent (whether singer, video maker, photographer, app developer or author) will continue to do the parts they’re good at and enjoy doing; as their income grows, they can farm out other parts — bring in someone to help with marketing and publicity, or proofreading, or formatting their ebooks, or handling Facebook. Whatever is not economic to do themselves, but needs doing.

This is nothing new. But it does mean you can’t succeed JUST by being a good talent; you need to be able to run your business, too (or get successful enough to hire someone to run it for you); in fiction, agents sometimes took that on. For that matter, that’s a common case for pro sports, too. I expect you’ll see the agent role mutate into more of a business manager instead of a submission broker.

The model for this is well known; it’s not new, and it’s been used successfully for a long time. What’s really happening is that all of these talent-centric industries are moving to that model with increasing speed, and the transition is at best unsettling for those caught in the middle. And it’s going to create problems and failure for some, and opportunities and success for others.

Which, honestly, sounds a lot like what talking movies did to silents, and what television did to radio, back in the day. And in both of those cases, some people woke up without a future, some people moved from one to the other just fine, and some found opportunities created where none existed before. But now, just being a good writer (or singer, of photographer, or…) isn’t enough to be a successful one.

If it ever really was. (I have my doubts).

(hat tip: BW Jones)

Just Hanging Out….

California Sea Lions, Moss Landing Harbor/Jetty Road=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+This image is free to use and is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivative Works license. This allows you to use this image in a non-commercial way as long as you give proper attribution of the author and source. This license does not allow you to re-publish it for commercial use.

Spent some more time down in Moss Landing with the Sea Lions. Watching them argue with each other is endlessly fascinating, as long as I’m upwind.

This one is just hanging out in the water. the reason he’s sticking limbs out of the water is to regulate their body temperature.

While down there this trip, I saw the ultimate in lazy. A sea lion had ended up laying on the dock with his head out over the water. Three of his buddies (the dock they have taken over is a bachelor pad; it’s all of the males that aren’t yet able to win fights for the girls. Think of it as a  Pinniped frat) have laid down on top of him, so it’s going to take some effort to move.

Too much effort. I stood there and watched him with his head full in the water, blowing bubbles as he exhaled. And when he wanted to breathe in, he’d raise his head just enough to grab a breath, then plop his head back into the water, where he’d slowly start blowing bubbles again. This went on the entire time I was there. Because it was too much effort to actually move his head out of the water.

That to me is a zen mastery of lazy.

For more images of this sea lion group, click through this image:

Today’s Twitter Activity for January 24, 2012

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