Category: portfolio

This is a portfolio of my work in many forms. It should give you some insight as to the products I might help you to create.

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insights photography

My new food staples checklist: 20 items I can’t go without.

My food philosophy, revised.

Michael_Pollan
Michael_Pollan

So I wanted to talk a bit about how my food philosophy has changed most recently, and discuss how that has changed my grocery shopping habits.

Here are 7 things I try to do in making choices about food.

  1. I prefer local food over high carbon footprint, anonymously sourced food. I like to know who handles my food, thank them directly, and make sure that they are doing well for helping me be well. If everyone did this, we’d all be better off. If the food is not local, such as coffee or bananas, or tea, I try to make choices that benefit the grower directly, such as fair trade offerings. If food is available locally, I will choose it over a remotely sourced food. 
  2. I prefer organic food to commercial farming methods. No one needs to eat pesticides or chemical fertilizers. The need for pesticide aggression in commercial farming is one of convenience and mass growing efforts, usually of monocrops where the pests evolve to resist less aggressive pesticides. Smaller farms can pay more attention to the crops, the soil, and the methods for their plants, and I want to support that effort.
  3. I prefer natural genetic evolution to Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO). I’m saddened by the Obama Administration’s recent support of the efforts of GMO organizations.
  4. I prefer to cook and bake and brew my food rather than to pay for having it done for me. It usually tastes as good or better than the food I buy in a restaurant, I never get my order wrong, and I’m able to very tightly control my caloric intake. It is always, always, always cheaper.
  5. I prefer whole foods over processed foods. I like foods that Michael Pollan would approve of.
  6. I prefer to grow my food when possible. I live in a studio apartment, with very little spare space, but so far I have an herbal tea garden with German chamomile, basil, sage, and oregano, all delicious teas.
  7. I’m mostly vegetarian. I eat meat occasionally, usually as a condiment, usually in situations where the food is already prepared, like chicken broth based soup at a restaurant, or at a friend’s house.

What do I keep on hand?

Brussels sprouts on stalks
Brussels sprouts on stalks (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So with all of this in mind, I have started to cut down the cans, boxes, and packages of processed foods in my cupboard, most of which I’ve not touched since my nutritional lifestyle change almost a year ago. I’ve had more than my share of Progresso soups lately, and I’m glad to see them go. I am replacing these past staples with new staples in my cupboard, fridge and freezer, and using most of them at least once each week.

  1. A variety of apples and Navel Oranges. I eat at least 3 of these a day.
  2. Seedless Grapes, cherries, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries and raisins and other dried fruits. I snack on these.
  3. Mixed nuts in shell: peanuts, almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts, pecans, and Macadamia nuts. I shell and blend these to make a mixed nut butter.
  4. Leafy greens, including spinach and kale. I use these in dinners and stir fry.
  5. Whole grain flour, barley, and corn meal or grits. I bake a loaf of bread each week, eating a quarter of it each day. I use the corn meal for polenta, corn bread, and as a texture in other dishes.
  6. Yeast, baking powder and baking soda. Who doesn’t like pancakes?
  7. Peas, String beans, lentils, chickpeas and legumes. Great protein.
  8. Cabbage and Brussels sprouts. Great texture and flavor.
  9. Asparagus. A treat.
  10. Bananas. One of my regrets. I really wish they could grow bananas in New Jersey.
  11. Tomatoes in many shapes sizes and colors.
  12. Potatoes, onions, garlic and carrots.
  13. Raw sugar and honey. I like it sweet.
  14. Olive and peanut oil. I like it umami.
  15. Corn and popcorn. Corn as a whole food is very good food.
  16. Granola mix. This varies, but I like a little toasty, crunchy, sweet mouthful.
  17. Peppers. I like it spicy.
  18. Rosemary, cilantro, parsley, basil, peppercorns, sea salt. I think that these items are what bring food from delicious to sublime.
  19. Eggs. I buy them locally, where I can see the chickens.
  20. Water. I drink 8 cups a day, usually in tea.

This is where I am at right now. I may change again, but it’s a process. I know this: I’m fit, content, satiated, and happy with my nutrition. I feel great. I challenge you to try this for a week or a month, and see what happens. You might love it like I do.

Related articles
  • Reasons to Buy and Eat Organic Food? (ourlittlefamilyadventure.wordpress.com)
  • Top 10 excuses for Obama signing the Monsanto Protection Act (thedailysheeple.com)
  • 8 reasons GMOs are bad for you (sott.net)
  • Common Food Items Could Contain 180 Times More Fluoride Than Tap Water (secretsofthefed.com)
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brand consulting insights teaching workshops

The case for improving your visual creation skills #design #technology #transliteracy

A visual list of dangers
A visual list of dangers

It is becoming more important to know how to create original images, videos, and other visual content. You need transliteracy skills.

20060410 (2)
20060410 (2) (Photo credit: nikontino)

In the same way that it has traditionally been important to know how to read, write and perform arithmetic as a basic skill set of  communication, it has become increasingly important for people to create their own images, video, and other graphics to communicate their particular message effectively. It’s almost as though people only recently realized their visual preferences, maybe as a reaction to the emergence of visually motivated social networks like Pinterest, a place for people to curate, share, and collect images with verbal content becoming secondary.

A more visual web of content requires new skills.

A screenshot of the GIMP 2.2.8 raster graphic ...
A screenshot of the GIMP 2.2.8 raster graphic software. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As we move towards more digital interactions, and enjoy more visual web content from producers as a first introduction to their messages, we can see that they are creating a digital trail for themselves. Other people then find and interpret what they are about through quick visual assessments. If you look at my Pinterest boards, you will quickly get a sense of what I am about, because the cursory glance at a series of images does not carry the threshold of understanding that reading text does. We must slow down and engage our verbal brain to interpret the letterforms, then the words, then the combination of words to make meaning. With images, we need only recognize the items in the image to begin interpretation. We want to be able to leave our own visual trail, one with interesting, insightful, and communicative images, videos, and graphics that tell our story. If you do not know how to edit a photograph, make cuts, titles, and transitions in video and audio, or create a reasonable graphic, you will become more reliant on others to produce, edit, or change content for you. In the same way that you would not have to rely on someone else to create your word processed documents for you, you do not want to rely on someone else for mediating your visual content.

You can learn how to make great images and videos.

There are fantastic free tools and resources to begin to learn how to use these toolkits in the same way that you learned how to use browsers, word processors, spreadsheets, and operating systems. If you learned by spending time in the applications, the same will likely be true for visual applications. If you learned by reading a book, you may want to try the same for these applications. In order to learn Inkscape, an open source illustration application like Corel Draw and Adobe Illustrator, by book, I strongly suggest The Book of Inkscape, by Dimitry Kosonov. You likely learned word processing and other  applications because a need arose for you to become familiar with them to do schoolwork, business, or to communicate with others. A new need has emerged in digital transliteracy: for people to communicate in person, on paper, on-screen, in images, in video, in voice, and in graphics.

You can be your own graphic designer, video producer, or photographer with the skills to support you.

English: An infographic illustrating and compa...
English: An infographic illustrating and comparing the popularity of different geosocial networking services (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

With newly acquired video editing, image manipulation, and other visual media skills, you can begin to tell new stories that move people differently than a page or a voice can, take part in the remixed web, leave your creations waiting to be found and enjoyed, and have a kind of digital presence that engages, sticks with visual learners, and promotes you differently than text can because of the very nature of the media.

 

I’d like to help you to gain these skills!

Contact me at lemasney@gmail.com or 609-553-9498 to talk about how we can begin to acquire these skills for your organization, service, or product. Let’s do something great together!

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Illustration Inkscape insights photography professional activities professional experience publications

Recipe: A well-balanced, whole food, delicious meal in 5 minutes or less.

Basic granola template by lemasney
Basic granola template by lemasney
Basic granola template by lemasney
Basic granola template by lemasney

I have tried to find an especially easy meal to get about 500 calories in a good balance of fat, carbohydrates, and protein. It should accomplish the following:

  • local food
  • variable and extensible according to seasonality and availability
  • whole food
  • organic
  • delicious
  • well-balanced nutrition
  • raw food

I think I found it.

Fruit with granola and nut butter:

In a 2 cup bowl, combine granola and peanut butter into a paste, dice and add apple, add raisins and mix.

It is addictive. It’s so delicious that I crave it, and have had it every day since I first made it. The fruit adds a bright sweetness, the raisins add a chewy licorice depth, the granola brings a crunchy texture, and the peanut butter holds everything together. At 8 grams of fat, 10 grams of protein, and 87 grams of carbohydrate, it is very close to my nutritional percentages that I try to get for the day. The sugar is all fructose, and it has no refined sugars. The ingredients are local and organic. I could make the raisins myself, and have a plan to start drying fruit this season. It’s raw food, whole food, good food. 440 calories for the whole bowl.

Apple, granola, peanut butter, and raisins, by John LeMasney via Diary of Calories
Apple, granola, peanut butter, and raisins, by John LeMasney via Diary of Calories
Categories
insights photography

On coffee, tea, and the conflict of locality.

I enjoy coffee very much. I have recently enjoyed it less recently though, because I’ve begun to realize how it negatively affects my persona. I recognized the effects one day as I was sitting with my children, everything was going fine, and I decided to make myself some coffee. I quickly became quick to anger, chaotic in my mind, and a subtle distress, shakiness, and forgetfulness appeared. I thought maybe it was something else, or that maybe the particular situation of my life at that moment was having an effect, but after sensing this each time I have coffee after, I realize that for my particular body, this is causal. I only noticed this because I specifically focused on it, becoming more aware over time of effects of certain foods and situations on my persona, and removed other stimuli to try to see if coffee was the culprit. For me, it was. I am kind of sad about this fact, but I also realize that the absence of coffee, for me, makes me calmer, more focused, and less shaky. This might seem obvious, as many people drink coffee for this particular effect, but I do not think of this state as my best state, and so, why pursue it?

Note that I do not typically have just a cup of coffee, and less coffee means less adverse affects. I typically make 28 ounces in a French Press, and finish it in a short period of time, usually an hour or less. I used to have it with Splenda and fat free milk, and moved to raw sugar and whole milk, thinking perhaps that the processing of the materials in the food were part of the issue. I still drink coffee from time to time, and notice the almost immediate effects, regardless of the setup of the beverage.

As a result, I’ve focused more on tea as an alternative to coffee, and have not only not seen those effects appear, but I have seen other more positive effects appear instead. I’ve noticed after drinking tea that I breathe better, have more focus, and am generally calmer. I purchase loose teas, and enjoy them just as much as coffee. There are many stated benefits to green and black teas that I am interested in gaining.

However, there are still issues with this. I love bananas, and enjoy them very much. However, they are wrought with issues because they are not local food. They will not ever be local food. There is a huge carbon footprint to eating bananas. The Chiquita Dole company also has a sordid history in terms of how it treats its banana workers. For more on this, consider the documentary “Bananas!” on Netflix Watch Now. If you can understand why I am conflicted in eating bananas, you can understand how I likely feel about drinking coffee, and tea. Both have a huge carbon footprint, and neither are local.

I started asking people who are like minded how they solved this problem, and they all have the same answer: Grow your own herbal teas. When I asked what herbs and other plants made the best teas, I got a long list of beneficial, familiar, local herbs that are perfectly suited for tea. These start with rosemary, thyme, sage, raspberries, mint, ginger, and include basically every other edible, fragrant herb you can think of. I was referred to Victoria Zak’s 20,000 Secrets of Tea, and it’s so far, it’s a very enlightening read.

I’ve just started adding rosemary and oregano to my beloved gunpowder tea, and it’s lovely.

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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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