Könecke Advent Sausage

This year for the holidays I want to take my family through this, the Könecke Advent Sausage.

Typography sequencing

I see what they’re doing over at Meek.FM and I dig it.

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Portable NewSpring

“But wait, I thought you were in a building, now?” That may be true for our Anderson campus, but we spent six years doing setup/teardown and we’re quite familiar with the portable church method. In fact, our Greenville and Florence campuses perform this setup nearly every week. Would you like a sneak peek into what it takes to make it happen? Kevin, our video producer over at the Greenville campus, shot this timelapse the other day. Praise God for this swarm of volunteers who make this happen.

Jeans survey results

The other day on Twitter I asked the question “how many times do you wear a pair of jeans before you wash them?” The answers were varied so I’ll let the responses speak for themselves. Multipliers are included to denote multiple similar responses. Here are the results:

Definitive numbers
one time (citing OCD)
2-3 times x8
3-4 on average
5-7 times x3

Sensory gauge
“when they look, feel or smell dirty”

High variability
“between 1 and 25″

Pigpen-style, or just machine wash clueless
“r jeans washable?”
“you’re supposed to wash them?” x2
“I plead the fifth”
“when I lose count I wash, I can count pretty high”

Unleash 2010

Great job, Adam, on the Unleash 2010 promo. Others are coming, won’t you come?

How Different Groups Spend Their Day

What great infographic in the NY Times on How Different Groups Spend Their Day. I especially love how you can click a filter in the upper right (men, women, age, race, etc.) and see the break down change. Then with a mouse-over you get a details reading on whatever point you’re zoning in on.

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Make A Radish Into A Mario Mushroom

Another thing to file under “do this if I find a lot of spare time,” Make A Radish Into A Mario Mushroom.

Echo conference

I don’t have long, got to head back to the Echo Conference. But for those of you watching at home (or via the #echo09 twitter hash tag) it’s been very informative and inspiring. By far my favorite moment so far was the keynote of Phil Vischer, creator of Veggie Tales and Jelly Telly. I took great notes; maybe I’ll condense them for you later.

I did want to include some personal visuals, stuff you won’t see on their site, that I’ve particularly enjoyed.

It all started with this gentle reminder of technologies’ past.
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I love the warmth of Watermark Church’s beautiful facility.
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… And the fact they gave me Starbucks. And let me take it inside the auditorium.
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Here’s a little pre-show electronic doodling going on before the first keynote.
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…And the suppertime BBQ frenzy. I’ll say this, those Echo folk sure know how to feed us well.
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I’ll leave you with this thought from John Dyer’s breakout on Using Technology without letting Technology use you: The use of technology will change you, or shape you. You get to decide if that shaping is for your betterment.

“Warning! Vehicle Transforms Into Robot” Stickers

We should stick these stickers just about everywhere.

Eclipse

So apparently there is an eclipse happening tomorrow in China, Japan, and India. Want to be a part of the experience, here’s a site dedicated to the event.

Brooklyn Fare’s Packaging and Graphic Design

I really love the branding of Brooklyn Fare’s Packaging. It’s clean, the type feels modern, but most importantly I love the copy they’ve written. This is my favorite:

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Hobby Lobby thoughts

On date night this past week Meg and I went to spend some quality time at Hobby Lobby. Truth be told, Meg was purchasing lamps, I was causing trouble and running a muck in the store. Armed with my newly acquired iPhone 3GS camera I saw a couple of things. I had a few thoughts. And now I’ll share them publicly.

Is this Kimmie Gibbler?
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His and Her bathroom embossing stamps?
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We call this “Vampire Aisle.”
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Yo, yo. It’s foam, bro.
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So, which century exactly defines modern? “modern as compared to the middle ages.”
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That’s all I have right now. Maybe next time Meg will want to return. I’ll be ready.

Kenya video

The standout piece from this past Sunday in my mind is this video, built by Will Rodes, that tells the story of our most recent mission trip to Kenya. Nicely shot by Will half way around the world.

Ben Thomas story

This week I had the privilege to work on a story that was both personal and a technical challenge. Ben Thomas is a close friend and one of the Godliest men I know. I enjoyed the opportunity to edit and composite his story.

As for the technical challenge, we chose to shoot this piece green screen. B-roll, stock footage (bet you didn’t know the train at the 0:43 mark was really a toy), and real photos and articles from the accident were layered in to add a second time line of backdrop. Stylistically I’m really happy with how it turned out. To make it extra personal I created the soundtrack myself with Reason. It’s nothing flashy, but I wanted something pretty specific and I think it fits well.

Ben Thomas interview from Ken Wilson on Vimeo.

You can watch the final version here.

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Thanks Adam for providing brainstorm and camera support.

They say the secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. I’m not so good at that… give credit where credit is due. This piece was inspired both in vision and tone by the PC3 “One Word” series. Great work, guys, and great inspiration.

Quirky Culture Wednesday

Let’s call today Quirky Culture Wednesday. As much as I find this quirky and fascinating, I’m sure that any Japanese viewer of Yo Gabba Gabba is thinking the same thing about the United States. Are there any avclub.us readers in Japan who can confirm this?

Eclipse

My bro spotted this bad boy out and about the other day and set the image to me. Why is it significant? I owned (and loved) and 1991 Eclipse all through college. It was awesome. It was the first ride I’d ever purchased for myself. It had a sun roof.

And ultimately it self-destructed just before college graduation. It was fun while it lasted.

Review: “Instant Turnaround!” by Harry Paul and Ross Reck, PH.D.

Recently I’ve decided to read more. I love reading, but don’t often take enough time to do it. Meg picked up a few books for me on business, leadership, managing, and things of that nature. And that brings me to this book, Instant Turnaround!, Getting People Excited About Coming to Work and Working Hard.

What manager wouldn’t want his team to enjoy their days at work? I suppose some wouldn’t really care about how his employee feels, and that’s really the point of Instant Turnaround. The way a person feels about their job directly relates to their performance. Multiplied on the scale of an entire department and it begins to shape the performance of an entire department and an entire company.

This is an interesting and refreshingly brief read about the fact that success is hinged on an employee’s discretionary effort. There is a baseline amount of effort that each employee gives to their job to stay employed. This is effectively C-average work. For a companies to thrive, its employees must operate at A-level.

The difference, according to Instant Turnaround, is that these employees give all of their extra effort to their work. They can withhold and partially do the job. But if they give it all the results are demonstrated in the companies’ bottom line and in the perception that the workplace is somewhere you want to be, not just somewhere you have to be.

And as I’ve heard before, “it rises and falls on leadership.” The book explains that the leadership above the employee sets the tone and creates the environment whereby employees feel they want to give their discretionary time to the company. How? You’ll need to read the book for a full, detailed play by play of the author’s four distinct steps.

If a manager focuses his or her efforts on the employee, on engaging them as a person, that person will feel valued and cared for. Instead of hiding away in your office tirelessly pouring over the stats and numbers Instant Turnaround recommends a manager put himself on the production floor, in the mail room, or with his people. Talk to your people, be nice to them, truly seek to learn about their jobs and what frustrates them. When an employee feels like their manager is their fan rather than their foe, they will be more willing to give their discretionary effort to the cause.

The book even advocates an manager join his employees in the trenches from time to time. Get your hands dirty, especially on the toughest of days, and model how you want your team to act.

I had a few points of contention with some of the book’s assumptions. What do you do with an employee who is lazy or has a poor attitude? The book briefly addresses removing negative personnel. The lion’s share of the story focuses on the more typical case, that the manager sets the tone and people want to want to be there.

Why is the turnaround instant? You’ll have to read and find out. Typically the results are seen in days rather than weeks or years.

It is a short read with a focused theme. This is not the kind of book that spouts endless theories and principles. Instant Turnaround remains on target throughout, and by the end, you know what Harry Paul and Ross Reck want to communicate. For that, I recommend reading it. You may not 100% agree with their advice, but it is a good, useful lesson for any manager striving to realize success.

Birdhouse App

A few weeks back I decided to drop a whole $3.99 on Birdhouse, an iPhone app that serves a somewhat of a notepad / queuing area for Twitter. It works alongside your favorite twitter application (Tweetie, for me) as a place to jot down your thoughts for future twitter updates. Their marketing write up says that if you are a person who likes to marinate over what to say as opposed to just putting it out there, this is the app for you. As I’m rounding 4,400+ twitter updates (the lions share generating from my iPhone as opposed to a desktop computer) I decided this app may be for me.

It’s difficult to judge the effectiveness of such an application with an unbiased assessment, but I will say I really like it. They suggest if you drop a twitter update at the right now (ie., not 2:00am Wednesday, but rather 9:45am Monday) and take the time to properly tweak and compose it, it may be of more value. I tested that theory on a recent tweet. I wrote (and tweaked over the course of a few weeks) this:
If my mac could do no wrong it would be infatuation. Because I see an occasional flaw I know it’s love.

Within the next hour or so I found that tweet replicated (ie., retweeted) several times.
Here, Here, Here, Here
Here, Here, Here (technically, this is a response… but it still counts).

I surmise that tweet got a reaction, whether by its timing, its composition, or the fact that it was marinated for a week or so before released to the public. Regardless, if you frequently release thoughts at the wrong time (or… feel you need to delay a potentially harsh reaction) I would recommend trying out Birdhouse.

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How to Stop Dealing With Someone Else’s Lateness

I came across this article today on Lifehacker concerning lateness and how to deal with others who are perpetually late. I believe the first step (below), says it all. Well written. And what a personal challenge to myself as well to play out Philippians 2:3 as a real life example.

Step 1

Call it what it is – a respect issue. When it comes right down to it, that’s what it’s all about. Why is your time any less valuable than your friend’s? Why should you put up with a lack of respect for your valuable time? The answer is, you should not. Your friend saying, “I’m so sorry, I’m so busy, I had to etc.,” should not fool you. What your friend is really saying is, “What I was doing was more important to me than the fact that I knew you were waiting for me.” That’s disrespectful, rude, and wrong. There are no excuses to justify this kind of behaviour, and you need to make your friend clear on that.

*** UPDATE – this post is ultimately ironic as I was late for a meeting today. But I did call and apologize and will make it up. So there. ***

sean tubridy

I’m in love with the Polaroid photos of Sean Tubridy, so much so I’m seriously considering his book. Simply intriguing.

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