How You Can Make A Video To Connect With The World

The days of YouTube stunts like the guy who catches glasses with his face are over. Sure, if you can backflip into your Levi's you might garner a little attention, but what will really get people to pay attention is a story. We're wired for stories always will be. So when you make your next video or start your next creative advertising campaign give people a story to latch onto. It brings meaning, starts conversations, and makes you memorable.

The 2009 Cannes Festival Winner "Signs" is a prime example. Check it out and then tell your story. With it you can connect with the world.

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MUSIC RECOMMENDATION: The Lovely Feathers - "Lowiza"

I'm Going to Write A Novel

I'm in a writing mood tonight and it's not necessarily the type of writing mood that's at all related to blogging or talking about why I think some sort of new achievement will change the world in a small way. No, tonight plagues me with the sort of writing mood that seeps out of me in accidental fragments and then leaves me suddenly speechless.

The urge to write is engrained in me, stuck somewhere in my body and circulating, heating up and brewing. As far back as I can remember I've been brimming over with stories. Short stories with tall orders and long ones without any point except to make someone smile.

During the day I often lose myself researching and studying the ideas of others, but if I stay up late enough the urge to write something literary overcomes me and bubbles over in long meandering emails or the introductions to books I've always wanted to write. Up to this point in my life only a half a dozen or so of my closest friends have seen the rhythm of my sentences change as I'm overtaken by the sweeping sentences of the classics that have inspired me all my life. Tonight I have formally decided that this is going to change.

I have too many stories and too many people saying, "I still think you should be writing" to relegate my literary side to a few drifting emails written as the sun rises after a sleepless night. I feel a sustainable plot forming in my mind and I'm almost ready to begin. And after I do I hope you'll hold me to it. Or perhaps more important, I hope at some point some publisher somewhere decides to hold onto me.

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In my writing mood I was lured back to a man whose music I've loved for years. I bring you...

Her Space Holiday - "Sleepy California" (1. I apologize that the video is just lyrics but it was the only one I could find with decent sound and I wanted to include this song because this song has always made me think.)

Could SEO Spur Internet Gentrification?

Since the internet came into existence everything was about leveling the playing field. There's Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat, the bits economy of costs getting closer and closer to zero, the idea that music should be free, and the ruling principle that on the internet anyone can do anything. All these concepts remain, but now that the internet is growing into an unfathomable web of layered thoughts and contextual relationships it seems like our content consumption is depending more and more on 1. friend recommendations (something I plan to address in a future write up) and 2. the power of search.