download please

Contact

×
Name:
Email:
Message:
Send message

Share

×
Twitter
Facebook
Tumblr
Posterous
Blogger
Wordpress
Linkedin
Delicious
Digg
Myspace
Windows Live
Google Buzz
Orkut
Stumbleupon
Reddit

john ratcliffe-lee

dot com

+

Posts

  • July 30, 03:36 PM

    Balanced People Don’t Change the World

    But the other thing to think of, it’s that being unbalanced (for lack of a better word) doesn’t mean you have to go into destructive genius mode. I don’t know if it’s your family or your health, but if you really want to head off in pursuit of a big dream, something’s gotta give. It’s up to each of us to determine what that’s going to be and how we’re going to allocate our energy.

    the inspiration for my twitter bio.

  • July 30, 02:17 PM
    “Distilling my personality provided surprising focus, making feel stripped to my essence. It forced me, for instance, to pinpoint the dominant feeling as I sat outside with my daughter listening to E.B. White. Was it my joy at being a mother? Nostalgia for my own childhood summers? The pleasures of listening to the author’s quirky, underinflected voice? Each put a different spin on the occasion, of who I was within it. Yet the final decision (“Listening to E.B. White’s ‘Trumpet of the Swan’ with Daisy. Slow and sweet.”) was not really about my own impressions: it was about how I imagined — and wanted — others to react to them. That gave me pause. How much, I began to wonder, was I shaping my Twitter feed, and how much was Twitter shaping me?”
    Peggy Orenstein
  • July 30, 01:14 PM

    How I Order an Americano - Shawn Blanc

    When at coffee shops I almost always order a 12-ounce, double Americano with a little bit of half-and-half steamed in.

    i should try this.  i usually go with a “triple tall with room” which is three shots in the smallest amount of water.  no milk, just three “sugar in the raw” packs.

    i had read somewhere, a while ago, that this was what the head taster at starbucks always orders to get a temperature for the overall performance of the store in question.  i figured that made sense for me too - it’s a straight-forward drink that is effective, caffeine-wise, and its unadulterated prep highlights original flavor.

    but, lets get real, it can be boring from time to time.

  • July 30, 10:16 AM

    caro:

    andrewromano:

    In which I attempt to explain why New York tastemakers are suddenly obsessed with the real New Jersey (versus the impostors of Jersey Shore): 

    In Brooklyn, a new hipster gastropub named St. Anselm is mining its owner’s North Jersey youth for menu items: Newark hot dogs, Hacksensack-style sliders, Trenton pork rolls, cheese-and-gravy-covered disco fries, even the enigmatic sliver of cadaver-colored meat known as scrapple. The high-concept SoHo shop Kiosk, which typically sources its “anonymous design” objects from far-off countries such as Japan, Portugal, and Finland, just launched a mid-Atlantic collection that revolves around the Garden State. And recently it seems as if every new indie-rock “it” band—Titus Andronicus, Vivian Girls, Real Estate, Ducktails, Screaming Females, and Julian Lynch, to name a few—hails from (and, in most cases, sings about) Sopranos country. Not even the Boss was able to make N.J. this chic…
    The Jersey trend taps into the defining cultural obsession of the moment: the allure of authenticity. In cities from Portland, Ore., to Portland, Maine, bookish lumberjack types are wearing hunting garments to art galleries and brunch. It is difficult to find a new restaurant that doesn’t require its brick to be exposed, its wood to be reclaimed, and its bartenders to be mustachioed. Heritage brands—Levi’s, Keds, Filson—have never been hotter. The attraction is simple: by consuming the “actual article” (or, more often, a carefully crafted simulacrum), urbanites everywhere feel they’re distancing themselves from the increasingly insubstantial, Internet-driven nature of contemporary life. As states go, New Jersey may be the ultimate real deal. It isn’t obvious. It isn’t marketed or mythologized. It isn’t easy to love. It just is. By scarfing down a tray of disco fries with gravy and ricotta at St. Anselm, or by admiring the unheralded output of small Garden State manufacturers at Kiosk, consumers are subscribing to a sensibility that’s very much in vogue right now. New Jersey is just the vehicle du jour.

    How much credit are we forced to give Zach Braff?

    none at all, i think.  it’s romanticism vs. something authentic that’s always been that way.  i’m very proud of the state i live in and wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

  • July 28, 09:32 PM

    A New Risk Factor: Your Social Life

    The researchers concluded that having few friends or weak social ties to the community is just as harmful to health as being an alcoholic or smoking nearly a pack of cigarettes a day. Weak social ties are more harmful than not exercising and twice as risky as being obese, the researchers found.

    GET FRIENDS OR DIEEEEE

  • July 28, 09:12 AM
    “If you have the choice to invest more time/money into your user experience or some branding campaign, choose the user experience every time.”

    Experience Precedes Branding (via viiv)

    Maybe 90% of the time.

    (via mikehudack)

    yes, please.

  • July 24, 01:52 PM
    “Hey, well, as far as I’m concerned, progress peaked with frozen pizza.”
    John McClane (via iswarley)
  • July 24, 01:40 PM

    soccer in america.

  • July 23, 02:31 PM

    The Art of the Deal as Entertainment

    Procedural voyeurism grants us an illusion of control over realities that we secretly fear we have no power over — sometimes correctly, as with the BP oil spill, whose coverage has been rich in process and until recently short on meaningful developments. The Romanian religious philosopher Mircea Eliade wrote about mesmerizing narratives that he called origin myths. He said they helped people feel a sense of authority over an otherwise chaotic world. Today our origin myths are more mundane, but we still see the deal as a primordial act. We might do well to call these decadent versions “LeBron Announcements” or “Conan-Leno Matches”: rituals of symbolic participation in games-within-games that are way above our heads and occur within heavily guarded inner circles that we can peek into but never truly penetrate.

    solid explanation. all this lebron/conan/leno stuff pissed me off too. NO BODY HAS/HAD ACTUALLY DONE ANYTHING YET.

    not just disguising, we’re bait-and-switching one of the few things in this world that is mildly controllable: our very own accomplishments.

  • July 22, 04:38 PM

    Vonnegut on Technology

    On replacing human contact with electronic contact:

    …

    Then I’m going down the steps, and my wife calls up, “Where are you going?” I say, “Well, I’m going to go buy an envelope.” And she says, “You’re not a poor man. Why don’t you buy a thousand envelopes? They’ll deliver them, and you can put them in a closet.” And I say, “Hush.” So I go down the steps here, and I go out to this newsstand across the street where they sell magazines and lottery tickets and stationery. I have to get in line because there are people buying candy and all that sort of thing, and I talk to them. The woman behind the counter has a jewel between her eyes, and when it’s my turn, I ask her if there have been any big winners lately. I get my envelope and seal it up and go to the postal convenience center down the block at the corner of 47th Street and 2nd Avenue, where I’m secretly in love with the woman behind the counter. I keep absolutely poker-faced; I never let her know how I feel about her. One time I had my pocket picked in there and got to meet a cop and tell him about it. Anyway, I address the envelope to Carol in Woodstock. I stamp the envelope and mail it in a mailbox in front of the post office, and I go home. And I’ve had a hell of a good time. And I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different. Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing. We’re dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go do something. [Gets up and dances a jig.]

    emphasis mine.

  • July 22, 02:44 PM

    McSweeney's: Tom Skerritt's speech to the cadets in Top Gun

    pile:

    “Even the worst among you here at Top Gun, or the worst of the rest of the best of the best, are better than even the best of the rest of the best.”

    how you use the internet:  change your profile picture on facebook then re-blog some top gun.

  • July 21, 06:13 PM

    The dangerous art of the right question

    bobulate:

    Venkatesh Rao on the dangerous art of the right question. Four questions that are, in fact, terrible from the world of business:

    1. Who is our customer?
    2. What is our market?
    3. What is our goal?
    4. What problem does our product solve for the customer?

    They’re terrible, he says, because they’re devoid of information. Instead:

    Real questions, useful questions, questions with promising attacks, are always motivated by the specific situation at hand. They are often about situational anomalies and unusual patterns in data that you cannot explain based on your current mental model of the situation… Real questions frame things in a way that creates a restless tension, by highlighting  the potentially important stuff that you don’t know. You cannot frame a painting without knowing its dimensions. You cannot frame a problem without knowing something about it. Frames must contain situational information.

    Here’s why things work this way:

    There are two types of questions. Formulaic questions and insight questions. …. Formulaic questions can be asked without knowing much. If they can be answered at all, they can be answered via a formulaic process. …. Insight questions can only be asked after you develop situation awareness. They are necessarily local and unique to the situation.

    So how do you ask these questions? Here are three ways:

    1. The Poirot Method
    2. The Jack Welch Method
    3. The 42 Method

    And what are those you ask? For those answers, you should head over to read the piece in its entirety.

    [via]

    this reminded me of dave gray’s new gamestorming book.

  • July 21, 05:47 PM

    the curving hip, the soothing shade: Plane watchers II

  • July 21, 05:39 PM

    Questions for the Novelist Gary Shteyngart - The Russian Immigrant’s Handbook

    The death of reading is a longstanding fear of futurists.

    Maybe we’re all wrong and there’s going to be a huge comeback in 10 years where all the kids are going to drop their iKindles and start reading like crazy. “Dude, did you read the latest Turgenev? It’s so sick. This dude is like all over the subject of love and serfdom.”

    That would be nice.

    I don’t know how to read anymore. I can only read 20 or 30 words at a time before taking out my iPhone and caressing it and snuggling with it.

    Silence is so over.

    Silence has been destroyed, but also the idea that it’s important to learn how another person thinks, to enter the mind of another person. The whole idea of empathy is gone. We are now part of this giant machine where every second we have to take out a device and contribute our thoughts and opinions.

    Why do you think you write about the present when so many novelists are immersed in the past?

    How could one not write about today? It’s so fascinating. When civilization takes a nose dive, how can you look away? You’ve got to be there. You’ve got to be at the bottom of the swimming pool taking notes.

    …

    Any thoughts on the Russian spy ring that was just dismantled by the F.B.I.?

    I think this is a holdover from when Russians knew so little about Americans, before YouTube, and it was impossible to figure out what makes these people tick. But I think it’s very easy to figure out what makes us tick.

    What is that?

    Fear. And hamburger.

    great little exchange.

  • July 14, 12:50 PM

    De inventione punctus

    All signs sug­gest punc­tu­a­tion is in flux. In par­tic­u­lar, our signs that mark gram­mat­i­cal (and some­times seman­tic) dis­tinc­tions are wan­ing, while those denot­ing tone and voice are wax­ing. Fur­ther­more, signs with a slim graph­i­cal pro­file (the apos­tro­phe and comma, espe­cially) are hav­ing a rough go of it. Com­pared to the smi­ley face or even the ques­tion mark, they’re too visu­ally quiet for most casual writ­ers to notice or remem­ber, even (or espe­cially) on our high-def screens.

  • July 14, 10:39 AM

    1920s “Gentleman’s Racer” from New England Boat & Motor Co.

    let’s talk about boats and how i want this one.

  • July 13, 11:34 PM
    “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by brevity, over-connectedness, emotionally starving for attention, dragging themselves through virtual communities at 3 am, surrounded by stale pizza and neglected dreams, looking for angry meaning, any meaning, same hat wearing hipsters burning for shared and skeptical approval from the holographic projected dynamo in the technology of the era, who weak connections and recession wounded and directionless, sat up, micro-conversing in the supernatural darkness of Wi-Fi-enabled cafes….”

    McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Tweet.

    (via lapuravidagallery) (via cmonstah) (via newsweek)

    (via wearethedigitalkids)

  • July 12, 09:29 AM

    bunch:

    Sound advice.

    [via]

    this is essentially what i’m doing today.

  • July 11, 11:15 PM

    Everything I Know About Tennis I Learned from Cow Paths

    Modern technology has created a tennis monoculture, one that is best seen in paths of dead grass.

    great observation about grass court play in 2010 vs. 30 years ago.

  • July 10, 02:37 PM

    kratlee:

    walking back from the uhhh-mazing vermont farmers dinner we stopped to admire the sunset that we had been enjoying all evening. the lumps from left to right are betsy, big john, al, tommy, and kate. I had the flash on and everyone said it went off, but i guess the sunset was all “screw that” and shut that bad boy down. i was a bit upset because this was the only family-shot opportunity that i took the whole time we were there, but then i went to bingo and witnessed one of the best almost-wins of all time. like, i think bri’s loss was better than actually winning.

    another vacation where the d90 didn’t get used once.  shame.

  • July 10, 02:36 PM

    kratlee:

    enjoyed the fireworks on the airstrip with everyone tonight. that’s @jratlee in the photo, but ‘round these parts he goes by big john.

    who would’ve thought i’d have my photo taken w/ an iphone 4 before i actually got one.

  • June 28, 12:07 PM

    Sunday Routine - David Chang - But It’s So Nice Inside

    ZONING OUT I try to do nothing. I don’t know — I’m not trying to reach nirvana or anything, but doing nothing is awesome. I’m trying to do more of nothing. I wish I could say, “Hey, I’m reading The Paris Review or crushing The New Yorker.” But you know what? That’s not happening.

  • June 27, 09:38 AM

    Ira Glass on Being Wrong

    One of the reasons I was interested in doing this interview is because I feel like being wrong is really important to doing decent work. To do any kind of creative work well, you have to run at stuff knowing that it’s usually going to fail. You have to take that into account and you have to make peace with it. We spend a lot of money and time on stuff that goes nowhere. It’s not unusual for us to go through 25 or 30 ideas and then go into production on eight or 10 and then kill everything but three or four. In my experience, most stuff that you start is mediocre for a really long time before it actually gets good. And you can’t tell if it’s going to be good until you’re really late in the process. So the only thing you can do is have faith that if you do enough stuff, something will turn out great and really surprise you.

  • June 27, 07:43 AM
    “According to the urbanist Jane Jacobs, the engine of a city’s wealth in a bootstrap called import replacement. Essentially, a city become economically vibrant by finding ways to domestically produce the things it imports. Within a global environment where physical distance is becoming increasingly expensive (fuel and overhead) and virtual distance is increasing free (bandwidth and scale factor), the imports that are most vital to replace through local production will increasingly be food, energy, and manufactured products. The most valuable exports will increasingly become virtual. The best way to start this wealth engine, in a place like Detroit, is to foster the development of moderately urban, economically vibrant, resilient communities — that produce most of the food, energy, and products that they consume — in the blighted area that surrounds the shrinking urban core. Instead of producing wealth at the core, produce in the near periphery (at the RC level) and by default, turn the city core into the place for services that require a large population base to support (from entertainment to medicine).”

    Global Guerrillas (via azspot)

    sometimes this whole hipster/craft/local movement seems a bit ridiculous.  then there are ways it’s explained perfectly.

  • June 25, 11:53 PM

    pieto:

    Wilson Pickett - Mustang Sally

    tonight was a good friday night.

  • June 22, 02:51 PM

    Truth

    mknell:

    What kind of life do you have if you’re always breaking news, but never fixing it? 

    discuss amongst yourselves.

  • June 22, 02:35 PM

    Brands: Please Pay Attention to This

    mikehudack:

    “A charismatic brand can be defined as any product, service or company for which people believe there is no substitute … Among the hallmarks of a charismatic brand are a clear competitive stance, a sense of rectitude, and a dedication to aesthetics. Why aesthetics? Because it’s the language of feeling, and, in a society that is information-rich and time-poor, people value feeling more than information.”

    — Marty Neumeier in “The Brand Gap”. I am rereading this book slowly to ponder his wisdom and let it swirl in the grey cells. I thought about this quote all weekend. He goes on to explain a charismatic brand’s magical ability to bridge the gap between strategy and creativity. (via gbattle) (via caterpillarcowboy)

    Yes. This.

  • June 22, 02:28 PM

    themattrubin:

    headunderwater:

    Tennis - Marathon

    I am head over heals for Tennis thanks to Andrea. Obviously I’m not the first to mention this lovely group. I am so in love with the movement of new sounds coming from old ways of late 50s & 60s pop music.

    andreainspired:

     You had me at “woooOoOoooO”. Legitimately smitten.

    via Delicious Scopitone // via gotagirlcrush

    good job, band who is named after my favorite sport.  surely a trend but good music is precisely that:  good music.

  • June 20, 08:21 PM
    “I speak a lot at business schools, and I ask how many people are there to make money. And then I say why don’t you just quit school and be drug dealers then? Because business school is about making things for people. That’s why you should be here.”
    John Scharffenberger
  • June 14, 11:53 PM

    Stark Raving Black Web Trailer

    sorry for all the fresh language tonight.  it works when it works, ya know?

    anyway, this is “old.”  comedy central is getting around to airing the dvd as a “special” so they’re running promos for it.

    the very end of the clip (not going to spoil it - just watch) hit home over the weekend.

    maybe it’s the antithesis of the post below.  digitizing/keeping vs. experiencing.

    “if you’re…”

  • June 14, 11:43 PM

    I am wondering…

    And is there data that shouldn’t be passed on?

    it’s impossible to understand what will matter or who will care about it.  one of my favorite things about recording in the present is that there will be context about me for others later in life.

    we all bear what others leave behind.  i’m set to head into drobo-land and open up the flood gates.  will it all be around afterwards?  i don’t know.  i’m connecting dots now so someone can draw a picture later.  don’t worry about what you’ll leave behind and don’t be afraid of keeping it now.

    the story always gets told.

  • June 14, 11:18 PM

    Jessi Klein:  Dale

    hey guys, this is funny.

  • June 14, 12:36 AM

    Phoenix - Lasso (via pnvbrown)

    solid summer jam.

  • June 11, 05:52 PM

    A helpful reminder for modern life

  • June 11, 05:26 PM

    Questions for Christopher J. Brownfield - America’s Next Top Kill

    You served as a submarine officer aboard the U.S.S. Hartford from 2002-5. What is the longest amount of time you spent underwater?

    Fifty-four days, which is about 45 days longer than fresh fruit and vegetables last.

  • June 05, 12:53 PM

    What's your time perspective?

    i’m a combo of “past positive” and “present hedonistic.”

  • June 05, 11:36 AM
    “

    I can’t think of anything better to do right now than to sit in my backyard and look at the Mississippi and listen to Bach cello suites and enjoy a dish of ice cream with fresh raspberries.

    As the Gulf turns dark and the polar ice cap melts, I intend to listen to Bach more and listen to the news less. It’s good to know that, in the midst of vast indifference and mediocrity and narcissism, mankind did manage to produce the St. Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor.

    ”

    Garrison Keillor (via caro)

    ever the optimist.

  • June 04, 09:39 AM

    wearethedigitalkids:

    Designing For Networks

    this makes sense.

  • June 02, 08:45 AM
    “I don’t like being dissed when I’m already down.”

    The Disservice Economy

    essentially, companies have done the math and something that happens in your everyday that might cause you to send a tip to consumerist for have been already factored in and the “vendor” takes these types of experiences into consideration.

    they’ll happen once in a while but it’ll never impact profit.

  • June 01, 11:06 AM

    How Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me Is Crowdsourcing Done Right

    peer deep into the eyes of NPR, they know all.  actually, they might - they’re tasked with creating programming that engages people and works well on budgets much smaller than most in today’s media world.

    there is also a small argument for crappy programming on major networks.  there is no skin in the game anymore.

  • June 01, 08:45 AM

    attention to detail.

    Even with cheap printed books, you can tell that someone proofed every page. With many e-books, they’ve clearly just been run through a converter with no proofing whatsoever. This is especially true for backlist Kindle titles from Amazon — the formatting is just atrocious.

    this will be fixed, i’m sure but it’s certainly indicative of an unintended separation while innovation, in general, is hurtling forward.  part of how we live, as a species, is connecting to the environment around us using all of our senses.  touching a screen and magic happening is nice but it doesn’t engage you completely.  there is nothing tangible interacting back with you that engages all of you at once.  you’ll see something, you’ll hear something - but you won’t physically feel anything.

    we still need that.  we’ll always need that.  things go wrong and our balance is shifted.  why is running away and going on vacation, “unplugging” so hot right now?  it’s that balance that has left our everyday lives.  we’re chasing when we can easily bring it back.

  • May 31, 10:59 PM
    “A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.”
    A. Einstein (via walksinbeauty) (via bringtheruckuss) (via asprettyasasong)
  • May 31, 04:52 PM

    What to do with your millions.

    Many people with jobs have a fantasy about all the amazing things they would do if they didn’t need to work. In reality, if they had the drive and commitment to do actually do those things, they wouldn’t let a job get in the way.

  • May 29, 07:38 AM

    Barking up the wrong tree - Just the interesting stuff.

    the kind of blog i would be writing if i wasn’t busy posting photos of custom ben stiller headbands.

  • May 29, 07:21 AM

    Ok Seriously, What Is Yahoo?

    a rare, astute insight from the land of ‘crunch.  mike is right, for $47.2 million, carol bartz not only gave a real shitty answer but pretty much confirmed the fact that yahoo! doesn’t know what it is or where it should be going.

    seriously, it was cute but when you’re making news for telling someone to “fuck off” and not because of anything else - that’s a shame.  and yes, when it happened and everyone was so proud of it, this is exactly what i was thinking.

  • May 28, 05:19 PM

    goldenfiddle:

    eBay: Signed STILLERSTRONG Headband: signed by Jon Hamm

    what.

  • May 28, 11:34 AM
    “Some things in life justify themselves emotionally, without necessity for analytic reasoning…”
    Norman Thomas
  • May 26, 04:46 PM

    This is not content

    What people want is opinions, analysis, techniques, experiences, and insights. The best of all these come as a bi-product from actually doing stuff. The closer you are to the topics, the more natural you’ll be able to extract the goodies.

    boom goes the dynamite.

  • May 26, 02:09 PM
    “…globalization and information technology are not transforming the international order to the extent suggested by all the hype. One thing that is changing, however, is this: the feasibility of solving our domestic problems by pursuing further expansion abroad is shrinking. What Niebuhr referred to as “quantitative solutions” are no longer solutions. The pursuit of more has become self-defeating—for Americans, the chief products of that pursuit are more debt, more war, and more damage to the environment. So we need to look to qualitative solutions—revising the American way of life so as to restore a sense of harmony and balance.”

    Andrew Bacevich (via azspot)

    so, i was in this relatively important meeting yesterday where i was asked, “why this?”  ’this’ as in connecting my personal interest in technology with my professional pursuits as a communications professional.

    i didn’t stumble and i had some time to think about it while others offered up their reasons.  when it came to me, i picked up my blackberry and, essentially, said that “sad - but true - one’s whole world is right here.”  the tech has broken down so many walls and what drives me isn’t about what popular convention thinks it is.  do i live and die by a tweet or a like?  no, and you shouldn’t either.

    my basic answer is explained better in this quote.  my end goal isn’t to cover myself in a world of screens but, instead, meet where the waves collide.  honest, hard work benefiting and being transformed by the technology we steep ourselves in.

    sink or swim time folks.  there are distinct paths this world is headed in.

  • May 25, 11:56 AM

    the moon.

    as seen from my bedroom last night (blinds closed).

dot com

professional

+

Profile

John Ratcliffe-Lee

Account Supervisor, Digital at MS&L Worldwide
Online Media | Greater New York City Area, US

Summary

I have a passion for helping people connect, share and learn. Currently, I'm focused on helping businesses use digital and social media technologies for external community building, outreach and internal collaboration.

At MWW Group, I worked with a team of digital media relations experts to help our clients and colleagues understand and involve themselves online. Everyday, we worked on building relationships within the social media landscape for our clients and help add value to their interactive marketing efforts in the digital world.
Specialties: Usability, Branding, Marketing, Design, Media Relations, Technology, Photography, Writing, Brand Management, New Media, Blogs, Strategy, Corporate Communications, Executive Branding, Public Relations, Digital Media, Social Media

Experience

  • Oct 2009 - Present

    Account Supervisor, Digital / MS&L Worldwide

    Consumer Marketing
  • Jul 2008 - Oct 2009

    Senior Digital Media Specialist / MWW Group

    Managed digital media strategy and execution for MWW's clients. Making sure use of new social technologies always adds value for client brands and their audiences.
  • Jul 2007 - Jul 2008

    New Media Specialist / MWW Group

    Helped today's most relevant brands communicate effectively online. Developed strategic campaigns utilizing digital and social media tools such as blogs, podcasts and other targeted outreach activities that reached and exceed client goals.
  • Jul 2006 - Jul 2007

    Project Coordinator / MWW Group

    Consumer Lifestyle Marketing Division - National media contact for Nikon Inc.'s Digital SLR camera products.
  • May 2003 - Jul 2006

    Owner / False Dawn Industries

    Launched a multimedia initiative; specializing in print/interactive design, web site maintenance, logo design, album artwork, photography, and more. Designs have been shipped internationally and sold in Hot Topic, Inc. stores throughout NY, NJ, PA, CT, and DE.
  • Jun 2005 - Nov 2005

    Interactive Designer / MWW Group

    Created, implemented, and managed web content projects (HTML emails, web sites, digitizing audio/video) for one of the nation’s top ten public relations agencies. Successfully completed this internship by handling strict deadlines and meeting high expectations from clients such as McDonald’s, Bank of America, Nikon, Amazon.com, Continental Airlines, Sun Microsystems, and Roche. Reported directly to the Vice President of Technology.
  • Sept 2003 - May 2004

    Journalism Labs Supervisor / Rider University Communications Department

    Supervised high-technology multimedia labs. My extensive knowledge of industry-specific computer programs, scanners, etc. facilitated student and professor lab activities. Designed Communications Dept. logo used in University publications.
  • Jun 2001 - Sept 2001

    Account Representative / Mokrynski & Associates Inc.

    Demonstrated excellent time management skills and superior problem resolution ability while expediting client purchases of mailing lists. Attention to detail was required for frequent communication between mailing list seller and buyer to insure timely and accurate delivery of mailing list purchases..

Education

  • 2000 - 2006

    Rider University

    Bachelors in Journalism (Multimedia Communication) Major & Advertising Minor
    Activities: Lambda Pi Eta Communications Honor Society, Zeta Beta Tau (New Member Class President, Alumni Chair), PR Society, Men's Tennis, WRRC, Community Standards Board, Interfraternity Council VP of Academics

Additional information

Websites:
My Blog
Honors:
PR News PR People Awards 2009 Finalist, "Tweeter of the Year"
Interests:
cars, comedy, computers, cooking, design, film, literature, music, new jersey, photography, politics, satire, tennis, writing
professional

tweets

+

shared

+

Posts

  • July 30, 09:24 AM

    Everything-ism

    Everything-ism:

    David Sedaris uses, not a real stove but, a stove metaphor to talk about work-life balance:

    One burner represents your family, one is your friends, the third is your health, and the fourth is your work. The gist … was that in order to be successful you have to cut off one of your burners. And in order to be really successful you have to cut off two.

    James Franco seems to defy burner-isms. A recent piece raises at least two questions: 1) Can he be for real? And 2) If so, then just how is all of this possible?

    For instance:

    [G]raduate school. As soon as Franco finished at UCLA, he moved to New York and enrolled in four of them: NYU for filmmaking, Columbia for fiction writing, Brooklyn College for fiction writing, and — just for good measure — a low-residency poetry program at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. This fall, at 32, before he’s even done with all of these, he’ll be starting at Yale, for a Ph.D. in English, and also at the Rhode Island School of Design.

    And this isn’t new:

    According to his mother, Betsy, Franco has been this way since he was born. In kindergarten, he wouldn’t just build regular little block towers — he’d build structures that used every single block in the playroom. At night, he would organize his Star Wars toys before he slept. When Franco was 4 years old, a friend of the family died. Betsy gave him the standard Mortality Talk: no longer with us, just a part of life — yes, but hopefully not for a very long time. Little James burst into tears. He was inconsolable. Eventually, he managed to choke out, between sobs, “But I don’t want to die! I have so much to do!”

    This is no two-burner strategy. This is everything-ism.

  • July 29, 11:51 PM

    Visualizing Economics, Catherine Mulbrandon's Blog

    I've just stumbled across Visualizing Economics - a blog by Catherine Mulbrandon. The title pretty much says it all, so please take a look.
  • July 29, 08:08 PM

    The Great Check-In Battle

    Neal Pollack wrote a great piece for Wired Magazine which looks behind the scenes of the start and growth of both Gowalla and Foursquare. I use Gowalla and picked it mostly because I love the look and feel of it over Foursqaure. But I always assumed the two apps were basically the same. And though it’s true that they both have the same foundational usage — go places and get rewards for checking in — the two apps reward and encourage those check-ins quite differently.


    Visit This Link ➚
  • July 29, 12:57 PM

    Give back a little, Kanye.



    Give back a little, Kanye.

  • July 29, 05:14 PM

    Urbanized

    The next film in Gary Hustwit's design trilogy (after Helvetica and Objectified) is Urbanized, an investigation of urban design.

    Who is allowed to shape our cities, and how do they do it? Unlike many other fields of design, cities aren't created by any one specialist or expert. There are many contributors to urban change, including ordinary citizens who can have a great impact improving the cities in which they live. By exploring a diverse range of urban design projects around the world, Urbanized will frame a global discussion on the future of cities.

    Tags: cities   design   Gary Hustwit   movies   Urbanized
  • July 29, 03:05 PM

    Quote of the Day

    Anne Rice:

    “I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of … Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.”



  • July 28, 07:30 AM

    The Best Magazine Articles Ever

    The Best Magazine Articles Ever:

    The following are suggestions for the best magazine articles (in English) ever. Arranged in chronological order.

  • July 28, 07:30 AM

    Half-baked R&D

    Half-baked R&D:

    Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino on The Half-baked R&D Model:

    Companies who don’t officially have a space for innovation but have one or 2 people who are creative and want to do r&d. So they make them do r&d mostly but brush it aside the second client work comes in. Really dangerous as a model as the level of frustration of those people escalates rather rapidly. You’re either dedicated to the idea that people can do good new and useful things in specific conditions where they are isolated from the everyday, or not. Don’t pretend.

    See also: The Osmosis Model, The Alpha-person Model, The Start-up & Flip Model

    [via]

  • July 27, 12:33 PM

    Ha ha.

  • July 27, 01:15 PM

    Phone etiquette and the end of the individual

    Peggy Nelson argues that everyone being on their mobile phones all the time -- even while at a dinner for two -- isn't rude, it signals a shift from our society's emphasis on the individual to the networked "flow".

    We've moved from the etiquette of the individual to the etiquette of the flow.

    This is not mob rule, nor is it the fearsome hive mind, the sound of six billion vuvuzelas buzzing. This is not individuals giving up their autonomy or their rational agency. This is individuals choosing to be in touch with each other constantly, exchanging stories and striving for greater connection. The network does not replace the individual, but augments it. We have become individuals-plus-networks, and our ideas immediately have somewhere to go. As a result we're always having all of our conversations now, flexible geometries of nodes and strands, with links and laughing and gossip and facts flying back and forth. But the real message is movement.

    But au contraire, mon frere.

    My new standard of cool: when I'm hanging out with you, I never see your phone ever ever ever.

    If we're hanging out and you pull out your iPhone to water your Farmville crops, we can no longer be friends. It's not me, it's you.

    (via @tcarmody)

    Tags: etiquette   telephony
  • July 27, 10:38 AM

    The Lake Wobegon effect

    The Lake Wobegon effect:

    Experiments into human behavior use games and simplified decision situations to identify patterns of behavior that are likely to mirror real-life decision-making, or at least fictional life in Minnesota:

    [M]ost drivers in repeated studies rate their skills as better than average (sometimes referred to as the “Lake Woebegone Effect,” [sic] after radio personality Garrison Keillor’s fictional hometown “where all the children are above average”).

    See also:
    “Driving blind” concerning the topic of traffic and The Infrastructural City

    This can plausibly account for much of the risky and boneheaded behavior on roadways — for instance driving while talking on a cell phone. Drivers think they can beat the odds. …. Much of drivers’ overconfidence stems from an “illusion of control” [Dan Ariely says]. “When we control something, we feel the risk is lower, even when it is not, and this is especially strong in driving.”

    It seems the road is where the women are strong, the men are good-looking, but the driver may not always be right.

  • July 27, 10:22 AM

    What if the Earth stopped spinning?

    Using computer modeling, it's possible to take a crack at answering that question.

    If the earth stood still, the oceans would gradually migrate toward the poles and cause land in the equatorial region to emerge. This would eventually result in a huge equatorial megacontinent and two large polar oceans.

    Tags: geography   geology
  • July 26, 07:23 AM

    Laver's Law of Fashion

    James Laver was a museum curator for the Victoria and Albert Museum in London from the ‘30s through the ‘50s. He was also a fashion theorist and historian who conceived Laver’s Law — an attempt to make sense of the fashion trend lifecycle.

    Here is Laver’s Law:

    Indecent 10 years before its time
    Shameless 5 years before its time
    Outré (Daring) 1 year before its time
    Smart Current Fashion
    Dowdy 1 year after its time
    Hideous 10 years after its time
    Ridiculous 20 years after its time
    Amusing 30 years after its time
    Quaint 50 years after its time
    Charming 70 years after its time
    Romantic 100 years after its time
    Beautiful 150 years after its time


    Stanley Marcus, the former president of Neiman Marcus, recounts in his memoir Minding the Store how Laver’s Law was used by Neiman Marcus clothes buyers in the late 60’s. There was a heated internal debate on whether the trend for that next year would still be the mini skirt (which was the current fashion) or the longer midi skirt. Marcus asked Laver point blank if the mini skirt was dead. Laver told him that the mini skirt had at least another 2 years to go — against expert opinion at the time.

    His forecast was right, the midi was a complete flop, many women continued to wear the miniskirt, and those who couldn’t or wouldn’t make up their minds went into the pants suit. Pants were bound to come, but the skirt-length controversy made pants acceptable at an accelerated rate.

    The brilliance of this timeline is that it can be applied to nearly all creative mediums — not just fashion but also art, design, architecture, and even music. Smart, or Current Fashion, doesn’t have a particular time frame attached to it. Something can be smart for 1 year or a even few years.

    Think back to some of the trendy things of the past and you’ll see how it applies: candy colored iMacs, Victorian wallpaper, Emigre fonts, Disco, Sears homes of the 1920’s, Preppy clothes, Atari video game box covers, and Braun products of the late-50’s early 60’s.

    Hitting that sweet spot around Daring and Smart when you’re trying to design, create or sell something is crucial. There’s even a market for Dowdy too, right? Just look around at your local mall or shopping center. Just remember that in a few years it’ll start to look bad. In 10 years it’ll look REALLY bad. Then, after some time, it will be appreciated — or even revered — again. I take comfort that something like Comic Sans (theoretically) will have a shot at being beautiful in 100 years time.

  • July 22, 06:00 PM

    Writing tips for anyone

    Author Janet Fitch wrote a list of 10 Writing Tips That Can Help Almost Anyone.

    Long ago I got a rejection from the editor of the Santa Monica Review, Jim Krusoe. It said: "Good enough story, but what's unique about your sentences?" That was the best advice I ever got. Learn to look at your sentences, play with them, make sure there's music, lots of edges and corners to the sounds. Read your work aloud. Read poetry aloud and try to heighten in every way your sensitivity to the sound and rhythm and shape of sentences. The music of words.

    Tags: Janet Fitch   lists   writing
  • July 22, 03:21 PM

    QUOTE: If you have no critics, you’ll likely have no success.

    If you have no critics, you’ll likely have no success.

    —Malcolm X

  • July 22, 11:04 AM

    Three minute philosophy

    YouTube user CollegeBinary does a video series called Three Minute Philosophy. Each episode describes the views and beliefs of a noted philosopher: Galileo, Kant, Descartes, Locke, and more.

    Tags: philosophy   video
  • July 09, 03:28 PM

    debauchery week at lol awesome jaime!



    debauchery week at lol awesome jaime!

  • July 21, 09:19 PM

    not a lemonade stand : clusterflock

    Permalink | Leave a comment  »

  • July 20, 11:00 AM

    What it means to have a “brand”

    On the front page of the June 19 New York Times:

    A self-described “fat redneck,” he speaks in a marble-mouthed Mississippi drawl, loves Maker’s Mark bourbon, resembles an adult version of Spanky from the Little Rascals, and fits no one’s ideal of a sleek new political model… (A description of Haley Barbour.)

    When they wrote (and when you read) “Maker’s Mark” you had a specific feeling. If it just said bourbon, or whiskey, or a different kind of whiskey, you would have had a different feeling.

    That feeling is a brand.

    I often wonder what it would be like to be the Samuels family, who have had the privilege of caring for a single product, a single brand, for 50 years. I can’t imagine having that kind of focus, but I’d love the chance to take the time to do one marketing job really, really well.

    Share:

  • July 20, 11:00 AM

    My Measures & Dimensions

    I just discovered an iPhone app named My Measures & Dimensions that lets you take any photo and quickly draw dimensions on top of objects or spaces in the photo. Typically, I use a piece of scrap paper for this, and end up forgetting to bring it with me when I need it. After photos are marked up with measurements, they can be emailed to anyone, or added to the iPhone’s photo library.

    So far, this app seems incredibly useful for several purposes. I’m using it to quickly record the measurements of rooms in our house. It’s also handy to note the dimensions of some bookshelves in our daughter’s room, so we’ll know what can fit inside. I can easily imagine several other uses too. Here’s a direct link to My Measures in the iTunes Store. link

shared

location

+

Latest checkin

Badges

Checkin history

Friends

location

mentions

+

Posts

mentions

travel

+

Posts

travel

listening to

+

Recent tracks

Top artists

How I Met Your ...
The Moth
Chicago Public ...
It's Always Sun...
Surfer Blood
Mad Men
Tiësto
NPR
apm
Blakroc
Californication
Sleigh Bells
Nikon, Inc.
30 Days
Royal Pains
Phoenix
The New Yorker
Florence + the ...
Brand New
Jay-Z
This American L...
Freeway
Flight of the C...
Weeds
The Heavy
Tokyo Police Cl...
Vampire Weekend
Passion Pit
Entourage
Broken Bells
Fleet Foxes
Kings of Leon
Anthony Bourdai...
Spoon
Radio 538
The Limousines
Kid Cudi
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Archer
iTunes/Travel C...
Jimi Hendrix
30 Seconds to M...
Foghat
TV on the Radio
stellastarr*
Band of Horses
Iglu & Hartly
Men of a Certai...
Miike Snow
The Hit Nation

Top tracks

listening to

comments

+

Posts

comments

an addict of balance through excess and restraint.