Photos
Photos
Fiona's Art Show
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 03/10/2007 - 23:05
Fiona poses next to a cutout tracing of herself that she painted for her first art show in Greenwich Connecticut. Her work was part of an exhibition of nursery school students from the Long Ridge School
View the whole set here.
Christmas2006
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 12/25/2006 - 17:40
Check out the latest Christmas pictures (as well as some from Christmases past at Flickr.
Also, be sure to check out some Christmas videos on Blip.TV
Fiona dances to Little Butterfly in Stepmania with the new pad that she got for Christmas.
Congrats NaNoWriMo Girl!
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 12/03/2006 - 14:00
The cake that we got to celebrate Miranda completing the first draft of her first novel as part of the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)
Can Social Marketing Save the World?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 11/27/2006 - 18:35On Tuesday, I will be participating in a panel at Wesleyan entitled Can Social
Marketing Save the World?
In preparation, I wanted to pull up various videos that tie together some of my thoughts. The first is the trailer for The Ad and the Ego.
First, I think we need to re-evaluate our relationship to advertising, and particularly in terms of thinking about the subtext of advertisements. As I've written before, I believe that the subtext of most political advertisements, especially the ones that dominiated the recent elections is We Think You're Stupid. To me, one of the most important underlying messages of the Lamont campaign was one of participation.
In the first campaign ad we saw people rushing in, even before the advertisement was completed, and the introduction of the 'and so do we' theme.
There are two pieces online about how the media landscape is changing. The first is Epic and the second is Day of the Longtrail. They both talk about more citizen involvement with shaping our media. I really wanted to see and encourage citizen involvement in shaping the media for the campaign, because I believe that is a key part of how the change we are hoping for needs to come about.
Perhaps one of the best examples of what worked in the Lamont campaign was when CT Bob created this video. Later, the campaign created a similar ad.
Things that I would have liked to have seen, that didn't happen was people creating Machinima and doing other things to use games and other online tools to get the message out.
I believe that we can use social marketing to save the world. I believe that campaigns are a start to that, but that we need to go beyond campaigns, and that the key starting point is get more people involved in thinking critically about media and creating their own media.
Transformation
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 11/26/2006 - 19:24(Cross posted at Greater Democracy)
Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. (Rom 12:2)
I’ve been thinking a lot about this ever since the shooting at the Amish schoolhouse several weeks ago. Of all the groups of people that epitomize the idea of not being conformed to this world, the Amish are near the top. I’ve also been thinking about it a bit after some of my recent encounters of some of the negative aspects of group-think online.
A year or so ago, I was at a meeting of grassroots activist leaders in Burlington, VT. We had had a great day talking about ideas and strategies of how to change our country for the better. At the end of the day, we took a boat ride out on Lake Champlain. It was a beautiful day and at one point we gathered near the bow of the boat. One person was bewailing the inside the beltway consultocracy. I posed the question of if we are successful, how we will avoid falling into the same trap that they did and becoming the new insiders. This gave the leader of the group a moment of pause, and I hope that it still causes people to pause.
Early on in the Lamont campaign, when I was the person responding to emails at the ‘info’ account, one person spoke about how Sen. Lieberman had changed. He had lost touch with his constituents and become part of the beltway problem. The writer asked how I knew that Ned wouldn’t do the same thing. I admitted that I didn’t know that. I went on to say that based on my knowledge of Ned, I doubted that would happen, but I also said that if it did, then perhaps in 18 years, I would be working for some new young challenger.
As we launch into the 2008 presidential contest, are blogs going to be part of a new netroots based consultocracy, or will we be able to continue to renew our minds and transform ourselves? I am hoping for the later, but at times, I have my doubts.
