Tag Archive for: @brandbuzz

#GalsNGear Rocks #NABShow

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From Las Vegas, NV NAB Show 2016 –

I’m just back from NAB Show where I was privileged to co-host #GalsNGear Live! by Women in Film and Video (WIFV-DC) with Adryenn Ashley of Crowded TV to help showcase the amazing women working in production and post-production in broadcast, feature films, docs, commercials, branded content and more. Live-streamed by Broadcast Beat, we featured Megan Donnelly, DP and Camera Technology Specialist with AbelCine; Rose Fadem-Johnston, DP,  Luisa Cassasnovas Winters, Drone Operator/Adobe/Apple Certified Trainer; an iZotope demo by Cheryl Ottenritter, Senior Mixer/Founder, Ott House Audio; Katie Hinsen, Senior Finishing Artist, Light Iron (on TWO  Oscar-winning teams!) who is also a founder of the Blue Collar Post Collective; and Jillian Arnold, Video Engineer, Local 695; Lucy Seaborne did a demo for us at the Snell Advanced Media booth, and Christine Steele of Steele Pictures also conducted #GalsNGear interviews with Victoria Nece, Adobe After Effects and Alissa Johnson, Adobe Anywhere as well as Stefanie Mullen, the impressive woman behind the effects of Rampant Design. Christine also took time to make us an animated logo bumper. What an impressive crowd!

Terrific GNG graphics for our signage, logo and buttons were created by Deborah Humphries of True Color Chrome.

Shout-out to our amazing sponsors, including our lead sponsors Black Magic Design and Media Central! We had more than 100 people watch the show live, and thousands more watched online.  Sponsors gave us more than $4,500 in giveaways–everything from cameras to graphics packages to audio software and tickets to creative conferences. Let’s do this again at another industry event! How about Cinegear, IBC, Sundance, Cannes?? Let us know what you think!

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5 Ways to Close the Gender Gap in Media and Tech

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GendergapTweetI’m not a hand-wringer. Neither are most women in TV/film/media production. We’re do-ers. That’s how we got into this business in the first place. At NABShow, the annual conference of the broadcast and media production industry that draws 100,000 to Vegas (and about 85,000 of the attendees are men), I was privileged to moderate a panel on the subject of closing the gender gap in production. The panel included Ellen Wixted, Adobe; Siân Fever, Editor (UK) and GBFTE Governor; Megan McGough Christian, WGBH; and Kylee Wall, Editor and blogger on Creative Cow –who pushed to have the panel be part of the event.  You can watch the whole discussion here:

Special thanks to Creative Cow, Adobe and FMC, who supported and publicized this effort, and helped to make it a priority in an industry event known for, well, a lot of “Vegas booth babes.” Prior to the event, we pulled together some dismal statistics across the industry. But we also talked about solutions. I was thrilled by the number of men in the packed room, the number of millennials ready to tackle this challenge, and the interesting and continued commentary online afterwards (primarily on Twitter—see #postgendergap).  Please pass the link along and share your solutions using the #postgendergap hashtag.

Here are some of the simple ideas we proposed, plus a few more I’ve thought of since:

  1. Take Names Off Resumes. All of us have bias, and it’s not just gender-related. So give yourself and your company the advantage of finding the best person for the job by removing bias in the hiring process. There’s all kinds of data to back this up, by the way. A University of Melbourne study  showed that people with “simple” names were promoted more easily. In other words, people with less ethnic-sounding names. A University of Ohio study showed that women with more feminine sounding names had less career success in traditionally male jobs. And a Wharton study using mock email addresses with 6,500 professors at 259 top US universities found them more likely to meet with and mentor students with white male names.
  2. Promote Young Women for Potential. A 2011 McKinsey report—famously quoted by Sheryl Sandberg in Lean In–showed that men are promoted based on potential, while women are promoted based on performance.  This means young women get shut out of the tech leadership pipeline more quickly than their male counterparts. We know that is true, because the statistics on gender in film schools is about even. Yet 10 years out, women only hold 17% of the industry jobs. We also know from the recent Women in Film/Sundance study that men and women win awards at film festivals at an equal rate, yet men are offered their first major directing gig by big studios afterwards, and women are not. In other words, men are snapped up for their directing potential. You can change that, by seeing the potential in a young woman behind the camera, or in another “technical” job, and help her climb that ladder. Oh, and if you are posting a job for Director of Photography, please ask for a DoP and not a “cameraman.”
  3. Promote Experienced Men and Women Based on Performance not Style. Once we get into the higher ranks of leadership, the tables turn. The very leadership qualities that make someone effective—being bold, being assertive—are often held against women. Women need to be more choosy about when they are assertive, or they will be perceived as not team players at best, b*tches, or worse.  As an employer you can change this by promoting women and men for the job they accomplish. Period. On the flip side, if you are a woman, you’re going to need to be more assertive about asking for more pay. But somehow do it in a way that isn’t b*tchy Hmm. This strikes me as forcing women into some kind of no-win situation regarding what kind of “style” they will present in the workplace. So how about promoting based on performance?
  4. Hand Out Clean-Up Jobs Equally. Invite Women to the Party. Study after study has shown that women tend to be asked to get coffee and clean up after meetings, no matter what their role. It’s easy to change this. Post a sign in the office kitchen: “This week’s kitchen boss is…Bob” and rotate among all your employees equally.  The flip side of this coin is making sure women int he office are invited to after-hours happy hours and meetups the same way men are. Only then can they be seen as colleagues and friends, and develop personal relationships with mentors.
  5. Put Women on Stage. At conference after conference that I attend in the tech and media industries, there is just one token woman on the stage as a speaker. Surely we can find more women for these high visibility posts? Conference planners, look for women to speak. And reach out to groups like Innovation Women, which offers a women-in-tech speakers bureau. We’re out here. So the onus is on you to change the balance on stage at your next event.

Amy DeLouise is a multi-media director, producer, speaker and author in the media/content industry. She’s happy to bring everyone coffee on the set, as long as someone invites her to the happy hour after the shoot.

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Spring Cleaning for Your Personal Brand

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Is it time for a change in your career path? Butterfly We all have those moments when we feel the seasonal shifts in our professional lives. Sometimes these are triggered by personal life events–children, aging parents, an illness. Often they are part of bigger trends in our industry (boy has my industry changed from the days of shooting on film to 4K cameras!).

The three keys to a successful personal re-brand are the same elements needed for any strong brand:  Storytelling,  Community,  and  Authenticity.

1. Storytelling. Everyone has a brand story–even individuals and small companies. So tell your story. And if your story now includes a new service, or a new focus, or a new location–tell THAT story.  How?

Curate & Share-Help people sort through the clutter in your new area of expertise by tweeting about a new study, or build and share a useful resource list. You could write a how-to blog post on the topic (and send an email to your clients to better share it). You could build an infographic on a new trend and pin it on Pinterest and share through other social platforms. And don’t forget to curate for yourself by following thought leaders in your new area of work.

Even better, let your Community tell your new brand story. See next paragraph!

2. Community. My friends Maddie Grant and Jamie Notter in their useful book Humanize say “Everyone has customers, stakeholders, suppliers, members, constituents…but not everyone can honestly say they have a community.”  I would turn that a bit and say you probably have a community you haven’t really thought about. It might be your religious community, it might be people in your neighborhood, it might be friends through a music group–you are connected to many different communities and can reach out to all of them to let them know what changes you’re making and enlist their help.

How? Your community can help promote your new website, or retweet your new posts. They can suggest new contacts for you, or post endorsements on Linked In.  And speaking of Linked In, try their nifty new “In Map” feature, that lets you visualize your personal networks (mine look like a squid–with the head being my digital media contacts, and the tentacles being all the different communities that I participate in through work and play).

3. Authenticity. One of the most important components of a successful brand today is that you are who you really are, across all platforms and networks. There once was a time when people had personal Facebook pages separate from their professional ones. Those days are gone. (That doesn’t mean you can’t segregate which posts go to all your “friends” and which ones stay amongst a select group–take the time to break out your friends groups in Settings, people!  Google+ lets you do this from the get-go–much simpler!)

So if you are making a career shift–be transparent about it. In fact, engage your Community with your evolving Story by crowd-sourcing ideas you can use in your new field, or location or area of expertise.  You can do this easily through social platforms. But you can also do it In Real Life! Talk to people and ask for advice and believe me, they will share.

And now your new personal brand will be connected to lots of other personal brands that are evolving, too.

Amy DeLouise is a digital content creator who consults on brands and is always evolving her personal brand. Follow her occasional tweets on the subject (and #nonprofits, #video, #food, #fastcars ) @brandbuzz.

 

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8 Vegas Eateries Not To Miss

AmysDinner2014-04-06The Las Vegas brand certainly includes great food. But if you’re in Vegas as I am for #NABShow, you may enjoy getting away from the big name restaurants. So here are a few tasty spots to try this week:

1. Lotus of Siam. Excellent, authentic, and seriously spicy–thai cuisine. Try te spicy prawns or the sea bass in any of the three sauces–I had the ginger sauce with mushrooms on Saturday night and it was divine.

2. Kaizon Fusion Roll. Asia fusion with interesting (and gigantic) sushi roll combinations in a low-key, hip bar atmosphere. Just across street from Hard Rock Hotel but not nearly as pricey as their famous sushi place.

3. Sen of Japan gets rave reviews and is more authentic Japanese, for purists.

4. Pamplemousse. Locals go here for special occasion, reasonably authentic French fare. Haven’t tried it myself, so give me your feedback.

5. Lindo Michoacan. A local Mexican 3-restaurant chain well regarded, including by my local friend whose wife hails from Mexico.

6. Echo and Rig Pick out your cut of steak, then have it grilled up at the restaurant next door. Talk about “on-demand” dining!

7. Piero’s. A Las Vegas institution and close to the Convention Center where we’re all living for this conference. Dinner only.

8. The only Vegas eatery on the strip that makes my list is Beijing Noodle No.9 at Caesar’s. Try the soup dumplings (they’re not IN the soup, the soup is IN the dumplings!) and a bowl of Lanzhou noodle soup.

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Research to Target Content for Better Impact

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3 Glass Bottles-1b sGetting applause for your content isn’t enough. So while Facebook and YouTube likes are nice, it’s more important to know if you are engaging the right community, and causing them to change knowledge, beliefs and attitudes—the precursors to behavior change. You can use embedded polling, an online survey, a focus group or a full-blown pre/post study—anything that will give you some data to make decisions about what kind of content to create, and how to deliver it more effectively.

There are plenty of great tools out there to help you discover what motivates your audience.

—  www.websurveycreator.com

—  http://kwiksurveys.com/

—  www.surveymonkey.com

—  http://www.google.com/drive/apps.html#forms

—  http://www.zoomerang.com/

—  http://www.surveygizmo.com/

—  http://polldaddy.com/

—  http://www.formsite.com/

—  www.constantcontact.com

www.batchgeo.com    also helps you map your data–literally, on a map! (although it wouldn’t let me put US and international locations on the same map, hmm.)

Don’t forget you can also survey in person. For example, here are the results of a quick in-class survey from my workshop on Researching Your Audience for Better Content Impact this morning at #NABShow in Las Vegas. Thanks to my terrific—and, as you’ll see, geographically diverse—participants, we had a great session.

Sample size: 37

Average age: 36

US Geographic Diversity  

Geo Diversity Amy's NAB Research ClassTop reasons for coming to #NAB: Checking out post production technology, trans media, gear: camera, lighting and audio; digital publishing ; how to develop engaging material for internal audience; how to get more views on content; discover what production is like outside our country.

 Amy DeLouise is a content producer who cares about research and speaks at major conferences and events. She tweets @brandbuzz.

 

 

 

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Big Data and Social Change

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Sky at Sunset With whistleblower or traitor (take your pick) #edwardsnowdon in the news this week, everyone’s talking about our government collecting Big Data.  But guess what? Google, Verizon, Facebook, CVS Pharmacy, Giant, Safeway and all the rest have been doing the same thing all along. The difference is this: these companies are monetizing our habits, but we aren’t.  Hey come on, people, why do you think Facebook and Google and Linked In are free?! At least the local pharmacy and grocery store offer me discounts in exchange for my personal buying habits. Jaron Lanier’s thoughtful and interesting article in the New York Times this week Fixing the Digital Economy got me thinking. He talks about how we could build a new, robust middle class if we stop giving away all our personal data for free, and letting only big players and their investors reap the rewards. (Ironically, Facebook’s investors aren’t rich enough yet.)

But what if Big Data could move the needle even more, and not just benefit the middle class? What if it could change the world for the seemingly permanent underclass?

Nonprofits need to start harnessing Big Data to serve mission-driven outcomes.  Only that can topple this robber-baron economy we have created. In a knowledge-based economy, it’s important to know what people are thinking and doing. And if you’re selling change, that becomes even more critical.   In fact, collecting and understanding data is really just another way of looking at and telling your Mission Story. (Sidebar: fabulous blog post about mapping data and storytelling by @eSpatial–I now reveal my wonkiest side!)

Of course correlation and causation are two different animals–just because most axe-murderers drink milk doesn’t mean milk turns you into an axe-murderer! So you need quantitative data–real people collecting real stories of what is happening in the field–to know the difference. And you don’t just want to collect data on your own programs; you need to know who else has tried certain approaches to the very same issues your nonprofit is working on–whether it’s homelessness or environmental degradation or education for girls in Africa.  Organizations are turning to tools like Flux or Social Solutions or a mapping tool to build their own data–even while they are out in the field changing the world. But collective data-sharing would be even more effective, and less costly wouldn’t it? It’s the direction in which the philanthropic and nonprofit sector is moving and I think really must move to be effective.  Places like Global Impact Investing Network and others are already doing it. More should follow. And every nonprofit umbrella association can be doing the same.

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