Karen Land Speaks at Roanoke Main Library

There’s always something going on at the Library… you already knew that. Right? Well, let’s look at this week’s program presented by the Roanoke Public Library. This is not your average library, just in case you think it’s a quiet place to sit and use the computer or check out books for free. (Oh-oh, what the ???)

Monday night, Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race Musher Karen Land spoke to a packed house at the Main Library’s Mezzanine Room. Star City FAME came to take pictures and learned about a sport that seemed more grueling and exciting than just about anything else out there.

Dog Mushing is a competitive sport, one musher against others… and a team sport, a pack of dogs being that team. Karen presented some finer details of training for the Iditarod, which is the annual race held in Alaska. The race begins every March. Competitors typically enter with 16 (maximum) dogs. The trail covers 1161 miles in sub-freezing temperatures. They get 15 days or less to finish it. Karen’s training took a number of years, as she explained she had to apprentice with a kennel owner, whose dogs raced as sled dogs, to really learn about mushing.

Here is a photo courtesy of JKBrooks85 off Wiki that details a sled dog team: (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/aa/Mushing_graphicx.JPG)

Karen went on to talk about the way she was first introduced to mushing, her training to qualify, her rookie entry into the Iditarod, and of course, she spoke proudly about her faithful team of dogs. Karen also brought along a photo presentation of breath-taking pictures, her racing sled, and her beloved Alaskan Husky, Borage.

The sled shown here is actually quite light in weight… 20-something pounds or so. The dogs pull the musher, all suited up, and the sled, all loaded up, over snow and ice. However, a lot of the Iditarod trail can be rocks and dirt.

Karen asked the audience a number of questions and surprisingly a lot of children present knew some of the answers. She has been on over 300 such presentations to audiences all over the United States since 2005, mostly at schools and libraries. She has taken this year off to tour the country and talk about Mushing, but says she will enter the Iditarod once again next year.

Photos Star City FAME (c) 2010

You can find more about Mushing at Karen’s website and blog at http://www.mymusher.com/
The official site for the Iditarod is http://www.iditarod.com/

See you around Downtown!!

Star City Roller Girls Get Ready for Big Showdown this Weekend | WSLS-10

This past Friday, all-female sports team, The Star City Roller Girls, were guests on "OurBlueRidge," the daytime TV spot aired by local station, WSLS-10. Star City FAME is one of the team's sponsors, as well as the official team videographer. We were pleased to be able to supply WSLS-10 with live-action footage from a recent Star City Roller Girls home game, held at Lee Hi Skate Center in Roanoke, VA.

Many thanks to WSLS-10 for airing our clips and also for giving this great team and the sport of Roller Derby some wonderful coverage.

Here is the interview in its entirety:
Star City Roller Girls Get Ready for Big Showdown this Weekend WSLS 10#comment_form#comment_form#comment_form#comment_form

No Shame Theatre Now in the Daytime at Roanoke Public Library

Studio Roanoke partnered up with the Roanoke Public Library to bring a daytime version of "No Shame Theatre" to the infamous Mezzanine of the Main Library in Downtown Roanoke City. Chad Runyon, host and General Manager of Studio Roanoke, opened the show with the near-usual announcement adding the new rules of "no cussing" or any other obscene behavior for the more family-oriented flavor of "No Shame."

The first performance was held last week on March 3rd at noon, and brought in several brave souls to kick off what will be a regular monthly program at the Library.

The very first original pieces offered at "No Shame in the Afternoon" were by authors (in order of appearance) Patrick Lyster, Claudia Harris (read by Jonathan Harris), Leisa Thomas, Paula Smith, Mark Tutai, and Beth Deel and River (Car Less Brit) Laker as a duo.

Everyone followed the rules, but you know, there always is that one exception in the crowd who will find a loophole, right? Wonder who and what that could have been??

Luckily, Star City FAME brought a camera, otherwise it'd all have been hear-say!!

River Laker and Beth Deel

Of course, this is not considered dis-robing in public, because the man clearly was not wearing a robe.

More pics...

Patrick LysterJonathan Harris

Leisa ThomasPaula SmithMark TutaiChad Runyon

A fun time not to be missed. Please come out to the next "No Shame in the Afternoon," which will be on April 7th. Workshops for the afternoon performances are held on the last Monday of the month at the Main Library.

Many thanks to Studio Roanoke, Roanoke Public Libraries, and special thanks to River Laker, the programming master-mind behind so many of the Library's events, and Beth Deel of myScoper.com, one of Roanoke's brightest artists and biggest advocate of the Arts here in Downtown. Without some of our more adventurous residents, Roanoke would just be plain Roanoke. (A whole 'nuther topic for another day...)

See you around Downtown!

Origins, Facts, and Fiction about Web 2.0 and Online Strategy – Part Three

Organic viral videos don’t need a crew of pushers sending links out to people in Russia or Turkey, or to my mail box. Nor do they need to be posting fake comments on video channels, and all that. Organic virals are rather just interesting videos that people happily and naturally forward to their friends or repost online. If you want more specific exposure instead of hoping something will go viral, pay the fees to YouTube (or your favorite video site) to feature your video. They are the experts.

Yes, you can make online videos do some cool tricks aimed to run up the viewer counter. But one thing you can’t do is trick the hosting site. If you add commands to the video’s code (say, to make it loop) and then embed it from its original site, the powers-that-be will know you’re scamming them right away. Google employs some pretty slick programmers. People ought to be happy about that since Google controls everyone’s cyber lives now, regardless of operating system or web browser (that thing you open to look at the internet). It’s easy to add commands to a video and make it loop-play after one second, thinking you’re going to rack up the viewer count. YouTube halts the counter after about five (5) loops or auto-plays (meaning the video plays when you land on the page). They may never allow your video to count hits again, ever, so don’t experiment with a video you really want to go viral with.

Besides, Google owns YouTube. You should be really happy about that, as well. Why? Because if you upload a video to YouTube, and you give it a great title, Google will kick your search results up on ALL search engines. Um, for free. So, say you have a bike shop, and you have a website for your bike shop. You sign up for a YouTube Channel and start uploading videos about bike-riding in your hometown. You load some more videos about fixing a flat tire on a bike and other maintenance stuff. You call them things like, “Bike-riding in Roanoke, VA” and “How to Fix a Flat Tire on a Bike” and “Worst Bike Ever.” (After a while, you will learn to use silly titles. And yes, sex sells, so “Hot Girls on Bikes” might get you somewhere.)

Be sure to name your channel something relevant, such as the exact name of your store or brand. Use it in your video’s description. Use it in your tags. Tags are the words that help your video come up on a search - not only in YouTube, but on the web itself. (Google owns YouTube, remember?) It doesn’t matter if you use Bing or Yahoo or whatever as your search engine. Google (DMOZ) is the scraper that acts like a huge cyber rolodex. Now that your company name is splattered all over your video channel, an online search for “bike shop, roanoke” will display results not only for your videos but also for your website (and anything else associated with your company name, like a Facebook or Twitter page).

So how hard is that? Most of these online sites are fairly simple to use. You don’t have to get fancy. A company or business web site might be the only thing that needs to look polished. Everything else, like your Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Vimeo, Blogger, or WordPress pages can take its time while you get the hang of it… no hurry. I’ve heard quotes up to $300 to “make” a Facebook page for clients. Please rent a kid in your family or on your block and give them a nice bowl of ice-cream. You know, the kid you used when you couldn’t figure out how to work the VCR remote… But the more you yourself play with these “social” sites, the more you’ll understand. You can hook up most of these sites to feed each other updates so you won’t have to keep logging into all of your accounts just to tell everyone you posted one new article or uploaded a new video.

There are also a lot of extra tools (if you want to know more) that you can utilize with most any site. The most important would be to keep track of traffic, what that traffic did, who they are (in general), where they are, and how long they paid attention and to what. That will help you determine whether they liked or didn’t like something about your website pages, blog articles, videos, and so on. This is called Analytics, which Google (and its YouTube site) offers for free. Use the results to plan your future marketing efforts.

If you’re worried about becoming really popular: Don’t. Just provide good content, good products, get your business name out on various places, stay current, be accessible and be sociable. I have to quote Jeffrey Gitomer, who says, “People hate to be sold, but they love to buy.” So, knock off the sales pitch. And quit making it about “helping people” too. Barf, barf. This is the information age, not the helpless age. People want to learn for themselves and the information is there. People are no longer helpless. Information is not a commodity anymore. It’s free. (PS – where do you think most of these “gurus” get all their info from?)

The Web is not such a mystery. There’s really not much you can do to screw it up. And it doesn’t take a genius to do Social Networking. How do you think kids do it? They play with it. So go play with it. Just remember to update your anti-virus and be sure to set your third-party cookies to “prompt.” If you want more protection, go to Adobe’s website and set your flash settings to block those invasive .sol files which by-pass your cookies security. Now you’re fairly safe to go back in the Web 2.0 water.

Nice description (with pictures) on how to set up third-party cookie handling:
http://helpdeskgeek.com/how-to/disable-first-and-third-party-cookies-in-ie8/
Here’s where you can learn about flash settings:
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager.html

That’s it for “Social Networking” for now…
My next techie article will be a lesson on how to speak on-camera.

Origins, Facts, and Fiction about Web 2.0 and Online Strategy – Part Two

Just what the heck is Online Strategy? Do you need it? Are you good at it? Do you sell it? Do you buy it?

Sure, you can plan it or have someone else plan it for you. It’s like any other advertising strategy, only for the web. A company can help put together your business motto and logo, set you up with newspaper and magazine ads, paid articles, highway billboards, and TV and Radio spots. They can get you in the business section or on the front-page, or get you on a talk show. They can coach you or hire a spokesperson for your business.

Or perhaps you are clever enough to do all or some of that yourself. Some people can because they are quite crafty. Either way, it will take time and money. But unless you have TONS of money from the start, or you are the darling of your social club, an overnight success by way of marketing and/or advertising is not a common event. It depends on being at the right place at the right time with the right thing that people want. And you know how people are: You don’t.

It’s like everything else. If you’ve got something people will love, you need to get the word out, no doubt. Edison had to take his invention somewhere. (Okay, I know he didn’t invent the electric light bulb…) But the questions you need to ask yourselves are:

A. What do I offer?
B. Who’s my target audience (readers, viewers, buyers)?
C. If it succeeds, can I support the demand?
D. How much time do I devote to this on the web?

Entrepreneurs struggle with this the most, I think, because they are trying to run a business while wearing all the hats. Social networking alone can take up an entire day. It’s more work than cold-calling, because you can schedule your out-calls to 20 minutes a day and move on to other stuff. Online, if indeed you are interacting, engaging and responding to people, you might get stuck there for a while. That’s why some companies have Social Networking departments now. That’s also why gurus come along throwing seminars at you, hopefully making you cross-eyed enough to sign up for their services. They will handle all your Web 2.0 Social Networking Online Strategy needs. Which is fine. But are they engaged in it successfully themselves? Or do they know just enough to be dangerous? Obviously, advertising agencies don’t run commercials like Coca Cola ™ because they work behind the scenes for the client (like Coca Cola ™).

BUT… You should find out:

• Who are their clients?
• What industries are they good at promoting?
• Have they taken something from weak to profitable?
• Or do they pass the buck because it’s really all up to you? (Did they take on your crummy product and you expected miracles?)
• Do they claim to know HOW to make something happen and yet have no such thing to prove they can do it?

Let’s take viral videos for example. What is a viral video and why the heck would someone want or need a viral video? Marketing your business is one. Getting views (so you can get paid for them) is another. But there are two kinds of viral videos. Yup. One is “organic” and the other is “synthetic.” Unless you know that, it doesn’t matter. Once you know that, it will matter, depending on what your business is.

Viral means the online video file gets forwarded on to others and/or watched many times over, most likely on or through a hosting site like YouTube or Vimeo. There are dozens of video hosting sites, but those two are probably the best known.

If you are a YouTube Partner (which means you make popular videos and YouTube pays you), you have to be consistent with your video programming or no one will ever come back. Just a one-off video that gets 10,000 views will hardly prompt YouTube to offer you a partnership. But even one popular video can help you – sure, if it’s meaningful and brings you business. People who believe that it’s all a numbers game and only care that the file is passed along, no matter how insidiously it’s done, don’t realize the ineffectiveness of this synthetic viral method UNLESS view counts make you money. They’re posted in other people’s blogs, forums, Google Groups, Facebook Groups. They’re sent using spam email broadcasts, and so on. They’re set on other channel users’ rotation playlists, or posted as a response to other users’ videos (regardless if their video is relevant). Some popular bloggers accept bribes to post “viral videos.”

So, is that bad? I can’t answer that for you. What’s your goal? To get viewers – as many eyeballs as possible? How does that help you? Synthetic virals never get watched all the way through, which is why they are made to be VERY SHORT. People won’t put up with a video they didn’t ask to see. So, it better be a damned great video, because most folks already hate you for getting it in their email.

Of course, you can use all sorts of methods to boost your Social Networking on the Web 2.0. If you have the money, you can hire starving bloggers to write articles for $10-15 a piece. You can pay people to kick your stuff up onto Digg and Delicious. Did you REALLY think all those top-selling “gurus” sit around typing catchy articles every day?

But better yet, and because you want things to be automated, “bots” are the way to go. Want your YouTube video seen? Use a bot. (Just google “bots for YouTube” and pick one. I won’t advise you on which ones to use.) The same applies to just about every Social Networking site to gain friends, fans, followers, and viewers. It’s all there, free to research. No magic, no mystery, no classes to take. Reading is all that’s required. Fortunately for Social Networking gurus, most people who want to make a million dollars overnight do not like to read.

Most of all, what’s really so special about Social Networking, is that it’s a mighty database culled from billions of logged in users. Thus the internet has become very efficient in targeting better online ads to people. These days, Web 2.0 is fairly close to speaking directly at you and me. Some ads even say, “Ron, we have the perfect [whatever] for you!!” It’s all very creepy, but advertisers easily get info from what you post on Facebook in comments, “likes,” and stuff from your profile pages. Lucky for the marketing world, not everyone blocks internet tracking cookies. These stay on your machine for YEARS, patiently learning about what you prefer and don’t prefer in life, so they can market TO you more personally, with better results.

So, in that sense, if you want the very most people to see your spammy ad and spammy viral video, it’s not all that difficult to set up. There’s a sucker born every day, as PT Barnum once said. If that’s your customer base, go for it. I just won’t be seeing it.

Origins, Facts, and Fiction about Web 2.0 and Online Strategy – Part One

Okay, sometimes we really must post humorous information because the world is just too serious a place. And besides, today is Saturday. Unfortunately, for some people, we need to post a sarcasm warning. Times are tough and it stresses out sensitive individuals, particularly those who are angry that it takes so much effort to make a few million. So here's your warning: SARCASM IN EFFECT.

This article is about the origins, facts, and fiction concerning the internet. This is Part One of a series of three. There is absolutely no truth to it. As you know, the internetS is a series of tubes. (In reality, it actually is.) Here goes.

The Web (or Web 1.0) – this is online stuff. Back in the day, you went to Yahoo and AOL. Companies were tripping over themselves to get a web page created. Your phone did not ring while you surfed the Web.

Web Media – this is online stuff, too. Used to be Javascripted animation, that annoying page art-with-sound some web designers still insist upon using for the landing page of their client’s website (as an example). Sometimes you will see that Javascript thingy open in your taskbar when this garbage is coded into a webpage.

New Media - Today, it’s called New Media, and it is mostly video. It is coded better to stream better. That means it plays right away without you waiting for it to download. Professional animation geeks use Adobe Flash, but various site builders use similar intelligent coding. In reality, there really is no “streaming” done much anymore. Most people’s computers have the players necessary to watch files, or the files are linked and neatly coded in embedded players. Server bandwidth and hi-speed internet takes care of the rest. Whatever that means (tubes). How cool is that?

Web 2.0 – this is online stuff, too. As recent as this past decade. This means all those cool “interactive” sites and applications that everyone uses is brainless to the naked eye. It incorporates New Media and Social Networking. Biggest experts are five year-olds and internet entrepreneurs. It is a mystery to everyone else, including politicians and people who get graduate degrees in Computer Sciences. After all, the Web is one big happy world-wide market. Programmers are just a necessary evil.

Texting – this is the 21st Century version of Morse Code. You must learn the correct abbreviations or no one will understand you. Applies to tweeting, also.

Social Networking – this is the “interactive” stuff mentioned above. I use quotation marks, because I really consider user-participation online to be bi-directional, not “interactive.” Examples are Facebook and Twitter. The ancient versions were instant messenger services (Windows, Yahoo, AOL), chat-rooms, and things like MySpace (which basically started the revolution of online “friends” as some sort of popularity contest, and became a great way to market to a particular demographic).

Viral Marketing – this is what happens when WHAT you do or say or offer online takes off like a hot potato. There is no magic internet fairy. It can be manipulated for a cost (time, money, human resources) or it can be quite organic. More on this later.

SEO – stands for “Search Engine Optimization” (or, "Something Everyone Offers") and was very huge in the dark ages of Web 1.0, whatever that means. You could buy SEO software to help you set up keywords and submit your site to 100’s of search engines. These are useless today. Google, or DMOZ actually, “crawls” over the content of your web page. But if you’re not saying much relevant to what you are trying to convey or sell, your site will be buried way Off-Off-Off Broadway into the swamps of New Jersey. Yes, title and description matter, too. Refreshing your website with new content is helpful. Content is king. You can pay someone to “trick” your site up for $5,000, but much of that doesn’t work anymore.

Blogging – this is kind of Web 1.5 in a way. Considering people, especially Westerners, are all afflicted with ADHD, the blog has moved back into its rightful place as the personal web page of the early 1990’s. Most people and businesses that start a blog will let it fall off after a few entries. Successful blogs do continue to emerge, for sure, as it is useful for alternative news from the more serious writers. (The Huffington Post is one example.) Work-from-home bloggers that make money through click and affiliate programs have flooded the blogosphere. The better ones have something useful to say and sell. The rest… well, if it looks like spam, smells like spam, tastes like spam…

Forums - Many techie people still keep blogs, but you’re better off joining a serious forum where these folks are most helpful talking shop with other forum members. This is where you will learn lots of useful stuff about whatever subject you’re interested in. There are forums about everything imaginable.

Vlogging – this is blogging using video or at least adding videos to your articles. It helps to keep your readers entertained, so throw a video at them now and then.

Podcasting – this is a kind of amateur broadcasting, but online, as it has become available for anyone to do. Lots of people (and companies) will stream audio, like an interview, on their websites or blogs. Radio stations and newspaper media use it on the web.

Tweeting – ah, finally. The 140 characters that killed the blog. Twitter may be the best or the most annoying thing to have ever come online. Now THAT’S the kind of stuff that makes something special – ya gotta either love it or hate it. You need private citizens and commercial interests alike on social media like this one (and Facebook), because after all, if it can’t generate money, why bother?

Facebook – Use this or go back to the chat room… which both Twitter and Facebook may one day turn into after something cooler takes their place. But because so many application creators have invested in making cool stuff for these sites, it may take a while… or maybe not. You can invite hundreds and thousands of "friends," but if you do it all at once, Facebook will get mad at you. They prefer you become a paid advertiser.

Smartphones (Mobile Web) – this is where it’s all going real fast. Third World countries are computing and communicating almost 100% by smartphone. Get with the program.

Online Strategy – this is my favorite and combines all of the above. This is like watching a hockey game and commenting on the great strategy even though the puck changes possession every two seconds. More on this later.

If you want to add your own Web definitions, that would be awesome. (Keep it Rated G.)

The next segment will expound on "Online Strategy." Hope you had fun reading! Please come back.

Had Fun at the Biz Expo - Meet the Street Team!

Last Monday, on February 8th, the Salem-Roanoke County Chamber of Commerce hosted the 2010 Business and Technology Showcase at the Salem Civic Center. Star City FAME was there with bells on. We set up our booth for the first time as a company and Chamber member, and then, in Star City FAME fashion, had a blast!

Although this marks our first outing to showcase the business marketing end our Video Production company, we came to have fun and engage visitors to our "booth" in helpful dialogue about how they can promote their services and products in a visual, non-hardsell way. We gave out demo DVD's and CD's and even instructional inserts in our brochures to give them a clear understanding of the variety of ways to promote business through video on several marketing platforms. For some people, of course, point-and-shoot DIY videos are just fine. Knowing and keeping up with all the avenues to benefit them still can be a time-consuming task - in fact, a full-time job in itself. And then there are the bigger projects like instructional programs and full-on marketing videos that simply cannot be done on a $300 Flip or iPhone. And that's what we want you to know: No matter what your media project is, it can be done better and more effectively, whether it's on the web or CD/DVD.

The Street Team:
Several friends of mine, who often jump on-board with SCF projects, decided to form the official Star City FAME Street Team. Hans Moore of Ahha Pictures and Josh Seaman, his nephew, ran around the Civic Center with one of our smaller HDV camcorders asking Expo participants if they'd like to be on camera for a short video promo of the event. The two of them collected a nice collage of footage, which Hans, an accomplished video editor, will produce in the coming weeks. (Josh is the young man assisting me with the filming of last season's AMTRAK Excursions out of Roanoke, VA.)

Also, my dear pal Sam Roby manned the table for quite a bit while I snooped around chatting with other vendors at their booths. He is a genuine cut-up at 84 and fits right into our company's business profile! Hard work as our projects always are, we are "Fun about Business, and Serious about Fun!" Who needs another stuffy tie-and-jacket sour-face out there? (Business suits are out; Star City FAME T-Shirts are in! That's why we gave away SCF shirts for our door-prize drawing!!)

Here are some pics of the 2010 Biz Tech Showcase...

The catering was awesome, BTW. Thanks SR-Chamber for the eats, because I was starving by the time I got there and set up our table, haha. The fellow behind the electronic piano sang just like Barry White. (I will have to get his name, folks. I slipped up on that, which is a big no-no considering we support the Arts.)

So here's the Street Team...

Hans Moore, Videographer and Editor, Ahha Pictures

Josh Seaman, Assistant Camerman

Sam Roby, Assistant Sales

Afterwards, Hans caught up with Executive Town Car and Limousine Service owner Patrick Helvey... and disappeared into Pat's finest stretch limo to take some absolutely wild footage of this automobile's stunning interior. Josh and I joined him to horse around on-camera inside the limo. What was hysterical, Pat threw on some Cher in-concert videos. How appropriate without even knowing that we produce the Cher spoof series, "Cher on Crack," right?

How cool is this??

Well, that's it for now... We have some live music footage coming up soon from Nancy and Two Meteors at last month's Happy's gig and also a special Twelve O'Clock Knob performance from the Jefferson Center. There will be a couple surprises too, but I've got to go and edit now!!! See you around Downtown!!