Last week at the National Association of Graduate Admissions Professionals (NAGAP) annual conference in New York City, EMG gave away a pair of tickets to see the highly rated and extremely popular musicals Wicked and West Side Story.  Conference attendees were mailed a mock ticket for each show with a special number on the ticket a few weeks before the conference. By bringing that mock ticket to our booth, attendees were able to check if their number matched the seat number on the real tickets to instantly win the pair. If their number didn’t match, attendees were able to drop their business card for a drawing at the end of the day if the winner had not claimed their tickets. Congratulations to Fareza Khan from St. Thomas University School of Law for winning the pair of Wicked tickets and also to Jennifer Philpot from the University of Louisville for winning the pair of West Side Story Tickets. We hope you enjoyed the show!

How many of you watched Susan Boyle sing on Britain’s Got Talent? At first glance, most music executives or talent scouts would have probably said no and not given her a second thought. However, thanks to the TV show and to others like it, individuals like Susan Boyle are given the chance to show their talent before they can be judged by their looks or appearance. Thank goodness for these types of shows because the woman can sing!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

There are so many people who judge by appearance and so many people don’t really get the opportunity to show what they can do. In today’s employment world, it can be very much the same. As an HR professional, I have seen so many managers choose final candidates based on who was most physically appealing, who appeared to be more professionally dressed, or who fit in more with the group. While these things may be important to some extent, I must say that these should not be the basis for choosing a candidate. At the end of the day, a candidate not only has to be able to perform the job, but also has to be able to adapt and grow with the company as it changes and grows just as an artist has to be able to perform and sell records for his or her record label.

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Tomorrow is a big day for Americans.  It is April 15th (dunt dunt duhhhhhhh), the deadline for filing taxes.  For some people all the hard work of gathering their W-2’s, 1099s, and other tax documents results in a nice check from the government.  For others the result is a not-so-nice check TO Uncle Sam.

Unless you are one of those people who break even, the burden of money is going to hit you.   You’ll either be faced with paying off a debt, or you’ll have to decide how to spend the mini-fortune that is your tax return.   Sure the second group can just blow it all on a new toy or a night out on the town, but is that really going to help you in the long run?   No.  In both cases it is probably a good idea to make a plan.

If you are like me, you do not manage your money very well.  At least not intuitively.   Recently, I was doing some searching and I came across two sites that have already changed my outlook on my finances, as well as provide me with tools to get organized and start saving/paying off debt.  They are:

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Recruiting in a down economy when so many people have been laid off has really made me appreciate that my company is doing well and is keeping me gainfully employed. Yet, I have spoken to other candidates who are gainfully employed and seeking opportunities elsewhere, for some reason or another, and are making requests for items such as outrageous salaries that are well above market -it just doesn’t seem appropriate in this economy.

I recently had lunch with a friend and during one of our conversations, I asked how things were going at work. You see, this person was working at a company for a short while that really valued her potential and abilities, but also had the normal issues you might see at any other company. That is, no one is perfect and not everyone is going to like everyone else all the time. Initially, things were great there but then she eventually became unhappy when she wasn’t progressing as quickly as she had planned, professionally. The company overall treated her great and she liked many of the people she worked with, but she inevitably did what many employees do when things aren’t going their way: she began to complain and discuss her gripes with colleagues at work and eventually became negative. She quit her job to work for another company which she thought would provide her with more direction and the ability to grow faster than she would have had if she stayed with her first employer. Now, in hindsight, she realized that she would have been better off staying with the first employer and not leaving them after all. Things just looked greener at that time but she realized she was simply seeing a shade of green that looked better with her rose-colored glasses.

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Year after year offices, campuses and households are swept up in March Madness and the Men’s NCAA Basketball Tournament, dreaming of the big upsets, buzzer beaters and of course, bracket poll bragging rights. Over the years however, I’ve been about as likely to watch, or care about, the NCAA Tournament as I am at becoming the next starting power forward for the Lakers. This year has been different though, this year my alma matter and small, little known school just outside Pittsburgh, PA, Robert Morris University appeared in the bracket for the first time since 1992 not only causing me to watch my first full tournament game but also, from doing marketing in for higher education, changed the way I look at the NCAA tournament forever.

Since Robert Morris is little known outside the Pittsburgh area and I now live in southern California, it’s VERY rare that I ever get more than an “oh ok” when I respond to someone asking where I went to college and at times I’ve even found myself replying with “I went to a small school in Pennsylvania, you never heard of it”. Now, with the NCAA Tournament underway and the national recognition that RMU has gotten from it, I found myself transformed into an ambassador for my school with a renewed sense of pride for the place that I got my degree.

Every time RMU was mentioned on TV or when people talked about the tournament, I found myself not only pointing out that I’m an alumni, but answering questions about the school and giving a two minute “sales pitch” on all the great things about it. After digging out my RMU alumni t-shirt and wearing it to the local sports bar to watch the game, I almost felt like a celebrity with the constant flow of people coming up to me and asking me about the school. Throughout the game I was in constantly responding to, and texting friends from college, some of which I hadn’t connected with in a long time, to talk about the game and how exciting it all was.

So now that you see how an NCAA Tournament appearance can affect alumni like me, let’s dig into what effect a Tournament appearance has on the university itself. For starters, as I mentioned previously, the NCAA tournament gives alumni a reason to reconnect with one another, have renewed pride and interest in their school and act as ambassadors which in turn will gives the school a new reason to reach out to those alumni for donations and involvement in events. Secondly, a large majority of high school students want to go to a “name brand” school and the local and national attention that the NCAA tournament provides drastically increases brand recognition and interest from perspective students and inquiries and applications should see a huge spike as a result. Schools like Gonzaga and Duke are prime examples of small schools with a small student population but being nationally known due to having a strong basketball program. Another great example was in 2007 when Appalachian State upset Michigan in a football game to go from complete national obscurity to infamy over night.

This all comes back to the importance of college sports programs and how their success can directly affect the success and growth of a university and can help to attract new students and donors. For small, obscure schools, like Robert Morris, proper use of the money the school will receive from appearing in the tournament along with a great marketing, communications and PR campaign to capture the spike in interested and attention and build off the tournament momentum can lead to positive growth for years to come.

“On Thursday, October 2, 2008, Earthbound Media Group was honored as the 3rd fastest growing private company in the Orange County area by the Orange County Business Journal. The awards ceremony took place at the Hyatt Regency Irvine and brought together technology consultant firms, software companies and many other businesses throughout Orange County. EMG partners Blaine Behringer, Damien Navarro and Lawrence Williford were all in attendance alongside company executives and staff to accept the award.”

I’ve had the pleasure of working here at EMG for over five years now and I have experienced first hand the growth of the company. It is amazing to think of where we started from and where we are now, but it’s not surprising. The vision and talent combined with a unique company culture makes EMG stand out and succeed.

I can’t wait to see where the next five years takes us. Congrats team!

I met a lot of interesting people at Mixergy and had some great conversations. I couldn’t believe how many people turned out for the first event like this in Orange County. Mixergy was also the first event that we’ve thrown here at our headquarters since I started and it was great to hear how cool people thought our office was and to see how many people we can fit in this space. I can’t wait for the next big event here.

Big thanks to Andrew from Mixergy, the Tia Juana’s staff, and the EMG team for making this so successful.

According to the Richter scale, a magnitude 5.4 earthquake shook our main offices here in Irvine yesterday morning at approximately 11:42 am. For some of our team members, this was their first tremor experience… ever. But for other southern California-raised residents, like me, we haven’t experienced seismic activity this significant since the 6.7 Northridge earthquake—you know, the one that sent us flying out of our beds in the wee hours of the morning back in ‘94. What many of you probably aren’t aware of is the fact that our office space is situated within a completely renovated, refurbished and expertly retrofitted 110+-year-old lima bean factory in Old Town Irvine. Although it is up-to-spec in building codes, the thought of “The Big One” raced across our minds, as we swayed back and forth on our wobbly wooden legs.

Here at EMG, our security cameras captured real-life footage of our offices in a commotion as the ground shook and rattled hanging fixtures and appliances. Looking closely at the video recording, which can be viewed at http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-53184, we see two sets of reactions from our team members both upstairs and downstairs. Naturally, the video has already proven to be an excellent demonstration of the dos and the don’ts during an earthquake disaster and will most certainly be used in our updated disaster preparedness video training.

As you can see, our offices were shaken – and stirred – but I can just imagine that internet viewers must have been crying tears of laughter as soon as our videos were posted on ireport.com—a subsidiary website of CNN, where users can instantly post and report the latest breaking news. Remarkably, EMG’s footage generated over 1,100 views within the first hour of being posted and was also picked up by CNN.com and was marked to be featured on the CNN’s broadcast television station. Within less than 24 hours, the video received more 4,600 impressions, and based on web analytics reports, the footage description which included a link to our facilities has attracted more than 100 visitors to the EMG website www.earthboundmediagroup.com.

Truth be told, our attempt to share our earthquake experience just shows how that agencies like ours – or anyone with a recording device – can take advantage of a newsworthy event and virally distribute it on a newsfeed to instantly drive highly unique user traffic to our site . . . for FREE.

I don’t know about you, but I would LOVE a new 17″ Macbook Pro! So, how do you win a new Macbook Pro? Enter the Day JCR Cup 2008! Simply create a content-centric application and submit it no later than midnight September 30th, 2008. Detailed information (more so than what I’ll cover in this blog) can be found at:

http://dev.day.com/microsling/content/blogs/cup.c.html

JCR/JSR 170/Content Management:

You may be asking yourself, ‘what does JCR stand for?’ JCR stands for the Java Content Repository. Day Software (Day) has been an emerging leader in the field of Web Content Management (WCM) and Enterprise Content Management (ECM) for over a decade now. In an effort to not only promote themselves more amongst the Open Source Community, but also in promoting the concept of Content Management Systems (CMS) (I know, I know, let the acronyms fly!), they created the JSR (Java Specification Request) 170.

The Apache Software Foundation created an open source, fully compatible version of JSR 170 by creating the Jackrabbit project. Day’s commercial implementation of JSR 170 is the Content Repository Extreme (CRX). Day’s flagship WCM, Communique, is a set of API’s built on top of the CRX.

One of the neat things about this contest is that it gives developers a chance to obtain a free, trial version of the CRX. When you sign up for the contest, a trial key is emailed to you. The contest page has links to documentation, quickstart guides, FAQs, mailing lists, and all associated technologies needed to build out a complete CMS.

One final note before I end this blog… I’ve been developing with Day Communique for over 5 years now. I am VERY curious to see what the new version, CQ 5, will look like. I have a sneaky suspicion that all of the technologies involved with this content (JCR, SLING, etc.) are a good indication of what CQ 5 is going to look like…

Until next time…

Todd

Allow me to take you back to high school English class, when all but the bravest of introductory paragraphs began with a deeply thought out quote snatched from the thickest book to be found in the non-fiction nether regions of the library (or media center - for the younger ones in the bunch).

“The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts, but alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance. The serious artist is the only person able to encounter technology with impunity, just because he is an expert aware of the changes in sense perception.” - Marshall McLuhan, “The Medium Is the Message,” Understanding Media

Brilliant, right? The last few weeks, I’ve been revisiting some texts I too hastily read back in the day, and when those words went from page to perception for me yesterday, I was utterly floored. I’m pretty sure I made some sort of sound of astonishment to mark the occasion, too. I mean, come on. Not that I fully grasp the fullness of McLuhan’s statement even 24 hours after I read it, but it’s clear the implications of just this single set of words and ideas are massive - for EMG, for my role and responsibility within the company as well as for me personally not to mention what this means for everyone who considers themselves a serious artist (whatever this means should be saved for a later post!).

Now, since I’m writing a blog post and not the novel I’ll never write, I’ll stick to the first couple ideas McLuhan’s prophetic prose brought forward for me - specifically regarding EMG as an organization. First off, EMG functions best when all three of its operational efforts - Strategy. Artistry. Technology. - are organically giving and taking, working toward unified project-specific goals, and McLuhan’s belief’s about the Artist and his or her unique ability to identify and respond to Technology’s impact on the user illustrates the wild need for Artistry when developing effective Technology solutions. And, if what McLuhan says is true - that a “serious artist” is the ONLY person able to engage in technology without being significantly changed by the technology itself, an artists’s input and inquiries from a user perspective is vital to an effective process for us and an effective end product for our loyal client.

This leads to another thought, and this one’s about why the EMG team works as well as we do together. Artists of all kinds have found a 9-5 home at EMG - painters, musicians, composers, essayists, directors, producers and even a quilter or two to start a short list - and up until now I thought our good rapport had more to do with personalities than job function. But, after considering the artist’s role and responsibility for shaping technology, an artist at EMG is in his or her element - continually shaping technology from a place of difference as McLuhan proposes. So, it’s okay that the user scenarios we propose in meetings seem to come from left field sometimes, and it’s okay when we need assistance from time-to-time understanding what seems so logical to techies and analysts because it’s essentially an artist’s job to see things differently. As artists we are - for better or worse - hardwired to be in tune with the way an audience accesses or perceives a message or process as much as we are equipped to create artful products to best serve these sense perceptions - in their endlessly unpredictable and dynamic glory.