According to the Richter scale, a magnitude 5.4 earthquake shook our main offices here in Irvine yesterday morning at approximately 11:42 am. For some of our team members, this was their first tremor experience… ever.  But for other southern California-raised residents, like me, we haven’t experienced seismic activity this significant since the 6.7 Northridge earthquake—you know, the one that sent us flying out of our beds in the wee hours of the morning back in ‘94. What many of you probably aren’t aware of is the fact that our office space is situated within a completely renovated, refurbished and expertly retrofitted 110+-year-old lima bean factory in Old Town Irvine.  Although it is up-to-spec in building codes, the thought of “The Big One” raced across our minds, as we swayed back and forth on our wobbly wooden legs.

Here at EMG, our security cameras captured real-life footage of our offices in a commotion as the ground shook and rattled hanging fixtures and appliances. Looking closely at the video recording, which can be viewed at http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-53184, we see two sets of reactions from our team members both upstairs and downstairs. Naturally, the video has already proven to be an excellent demonstration of the dos and the don’ts during an earthquake disaster and will most certainly be used in our updated disaster preparedness video training. 

As you can see, our offices were shaken – and stirred – but I can just imagine that internet viewers must have been crying tears of laughter as soon as our videos were posted on ireport.com—a subsidiary website of CNN, where users can instantly post and report the latest breaking news. Remarkably, EMG’s footage generated over 1,100 views within the first hour of being posted and was also picked up by CNN.com and was marked to be featured on the CNN’s broadcast television station. Within less than 24 hours, the video received more  4,600 impressions, and based on web analytics reports, the footage description which included a link to our facilities has attracted more than 100 visitors to the EMG website www.earthboundmediagroup.com.

Truth be told, our attempt to share our earthquake experience just shows how that agencies like ours – or anyone with a recording device – can take advantage of a newsworthy event and virally distribute it on a newsfeed to instantly drive highly unique user traffic to our site . . . for FREE.

I don’t know about you, but I would LOVE a new 17″ Macbook Pro! So, how do you win a new Macbook Pro? Enter the Day JCR Cup 2008! Simply create a content-centric application and submit it no later than midnight September 30th, 2008. Detailed information (more so than what I’ll cover in this blog) can be found at:

http://dev.day.com/microsling/content/blogs/cup.c.html

JCR/JSR 170/Content Management:

You may be asking yourself, ‘what does JCR stand for?’ JCR stands for the Java Content Repository. Day Software (Day) has been an emerging leader in the field of Web Content Management (WCM) and Enterprise Content Management (ECM) for over a decade now. In an effort to not only promote themselves more amongst the Open Source Community, but also in promoting the concept of Content Management Systems (CMS) (I know, I know, let the acronyms fly!), they created the JSR (Java Specification Request) 170.

The Apache Software Foundation created an open source, fully compatible version of JSR 170 by creating the Jackrabbit project. Day’s commercial implementation of JSR 170 is the Content Repository Extreme (CRX). Day’s flagship WCM, Communique, is a set of API’s built on top of the CRX.

One of the neat things about this contest is that it gives developers a chance to obtain a free, trial version of the CRX. When you sign up for the contest, a trial key is emailed to you. The contest page has links to documentation, quickstart guides, FAQs, mailing lists, and all associated technologies needed to build out a complete CMS.

One final note before I end this blog… I’ve been developing with Day Communique for over 5 years now. I am VERY curious to see what the new version, CQ 5, will look like. I have a sneaky suspicion that all of the technologies involved with this content (JCR, SLING, etc.) are a good indication of what CQ 5 is going to look like…

Until next time…

Todd

Allow me to take you back to high school English class, when all but the bravest of introductory paragraphs began with a deeply thought out quote snatched from the thickest book to be found in the non-fiction nether regions of the library (or media center - for the younger ones in the bunch).

“The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts, but alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance. The serious artist is the only person able to encounter technology with impunity, just because he is an expert aware of the changes in sense perception.” - Marshall McLuhan, “The Medium Is the Message,” Understanding Media

Brilliant, right? The last few weeks, I’ve been revisiting some texts I too hastily read back in the day, and when those words went from page to perception for me yesterday, I was utterly floored. I’m pretty sure I made some sort of sound of astonishment to mark the occasion, too. I mean, come on. Not that I fully grasp the fullness of McLuhan’s statement even 24 hours after I read it, but it’s clear the implications of just this single set of words and ideas are massive - for EMG, for my role and responsibility within the company as well as for me personally not to mention what this means for everyone who considers themselves a serious artist (whatever this means should be saved for a later post!).

Now, since I’m writing a blog post and not the novel I’ll never write, I’ll stick to the first couple ideas McLuhan’s prophetic prose brought forward for me - specifically regarding EMG as an organization. First off, EMG functions best when all three of its operational efforts - Strategy. Artistry. Technology. - are organically giving and taking, working toward unified project-specific goals, and McLuhan’s belief’s about the Artist and his or her unique ability to identify and respond to Technology’s impact on the user illustrates the wild need for Artistry when developing effective Technology solutions. And, if what McLuhan says is true - that a “serious artist” is the ONLY person able to engage in technology without being significantly changed by the technology itself, an artists’s input and inquiries from a user perspective is vital to an effective process for us and an effective end product for our loyal client.

This leads to another thought, and this one’s about why the EMG team works as well as we do together. Artists of all kinds have found a 9-5 home at EMG - painters, musicians, composers, essayists, directors, producers and even a quilter or two to start a short list - and up until now I thought our good rapport had more to do with personalities than job function. But, after considering the artist’s role and responsibility for shaping technology, an artist at EMG is in his or her element - continually shaping technology from a place of difference as McLuhan proposes. So, it’s okay that the user scenarios we propose in meetings seem to come from left field sometimes, and it’s okay when we need assistance from time-to-time understanding what seems so logical to techies and analysts because it’s essentially an artist’s job to see things differently. As artists we are - for better or worse - hardwired to be in tune with the way an audience accesses or perceives a message or process as much as we are equipped to create artful products to best serve these sense perceptions - in their endlessly unpredictable and dynamic glory.

There are no real rules for kicking off a blog, I guess. And, even though this may seem on the surface contrary to the creative process, rules are a very good thing in my book. At the very least they channel energy and provide texture for ideas to bump up against, shaping and defining impulses and impressions until they become viable “somethings.”

So, when it comes to things like this blog - something that (fingers crossed) will sustain itself because of its liminality - a girl like me finds herself without much of a place to start. This coupled with the fact that the majority of my time is spent observing and processing practical and phenomenological subtleties that scream “writing for a vacuum is for crazy people” makes blogging a conflicted task.

(How’s this for a contemplative little start to our blog!)

With the “why blogging is weird” behind us, let’s move on to what makes blogging powerful: connections, connections, connections. I had a professor in college who, when he described postmodernism and what he called THE WORLD TODAY (even though him using that word to describe “today” immediately discredited him) would link his fingers, palms flat in front of him and say something like, “Today, we are always at an intersection of influences.” That’s not something unique for us today, though.

Read the rest of this entry »

First and foremost, I hope that you are never able to dig down to this inaugural gem of a ‘welcome’ in the months and years that pass from this day in time. Why? Because you won’t believe the incredible amount of talent, personalities, goofs, characters, and all around great group of individuals that will be adding their own spice, wisdom and flavor to this blog - keeping you busy exploring much more important, interesting and exciting content. You may wonder what’s going to make ours different - you won’t have to wonder for very long. So please - feel free to wander and please, please, please don’t be shy. I challenge you all to push the envelope and challenge us anytime you’d like – we love it.