I applied for the position of PR Assistant at Vine Multimedia and when I was doing some research on Vine Multimedia's website, what sets Vine Multimedia apart from other agencies in the city of Winnipeg is Vine Mutimedia's focus on Social Business.
What also stood out for me is how Vine Multimedia tries to minimize its carbon footprint through the use of green energy and encouraging working from home.
Most importantly though, I think I can contribute to Vine Mutimedia's team and culture via my passion for feeding into the creative process, and my connections to Transition Winnipeg, a local non-profit with a mandate to ween Winnipeg off of our finite fossil fuel way of life.
I've been doing pro bono work for Transition Winnipeg which includes writing a creative brief, crafting business cards, and most recently a promotional video.
I see a natural bridge between what Vine Multimedia cares about and what Transition Winnipeg wants to accomplish, and nurturing connections to clients is what I can do in the position of PR Assistant.
I want to end this post by plugging Vine Multimedia for an amazing corporate culture that I think more businesses should adopt, and Vine Multimedia would be an incredible work environment for me given that I strongly suspect that the people at Vine Multimedia are as quirky as I am.
For more info on the work Transition Winnipeg is doing go to their website:
Transition Winnipeg
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Invade my Privacy! Just a little though ...
It doesn't take a lot of TV watching of a particular channel to realize that every station has a certain demographic that businesses are spending big bucks to hock their wares to.
For example, CBC Newsworld is chalked up with a lot of elderly related safety products and 'you better by life insurance for your grandchildren before you keel over and die' financial products.
We've been hearing rumblings about targeted advertising on TV akin to what Facebook is trying to do to appease their many fairly recent shareholders.
How do I feel about targeted advertising?
Well, to be honest with you, I would prefer it.
Let's face it, as someone watching TV, regardless of the actual channel, I am less likely to get up and walk away or switch to another channel if the product and/or service being advertised is relevant to my age, marital status, and hobbies.
As a company, it makes more sense to enhance reach with increased probabilities of honing in on your target audience.
What would this look like?
Most of the information about you could be gleamed from existing social media accounts.
Where you check in on Foursquare to what brands you like on Facebook, even if it was just to enter a contest to win a big screen TV can be data mined.
I envision the future having one central multimedia device in the house, possibly a very sophisticated smart TV that will have massive storage, for everything from jpegs to movies and video games, which will eliminate the need for other separate devices such as a Blu-ray player.
This device will be wired to the Internet so every move you make and every breath you take in that world can be categorized and referenced.
I personally don't think that's so bad.
It's not like were talking about a 1984 type telescreen are we?
Oh wait ...
For example, CBC Newsworld is chalked up with a lot of elderly related safety products and 'you better by life insurance for your grandchildren before you keel over and die' financial products.
We've been hearing rumblings about targeted advertising on TV akin to what Facebook is trying to do to appease their many fairly recent shareholders.
How do I feel about targeted advertising?
Well, to be honest with you, I would prefer it.
Let's face it, as someone watching TV, regardless of the actual channel, I am less likely to get up and walk away or switch to another channel if the product and/or service being advertised is relevant to my age, marital status, and hobbies.
As a company, it makes more sense to enhance reach with increased probabilities of honing in on your target audience.
What would this look like?
Most of the information about you could be gleamed from existing social media accounts.
Where you check in on Foursquare to what brands you like on Facebook, even if it was just to enter a contest to win a big screen TV can be data mined.
I envision the future having one central multimedia device in the house, possibly a very sophisticated smart TV that will have massive storage, for everything from jpegs to movies and video games, which will eliminate the need for other separate devices such as a Blu-ray player.
This device will be wired to the Internet so every move you make and every breath you take in that world can be categorized and referenced.
I personally don't think that's so bad.
It's not like were talking about a 1984 type telescreen are we?
Oh wait ...
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Fix the Problem, Not the Blame ...
I couldn't post about another mass shooting in the US ...
Not least until all the wags, pundits, and anachronistic types had their say.
Having digested the bipolar disorder that is gun culture in the US for so many years, I must say that it never fails that you will hear the same tired arguments.
For example, let me play devils advocate and take the head of the NRAs solution to prevent another Newtown seriously.
You know what, your right!
The variables of a gunfight taken under serious consideration, the Newtown massacre might not have happened, or the deaths might have been minimized had a first responder in the school with a firearm been there to confront the shooter.
I get it, a gun meets a gun and it MIGHT not get any worse than it already is.
But is that seriously the only answer the NRA can come up with?
A truly enlightened society would have NO guns. No citizen or civilian has access to any type of firearm whatsoever accept weapons manufactured and marketed for hunting.
(Philosophical considerations for a no-gun society cannot be covered in this post)
If Adam Lanza had NO access to an arsenal of weapons that riot police and soldiers might very well have, there is no way he would have inflicted the death toll he was able to.
Even if he had a machete, and heaven forbid a machete is still a weapon, Lanza would not have been able to inflict the level of death he was able to.
The moral high ground of no guns wins over the solution of putting armed guards in schools.
What's the cost and coordination of such a plan by the way?
Here's a scenario for the NRA to ponder ...
Does everyone remember Trayvon Martin being shot and killed by neighborhood Robocop George Zimmerman?
It turns out Martin was a law abiding young citizen out to buy some Skittles but was assumed to be a thug by Zimmerman.
What if Martin had a concealed firearm and shot and killed Zimmerman during the struggle that Zimmerman uses as his defense that no one else witnessed?
What's the NRA response to this?
"Well, it's a case of a good guy with a gun meeting another good guy without a gun, but the good guy with the gun thinks that the good guy without a gun is actually a bad guy potentially with a gun and, uhh, well the kid should have just had a gun of his own!"
Ohh!
So let's see here ...
Perhaps EVERYBODY should be packing, even law abiding non gangster teenagers who might get innocently mistaken for some degenerate reprobate by some over caffeinated suburbanite who shudders at mass media reports on crime.
Sorry NRA, you need to come up with something more convincing before I can even fathom putting armed guards in every public school.
Not least until all the wags, pundits, and anachronistic types had their say.
Having digested the bipolar disorder that is gun culture in the US for so many years, I must say that it never fails that you will hear the same tired arguments.
For example, let me play devils advocate and take the head of the NRAs solution to prevent another Newtown seriously.
You know what, your right!
The variables of a gunfight taken under serious consideration, the Newtown massacre might not have happened, or the deaths might have been minimized had a first responder in the school with a firearm been there to confront the shooter.
I get it, a gun meets a gun and it MIGHT not get any worse than it already is.
But is that seriously the only answer the NRA can come up with?
A truly enlightened society would have NO guns. No citizen or civilian has access to any type of firearm whatsoever accept weapons manufactured and marketed for hunting.
(Philosophical considerations for a no-gun society cannot be covered in this post)
If Adam Lanza had NO access to an arsenal of weapons that riot police and soldiers might very well have, there is no way he would have inflicted the death toll he was able to.
Even if he had a machete, and heaven forbid a machete is still a weapon, Lanza would not have been able to inflict the level of death he was able to.
The moral high ground of no guns wins over the solution of putting armed guards in schools.
What's the cost and coordination of such a plan by the way?
Here's a scenario for the NRA to ponder ...
Does everyone remember Trayvon Martin being shot and killed by neighborhood Robocop George Zimmerman?
It turns out Martin was a law abiding young citizen out to buy some Skittles but was assumed to be a thug by Zimmerman.
What if Martin had a concealed firearm and shot and killed Zimmerman during the struggle that Zimmerman uses as his defense that no one else witnessed?
What's the NRA response to this?
"Well, it's a case of a good guy with a gun meeting another good guy without a gun, but the good guy with the gun thinks that the good guy without a gun is actually a bad guy potentially with a gun and, uhh, well the kid should have just had a gun of his own!"
Ohh!
So let's see here ...
Perhaps EVERYBODY should be packing, even law abiding non gangster teenagers who might get innocently mistaken for some degenerate reprobate by some over caffeinated suburbanite who shudders at mass media reports on crime.
Sorry NRA, you need to come up with something more convincing before I can even fathom putting armed guards in every public school.
Friday, December 14, 2012
No Extreme Capitalism Please ...
If you've ever watched the Lang & O'Leary Exchange on CBC it is obvious that Kevin O'Leary is a zealous right wing capitalist.
First as an aside, hats off to the CBC which is accused of being left wing of having such a staunch right wing character on an insightful program.
Now on to business.
Kevin O'Leary is living in a half fictitious world predicated on an ideology that needs to be very closely scrutinized and examined.
Capitalism has failed to live up to it's expectations.
The extreme capitalists would have us believe that unfettered free markets guided by the invisible hand of greed is good will provide everyone with a nice sized house in the suburbs with a white picket fence and two SUVs in the drive way.
OK, so I'm stretching it a bit right? After all, why would a janitor get paid as much as a neurosurgeon?
That has to do with how the free market, and by extension 'we', value labour. But that's another blog post entirely.
Capitalism has failed because it treats everything and everyone like private property.
Enclosing resources like water or wood in a free market vein is lunacy because we are slowly but surely eating ourselves out of house and home. The market only values short term profits with no foresight into how we will survive in the future.
This mentality is on top of corporations desire to pursue profits relentlessly and has led to a shrinking of wages/salaries for the middle class and poor. Yeah, I'm looking at you Caterpillar! We ought to wring those corporate tax cuts from the CEO of Caterpillar's neck!
I'm calling out Kevin O'Leary specifically because in a very recent episode of the Lang & O'Leary Exchange, O'Leary more or less stated that human activity isn't having ANY impact on the environment.
At least three times he asserted that we shouldn't mess with mother nature while contending as a species we are not having an impact on the very environment that sustains us.
O'Leary directly contradicted himself in respect to an episode of the Lang & O'Leary exchange from a year or so ago where he was in a tiff with Amanda Lang about the future of the electrical car and asserted that putting more electrical cars on the road would cause more carbon and 'that's just dumb' to paraphrase.
Well O'Leary, given your recent assertions about us having NO impact on the environment what does it matter if we go electrical in the car route and release more carbon?
Cuz the carbon ain't causing any problems right?
A word to wise O'Leary, be aware of what you say one day because you are rife with little contradictions and I and others will call you on it.
I'm not done with this by a long shot.
First as an aside, hats off to the CBC which is accused of being left wing of having such a staunch right wing character on an insightful program.
Now on to business.
Kevin O'Leary is living in a half fictitious world predicated on an ideology that needs to be very closely scrutinized and examined.
Capitalism has failed to live up to it's expectations.
The extreme capitalists would have us believe that unfettered free markets guided by the invisible hand of greed is good will provide everyone with a nice sized house in the suburbs with a white picket fence and two SUVs in the drive way.
OK, so I'm stretching it a bit right? After all, why would a janitor get paid as much as a neurosurgeon?
That has to do with how the free market, and by extension 'we', value labour. But that's another blog post entirely.
Capitalism has failed because it treats everything and everyone like private property.
Enclosing resources like water or wood in a free market vein is lunacy because we are slowly but surely eating ourselves out of house and home. The market only values short term profits with no foresight into how we will survive in the future.
This mentality is on top of corporations desire to pursue profits relentlessly and has led to a shrinking of wages/salaries for the middle class and poor. Yeah, I'm looking at you Caterpillar! We ought to wring those corporate tax cuts from the CEO of Caterpillar's neck!
I'm calling out Kevin O'Leary specifically because in a very recent episode of the Lang & O'Leary Exchange, O'Leary more or less stated that human activity isn't having ANY impact on the environment.
At least three times he asserted that we shouldn't mess with mother nature while contending as a species we are not having an impact on the very environment that sustains us.
O'Leary directly contradicted himself in respect to an episode of the Lang & O'Leary exchange from a year or so ago where he was in a tiff with Amanda Lang about the future of the electrical car and asserted that putting more electrical cars on the road would cause more carbon and 'that's just dumb' to paraphrase.
Well O'Leary, given your recent assertions about us having NO impact on the environment what does it matter if we go electrical in the car route and release more carbon?
Cuz the carbon ain't causing any problems right?
A word to wise O'Leary, be aware of what you say one day because you are rife with little contradictions and I and others will call you on it.
I'm not done with this by a long shot.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Lazy Politicians ...
Omnibus Budget Bill = Lazy Politicians
It's lazy because Bill C-45 is not all about the budget and has 60 different changes to legislation in it.
I don't know where the Conservatives get off thinking this is acceptable.
It should be noted that if the Liberals were in power we might very well be seeing the same thing happening. When a party is majority territory, it can basically pass anything it wants without much of a fight unless there is something really amiss, while the official opposition clamors you can't do that and would most likely do more of the same if they are in control.
So methinks that when the next federal election is held I will press every candidate that comes to my door or I run into if they are willing to pass legislation banning omnibus bills.
Canadians need to send a clear message to Ottawa that politicians are elected to preserve democracy by having open debates on reasonable pieces of legislation rather than a ramshackle all-in-one approach.
Democracy and our taxpayer dollars demand it!
It's lazy because Bill C-45 is not all about the budget and has 60 different changes to legislation in it.
I don't know where the Conservatives get off thinking this is acceptable.
It should be noted that if the Liberals were in power we might very well be seeing the same thing happening. When a party is majority territory, it can basically pass anything it wants without much of a fight unless there is something really amiss, while the official opposition clamors you can't do that and would most likely do more of the same if they are in control.
So methinks that when the next federal election is held I will press every candidate that comes to my door or I run into if they are willing to pass legislation banning omnibus bills.
Canadians need to send a clear message to Ottawa that politicians are elected to preserve democracy by having open debates on reasonable pieces of legislation rather than a ramshackle all-in-one approach.
Democracy and our taxpayer dollars demand it!
Friday, November 30, 2012
Notes on a Human Rights Museum Scandal
McDonald's got a credential in the article 10 epic marketing fails of 2012 on LinkedIn penned by freelance writer Michael Estrin.
It involved a twitter hashtag #McDStories.
It was supposed to garner good feelings about the farmers that McDonald's buys potatoes and beef from but was quickly hijacked by people with not so pleasant gastronomical stories related to eating at McDonald's to animal rights groups and activists lashing out at McDonald's business practices.
Most people proceed with good intentions but in the online world if there is ever any doubt about how something might be construed or interpreted, then you should stop right there.
What does this have to do with the human rights museum slated to open in a couple of years in Winnipeg?
It has to do with the Canadian Museum for Human Rghts posting communications job positions asking for seven years worth of experience and the fact that whoever was in charge of communications and/or management thought it was a good idea to source a garment producer in a country with a poor human rights record.
The country in question is Vietnam and the blowback got national coverage.
I think are you serious?
I don't have several years of communications experience and even I know that if you are constructing a human rights museum which in of itself is subjectively subject to controversy and interpretation that your choice of a vendor for swag is going to be put under a microscope.
Again, nobody was trying to be slave driver, but come on!
It will be a cloud over the museums head if they don't make a PR opportunity of ensuring that all the swag made for the museum is produced in an ethical and even environmentally responsible way regardless of public opinion because it is the smart thing to do.
It involved a twitter hashtag #McDStories.
It was supposed to garner good feelings about the farmers that McDonald's buys potatoes and beef from but was quickly hijacked by people with not so pleasant gastronomical stories related to eating at McDonald's to animal rights groups and activists lashing out at McDonald's business practices.
Most people proceed with good intentions but in the online world if there is ever any doubt about how something might be construed or interpreted, then you should stop right there.
What does this have to do with the human rights museum slated to open in a couple of years in Winnipeg?
It has to do with the Canadian Museum for Human Rghts posting communications job positions asking for seven years worth of experience and the fact that whoever was in charge of communications and/or management thought it was a good idea to source a garment producer in a country with a poor human rights record.
The country in question is Vietnam and the blowback got national coverage.
I think are you serious?
I don't have several years of communications experience and even I know that if you are constructing a human rights museum which in of itself is subjectively subject to controversy and interpretation that your choice of a vendor for swag is going to be put under a microscope.
Again, nobody was trying to be slave driver, but come on!
It will be a cloud over the museums head if they don't make a PR opportunity of ensuring that all the swag made for the museum is produced in an ethical and even environmentally responsible way regardless of public opinion because it is the smart thing to do.
Monday, November 12, 2012
Startup Winnipeg
I went to Startup Winnipeg Weekend which ran from Friday evening to Sunday evening.
After attending the first Startup Winnipeg, and getting reamed out by the judges, I was a little older and wiser about boiling down 54 frantic hours of work to vet and present an idea in five minutes to judges who are just as ferocious as the investors on Dragons Den.
The team I was on worked well together and I was on the business model side of things trying to make sure the presentation was top notch, and while we didn't make it into the top three, the app idea our team presented is still worth pursuing and who knows where it will go.
In some respects the educational and networking potential of Startup Winnipeg is more important to me then winning any of the top three prizes aside from bragging rights.
Oh, a couple of groups really did get reamed out this time still.
The next Startup Winnipeg might be happening in April.
Time to think of some new biz ideas!
After attending the first Startup Winnipeg, and getting reamed out by the judges, I was a little older and wiser about boiling down 54 frantic hours of work to vet and present an idea in five minutes to judges who are just as ferocious as the investors on Dragons Den.
The team I was on worked well together and I was on the business model side of things trying to make sure the presentation was top notch, and while we didn't make it into the top three, the app idea our team presented is still worth pursuing and who knows where it will go.
In some respects the educational and networking potential of Startup Winnipeg is more important to me then winning any of the top three prizes aside from bragging rights.
Oh, a couple of groups really did get reamed out this time still.
The next Startup Winnipeg might be happening in April.
Time to think of some new biz ideas!
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