LIFE IS GOOD!  We were able to secure a flat bed truck from a local dealer today.  This makes Gordy very happy.  It will be so much easier to bring the pre-assembled panels out to the playa now.  In addition, I am juggling the Early Admin passes.  It has been a bit of a challenge, but in the end, everything will work out just fine.  Yesterday I was able to get through most of the stuff on my list – still a few things to do/get…but what’s the worry — we do not leave ’til sunrise on Sunday! Kickstarter has been great to work with.  There is one supporter we have not been able to track down, and I have been going back and forth with their customer service.  Not perfect by any means, but the platform did provide a way for friends and family to make contributions to and connect with the project. Please Please – If you read this, and you’re not going to Burning Man, send your wishes and I will make sure they get deposited into The Life Cube. #artatburningman #bm2012 #BurningMan #TheLifeCube

Dear Supporters of TLC V2 project on Kickstarter:  I do not think it is possible to thank all you enough. Today we were listed as one of the most popular projects on Kickstarter.  It has been a super-positive experience to receive such overwhelming encouragement, caring thoughts, messages and emails as we move to the end of the road to raising funds, and approach the time when I leave for Reno, then Tahoe, and finally Black Rock City, where we will complete this part of our journey.  Please please send your wishes to thelifecube@gmail.com (Subject:  Wish for Life Cube).  You are all fantastic and I greatly appreciate your support. skeeter Artist, The Life Cube #art #TheLifeCube #Cubelifecubelifecubeprojectlifecubelifecubeproject #Burningman #artatburningman #wishcube #bm2012 #skeeter #artartatburningmanartatburningmanbm2011bm2012BM2012BurningManburningman2011BurningMan2011artburningman2012burningmanartburningmanburningmanlifecubeskeeterTheLifeCubeThe #TheLifeCubeV2 #BurningMan

Last year there were over 100 people that helped with design, pre-playa build, playa construction, burn, and clean-up.  There were over 600 supporters that donated money to our project (many who never heard of Burning Man but wanted to offer support to the art), and 1000s celebrated the burning of The Life Cube at Burning Man in Black Rock City.  There were tons of photographs taken by friends.  We sent out picture books to the financial backers of The Life Cube at Burning Man and thought I would share.  If you would like a  copy of the book, feel free to email or contact me on Facebook. Love, skeeter #art #TheLifeCube #burningmanburningman #thelifecubeartprojectatburningman #artatburningman #bm2012 #skeeter #BM2012 #blackrockcity #TLCV2 #lifecube #artburningman #TheLifeCube #TheLifeCubeV2 #BurningMan

ENVISION: The Life Cube – Rendering & Isometric Views http://thelifecube.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/envisionthelifecube-rendering-isometric-views/ ENVISION: The Life Cube – Construction & Framing Plans http://thelifecube.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/envision-the-life-cube-construction-framing-plans/ ENVISION: The Life Cube – Elevations http://thelifecube.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/envision-the-life-cube-elevations/ ENVISION: The Life Cube – Kit of Parts http://thelifecube.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/envisionthelifecube-kit-of-parts/ ENVISION: The Life Cube – Proposed Construction Details http://thelifecube.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/envisionthelifecube-proposed-construction-details/ ENVISION: The Life Cube – Color Rendering http://thelifecube.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/envisionthelifecube-colorendering ENVISION: The Life Cube – 3D Video #art #ENVISIONTheLifeCube #blackrockcity #artprojectatburningman #artburningman #artatburningman

The Life Cube Blog/Website (www.thelifecube.org) needs to be updated and made better (organize the content, add digital wish-sticks, upload stories, videos, and pics). 2013 is a year we plan to create urban installations of Life Cubes. Contact if you know someone that might want to volunteer to help communicate what TLC Project is all about and share the vision. Thanks for your interest and continued support. Much love, skeeter #BM2013 #thelifecubeorg #skeeter #blackrockcity #wwwthelifecubeorg #artburningman #TheLifeCube

Amazing customer service yesterday from REI, EMS & Amazon. Mediocre from B&H, and terrible terrible really bad from Best Buy. It is amazing after all these years how some companies are so good at eCRM, and some have not a clue on customer service and have such a poor social media strategy. After all the screwing around going to Best Buy, finding out they had a poor selection and no knowledgeable sales staff, and then finding that the cost was more than buying online – this became an easy choice. On the other front, REI and EMS both got money from me. Their customer service was outstanding. Easy return, total expert staff — can not say enough good things about both of them. I also had the most unpleasant experience with Best Buy. In fact, just as I am writing this post, I finally received a call from customer service. This was bad! This was really bad. I would have paid more to get the camera from a store. I loke electronic stores. I like to be able to go in, see and touch products. I want to talk to a sales person – hell, I am happy to pay a little more for the piece of mind to get to play with something before I buy — The folks at Best Buy DO NOT GET IT!!! So — at the end, I ordered from Amazon. But when placing the order – it processed it to be delivered on the 24th – but the confirmation came back on the 25th. I went to the site, clicked to chat and the customer service person went in — found the problem, apologized, offered free shipping and a guaranteed I would have it before I leave town. So at the end of the day — I experienced the best and the worst with regard to customer care. I expect that Best Buy will fall the way Borders did — it is fine to be more expensive — and many will pay for the service, but you need to have service. REI and EMS have hired young professional people. They are available at all sorts of weird hours. Sure, I could have found what I bought for less money from some other online retailer – but piece of mind and the ability to go to the store is a good thing. Those are my thoughts and observations. #EMS #customercare #bestbuy #ecommerce #customerexperience #borders #customerservice #AMazon #REI

The ‘Evolution’ of Advertising – Fri Jun 29, 5:04 PM ET CANNES, FRANCE "Evolution" was the watchword at the 2007 Cannes Lions last week, as 11,000 delegates from the ad industry gathered in the South of France to celebrate creativity and contemplate how the business and the award shows that honor it will evolve in the future. The Dove viral sensation "Evolution" took top honors in both the Cyber and Film categories, pointing to the colliding worlds of consumer-powered digital distribution and brand building. It’s the first time in the festival’s history that the same execution won in both categories. "It’s a big idea, beautiful execution and a powerful story for Dove to tell," said Bob Scarpelli, jury president of the Film and Press Lions and chairman and CCO at DDB Worldwide. "We believe in the power and the goodness of the idea." While the spot’s viral history–it began as an Internet video before being shown a limited number of times on TV–wasn’t the key factor in the Grand Prix discussion, Scarpelli, who prior to the festival encouraged organizers to recognize viral entries in the Film competition, noted that its viral beginnings were considered. "The jury thought it was the best advertising in the whole show," added Brazilian judge Celso Loducca, president of Loducca Publicidade in Sao Paulo. "It doesn’t matter that it got started on the Internet." In the double Grand Prix winner, the ad industry has a helpful guidepost to navigate the future where consumers will choose the brand messages they interact with and often power the distribution of. Ogilvy & Mather, Toronto, used time-lapse photography to show the transformation of an average woman into a glamorous billboard model using beauty stylists and Photoshop enhancements. Since Ogilvy uploaded "Evolution" to YouTube last October, it has been watched 3.7 million times. Dove "Evolution" won out over three more traditional TV spot gold winners in contention for the top Film prize: "I Feel Pretty" for Nike by Weiden + Kennedy in Portland, Ore.; "Paint" for Sony Bravia by Fallon London, in which explosions of color paint rip through an empty apartment building; and "The Power of Wind" for Wind Energy Initiative from Nordpol+, Hamburg, Germany, which visually represents the wind as a giant whose power is misunderstood. Thor Santisiri, chairman and ecd of TBWA\Thailand, said Dove represents an idea that can travel well beyond the single execution. "It’s a bigger idea for a bigger brand," he said. "It’s not advertising for a product. It’s a huge brand idea." In total, the Film jury awarded 12 gold Lions, 17 silver and 50 bronze. The U.S. took four gold, six silver and 16 bronze. U.S. gold winners were Coca-Cola’s "Videogame" from Wieden + Kennedy in Portland; Volkswagen’s "Safe Happens" campaign from Crispin; and Nike’s "I Feel Pretty," which won two gold honors, one for best use of music and one in the clothing, footwear and accessories category. The Titanium and Integrated Lions’ jury, led by jury president Alex Bogusky, CCO of MDC’s Crispin Porter + Bogusky, awarded the Titanium Grand Prix to Crispin’s Burger King-branded Xbox video games. Rather than give them away as a promotional exercise, BK turned them into a revenue generator, charging $3.99 for them. It has sold over 3 million copies. "Creatives from all over the world will look at it and say, ‘I wish I had done that,’" said Titanium and Integrated juror Colleen DeCourcy, chief experience officer at JWT in New York. The Titanium and Integrated Lions jury also singled out another effort that began with a product enhancement with its Grand Prix choice for Integrated campaign. The top prize went to VegaOlmosPonce in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which helped Unilever not just market its new body spray, Axe 3, but create it. In addition to the top prize, the jury awarded three Titanium and three Integrated Lions. "If you cook some marketing right into [product development], you can do good things," said Bogusky, who explained that the choices send a signal that the future of marketing communications can be enhanced by greater and earlier collaboration between agencies and their clients. The festival’s other awards competitions honored several entries that moved beyond interruptive messaging to find new ways to engage consumers. Rather than focus on typical online brand sites and initiatives, the Cyber jury sought campaigns that attracted consumers to them and encouraged them to spread the word in the manner of "Evolution." While Ogilvy used the hopeful message that women need to question society’s preconceptions of beauty, "Heidies 15 Minutes of Fame" from FarFar in Stockholm, Sweden, tapped sex appeal and user involvement to attract a following by showing a pair of underwear-clad models staging a "takeover" of diesel.com. The Cyber jury took an even more radical departure in giving R/GA a Grand Prix for its work on the Nike+ application, which straddles the world of product design and branding. R/GA also won a Titanium Lion for the effort. Tom Eslinger, interactive CCO of Saatchi & Saatchi and Cyber jury president, said Nike+, which links the iPod to a chip inserted in Nike shoes to track and share runs, represents the future face of advertising. R/GA developed the technology that uploads the running data to a social-networking Web site it also built. "It’s product design meets viral," said Eslinger. Many agency executives said the changing nature of media made classifying executions very difficult. In the year-old Promo lions, for example, jury president Geraldo Rocha Azevedo, president of integrated solutions at Neogama BBH in Brazil, said the jury "could not come up with one conclusive definition." However, nowhere is the blurring of the marketing world more acute than in the Titanium competition, which has been recast several times since it was created four years ago as a way for the festival to award "breakthrough ideas." It was reintroduced as an integrated award in 2005 and revised last year so that the entries were not restricted to a specific number of executions and types of channels used. Other Titanium Lions included Tap Project, a Unicef effort by Droga5 to raise money for clean drinking water, and "Earth Hour," a Leo Burnett campaign in Sydney, Australia, for the World Wildlife Fund that dramatized energy conservation by encouraging residents of that city to turn off their lights for an hour. While much of the delegation and jury members acknowledged that the definition of the Titanium and Integrated awards is unsettled, Bogusky noted that the jury is "trying to solve some of the confusion" with the two Grand Prix winners, BK games for innovation–innovation being what then-jury president Dan Wieden in 2003 was originally looking to reward–and Axe 3 for integrated campaign. "Titanium doesn’t mean the best, it doesn’t mean best of show. It’s a sanctuary for these ideas that don’t fit anywhere else," he said. The first Agency Network of the Year award went to BBDO Worldwide. Saatchi & Saatchi, New York, was named Agency of the Year. Smuggler in New York took home the Palme d’Or. — By Kamau High, Brian Morrissey and Eleftheria Parpis ADWEEK

I’m going to work on a company Dave Moore (CEO 24/7 Media) started a while back.  The company, Ad-Diction, centers around people watching commercials and playing games to recall the details.  Strategy and ecconomics to be worked out.  I have hired Andrei, who I worked with at Game Trust, to redesign the Web site and look at the backend.  I’m setting up meeting with advertsisers, agencies, brand managers, CMO, VP Marketing, and folks that run game portals.  Below is an article Dave emailed me. More marketers seek attention of online-game lovers Advertisers are increasingly interested in reaching the diverse group of Web users who solve puzzles, play word games and decipher mind benders online. The New York Times  – By Louise Story Published: January 24, 2007, 6:21 AM PST Casual game sites have learned how to play the ad game. The sites–which offer puzzle and strategy games–once focused on selling the actual games after the dot-com bust drove many advertisers away. But these days, they are becoming popular marketing spots as they begin to accept more branded messages. Last year, advertisers spent about $150 million buying space on casual game sites or in the games themselves, up from $74 million in 2002, according to DFC Intelligence, a game industry research firm in San Diego. This is all possible, of course, because advertisers are increasingly interested in reaching the diverse group of Web users who like to solve puzzles, play word games and decipher mind benders online. In December, about 65.9 million people played online games, which include puzzle games and action video games. That was up 13 percent from December 2005, when 58.4 million clicked online for a quick round, according to comScore Networks, an Internet research firm. While traditional action games still draw more men than women, casual games are more popular with women and offer the kind of friendly online experience that ad executives say companies want to be associated with. Big Fish Games, a casual game site known for its game Mystery Case Files, for example, says about 75 percent of its visitors each month are women. And, according to Forrester Research, about 51 percent of people over age 30 play online games. "The gamer is actually a much more of a mainstream consumer than you may think," said Shar VanBoskirk, a senior analyst with Forrester Research. "Consumers are really filtering out advertiser messages, and games are one way that they’re actually still engaged." Redefining "free" PopCap Games, a company known for the Bejeweled puzzle game, is testing ads in the premiere versions of its games. Like many online games, PopCap’s are available in two versions–a free basic version and a fancier version for a fee, which it calls premiere. Traditionally, Web surfers tried the fancy version free for an hour before deciding whether to buy it. Now, under a test PopCap is running with its game Zuma, consumers can download the fancy version and play it without ever paying–if they are willing to see ads. AOL Games, a unit of Time Warner, is testing ads in the one-hour trial version of its deluxe games, said Ralph Rivera, vice president and general manager of AOL Games. About 95 percent of people who try games do not end up paying for the deluxe version, he said, and AOL would like to reach those users in some way. "Within AOL, games is only second to e-mail and IM as far as time spent per user, so you’re talking about a very highly engaged audience," Rivera said. "Any time you have a highly engaged audience, you have advertisers who are looking to get in front of that audience." Big Fish Games charges for downloads of games and also carries about 200 free puzzle and strategy games online, with ads. Starting last month, visitors who clicked on their first free online game of the day got a Sponsor Select pop-up screen giving them a choice of ads for that game. About 25 percent of the people who play games on Big Fish have chosen to pick their advertisers, according to AWS Convergence Technologies, the company that operates Sponsor Select. Choosing a sponsor On Tuesday, for example, visitors could select either Better Homes and Gardens, Orchard Bank MasterCard or Windows Live Search to be the sole advertiser in the first game they played. The rest of the games they played showed them a variety of ads. "You’re going to get ads no matter what," said Paul Thelen, chief executive of Big Fish Games. "The advantage of Sponsor Select is it’s more likely to be relevant to you."  Big Fish started offering free games online a year and a half ago. Four years ago, after the dot-com bust, it was not possible to make much money from ad-supported games, Thelen said. Now that is changing. While Big Fish still makes most of its money from user-paid downloads, its fastest-growing revenue area is its advertising. Whereas advertising in games used to be specialized, involving a lot of negotiation, the growing number of ad options for casual games is making game advertising more accessible to brands that once focused on traditional advertising, ad executives said. "You don’t have to be as adventurous or as bold to make it happen now," said Art Sindlinger, vice president and activation director at Starcom USA, a Publicis Groupe media-buying agency. One appealing aspect of casual games is that players often start friendly dialogues with each other, and brands can associate themselves with that community building, said Saneel Radia, vice president and group director of Play, a gaming division of Denuo, which is part of the Publicis Groupe. "If you look at the communication on a board of pool in Yahoo Games, it’s, ‘Oh, where’s your family from?’" Radia said. "Go to XBox Live, and it’s, ‘I’m going to crush you.’" Some advertisers have taken casual gaming a step further, creating their own casual games–sometimes called advergames–and posting them on their Web sites.  When the Dodge Caliber came out last spring, the Chrysler Group, part of DaimlerChrysler, posted five casual games on its site, and one called Caliber Buzz was played three million times within a month, said Vanessa Kelley, manager of cross-brand gaming at Chrysler. Online games are now a regular part of Chrysler car debuts, she said.  "It’s the wave," Kelley said. "These people don’t watch television all that much. They are online. They’re playing games." Entire contents, Copyright © 2007 The New York Times. All rights reserved.

Madeleine started using her new gadget – the Sony Reader Digital Book.  While on plane, at beach, and in the airport, it was amazing how many people asked her about it.   For anyone that know Madeleine, they understand she reads a lot — and generally totes 5 or 6 books on a vacation.  This may be the best gift I ever got her.

You need to sell internally.  It is amazing how many CEOs and Top Execs are so good at selling to clients (externally), but do not sell their ideas, vision, projects to the executive management team.  If I could bestow one priority, one must do, one thing that will make these ececutives better – it is that they sell as hard internally to their partners and other execs as they do to clients.

Day 1 – Climbing School, 8.20.07 So my boots were too big – I did not check and picked up a size 11.  ARGGG.  I also did need sunglasses (should have brought the ones I took to BM that click in the front).  We did not need mittens – and I should have taken the gloves we had since the rentals were not great. I also needed to rent a pair of shell pants since taking off shoes to put on shell is not a good idea (and I brought those ski pants). Overall, save for the bad fit on the shoes, we had a great time.  The team was 9 students and 2 guides (one more guide will be added tomorrow.)  It was a cold and rainy day, but we did just fine.  Hiked up to the snow and practiced walking, rescue (team and self), using the ice axe, and ropes.  We came down a bit wet, but everyone in one piece.  Currently back from dinner and drying out cloths so I can pack for tomorrow.  Pics uploaded on BLOG.  We all miss CB, sorry he broke his leg.  Regardless if we summit or not, this is a fun adventure.

Saw the Bucket List with Madeleine on New Years Eve.  As many of my friends know, I have a "Life List" of things to do before I die.  The movie is directed by Rob Reiner and stars Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman.   It is a terrific movie.  Fortunately, I have to live a really long time, b/c though I do knock many things off the list, I add a lot more than I cross off!  Though it appears the film is receiving mediocre reviews, I enjoyed it tremendously.