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Call Me a Duck

My marketing job in the University of Oregon's Office of Admissions allows for a whole lot of creative leg-stretching. An indulgent and supportive boss, ditto.

Videotaping a ghost hunt in a cemetery? Go for it. Facebook-based essay contest? You betcha. Foursquare scavenger hunt? Sure, why not?

But nothing—and I mean nothing—has been so much fun (and so unexpected) as the writing, production, and creation of "Call Me a Duck."

Based on Maino's "All the Above," the video was launched last Friday, and as of this writing we're closing in on 160,000 views on YouTube... and still climbing.

Originally the brainchild of my boss Holly Moline Simons, "Call Me a Duck" was fast-tracked and produced on a shoestring budget once we learned that On the Rocks, the UO's resident male a cappella group, was going to appear on this fall's The Sing-Off on NBC.  (By the way, "fast-tracked" in academic parlance means just under half a year.)  Our boys were eliminated just shy of the final round, but hey, we'll take it!

Besides teaching me how to spell "a cappella," this project afforded me the chance to write and produce a rap song, which is a résumé line item I never would've considered. 

I was privileged to work with an amazing cast and crew.  Special shout-outs are due to Holly, as well as director Michael McDermott, director of photography John Waller, amazingly organized assistant director Christopher Parker, effervescent OTR liaison (and crystal-clear tenor) Jeffrey Rogers, audio engineer (and OTR founder) Peter Hollens, and the rock of UO Admissions, Jett Nilprabhassorn.

Funny side note: In a few weeks the UO plays Auburn in the BCS championship game.  I learned something interesting today.  Guess what l'il ditty Auburn has adopted this season as the football team's "pump up" song?

Maino's "All the Above." Complete coincidence, Tigers, scout's honor!

Photo courtesy of Michael McDermott.

Literary Arts Profile

Hey, cool. For the moment, Oregon Literary Arts has bumped a trimmed version of my profile and interview, as well as my smiling mug (okay, tight-lipped and smirking mug) up to their fellowships page. Dig:

 

In one of my trademark acts of shameless self-promotion, I figure my most effective strategy will be to ride the coattails of my own sweater vest until they fall off... like, say, cross-posting this to my blog. The full profile, by the way, can be perused on Literary Arts' Paper Fort blog.

And on a related note, I sure have gotten a lot of mileage out of that Isaac Viel-powered photo shoot.

Treme Flow Chart

Continuing what is evidently Inkville's new focus on wall-to-wall Treme coverage... Okay, is two episodes in too early for Treme fan art?

I made this flow chart and submitted it to GraphJam. Thus far, no response. Like other stuff I've done in a humorous (or is that "humorous"?) vein, you kind of have to be in love with the same things I am, to find this funny. And we all know that making arcane references to newly-premiered cable programming is the secret to good comedy, right?

Okay, here's the source material, the opening credits of Treme, featuring John Boutté wailin' on vocals:

Nevah be de' same, eh, cher? How's ya mama and 'em?

Out and About

Just a random collection of recent links to my work, both creative and professional.

Paper Fort, the blog of Oregon Literary Arts (which may have the greatest photo logo ever, as seen at left), published a li'l post about my ghost-hunting work. I guess winning this award means I need to get motivated, and expand this project, toot sweet. It was fun to be the interviewee rather than the interviewer for once, but I must admit I now have a better understanding of why my interview subjects obsess over their responses. The interview was conducted via e-mail, so I had loooots of time to unhealthily agonize.

I had a similar realization when the Oregon Daily Emerald, the UO"s independent student newspaper, published "Admissions office taps into Facebook." The article explores my department's use of social networking to recruit students, and quotes me extensively. Also mis-quotes me just a wee bit; I seem to remember my actual statements, as delivered over the phone, being just a skoch less self-serving. The Facebook profile in question, by the way, is located at http://facebook.com/UOAdmissions.

Finally, dotEduGuru, a sort of trade press site for higher ed marketing types, posted the online article "Best Admissions" Uses of Twitter," giving the nod to the tweet stream I maintain for the UO Office of Admissions, located at http://twitter.com/BeAnOregonDuck, as one of its "best." The article provides some tips for effective tweeting for recruitment. I'd mentioned this article in passing in a previous post, but frankly I wanted to make a little more hay of it.

Loaded Sixteen Tons, What Did I Get?

Taking a cue from my University of Oregon media colleague Zack Barnett, I thought I'd use this space to explain what it is, precisely, I do in my day job. It's a job I love; I have even waxed eloquent in public about how much I dig it.

In a nutshell, I maintain and produce new content for the website of the UO's Office of Admissions. That sounds a bit dry, though, and isn't really representative of the fact that I'm constantly trying to drag more of our communications and student recruiting plan online. Fellow writers sometimes seem surprised I'm so happy in a marketing job, but I believe in the product, and trust me, the job offers plenty of room to flex my creative muscles.

It's not a one-man band, of course. The other musicians with whom I'm making this beautiful music include  fellow admissions staffers like my boss, higher ed communications expert Holly Moline Simons; amiable and talented back-end web developer Tony Herrig; designer/photographer/videographer/jack-of-all-e-trades Isaac Viel; and wondrous wordsmith Randianne Leyshon. We're kind of like the Justice League, but with more paper cuts.

I also partner with key media innovators across campus, including the aforementioned Mr. Barnett; Debbie Williamson-Smith of the UO's Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art; and Katherine Gries of the UO's Clark Honors College. We're kind of like the A-Team, but with more carpal tunnel.

My direct work for the Office of Admissions website includes maintaining all the existing pages of the site, and developing new content such as fairly recent additions aimed directly, for example, at green messaging, student veterans, and Spanish-speaking families. Sometimes it's exhausting keeping on top of it, with so many stakeholders. This site has a lot of cooks in the kitchen, and a lot of the chefs from other departments they all seem to want to perform a taste test. But I'm blessed that Holly and my other bosses seem happy to let me do most of the cooking.

An outgrowth of the UO's web presence, the new, minty-fresh, interactive online Virtual Tour has been a yearlong exercise in creativity. The project has many parents, and it was my job to sort of ride herd on all the various fronts: film, music, design, photography, development, and writing. To date, this is the UO project I'm most proud of, and one that I hope will net us a lot of student applications. This is the exciting part of my job, cooking up innovative methods of communicating with students. This is the sort of thing that makes all the headaches worth it.

Anyone who knows me well enough to be a regular Inkville reader probably already knows how addicted I am to Facebook. Who knew I'd land a job in which I can get paid for it? It's like I somehow found a way to sit around reading comic books. Oh, wait. I did. If you haven't already "fanned" the UO Admissions Facebook page, what are you waiting for? Daily doses of my scintillating wit, filtered through the higher ed propaganda machine. I use the page to remind fans of application deadlines, answer student questions, and basically act as an ambassador for the incredible wealth of academic offerings and student culture on the Oregon campus. The Oregon Daily Emerald, the UO's student newspaper, just ran a little article about the page and how I use it.

You know, early on, I used to dig Twitter. A lot. And some still do. But the more time I spent tweeting from my personal account, the more I felt like I was just sort of screaming into the void. The UO was probably right to hire a man-child like me to helm this job, but I think even I have reached my personal generation divide with twitter: I guess I'm just more of a Facebook guy. That said, I do tweet, early and often, from the account I maintain for the UO. And I guess someone's watching: the higher ed site .eduGuru recently listed my stream as one of its "Best Admissions Uses of Twitter."  As if my narcissism wasn't bad enough already...

This academic year has seen our staff moving more and more into the production of short online videos, another strategy to attract the teenage audience that is the lifeblood of an admissions office. My passion for the project was stoked and re-focused by a presentation by the media manager of Connecticut College at this past November's American Marketing Association Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education (*whew*) in Boston. Most of the work here is by the aforementioned Mr. Viel, or by a talented local videographer named Erik Talbert. Erik's "Game Day Walk to Autzen Stadium" video does a great job of conveying the energy here in Eugene on game day, as close as we get to a state-mandated religion here in liberal Eugene. And Isaac's basketball-themed film is so compellingly beautiful that even I'm attempted to convert. Well, for a minute, anyway.

Well, there you have it. I have work-related profiles on MySpace and Flickr as well, but they're either not a primary mode of communication (in the case of the former) or in need of a bit more work (in the case of the latter).

Sound of My Own Voice

Last week I was interviewed by Talk UO, a student-produced community building project of the University of Oregon's School of Journalism and Communication. It's an interesting premise, in which all interviewees in a given week are asked the same brief set of questions, with the questions themselves rotating week to week.

Viewed singly, the Talk interviews are like little postcard snapshots of an interviewee's life. Consumed en masse, as on the project's YouTube page, the interviews present a strangely mesmeric portrait of life on and around the UO campus.

Incidentally, one of the Talk players is Isaac Viel, a fantastic videographer, photographer, and designer based here in Eugene, Oregon. Inkville readers interested in modern design and visual narrative could do worse than to give Isaac's blog a whirl.

Two observations about my own interview video:

1. I kind of like the "disembodied head" look, as Isaac put it, caused by a navy blue sweater against a black backdrop. Kinda makes me feel like the Great and Powerful Oz. Or like I'm a phantom conjured by some spiritualist medium.
2. Wow, I still have a bit of Southern twang rollin' around in there, don't I? I guess some people are just lucky.

Jolly Good Fellow

I wasn't in the best mood, to be honest. I felt rushed and harried, and my million-and-one editing and web projects at work at the University of Oregon's Office of Admissions were keeping me hopping. I was just about to step out of my office to run an errand and clear my head, in fact, when my cell rang.

I don't often pick up personal calls at work, especially if I don't recognize the number. Too frequently it's "Vote YES on Measure Such-and-So," or Comcast trying to suss out some billing nuance. But it was a Portland area code, and I needed a break, anyway.

"I'm calling from Oregon Literary Arts," said the voice of Susan Denning on the other end of the line. I felt my hands go numb, the way they always do when I'm about to get really great news, or really bad news.

It was the former.

I'm the happy recipient of the 2009 Leslie Bradshaw Fellowship for my literary nonfiction work, specifically some of the ghost-hunting material I worked on while a grad student at the UO. I'm proud to hail from an institution and an academic program that has produced so many great writers, many of whom have been fellowship recipients in the past, most recently my cohort Sabena Stark. And I'm also glad to sweep the literary nonfiction awards section with my fellow UO writer Mike Copperman. Most of all, I'm proud I was even considered for a fellowship, and pleased that the selection committee sees value in the sort of pop culture writing I do. My alma mater seems glad to claim me, if nothing else, based on the digital ink they've given me.

I'm not sure how I'm going to utilize the nice chunk of change my benefactors have dropped on me. But one thing's for sure: now my project has a ghost of a chance. Nyuck.

Oh, and my mood has picked up considerably.

Falling Into the Reflection

Over the past week I’ve been working on my publisher’s letter for the upcoming summer issue of Eugene Magazine.  It’s our Top Doctors of Eugene-Springfield issue, and, seeking to draw from my own experience, I open the letter with an anecdote about what it was like growing up with two psychotherapists as parents.  

In the letter, after I set the scene and (hopefully, presumably) draw the reader in with personal detail, I expand my theme and apply the anecdote’s simple lesson to the larger world. Lots of nonfiction is structured the same way… this blog post, as a matter of fact.

The publisher’s letter is a prime example of a frequent writer’s dilemma: How much of myself should I put into this thing?  Writers of fiction have to ask themselves the question, but it becomes even more pertinent to writers of poetry and nonfiction. 

Even writers who produce literary nonfiction have to gauge their involvement.  John Berendt is a central character, for example, in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.  But I’d argue that Erik Larson may communicate almost as much about himself in The Devil in the White City (perhaps my favorite book), a narrative that takes place a good six decades before Larson was born.

The writer wants his work to convey something about himself, his values, what matters to him.  But it can be difficult to tread the line between self-inclusion and self-absorption, between personal storyline and base narcissism.  (And no, I’m not ignoring the narcissistic overtones of writing about narcissism in a personal essay, appearing on a personal blog.)

Though in essence, the writer conjures only the illusion of personal connection. After reading this mini-essay, for example, you, the reader know that I wrote a publisher’s letter, but not what was going on at the same time, or whether I produced two drafts or twenty, or whether the writing took ten minutes or ten hours, or how I feel about it, or whether I even like the thing.  You can guess, based on clues I might include here or what you know of me outside this writing, but you can never know for sure.

So how about it, writers?  Or creatives in other fields?  How much of yourself do you insert into your work?  How do you avoid sharing too much?  How much of the “you” in your work is illusion, and how much is genuine contact with your readers or audience?  My comment corral is feeling snubbed…