These are posts centered around presentations delivered by John LeMasney on various technology, branding, and design topics.
In this quick video (video is now working, sorry for anyone who tried earlier), I give an overview of the reasons why I love Android, and invite viewers to come and see me talk about it at Princeton Public Library on Tuesday, April 9th, 2013 at 7 pm in the Technology Center.
Any of you who know me know very well that I am drinking the Goog-Aid. I believe in the company, give them the benefit of the doubt when they profess that they are not evil, and in general, agree with their business, technology, and work philosophy. Today, I thought I’d share why and how I came to this conclusion.
Their support of open standards. When I work with others, it often means that I have to decide the best way to deal with them. Do we use the same applications, services, and methods, or do we need to find a bridge between us? With Google, their products often use and support open standards and methods, such as XML, HTML 5, SVG, ATOM, and others, meaning that as long as another product (even proprietary ones) can understand the standard, we are good to go.
Their support of open source. In answering the mobile platform question “Why do you love Android so much?” my first answer is always “Because it’s open source.” Many people wonder why I care so much about open source (the source code that is written and compiled into the binary application is distributed along with the application), especially since I’m more of a user than a developer with most application code. The answer is that because developers get access to open sourced code, screen it for flaws, integrate improvements and can shape the code themselves, they act on my behalf. We all benefit from the changes that developers make to open sourced code. With proprietary solutions, those same developers are often cut off from adding their own code, seeing how it works, or checking it for flaws. Google uses open source in many of its projects, and supports its distribution through Google Code.
They offer portable music, documents, photos, and bookmarks, automatically backed up. I have a music collection of many, many gigabytes. It once was available on only one of my machines. When Google Music launched, it allowed me to upload all of my music to their service for streaming and download to any device that could visit their website, meaning every computer, phone, tablet, and set-top box I owned. They back up my music collection automatically, and make it available wherever internet access is present, which for me is nearly everywhere, anytime. Oh, and this goes for every photo I take with my phone, every document I write in Drive, and every presentation I’ve given for the last 5 years.
Google Plus, Hangouts, and YouTube. Google launched Plus, a social layer for its services a little while back. The obvious suggestion by critics was that they were trying to oust Facebook as king of social, but they are doing something different. They are making it easy to unify their services, share the products you make with them, and house it all under one roof: Plus. One feature of Plus, in particular, stands out as a disruptor: Hangouts. Hangouts, the ability to have up to ten people collaborate on documents, video chat, and more, has an on-air feature, with which you can do a live broadcast to thousands, archive the broadcast, and share it with people via YouTube. 5 years ago, it took a technologist with system administration skills to do this. Today, you just click the Hangout button on Plus.
The Android operating System. I’ll write on this at length in the future, but for now I’ll just say that excluding the Ubuntu mobile operating system, no other phone OS even begins to tempt me.
The Glass project and self-driving cars. Glass is a wearable computing platform that heralds the next big change in computing. Many are already dismissing it as too weird for mainstream use, but if we can get used to Bluetooth headsets, I think that wireframes that look like glasses without the lenses but that give you a heads-up-display on the world with camera, mic, and sound (powered by Android) would be worth the average person’s cultural shift in visual acceptance. And of course, any company that allows a blind person to drive himself to the store is a company that I stand behind.
I could go on, but I’ll stop here for now. If you are interested in how I think you could begin to integrate the Googleverse into your business workflow, please give me a call. I’m at lemasney@gmail.com and 609-553-9498
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:
We are doing these things to underline and reinforce what we are, and our patrons and other stakeholders understand and agree.
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.
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.
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.
So, this blog is about nothing if not health. One of my healthiest new practices has become meditation. As I’ve said on these pages before, I am a scientist, a practitioner, a realist, a humanist, and a naturalist. I respect, but do not follow, any organized religion, but I consider myself a scholar of many, as they have much to offer in the way of morality, guidance, and inner peace. Also, I like to think that I am open to what works, and meditation works for me. Much written about Buddha, Jesus Christ, Abraham, Allah, and others makes a lot of sense to me. They’re all pretty nice peeps, most of the time, and it seems like they all knew something about meditation.
So here I wanted to talk a bit about what I am trying to do with meditation, my recent practice, some techniques and methods I’ve learned about, and ones I’m excited to try in the future.
Meditation is practicing focus. Meditation is clearing away chaos. Meditation is centering. Meditation is exercise for the mind. Meditation helps you gain patience. Meditation helps you work through issues methodically. Meditation helps you become more you, and less else. Meditation creates a calm place for you to see the world without distractions. Meditation is the opposite of chaos. Meditation reveals delusion. Meditation differs for all who do it, even within schools where there is a framework. The meditation I describe below differs for you and me, and differs for others. The results will differ too, but it is more likely, if practiced regularly, that we will end up in the same place: more relaxed, more focused, more calm, more happy with what is. Does it make me perfect? Absolutely not. I struggle with guilt, pain, distractions, and temptations every day. Meditation makes it easier for me to deal with these and dismiss them, though. There are claims that it helps to improve your senses, immune system, and self-image. I have no idea about these. The only evidence I have, personally, is of more mental clarity, calmness, and focus.
My method is to go on a walk of about an hour’s length. As I walk, I breathe. I count my breaths on my fingers, one inhale and one exhale is one breath. I count on my four fingers and then start over again, as I breathe, physically counting to four, over and over, without noting the numbers, just the fingers. I also, in my mind, say the word breathing. As I inhale, I say breathe- and as I exhale, I say -ing. I sometimes become distracted as I walk, by cars, birds, interesting pieces of metal and trash. I note these, saying ‘distraction’, or ‘concern’, or ‘listening’, and then quickly return to my mantra of ‘breathing’. I usually look down at the ground as I walk, my eyes resting on the ever-changing pattern and chaos of the asphalt or concrete or dirt path. I try to ignore this visual information, as I can, and use it only not to walk into the path of others, cars, or other dangers; to stay on the path. The only other practice is to gather a rhythm. I usually walk four steps to a breath. This is it.
Many variations exist on this meditation, some where you might use the rhythm or counting or path as the main focus, as opposed to the breathing. I believe these would be equally beneficial. During the hour of this practice, I have often spontaneously smiled wide, at least once, by no conscious thought, but by the freeing act of mindlessness. I did this today.
Other techniques need no movement at all, but rather a quiet space and closed eyes. Some require conscious, concentrated focus on a particular problem or issue, focusing on the facts and feelings of the issue, back and forth and back, again and again, always returning to the issue until one resolves all facts and feelings, or at least comprehends them. Some methods focus on literally nothingness, no mental activity, visualisation, mantra, or activity. This is, maybe, the most common stereotypical technique that many think of when they hear the word meditation, and perhaps the one that causes most to dismiss meditation as potentially valuable, but difficult to practice. this is my opinion, but this does not mean I will not try it, when my mind is ready. Anyone who has ever actively tried to think of nothing and nothingness discovers how very out of keeping with the style of our contemporary world it is. This is maybe the best reason for it.
Happiness to you, in whatever forms it comes.
So, today I decided to make a new header for the project to show the difference in the new series. I started off by importing the older blue header with the open location import tool to get just the right size. After making a text layer with my project name and choosing a font and applying kerning, I added a few transparent layers underneath it. On each of those layers I used the paintbrush or eraser and various brushes to make the marks you see here. Using the palette color selector and a built-in fiery palette was especially helpful to create a cohesive color scheme.
Host: Princeton PC Users Group
Artist’s Statement: https://lemasney.com/consulting/about-365-sketches/
Venue: Mercer County Library, Lawrence Branch, Lawrenceville, NJ
Date: August 30th, 2010
Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie: Rumours and Expectations
The new look of Google management
Google’s Eric Schmidt denies merging of Android and Chrome
Lunch & Learn: John LeMasney – 10 things you should know about Android and the Nexus 7.
The Unanswered Question (and the only one arts administrators need to ask.)
The Quandry of E-book Lending
