January is over, but the beat goes on. Welcome to the January Schipul Mix: Delayed Hearing.
We’ve hand picked the songs we’ve been listening to, and made a mix to share with you. We hope you’ll enjoy the ear candy. If you do, use the comments section to let us know what’s fueling your ears. We’ll throw your tunes in our next mix.
Playlist
Superfast Jellyfish ft. Gruff Rhys & De La Soul (Gorillaz)
Ain’t No Future in Yo Frontin’ (MC Breed)
Enola Gay (O.M.D.)
One Love/ People Get Ready (Bob Marley & The Wailers)
Superbowl Sunday is coming, and for many that means chips, dip, friends and football. If you are video guy, like me, then that means the commercials. The Superbowl is well known for the ground breaking and buzz worthy commercials that play every year to an audience of nearly 40 million viewers.
Big corporations make video stars with user generated commercials
Some companies, like GoDaddy and Doritos, have taken the opportunity to promote their brand to an enormous audience and save in advertising expenses by opening Superbowl, Indy 500 and other major sporting event video contests to the general public. By offering large case prizes and a chance to showcase your work, these companies not only harness fresh talent and new ideas, but have entries submitted by top industry production companies.
Tips on winning a Superbowl commercial contest
Last year Francis De La Torre and his team entered and won the $100,000 top prize GoDaddy Indy 500 video contest with their entry ‘Go Mammaâ€. They utilized mass emailing, social networking and word of mouth to get in one of the top spots for judging. GoDaddy made this simple by utilizing Vimeo and YouTube links for entering your video. They also made it easy to share your video online by placing Facebook, Twitter, and other sharing options on each entry to send to your friends and family.
Francis says there are three key things to keep in mind when entering an online video contest:
1. Know your contest
This is vitally important when submitting your video. Some things to consider are: Will a panel of judges be picking the winner, or will it be by community vote? This can greatly affect how you produce and target your video. If it’s a panel of judges, you may want to research who will be watching the video to better understand what they may be looking for. If it’s the general public, you may want to go for a broader approach that appeals to the masses.
2. Use Social Networks
Francis considered this the base for garnering votes for his video. He also encourages people to visit non-mainstream site (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Myspace etc..) and visit film making / video online forums, and user groups to gain exposure.
3.Think outside the box
Create a Facebook event that encourages people to watch the video together and vote together at the same time. Host a small party to premiere your contest entry and hand out information on how to vote for your video. Create and online presence for the characters in the video. There are a number of ways to promote your entry. Be creative!
If you would like to enter a video contest, a great place to start is Poptent. Poptent gathers online contests from all over and puts them in one place for you to choose from.
There are many factors when entering a video contest for a large company. So do you research, build your support base, get creative, and win some sweet cash!
We’ll give the winners a shoutout on our Facebook wall Feb. 13, 2011.
Making LOVE
The coolest part about the making of LOVE, is it’s from the heart. We value our fans, clients and community and enjoy it when we can show you just how much!
Here’s exactly how it happened (basically). *cue dreamy flashback music*
It was a warm and sunny day in Houston (yesterday). The Schipul COMM team was in their morning meeting when all of a sudden a mini celebration commenced.
S1: Hooray! It’s almost February. Time for Schipul Love Fest (We seriously begin conversations this way. I know.)
S2: What should we do to celebrate…?
S1: Something really cool.
They thought for a moment, but it was early, and little coffee had been consumed, and a meeting was at hand. So they put it aside for later.
“We’ll think of something,” said S2. And with that the Schipulites began their meeting.
Soon before the meeting ended there was a loud gasp and a giddy giggle from S1.
“It would be soooo cute if we got everyone to spell the word ‘love’ on the parking garage roof and take a photo….I don’t know what we’d do with it, but it would be really cute,” she said.
The Schipulites laughed in agreement, and parted ways to begin their busy day.
Later on, she pondered aloud, “That picture would be really cute…and what if we made one of those fast forward videos of us spelling out the letters?!”
S2: OhMyGosh! We could put it on Facebook and ask people to tag their friends to win a prize.
And with that, the LOVE-struck Schipulites began the task of rule checking, prize assembling and cat wrangling for a photo on the parking garage roof.
And then they woke up. And remembered it was Houston. Which means the temperature dropped from a pleasant 68 degrees to a mind-boggling 40-something degrees. With rain (very likely the tears of a Schipulite wounded by Mother Nature).
There was no way they were schlepping up to the parking garage roof in the rain and cold to lie on the ground because that’s nuts and they’ve got their hair to consider! So they brought the Love Fest inside – and magic happened.
-adjective
1. exemplifies a unique quality; awesome; incredible
2. An expression from the mid 1950s, which fell from favor by early 1960s…until now.
Used in a sentence: Fact –Women who love watching football are so boss.
In 5 days we are about to watch the two best teams in the NFL – the Packs and the Steelers – contend for Super Bowl XLV. While I am a Cowboys fan and utterly despise both teams, it is in fact a football game and what I believe to be the culmination of all things great in America – healthy competition, grilled meat, brewskies and Troy Polamalu’s hair. You might think to yourself, but Courtney, ‘You are a girl and you should be worrying about shopping, cleaning and cooking for the guys.†And I would politely respond with, ‘Sorry the game’s on.â€
As you can see, I was raised to schedule my activities around football, and more importantly around the Cowboys. Sometimes I feel there should be groups other than the Lingerie Football League where women get fired up about the game and perhaps engage in a dog pile or two. Unfortunately, I have not found such a group (I’ve checked), but there are some rockstar females making it happen online and I thought with the Super Bowl in our midst, this would be a perfect time to dig into my sports blog arsenal and introduce you to one of my favorites…
Melissa’s Blog – resident blogger for TheFootballGirl.com – is spunky, honest and above all else, knows the game of football. Melissa not only discusses the typical weekly matches, she is open about her opinions and doesn’t give a poop if she boldly announces that Tucker Carlson is an idiot. This woman is a little spitfire and if you don’t believe me, please indulge yourself in my top 10 favorite posts – useless commentary included:
A two day conference made up of both traditional and unconference scheduling.
The point of the conference is to bring together several state and local officials as well as interested citizens with a goal of making government more transparent and accessible.
Overall the conference went well. It had it’s slow starts and the turn out was a little disappointing but it did not take away from the quality of brains that were made available.
My favorite presentation was made by Keynote Evan Smith. He defines Data Driven Journalism, using live examples from The Texas Tribune. A newspaper dedicated to presenting citizens with usable information in story, graphical, interactive, and raw format.
His passionate straight talk about our government, our data, and our citizens is enough to get anyone inspired. Amazing presentation.
It’s my understanding that these video’s are unedited raw coverage and that they will be edited soon. I watched a couple of these archives and they are not the highest quality, but I appreciate the efforts made by EFF Austin for both the live feed and holistic set of videos they’ve put together.
My takeaway from this event is that we are a lot further behind in government transparency and accessibility than I had originally believed.
Some wonderful quotes that can more accurately explain my takeaway. I apologize for not sourcing the majority of these quotes and some are paraphrased. Although I can tell you that the last quote is by Evan Smith, CEO & Editor in Chief of The Texas Tribune
“We cannot wait for government, we must set an example for government to follow.”
“Elephants don’t dance very well.”
“Today’s transparent government websites are equivalent to giving people a phone book and asking them to look for a specific phone number.”
“It takes individuals to make a parade, and there is no parade to join yet.”
Southwest Drupal Summit is in full swing! Yesterday was a flurry of speakers, panels, Scrum revolutions, open source passion, and awesome Drupal loot, and the Schipulites drank it all in. It’s always fun to get together with the rest of the Drupal community to learn more about how we can bring the best to our clients and get inspired.
The day started with an awesome intro to Drupal 7 with Lullabot‘s Angie Byron (famous for her appearances in the Lullabot Drupal training videos that we love at Schipul). We learned about all the performance, functionality and usability improvements in the latest version of Drupal. We also learned about the sometimes painful process that brings new versions of Drupal to us — thanks Dries, Angie and crew for all your hard work. Needless to say, we can’t wait to dig into Drupal 7.
Today, we’re looking forward to learning more about event websites in Drupal, designing with your wonderful clients, and integrating Drupal with social APIs. A few of the Schipulites will be answering questions this morning on managing client expectations using Drupal as their CMS. Be sure to check them out in the Acquia room at 9:30!
Tune in next week for a full recap of the event and everything we learned in this two-day Drupal lovefest.
Scroll to Account Security and click ‘Browse Facebook on a secure connection (HTTPS) whenever possible’:
Don’t see this option yet? Hold on for a bit, as they are rolling it out over the next couple of weeks.
How will HTTPS affect my Facebook-ing?
The Facebook programmers have cautioned users that enabling this additional encryption may cause pages to load more slowly and also means that some 3rd party applications may not work until some additional tweaking is done.
What? Facebook has been insecure this whole time?
Wellllll… that’s a tricky question to answer. This increase in encryption with HTTPS makes it that much harder to access your Facebook when you are, say, surfing on a public wifi connection.
But, as we’ve seen with numerous Facebook updates that have exposed information users didn’t intend to share publicly, approaching your Facebook surfing and sharing with caution is ALWAYS highly recommended.
Feeling overwhelmed or want a friendly person to friend on Facebook? Contact the Schipulites to see how we can help!
I’ve been ranting and raving about it like a crazy woman since the event made its U.S. debut in Houston last Friday. And I’ve been twice since – and I’m planning a third trip this evening. It’s that good.
Red Bull Illume is a worldwide action and adventure sports photography competition. More than 22,000 images were submitted to the contest of which 50 finalists were chosen by a panel of 53 photo experts. The photos from those finalists are the Red Bull Illume exhibit.
The Scene – 50 photos aligned in neat rows on 4-ft tall illuminated displays; a DJ and free Red Bull with beautiful Discovery Green as a back drop. Priceless.
How to do it right –
Make it a date ! The cold weather gives you are reason to get close. The photos give you something to talk about. The music makes great filler for potential awkward silences.
Grab a free copy of the program. It’s pretty and features a print of each photo, the photographer and the story of how they got the shot. (For my photography nerds – the technical details for each photo are included as well (Camera, Lens, ISO, F-stop and Shutter Speed) – I’d faint if the histogram was included.)
Dress warm with cozy shoes – it’s chilly this weekend in Houston and the exhibit is on the lawn.
As Web marketers, the Schipul team gets to play around with a LOT of technology for client and company projects. But few come remotely close to the flexibility and customization of Drupal – a software force to be reckoned with in the CMS world.
What’s exciting about this launch is not just the great updates, but the community celebration around the tremendous group effort that these updates have incorporated. It’s the open source spirit personified!
Be sure to connect with all of these AMAZING nonprofits online
Thank goodness we relied on the ever-handy Random Integer Generator to pick our winner, as we never could have made a decision with such great organizations represented. If you haven’t read through the great comments, you really must connect with these nonprofits online:
And just because we are geeky, here’s a screenshot of our randomly selected integer:
As always, we love hearing from you! If you work with a nonprofit that deserves some recognition, leave a comment below so we can add them to the list.
