Tag: project

  • Good News curriculum video shoot

    Yesterday, Jon and I spent the vast majority of our day shooting the 6 fictional stories that go along with each lesson in our forthcoming Good News in the Neighborhood curriculum.

    Seeing some of the big picture pieces come together in this project has been amazing. Doing the video segments actually brought new life into the project. With the deadline looming and the reality that there’s almost no chance we’ll be done by our self-assigned deadline of Monday, this project needed some fresh air breathed into it.

    It’s funny how an idea takes a life of its own. In this case, a series of jotted in my notebook over time became several popular blog posts. And in those posts there were several comments saying, “Yeah, but how do I teach that to high school students?” It was the association of the blog posts and the comments of readers which spurred the idea to turn it into a curriculum.

    Truth be told, I’d never have attempted this project without Jon. He brings a depth and breadth of experience to it which takes it from my blog posts to something anyone can try with their group. I’m thankful for his friendship and collaboration.

    And now back to work. Acting as co-author, editor, art director, marketing director, video editor, and every other task on this project is insanity!

  • Under the hood of YSpalooza.com

    For the last month I’ve had my head under the hood on a brand new event for YS called, “YSpalooza.”

    Over at the YS blog I’ll talk a little more about what the event is and why we are excited about it.

    But here I wanted to take readers behind the scenes to show off some of the nerd-factor I added to the website.

    • The site is fully HTML5 compliant. (No flash or plug-ins required to view the site, it looks great on mobile phones. All the hover overs and what-not works the same on a computer which it does on a phone.)
    • Since Internet Explorer isn’t HTML5 compliant, we had to learn a lot of hacks and workarounds for the world’s least functional browser.
    • This is our first big event to use Eventbrite for registration. I’ve used Eventbrite for a number of things and I totally love it. I especially love how it integrates with Mailchimp.
    • This is the first site in FOREVER (like maybe ever) that I build just in HTML/CSS without a content management system. It was like learning to ride a bike all over again. I love the customization level I was able to achieve by going this direction… but when it comes to managing content, there’s a reason you go with a CMS!
    • Building a site in this way has an aesthetic to it all it’s own. It’s a slow and methodical method. But I have a much more intimate connection to the site than I typically would. I have spent a ton of time on each of the 50+ pages.
    • Dave Luke was a freaking wizard. I’m not very good with coding websites and fortunately for me… Dave is formally trained. I broke stuff and he fixed it.
    • With no SQL databases or feeds or anything like that, the site loads super fast. Really, what you see is what you get.

    This was a fun project to work on. For one thing, it’s a brand new event. So we were creating a lot. Typically, I manage a group of freelancers who all do 1-2 pieces of the pie. For this one it was a blast to do it in-house, with coding help from Dave.

  • Rounding 3rd

    softball-gameA few years ago I was on the church softball team. Being a church league for adults it was mostly filled with people who used to be able to play well, but time and a few extra pounds had lowered their skill level down a lot lower than their imaginations thought they were. In other words, most of the teams sucked. And none was worse than ours!

    After a couple of weeks of frustration I started to figure out how to hit. The first 5-6 times up to bat my golf-styled swing lead to easy outs as all I could do was hit the ball right down the fairway… easily gobbled up by the pitcher, 2nd baseman, or center fielder. While watching a few games I made an interesting observation: There were a lot of dropped balls. I noticed that there was a high likelihood that the person playing first base wasn’t going to be able to keep his foot on the bag and catch a poorly thrown ball.

    So I learned to just keep running. In game after game this strategy worked. I’d hit a ground ball to 3rd base and instead of trying to beat out the play I’d just round first and keep running. Time and time again they’d drop the ball or it’d fly over their head and I was off to second or even third.

    The last game of the year, while I was riding to the game with a few other players, I joked that I wasn’t going to stop at third base. I was going to just keep the calamity going all the way home. I had a feeling that if I rounded third the same way I rounded first, I could make it a home run.

    So, true to form our team was down big with just two innings left. I get up and absolutely tee off on a ball that splits the outfielders and one hops to the fence. It’s a stand-up double and I could probably make it to third if I weren’t so out of shape. The third base coach gave me the stop sign at second. But I look at his stop sign and throw caution to the wind… it’s time to go home! As I got close to third I could tell by the way the third basemen was looking that the ball was coming in and he would tag me out. So I rounded third. My locomotion– instead of sliding– caused him to look up for a brief second and he bobbled the ball. Halfway home he tossed the ball to the catcher which made me stop and retreat to third. But wouldn’t you know it? When the catcher tossed the ball back to third, he dropped it and I turned for home… stretching a double into an inside the park home run.

    During my commute yesterday I was thinking about this, I love rounding third. I love the whimsy of finishing stuff off with a bang. Which is a weird statement for a guy who spends a lot of his mental day imagining ideas for projects that will never get done. That might lead you to believe I’m a project start-up kind of guy. Nope, I love seeing that small percentage of ideas come to fruition.

    With three of those “hey, wouldn’t it be cool if” projects just hours, days, or weeks away from completion I’m finding that rounding 3rd base has given me a lot of energy and momentum. I know that locomotion, surprise, and a smile will carry it home from here.