Trying something new - an unboxing video

Watch me unwrap and open a Disney Doorables Death Star on the tube of you! (I was looking for an "ultra rare" figure of Boba Fett.)

Another philatelic presentation

If you have a spare 50 minutes and want to hear me talking about the 'passports' that are issued at stamp exhibitions, you can watch the recording of the talk I gave to the British Thematic Association in November last year, which is now on YouTube. 

I got my first philatelic passport at Stamp World London in 1990 and have since acquired several others from all over the world. I like the random mix of stamps and postmarks and how no two passports are exactly alike. 

Making communications work: Always do the 'Comms around the Comms'

In 2015 I left my comms job and became the Network Co-ordinator for an all-Wales clinical network. It's not a complete change. I've taken some of those comms skills with me and I recently helped produce a video project working with some members of the network. We were quite pleased with the results, given our shoestring budget. Here's one of them:



It was a great feeling to have the videos filmed, edited, tweaked, and then finally signed off and loaded up to YouTube. You can watch all four on our website.

However, one of the big things I learned in my previous job was that the end of the project - when the product was polished and perfect - was when you needed to kick in with the actual 'comms around the comms.' It's easy to make the mistake of thinking the end result is the end of the work - I've done it! I've produced a lovely report, or a shiny video, or a glossy resource. I've put it on our website. I've thought my hard work is done.

Sorry, no. The hard work is not done. This was my comms plan for after we went public with the videos.

Comms around the Comms

It's not enough to produce the content; you need to get it read or watched or seen. How do you do that? Here are some of the ways I approach this.

1) Identify your channels
Count your channels - do you know what you have available? You might be surprised.

Aggressively promote it on your own channels - tweet it frequently using a scheduler.

Don't just rely on your channels, use other people's channels too, which leads to point 2.

2) Ask people to promote it
Send personal emails to all your contacts asking them to look at what you have done and tell others.

Be explicit in what you are asking for. Not just 'Could you tell people about this?' but 'Could you tweet this and put it on your Facebook page?' The worst that would happen is that someone will say 'No', but to make it more likely that they say 'Yes', make sure you do point 3.

3) Make it easy to share
Write tweets for people; write content for websites, lines for blogs, whatever.

Pre-empt people's needs. In Wales, people will need a Welsh version. Get it translated.

Make it relevant. Why would another organisation share your content for you with their audience? Emphasise the connection you have - for example, we had staff from different organisations involved so the web story was tweaked when we asked those organisations to share the content.

4) Engage in the dark arts
Do the SEO work on YouTube. It sounds obvious but you need to make it easy to find. Write a description. Use meta-tags. This is a bit more technical and probably won't make as much difference as a nicely-worded email to 50 colleagues. But it all helps.

5) Revisit
Keep coming back to it. Repeat your messages. Follow up with people who didn't share it - people are busy and forget. Don't be afraid to send a friendly reminder.

This is a bit naughty, but fair play it's a catchy song

Note: Some Christians might get offended by this

Karaoke

Went karaoke with our book group tonight. Great fun. Birdhouse in your Soul is a much faster song to sing than I or Cathy realised.

Singing in front of your friends is quite a brave thing to do. Mind you it's also quite brave to go hear your friends sing. Two of those present tonight had already witnessed this:

I was someone else's highlight of the year

Just got out of our last department meeting of the year where we were all asked to say what our highlight of the year had been.

My Head of Department said that after a torturous hour and a half presentation at the staff conference, me getting up and doing my bit was his absolute highlight. "It changed the course of the day."

Of course my 'bit' included this:

New Kids on the Comeback

So after about 15 years, New Kids on the Block have released a come-back single, Summertime. It’s a bit too late to become a summertime smash, and I doubt it would have anyway. But I have to admit the song isn’t bad. It could certainly give other pop songs a run for their money in the quest for chart success.

I was expecting it to be terrible, when Cathy told me about it. She was quite excited about it, having been a massive New Kids fan in her youth. When she found the video on Virgin Music On Demand, I agreed to watch it out of loyalty to her more than anything else. But, like I said, it was okay, bordering on alright.

The video kicks off with the ‘Kids’, all very grown up now of course, in various exotic locations, like on a yacht, in a helicopter, etc. getting a phone call, then all tipping up at a beach-side club full of scantily-clad women to perform the chorus. Like you do. There’s even some boyband dancin’ at the end to show they’ve still got it. The lyrics about ‘do you remember that summer’ are purposely designed to remind their now-growed up female fanbase of life as a 13-year old when everything was a bit simpler.

Another song I’m liking at the moment is the soundtrack to an ad for a new computer game called Mercenaries 2 (watch the ad on Youtube). I googled it and discovered that the song had been especially commissioned for the advert. You could download the full-length one from the official website, but that didn’t seem to be working. However there are other places you can get it on the web. So, now I’m rocking to it.

Fake cancer

When we were at Soul Survivor we sang this one song called 'Healer' written by an Australian guy called Mike Guglielmucci. We saw a video which featured Mike, who "wrote the song while suffering from an aggressive form of cancer", singing it for all his might with an oxygen tube in his nose. It was quite moving.

Turns out it was all a bit fake. He didn't have cancer. But he did write the song and achieve some kind of fame for his amazing faith.

I was told this today in work as breaking news, and then tonight I discovered a member of the youth had handily posted this link to the full story on my Facebook wall.

I'm not into drawing great lessons from this sort of chicanery. The people who will be most embarrassed are the people who have endorsed this stuff - mainly the 'Hillsongs' Christian Worship Industry, who are now trying to distance themselves from it, and people like Mike Pilavachi at Soul Survivor who related in good faith this amazing story to people, mainly because it was a great story. The people who will be most hurt will be the ones who sent the money now sitting in Guglielmucci's soon-to-be-audited bank acounts, or who spent hours in prayer for his healing.

But there are two very small lessons to be learned:
1) Don't believe everything you hear
2) If you make worshipping God a profitable endeavour, sooner or later something will go wrong

Incidentally, this video from YouTube is the intro to the very video we were shown at Soul Survivor, with a commentary imposed over the top. The rest of the performance has been pulled from YouTube, as Hillsongs apparently try to "deep six" it, but it keeps creeping back on...

Still, and as a final comment, it's a powerful song of faith. But watching it again, I do wonder what was going through his head as he sung that and heard his words sung back to him by the very attractive young people who seem to go to Hillsongs worship events.

Son of Rambow

I didn't choose to go to this. It was a youth outing from church. However, this British film is worth a look. There's plenty of stuff to make you laugh and, if you're of a certain age, a nice re-creation of early 80s Britain, including a Corona Lemonade stand in the supermarket. Now, whatever happened to Corona Lemonade?

The basic plot is two outsiders - Will, a Plymouth Brethren kid who isn't allowed to watch TV documentaries in class, and Lee, a troublemaker who gets kicked out of class regularly - meet in the school hallways while everyone else is in class. After watching a pirated copy of Rambo, they team up to make a film, and things get messy from thereon.

I really liked this film. The two kids who play the lead roles are very good. There is an hilarious incident with a flying dog attached to a stunt kite. And there are plenty of throwaway jokes. The opening lines of the documentaries Will has to sit outside for start with lines like "Fire is man's greatest friend... but also his greatest foe!" followed by screams, or "The wheel is man's greatest invention... and also his most deadly!" followed by screeching tyres and screams.

There's a nostalgia too, for a simpler time, when kids could go running off into the woods, set up stunts and make a movie. One kid says how he always wanted a watch. Okay, some of that nostalgia is idealistic. The early 80s I actually lived through weren't so great. There was plenty of fear around and generally the mood was nihilistic.

But still, this is an authentic-feeling feel-good movie. I liked it and I'd watch it again.

Jongudmund's rating: 7.5/10

I'm surrounded by very talented people, part 2

My buddy Justin produced this animation using his brother as a dummy...

Gotta hand it to them

Beaker sings Coldplay

If you ever thought Chris Martin was a muppet...

You have to watch this!

Irony Boy sent me the link to this video, which goes to show how having too much time on your hands ain't necessarily a bad thing. I particularly like Lego Chewie's entrance.