Thanksgiving has come and gone, the seemingly never-ending hunt for more work continues, and the radness that is This Is My Milwaukee continues. The guys over at the Milwaukee Tourism Commission finally sent out a series of emails yesterday linking to a Flickr photostream of a series of scans from a preflight draft of a booklet containing information valuable to prospective residents of Milwaukee in the TIMM universe.
The images introduce the concept of the DOR timescale; an abbreviation of what they refer to as “The Dormant Era” which, as far as I can tell, refers to all events leading up to what they call “The Three Hundred Troubles.” Whether the Three Hundred Troubles came before Blackstar’s invention of the Go.D.S.E.E.D. or if that was the attempt at a solution to the Three Hundred Troubles is still not clear.
The booklet further mentions something called M-Collapse and its relation to rotors and super-spin. I’m not very clear on what these things are but suspect they will have something to do with the ruptures that the buildings are designed to resist.
I’m going out on a limb here, but I suspect that there are vast catacombs underneath Milwaukee that occasionally collapse.
Much of the contents of the booklet seem arbitrary, such as the idea of dinosaurs and humans coexisting, and may be present only to paint the backdrop of a people who are living in a very different world. The book mentions brass in great detail, specifically a Brass Age. In context, it seems that the residents of the TIMM universe have forgotten their history.
There are also some graphs and charts that I can’t make much sense of at this time. There are already quite a few forums and wikis documenting the progress and speculation of this ARG, most of which seem to be full of people with theories about every mundane detail from the fact that the word “TEENS” hangs in the air while upside down in the video or that the girls can clearly be heard to say “shrimp scampi” while walking arm in arm. For a concise timeline of confirmed leads, check out http://mymilwaukee.wikibruce.com Whatever is going on in This Is My Milwaukee, it’s damned entertaining.
Thank God for Twitter. This was another morning where I woke up unusually early for some unknown reason. But rather than try to get back to bed, I started reading my Twitter stream through bleary-morning eyes and saw a link from my friend Rob Blatt about a bizarre and awesome site, thisismymilwaukee.com
Within the first few minutes of watching what appears to be a film from the Tourism Commission of Milwaukee, I thought to myself, "Milwaukee sure is trying a unique approach to make the city appeal to people." The first few shots seem reminiscent of The Royal Tennenbaums or Rushmore, but soon take a turn toward something straight out of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!
Watch the movie already if you haven't done so yet.
[waiting for reader to come back during this momentary pause]
Are you excited about bringing back the treasure from the tomb of G.o.D.S.E.E.D? I know I am!
So I promptly called the phone number on the page for the Milwaukee Tourism Commission. Expecting to get a voicemail that would lead to another number that would lead to a website to bring me down a rabbit-hole, I was surprised when a live voice picked up.
MTC: MTC, this is [I forgot his name]
Me: This is the Milwaukee Trade Commission?
MTC: Yeah. That's correct.
Me: What can you tell me about Blackstar?
MTC: Oh, I really can't tell you anything about Blackstar.
Me: Really? Well, it's just that the movie features Blackstar fairly prominently, and I'm looking to move to Milwaukee, and would like to know if there's any further information on how to protect my teens.
MTC: The video features a lot of things, none of which I can really give you any information on. It's just...You don't know what kind a position you're putting me in. Have you spoken with Russo?
Me: No I have not.
MTC: Okay, call Mike Russo at (414) 688-8914 and he can answer all your questions.
Me: Okay great! In the meantime could you send me any kind of brochures? Any information at all would be great.
At that point the MTC rep took down my email address and assured me that I would be recieving something shortly.
Then I made some mac & cheese and attempted to call Mike Russo. I was connected to a voicemail box belonging to Mike Russo, but it was full of messages so I couldn't leave one. I paged him with my number, to no avail.
As far as Alternate Reality Games go, This is My Milwaukee has had an entertaining intro, but I think for now I'm stuck until I can get ahold of Mike Russo.
If you have any information to help me find out more about Blackstar or the G.o.D.S.E.E.D. then feel free to leave a comment.
That's right, I've been taking so long to update the old chrismenning.com because I've had a touch of nerves when approaching the subject of a blog entry about blogging. I think someone last weekend made a comment about the dangers of being too meta. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.
On Saturday, November 8th and Sunday November 9th I attended (and presented at) the Denver Thin Air Summit: A New Media Conference. All in all, I believe I learned some things and found out what can't be learned, such as how you can't learn how to have credibility by attending a seminar. (See: Credible Hulk)
Day 1
Dave Taylor of Intuitive Systems gave a great opening keynote on the history of self-expression. In his speech, Dave argued that blogging has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with having a voice, citing the Diary of Anne Frank and Common Sense by Thomas Payne as such examples of self-expression that influenced a broad audience; whether they were initially intended to or not.
Dave went into further detail on a number of topics such as Fouad Farhan being jailed for his blog and astroturfers like Lonelygirl, but the main messages I took away from his talk were these:
The diversity of views that exist online, no matter how extreme, are a sign of a healthy medium.
Do not create content impulsively; exercise due dilligence.
I couldn't agree more with those two points.
Next on the agenda, I saw Robb Blatt, of Blattcave Productions and formerly of the New York Sun, lead an interactive workshop on how to launch a basic video podcast. What started off to look like an overly simple subject soon grew into a good discussion about the differences betweeen the various Creative Commons licenses, and the capabilities of different aggregators and feed technologies. The main message I took from his talk was this:
A diversity of distribution is key. Don't dwell on the medium; just create content to be viewed everywhere.
Following Rob's workshop I attended Jeremy Tanner's talk about “New Media Landmines.” Jeremy gave a high-energy performance, albeit short. Despite that, his charisma is really an entertaining asset that's sure to continue to carry him forward in life. Most of his presentation focused on what not to do, such as using Twitter for constant shameless self-promotion and portraying “personal branding” as a goldrush. Jeremy's words that stuck with the most were these:
If you spend all day slinging shit, you're bound to get some on yourself.
Wise words, for sure. Yet even though Jeremy's presentation was mostly a showcase of people that are doing the internet wrong, I couldn't help but walk out of there thinking to myself, “I want to be that guy's friend!”
Other good advice from Jeremy:
Don't be a tool.
New Media is not a Magic Bullet.
If you make a mistake make swift apologies.
Wait until other people call you an Expert before using that title yourself.
Re: Thin Air with Chris Menningwww.rocketboom.com
Then of course, I gave my presentation about how to write for a fast-paced show like Rocketboom. I talked about the importance of simple web apps such as RSS Readers. I touched on how a simple text-based chat client restricts one's reliance on low-brow humor and reinforces one's literary abilities. I also went on about how social-bookmarking sites come in handy when collaborating with other writers that you can't meet with face to face. Rob Blatt took some good notes on the whole thing.
Day 2
The next morning Jeremiah Owyang, senior analyst with Forrester Research gave the opening keynote speech. If you read about RSS feeds like I do, (which you probably don't unless you're Dave Winer) than you're familiar with the study that he had a part of recently that stated that only about 10% of Internet users make use of RSS. I'm not really surprised personally, seeing what a sleaze-hole Myspace is. But today Jeremiah wasn't talking about the number of users that utilize RSS. Instead he took a holistic approach, focusing on the entire Internet in terms of Jello (amorphous content), Shish-Kabob (bite-sized media), and Currency (your valuable content.) He also had a whole slew of interesting stats about demographics, types of communication, and politics. It's all freely available on Forrester.com. Jeremiah had a whole slew of good tips, such as:
Everything is input.
Catalog your content.
Create drafts and work on them slowly.
Aggregate content.
Create lists.
And more.
I don't remember if what came next was because of some audience members hard-pressed to find out Jeremiah Owyang's Magic Bullet, or if he planned on saying it all along. His last tip was to “create with Passion.”
I heard that tip over and over this weekend. I think I might even be guilty of letting this obtusely simple cliché leave my mouth. Really, what independent blogger is going about their daily routine begrudgingly writing about something they have no interest in?
This was a hot one. Within the first few minutes, Dan had the room divided with his argument that the term “Citizen Journalist” does a disservice to those who use it; that it carries with it a baggage that makes traditional journalists view themselves as better than Citizen Journalists.
He went on to illustrate this point by remarking how when Bre Pettis and Steve Garfield were in the ABC Newsroom, the other journalists had an attitude of, “watch out, here come those bloggers,” as if anyone using the title of blogger would write only extremely biased criticisms and do nothing with any kind of journalistic integrity. Dan and Rob went on to express that these were far from their views, but that this was something they had perceived from other old-media journalists. I'm not entirely convinced of this, as reporters for Chuck Olsen's The Uptake proudly carry the term Citizen Journalist. It could be assumed that many of The Uptake's viewers identify with the idea of Citizen Journalism because of the way it offers an alternative to Mainstream Media; and could be perceived as being more pure in some sense.
Rob and Dan went on to say that differentiating yourself because you produce content for the Internet does a disservice to you. Dan made this clear when he said, “just because you write for a newspaper, do you call yourself a newspaperist? No.” This made a lot of sense to me. The overall message I got from Rob and Dan was this:
Produce content for many mediums. Check your facts. Cite your sources. Exercise a code of ethics. Exercise due diligence. Build your credibility. Then you can just call yourself a journalist. Credentials can help but in the end only go so far.
Some members of the audience seemed to be aching to turn the discussion into a crucifixion of a member of traditional media by any means necessary; calling out the credibility of every news source on TV, and holding Dan Patterson responsible to defend all of mainstream media for coverage of the Iraq War. At this point I felt a little bad for him. Sure, he comes off a little full of himself sometimes. In his own words, “my ego takes a beating daily. And I have a HUGE ego.” Suddenly he sounded like someone I knew...
From watching the hailstorm of comments, questions, expectations, and near-accusations, (am I exaggerating? Maybe a little) I observed a trend. By judging age purely on the basis of the faces of those who spoke, I inferred that mostly the older generation still expects to be able to go to the TV or newspaper for an unbiased source of news that they can take as gospel. It also seems to me that most of the younger generation already understands that no matter how much a news source will claim to be “fair and balanced,” that one can only develop a complete view of the news by consuming it in multiple forms from multiple sources. As someone who was literally and figuratively born into 1984, I think I speak for my generation when I say that we don't expect to hear the truth; we expect to find it.
Barack Obama is being projected by all the major networks as the winner of the 2008 Presidential Election. We did it.
This moment feels unreal. Growing up I was so sure that the proud-to-be-ignorant, ultra-conservative Good Ol' Boys were completely in control. I figured that even if they weren't rigging our elections, that there were enough of them to vote their guy in.
But we did it. We got our guy in. We've got one hell of a mess to clean up in our country, but he's just the man to lead us through it.
I already voted at the library last week, so I've been just waiting for the whole mess to get settled. But I realize that some of you live in areas where there are no early-voting initiatives and will hav e to wait until tomorrow to vote. Well, in keeping with the spirit of things, here's one last reminder of why you need to get out to vote. It's because Ed Helms is the man.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008 at 12:58PM 
