Author: lemsy

John LeMasney (lemsy) is an artist, graphic designer, and technology creative. He is located in beautiful Nelson County, VA, but works remotely with ease. Contact him at: lemasney@gmail.com to discuss your next creative project.

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consulting insights workshops

How to videoconference, broadcast, and archive for free: Google’s long game.

Cancellation of Hanover bars through a chroma ...
Cancellation of Hanover bars through a chroma delay line (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There was a time, not too long ago, when having your own television station was an expensive, unreasonable dream. With the arrival of Google Plus in 2012, there was a lot of comparisons made with Facebook, with the verdict generally being that Google was playing catchup, doing too little too late, and was out of its league. The issue is this: Google is playing the long game. They are adding Plus to your tool set simply by you using any of their other applications. If you have a Gmail account, use Google Calendar, or even just search while logged in with a Google account, Plus is there, waiting for you to use. It is, as the name implies, a sort of umbrella service to add a social layer to other Google services.

They are not following Facebook, and are in fact doing something quite different from what Facebook is, even though a lot of the features seem the same. You can make connections in both systems, add photos and videos, create groups of common interest, and have conversations. However, one set of features in particular sets Plus apart: Hangouts.

Google Hangouts are free. You need to install a plugin or app in Windows, Mac OS, Linux, iOS, or Android to take part, but aside from that there is no threshold to entry. Hangouts are a metaphor for being available for a chat, sort of like standing by the fence waiting for a neighbor or sitting on the porch waiting to chat spontaneously with passersby.

You can be more direct than that though, choosing specifically to invite people to chat with you, up to and including everyone on the system (public). The interactive chat holds up to 10 people, and people can drop in and out. You can chat by video or audio, and you can also share your screen with the screen sharing plugin. You can use addons to create titles and use other features. What is perhaps most interesting is that you can choose to put the hangout ‘on air’, meaning that you can broadcast and archive the hangout to the world via your YouTube channel.

Other systems have done and continue to do this, but not usually for free, and not usually with such a widely adopted system as Google Plus. I have used Google Plus hangouts on air to build a related series of video broadcasts with others about the juxtaposition of technology and design, art, customer service, and nutrition. I call the collection Neckbeard Networks, and you can find it, along with all of my other videos on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/lemasney

Tonight, Wednesday, March 20th, 2013, I’m talking to an audience at Princeton Public Library about this topic, and at 7 pm, I hope to see you there.

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brand classes and presentations consulting insights workshops

On Organizational Branding for Libraries and other institutions

Carnegie library interior, Cincinnati, Ohio, U...
Carnegie library interior, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, 2004 by Rick Dikeman (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Tonight, I’m getting the chance to talk to librarians about a topic that I think is incredibly important to discuss, but do not get the opportunity nearly enough: organizational branding.

You might be tempted to think that I’m just talking about visual branding, like the library’s logo, but I’m not. In fact, visual branding can only be truly successful in my opinion after you have done the more difficult work of discovering what you are, what you are trying to represent, and stakeholder perception. The aim of organizational branding efforts is to make these three ideas merge:

  1. We are presenting a brand of some kind now (active or passive, intended or unintended) that we hope creates a positive, accurate perception by our stakeholders.
  2. We have stakeholders that perceive our brand in some way, and we must discover what that perception is, even if it is not positive or correct.
  3. We can do actions, enforce policies, and check stakeholder perceptions to align our brand with our intended perceptions, the very intent of branding.

We are doing these things to underline and reinforce what we are, and our patrons and other stakeholders understand and agree.

Brand assessment

The first part is to find out how you wish to be perceived. In other words, your brand is your function, your vision, your mission, your actions, your culture, and your perception. Do you know what these things are for your organization? What is your function? If you are a public library, is your function simply to get books and other media into the hands of patrons? Or is it to extend the education, abilities, and preparedness of humans getting ready to face the world? There is a chasm between these two ideas. What is the vision of your organization? How does your organization see the world? For example, the world might be dystopian, a cold and barren place in which everyone is watched and tracked, or the world might be an experiential delight, in which every interaction in the world is an opportunity for growth, learning, and extension. Perhaps most interestingly, what is the culture of your organization? What are the sensory cues that your space, language, and actions represent? What kind of art do you have on the walls? What color is on the walls? What scents greet you when you walk in? What kind of programming are you offering? What resources are available to patrons? How do staff react to interruptions? What frustrates your patrons? What do those things say about who you are, versus who you are trying to be? You can find out what you want your brand to be, and what it is now, and close that gap.

Stakeholder research

After you have discovered what it is that you are trying to be, it’s important to discover how you are being perceived. If your mission, vision, and culture are either not being perceived or interpreted in the ways that you expect, then the rest of your efforts will be that much more difficult. Through observation, interview, survey and other research methods, you can get a clear idea of how your efforts are being interpreted by staff, administrators, children patrons, adult patrons, and so on. You can find out how you are being perceived, and how you would prefer to be perceived, and close that gap.

Rebranding effort

Finally, you have to assess the gap between your efforts, your branding goals, and the perception of your brand. Once you have a clear idea of how you want to be perceived, and how you are being perceived, you can make changes in visuals, culture, policy, and action that underline, reinforce, and support that brand until your research shows that your intended brand is matching your perceived brand.

If you are interested in getting help for your organization to assess, interpret, and construct the brand that you want for your library or other organization, I would love to sit down with you to have that discussion. I’m lemasney@gmail.com.

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insights photography

A very simple bread

Baking your own bread

As I have said here before, I really love bread. I am beginning to actually practice my recent preach of baking over buying, and the result has been wonderful, full of surprises, and fun with tasty experiments. I still have a 100 calorie flat round or two that I’m making my way through, but my freezer is empty of half-price day-old kaiser rolls and 6 packs of garlic naan, so the time has finally come to get into the practice of making bread twice a week or so. In preparation for this, I’ve gathered a few things: A large bag of whole wheat flour, a small jar of rapid rise yeast, some sea salt, and a water purifier.

Many benefits exist for baking over buying. I know exactly what is going into my food. I am gaining a useful skill. I enjoy the process of making, waiting, watching, and revealing that is inherent in baking, and stolen with buying. I like the science of it. I like the sensory aspects of it, the sights smells, tastes, and feel that are mostly absent from purchasing. The cost of a loaf at home is about $1.50, all said, and the cost of the average loaf at the store, with all of its flaws mentioned here, not to mention the extra ingredients, like preservatives and chemicals, is around $2.50 or more. Artisan loaves are expensive at the store, more reasonable at home. A very good article on this particular aspect is here.

I like recipes that you can remember. I tend to remember those that use whole measures, an example of which is Mark Bittman’s pancake recipe that uses one egg, one cup of flour, one cup of milk, 1 Tbsp of honey, and so on. They are nice when you can find them. I adore simplicity.

Most bread recipes I’ve found do not do this. I decided to make one that does. It could not be simpler, and uses only four ingredients, which I’ve mentioned above.

Basic 4 ingredient bread recipe

  • 4 cups whole wheat flour
  • 1 tsp sea salt
  • 1 tsp active dry yeast
  • 2 cup filtered water

Directions:

  1. In a large bowl, add each ingredient in turn as listed above, mixing as you go.
  2. Mix with a large spoon until dough forms a ball incorporating all or most of the mixture.
  3.  Turn out into an oiled iron skillet, and let rise between 5 and 24 hours in a warm space.
  4. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.

One cup of whole wheat flour is 400 calories, so this loaf will be 1600 calories in all. I will likely eat a quarter of it each day.

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curriculum vitae insights workshops

WordPress, Google Plus, Libraries and Waveforms

WordPress
WordPress (Photo credit: Adriano Gasparri)

 

This week will be an interesting one!

 

Tonight, March 18th, 2013 at Princeton Public Library at 7:30 pm, I’m giving the second part of a two-part WordPress Camp, in which I show people how to get started with WordPress. There’s a rumor that we will be having a Food Blogging follow-up class in the future, to look at the specifics of using WordPress to publish content about food, but this class is about introducing pages, posts, media, and tags in WordPress. I’m excited about this follow-up class because I’ve talked individually with a lot of the participants from part one, and it’s obvious that they are having lots of success. The session is free, and we’d love to see you. No registration necessary.

Elf in a santa hat by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
She feels in italics (Henry James) CC-BY lemasney

 

On Tuesday, March 19th, 2013, I’ll be talking to the Special Libraries Association (Princeton-Trenton chapter) about branding in Libraries. In the session, I plan to lead a discussion on what your library says about you, what you say about your library, and how you can migrate your current brand to the brand you prefer.

 

On Wednesday March 20th, I’ll be talking at 7:30 pm at Princeton Public Library about Google Plus Hangouts! This is an amazing, free tool that is part of Google’s Plus suite of products that allows for videoconferencing between 10 people, public broadcast to many more, archiving to YouTube, screen sharing, lower thirds titles, and more. The session is free, and we’d love to see you. No registration necessary.

 

I had a lot of great engagements last week, but one that stood out was a job in which I applied what I had learned in making this waveform sketch of me saying the word ‘open’ for a client who wanted the same thing, but of him saying ‘hiphop’.

 

If you can think of how I can help you to use technology or design to make great things happen, contact me at lemasney@gmail.com, leave a comment below, or like my page on Facebook (see the sidebar!)

 

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insights photography

An Omelette Florentine sandwich recipe

I really love eggs. I enjoy eggs as a vehicle for vegetables, and with a nice piece of crusty bread, I can’t think of a better breakfast. This recipe is a fairly typical mash-up for me, grab some eggs, veg and cheese out of the fridge, combine in a pan and serve on bread. Lots of options here, but this is a classic Florentine combination shown here.

Omelette Florentine Sandwich

  • 2 slices hearty bread
  • 1 egg, whisked
  • 1 cup raw spinach, chopped
  • 1 small tomato, sliced
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • 1 ounce mozzarella cheese, diced
  • salt to taste
  1. Place the garlic, spinach and tomato in an oiled pan over medium heat, sauté until spinach wilts. Keep moving the mixture to avoid burning the garlic.
  2. Add salt, cheese, spinach, tomato, and garlic to egg in bowl and mix lightly.
  3. Pour egg mixture into re-oiled pan over medium-low heat and heat through until egg is mostly firm and cheese is melted, flip and cook for a minute to finish.
  4. Slide omelette on to bread and enjoy this less than 500 calories of deliciousness.
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insights photography

A twist on the PB&J: PB&B, PB&S & nut butter medley

Peanut butter is a semi-solid and can therefor...
Peanut butter is a semi-solid and can therefore hold peaks. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I love Peanut Butter and Jelly. It’s a treat, especially when it’s made with super crunchy peanut butter and real preserves where the fruit still has some of its texture, shape and deep flavor. I like mine on lightly toasted 12 grain bread, with about a tablespoon each of peanut butter and strawberry preserves. However, I like the taste of real fruit so very much that I prefer it to preserves, even when it is not nearly as sweet. So here are some ideas I’ve tried for improving on a classic:

Peanut Butter & Strawberries (PB&S) and Peanut Butter & Banana (PB&B)

Top your bed of nuts with chopped fruit! Here I’m sharing the ideas of strawberries and bananas, but that’s just a start. Try thinly sliced granny smith apples, strips of ripe peaches, chopped raisins, or crushed blackberries.

Add more nuts to your nuts: Nut Butter Medley

I always use natural peanut butter, almond butter, or cashew butter for these sandwiches, meaning that the ingredients list says “nuts, a little salt” and nothing else. If your label reads differently, skip it. The original marketing concern with natural nut butters was that people would see the oil sitting at the top of the jar (perfectly normal) and think there was something wrong with the concoction. The trans fat and other ‘ingredients’ are unnecessary and unnatural except to keep the look and feel of fake nut butters, and so why have them there? Extra points if you grind your own in the store, as you can at places like WholeFoods Markets. I like to take it a step further and make a sort of nut butter medley by adding my own walnuts, cashews, peanuts, hazelnuts, and almonds fresh from the shell, on the spot, per sandwich.

Related articles
  • The Nut Butter Face-Off: Almond Butter vs Peanut Butter (empowernetwork.com)
  • Peanut Butter Waffles (thefinishedplate.wordpress.com)
  • Get Out of Your Nut Rut! 8 Alternatives to Peanut Butter (thekitchn.com)