Labels: Amazon, bookbox, ebooks, epublishing, Halley Suitt, Halley Tucker, Kindle, Kindle Fire, publishing, Susy Pilgrim Waters
One thing that was so striking at the Women's Leadership Forum (sponsored by MITX, The Girl Scouts, Staples, The Tech Review and John Hancock), last week which took place at the Microsoft NERD Center, was how chockfull of really helpful information it was. The speakers shared great information about things that really matter!
Labels: alpha male, conferences, geeks, MITX, Women's Leadership Forum
Labels: Amazon, bookbox, ebooks, Halley Tucker, Kindle, Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson
Good piece in the Sunday New York Times Business section about Zines (short form of "fanzine" -- a short, often handmade limited-run magazine in tribute to a very narrow subject or particular person) by Jenna Wortham called Raised on the Web, But Liking a Little Ink this morning.
For Barbara Frankie Ryan, 19, a graphic design student in London who recently curated an exhibition of zines at a boutique there called Tatty Devine, the Internet and handcrafted publications exist in tandem. She runs a popular fashion blog and also makes a series of zines — although she said she wasn’t even aware of the rich history of zine culture when she started creating them in her bedroom at the age of 15.
Instead, she was looking for an outlet for her drawings and innermost musings on popular culture and romantic crushes. And she wanted to be able to experiment. While Web sites come and go, in another sense the Web is eternal: tidbits can be searched and found when you least want them to be. That can be inhibiting.
“I’m becoming more aware how permanent and accessible things are online,” she said.
Ms. Ryan also said zines have an air of exclusivity: they are like other artifacts that were never intended for mass consumption or distribution, like a scarf knitted by a friend, a sketch or a cassette tape filled with handpicked songs.
“I like the idea that I’ve only made 40 copies, and only 40 people will see it,” she said. “It’s really easy to reveal a lot about yourself, and so this is a way of getting control back, and I find that quite comforting.”
Labels: books, ebooks, epublishing, food blog, graphic designers, publishing, Runcible Spoon, zines
"Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point ... " -- Blaise Pascal
No, no, they don't pay me a fee to promote them. No, I'm not a "consultant" with some murky connection to their organization. I'm simply the BIGGEST FAN of Highland Lodge, near Mount Washington up in the White Mountains of NH.
Unpacking here at the crack of dawn. This jetlag thing gets you thinking deep philosophical thoughts like -- where the hell is that blue hairbrush? I'm sure I packed it. And other trivial stuff like, why are we born? Why do we die? Why is a Coke in Europe only 4 ounces and costs nearly $4.00?
I was at CES in January in Vegas, in Silicon Valley for Launch and TedXBerkeley in February and both were hella busy, networky and fun. But this week in Boston was a blow out. Gotta wonder if the Bruins were sending out their super good luck and mojo or something! This start-up community was kick-ass this week.
Good link (thanks to Kevin Fanning on Twitter @okkfan) to an interesting interview by Todd VanDerWerff from AV Club, with Dan Harmon, the Creator of the TV series, Community. Check it out. AVC: You’ve employed a lot of female writers, in both seasons. That’s not true of a lot of other TV comedies. Was that a conscious decision?
DH: It was conscious on the part of [former NBC programming head] Angela Bromstad, before she left NBC. Angela said, “Get more women on your staff. Make it half women.” I remember going, “Are you fucking kidding me?” to myself. “Okay, I got a sitcom, and this is as far as you go,” because I’ve just been told that half of my staff needs to be a quota hire. From the mouths of bureaucrats come the seeds of great things. I dug extra hard. You find somebody like Hilary Winston. You find people later like [Emily] Cutler and [Karey] Dornetto.
They’re harder to find. It’s definitely not because women ain’t funny, because I’m finding the opposite. It’s because there’s fewer of them. The statistical probability of picking up a shitty script, it’s compounded for women. There’s the same percentage of genius happening in both genders, but there’s less women writing scripts and out there looking for the job. So you dig a little extra-hard, and you end up with a staff that took a few extra meetings and a few extra shitty scripts to read. Now you have a staff that is just as good as the staff you would have had, but happens to be half women. And it seems like the greatest thing in the world, because the world is half women. And the male writers across the board, from top to bottom, in their most private moments drinking with me, when they’re fully licensed to be as misogynist, reactive, old-boy-network as they want, all they can say is, “This turned out to be a great thing.”
The energy is different. It doesn’t keep anybody polite. We’re not doffing our caps or standing up when they enter the room. They do more dick jokes than anybody, because they’ve had to survive, they have to prove, coming in the door, that they’re not dainty. That’s not fair, but women writers, they acquire the muscle of going blue fast because they have to counter the stigma. I don’t have enough control groups to compare it to, but there’s just something nice about feeling like your writers’ room represents your ensemble a little more accurately, represents the way the world turns.
Race is another thing entirely. It would be fantastic to have 18 percent black writers on your TV staff and stuff. But the fact is, black women have ovaries and white women have ovaries; black men have testicles and white men have testicles, so actually, race is far more an artificial construct than gender. There’s a literal, actual difference between men and women, and it’s in their blood, and it’s in their brains, and it’s in their fingertips, and it’s in our conversations. I think women are different, and I think having them in the room is crucial to a family comedy, ensemble comedy, television comedy, where half the eyeballs on your show are women. As it turns out, I think Megan’s the only female writer who’s staying this year, so now, even though Bromstad’s gone, now I’m carrying this legacy, going, “Eh, guys, we really need a half-female writing staff.” I would teach it. I think we have to stop thinking of it as a quota thing and think of it as a common-sense thing.
The month of May is just about over, lovely month. It reminded me of a game we used to play on grassy green lawns, "Mother, May I?!" which was about asking a "mom" permission to take baby steps or elephant steps or umbrella steps towards her, eventually usurping her spot as the leader by tagging her.
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