These animations are part of a long collaboration between Dewald and Wurzburg in exploring the branding of the children’s media brand, Dogsharks. The collaboration has included work in puppet theater, animation, musical composition and improvisation, story and branding. Thoughtfaucet is, understandably, psyched to have participated in working with Wurzburg’s creation.

“Robert’s approach to story and character development is fearless in it’s embrace of the wide array of intelligences available to people of all ages. It’s exactly the sort of stuff I like working on,” Dewald said, of working with the Dogsharks’ creator. “It’s been a real pleasure to take part in bringing these characters to life in visual and musical terms as well as participating in the narrative process.”

Prix Jeunesse International is a festival put on by the Prix Jeunesse Foundation to help promote quality television for the young, worldwide. It wants to bring forward television that enables children to see, hear and express themselves and their culture, and that enhances an awareness and appreciation of other cultures. Prix Jeunesse International occurs every two years in Munich, Germany.

Dogsharks LLC is a children’s media brand based in Tribeca NYC USA.

Thoughtfaucet is a strategic creative services consultancy/maker based in Burlington, VT. Thoughtfaucet’s work involves on harnessing a observations and analysis to enhance creative processes and inform creative execution for a variety of industries including media/authorship, green technology and real estate (and a few spare outliers in other industries–because hey, why turn down an interesting project just because it doesn’t neatly lump in with all the others). Thoughtfaucet likes to simplify all that and just focus on making things people like in collaboration with it’s clients.

“Dogsharks” was written and directed by Robert Wurzburg, Animation by Robert Wurzburg and Gahlord Dewald, Editorial Advisor was Nanette Kuehn. Music: “Tickety Boo” Written by David Martin, Composed by Scott Hartley, Arranged & Performed by Wills Bates. “Whistler” Composed and Performed by Scott Hartley, Gahlord Dewald and Robert Wurzburg. “A Dogsharks Day” Composed and Performed by Gahlord Dewald, Robert Wurzburg and Bob Wolk. “The Dogsharks Macabre: a Saint Saëns Fantasy” arranged by Gahlord Dewald and Performed by Gahlord Dewald, Peter Lewy, Bob Wolk and Robert Wurzburg.

Client Liaison between Thoughtfaucet and Dogsharks was Robert Wurzburg.

Tools: Toon Boom Animate v1, Flash CS3, Logic Express, Good Old iMovie ‘08, Adobe CS4, some Macbook Pros, Wacom tablets, paper, scissors, tape and so on. The phone and the internet too.

Further detail after the jump.

The formalities of the Improving Social Media via Web Analytics presentation

To get started the presentation does all of the usual stuff: introduces Gahlord Dewald, gives some space to learn about the audience and then gets into the goals and outline.

1. Intro slide
2. Audience data-gathering slide
3. Aligning business goals and social media plan
4. Presentation outline

Theory useful for measuring social media and making business better

As much as I hate to front-load all this theory stuff, it’s important for us to have a common language if we’re going to really apply this stuff. So here’s where measurement, organization and customer concepts are introduced. Also, thanks to social media, some of these things are a little different online than they have been in the past. That’s discussed as well.

1. Measuring increases innovative thinking
2. ROI (return on investment) and preventing insanity
3. Research to support action
4. A culture of accountability
5. The OODA Loop
6. Reach, Acquisition, Conversion, (Satisfaction)
7. The funnel is a little disrupted by social media
8. Less linear, start anywhere
9. Start where it makes the most sense
10. Review of boring old theory

Putting theory into practice: measuring social media and improving your business

Getting into the meat of it, we go into specific things to consider and measure in social media. There are some new challenges and some new opportunities.

1. Observations about Reach
2. Putting Reach data in context
3. Observations about Acquisition
4. Putting Acquisition data in context
5. Observations about Conversion
6. Putting Conversion data in context
7. Observations on Satisfaction
8. Putting Satisfaction in context

Conclusion: Measuring social media to help align your business goals with the needs of your customers

Hopefully this presentation helps you go out and improve your own social media plan.

• You can develop a clear approach for aligning your social media plan with your business goals.
• Thanks!

Services performed include animation, story consultation, music composition and performance. This work was performed in collaboration with Dogsharks’ creator Robert Wurzburg.

Tools Used: Toon Boom Animate, Logic Express

If you like this be sure to head over to Dogsharks.com for more like it.

Gahlord holds a blue box of Thoughtfaucet r2 Series business cards at the Thoughtfaucet Studio

I love it when I get a new shipment of business cards from Moo.com. It’s like Christmas for me. I like it for a few reasons:

1. It means that I’ve talked about my business with more than 100 people: my business card count is a metric for my off-line promotional activities.
2. I get to see what the new cards look like, since I redo the batch of cards each time.

This is my second order in the past 10 months. My goal for this year is to double my business card delivery rate. It’s a good metric for me because when I talk to people in person, my chances of doing business with them or someone they know skyrockets. And since I’m pretty happy about my cards I love giving them away.

Usually people say things like “Oooh these are cute/cool!” even before they notice that there’s a photograph on the other side. I know these little buggers don’t get thrown away because people who get them often call or email Thoughtfaucet. Someone who got one of the Thoughtfaucet Series r1 cards at Inman Connect New York 2010 said:

I remember you 1) the obvious, from talking to you for a while and 2) from your cool biz card – it works!

The front side of the Thoughtfaucet r2 Series business cards with logo and contact info.

This batch is my first one with my logo on it. And I’m super-psyched at how they turned out. Also, this time I’ve grouped the over 50 different photos on the back into sets (collect all 50!): Champlain Valley Fair, Burlington, Shelburne Farms, Winter, Japanese Festival, Geisha, Architectural Details of Japan and The Random.

If you get one of the cards in Thoughtfaucet Series r2, you might want to know a little more about the picture on it. So here’s a directory of all the cards in the series with a little more info about the photo. Some of these are in my Flickr account with a fairly liberal creative commons license as well.

Champlain Valley Fair

The pictures I took awhile back at the Champlain Valley Fair in Essex Junction Vermont are always fun to put on the back of the cards. Neon lights, horizons, lots of color. Here are the ones in Thoughtfaucet Series r2 Business  Cards:

The Carousel at the Champlain Valley Fair in Essex Junction, VT

A Holga photo of swings at Champlain Valley Fair:

Another horizon shot from the Champlain Valley Fair Ferris Wheel

Champlain Valley Fair horizon from the top of the Ferris Wheel

More swings at the Champlain Valley Fair, Essex Jct VT

Champlain Valley Fair: Ferris Wheel Glamour Shot

People who get on rides like this are crazy.

Really crazy.

Neon and O

Burlington, Vermont

Thoughtfaucet is located in Burlington, Vermont. Here are some pictures to prove it:

Outside the Radio Bean in downtown Burlington VT, you can sometimes see this double-tall bike

Thirty

Cellist is really really tiny in this Holga photo of Burlington's City Hall Park

S.D. Ireland drives these light-covered cement trucks around Burlington on New Years.

Henry's Diner in downtown Burlington

David Symmon takes a short pause from playing accordion on Church Street

Not many picket fences in the Old North End of Burlington. This one is near Pomeroy Park.

Architectural Details of Japan

When my wife and I went to Japan a few years back we got home and realized we’d taken photos of doorknobs, hinges and other architectural details. Almost exclusively. Here’s a set of business cards featuring some of these shots:

Imperial Chrysanthemum at Nijo-Jo

Intricate wood carving at Kurumayose, Nijo-Jo

Kiyomizu-dera Entrance (Holga)

A hinge for a very large door at Nanzenji

Looking down a roof at Nanzenji

Chrysanthemum motif at Nijo-Jo

Outdoor sculpture near a pond at Nanzenji.

Fish are kind of like architectural details.

One of the Rock Gardens at Nanzenji.

No nails.

Inspiration for bath house in Spirited Away?

Temple rising from Kyoto suburb.

Winter

One of the things I love about living and doing web design/strategy/etc in Vermont is winter. I can do some work, talk on the phone with clients and then go outside and enjoy the cold air. Tip for those of you who are anti-winter: if you’re cold, just pick up the pace. Here are some photos from various cross-country skiing opps that are between 20 minutes and an hour from the Thoughtfaucet studio:

The Wintervale, nordic skiing within 10 minutes of downtown Burlington, VT

Clearing at Trapp Family Lodge, near Stowe VT

Another one from the (W)intervale, near Ethan Allen Homestead

Geisha

Ok ok, when we went to Japan we took a few pictures that weren’t architectural details. On a walk through Gion district in Kyoto, I was able to make these pictures featuring Geisha:

Geisha on the phone letting a Teahouse know her cab has arrived.

The Geisha who was on the phone was alerting the Geisha in this card that there was a large crowd she would have to navigate through.

Fukue, standing outside Kawayoshi for a portrait

The Teahouse Bank in Gion

Shelburne Farms, Shelburne VT

Just south of Burlington, in Shelburne, is Shelburne Farms. I’ve been lucky enough to have a lot of friends involved in local food production, many of whom have worked at Shelburne Farms. As a result, I spend as much time there as possible. The food at the restaurant is awesome, the landscape is perfect for walking and I always find something fun to take a photo of. I’m usually armed with my Holga plastic camera which results in fun moody pictures.

Crumbling railing holding back Lake Champlain at Shelburne Farms

Cheese making barn at Shelburne Farms

Autumn Flower Bed (Holga) at Shelburne Farms near the main house.

Sheep are a big deal in VT. This one is guarded by a llama.

Sculpture of boy hugging a fish. I don't get it either.

Gion Matsuri

More Japan. A couple shots from the Gion Matsuri, an awesome neighborhood-centric festival that happens each summer in Kyoto.

A large hand-pulled car weighing over a ton. No differential. These guys are going to make it turn the hard way.

Crowd control at Gion Matsuri, Kyoto

The Random

Some of the photos on the Thoughtfaucet business cards didn’t fit into a neat category. They are the randoms. Think of them like the Jokers in the deck.

Lake Champlain taken from the New North End of Burlington, VT

Another picture of Lake Champlain from the New North End.

Here's my friend JT. He didn't mean to take this self portrait. But he did. Now it's on my business card.

In Vermont, Fiddleheads are picked in the spring and eaten

We were in the taxi in Ichinomiya. It was raining outside.

New York City

Kyoto, Japan

Thoughtfaucet Business Card Series r2

There you have it. The guided tour of my new business cards. Hope you enjoyed it. Hope you like the one you get when we meet.

One of my clients makes awesome wool hats here in Vermont. These hats are made-to-order and very customizable. There are over 650,000 variations possible, not including adding different team names, for just one style of hat. I’m not joking. Very customizable.

The problem with this level of customization, of course, is managing all the different options to get the order submitted correctly. My client was on his way to a trade show and at a trade show, being able to process these kinds of orders quickly and accurately has a big impact on the old bottom line.

So Thoughtfaucet made a Flash widget that allowed visitors to the client’s booth to quickly select their options and print out an order form on-site, including a representation of what the hat will look like. How did it work out?

The widget was enormously successful at the show. We made over 300 art samples in 2 days.

Because Thoughtfaucet focuses on data-driven and forward thinking coding practices we’re looking forward to spreading the custom team hat widget through a variety of media including the client’s ecommerce website.

A take-away here is to look at developing web assets that have value beyond the web itself. Here was something that could have just sat on a website somewhere, but it was a real star performer when put into a live-people environment.

Thoughtfaucet did the editing on this winter Dogsharks cartoon. Animation by Robert Wurzburg and Christine Mariani. Music arranged and performed by Jeff Nelson on the trombone.

If you like this cartoon, watch the others over at Dogsharks.com.

Awhile back, a phone conversation with someone inspired me to write my SEO Nineball blog post. Well the caller didn’t take any of my search engine optimization advice. Instead, he bought three hours of my time to do what I thought was best within that budget. Here’s what happened.

Within a couple of days of completing my work my client had gone from page 200 or greater on Google to the first slot. Within a week, Google was adding a secondary internal page for the site. Now, about two months later, Google is also showing image results. Of those image results, two of them are on the site where I performed the search engine optimization (including the large, readable product shot at the end of the row).

Quick SEO Results

An SEO client of Thoughtfaucet gets to #1 on Google (and #2 and images and...).

It’s unusual to see these results so quickly. There were some obvious things helping out, most notably that we were pursuing a very niche term with relatively low competition.

However, the strategic value of having quick results was exceptionally high: the client was going to begin making public appearances within a week of Thoughtfaucet completing the SEO work–the value of those public appearances would be diminished if his audience members had trouble locating his site afterwards.

Though the competition for the target search term was light, the top slot had more than five years of age. Runners-up included established trustworthy book sellers. So there may not have been a lot of competition, but it’s always the strength of the top ten that counts.

What was done with three hours of SEO time?

I devoted the entirety of the three hours available to me doing on-site search engine optimization techniques. The client indicated that he wouldn’t be able to spend the time required using social media and SEO nineball techniques so I left those for another day. The appearance of image-results and secondary pages on the search engine results page confirm that my choice to focus on on-page SEO techniques was a good one.

Search engine optimization takeaway

The success of this campaign should serve as a reminder to keep a tight handle on the underlying code. Having a website that looks great is certainly important. But if you want anyone to see how nice your site looks, they have to find it. Google is one of the ways people find websites.

Happy SEO client

Here’s what the client had to say about working with Thoughtfaucet:

Gahlord Dewald is a consummate professional. I didn’t know what SEO even was, but I knew that my website was hard to find. In clear and convincing language, he quickly explained the problem, remedied it, and suggested imaginative ways to maintain a strong profile on the web. I strongly recommend him to anyone for whom the intricacies of web marketing are terra incognita.

Thoughtfaucet was happy to work on this project, thanks Thad!

Design, artwork and animation were all done by Thoughtfaucet while keeping within brand guidelines for the festival. Music is from “Mary Poppins Gets Her Wish” the Icebox Records recording by Charles, Dead or Alive. Guitar by Nate Plasha, drums by Joe Slaby, bass by Thoughtfaucet’s president and janitor.

Tools used: Toon Boom Animate, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Logic Express

Other VTIFF stuff out there:

• Upstart Filmmaker Chronicles Life on the Road with Deer Tick (pastemagazine.com)

If you like this one, perhaps you’ll like some of the others over at the main site (linked above).

An augmented reality Halloween Mask created for Deidre Healy's Dark Arts gallery show.

This new piece, Mask, was based on the idea of those French-style masks with a rod that you hold over your face. I created a simple grotesque 3D model in Blender and then made use of the FLARManager and FLARToolkit frameworks in conjunction with Papervision3D.

In practice, observing gallery goers interact with the piece, I don’t think the side placement really worked. Perhaps if I had made the glyph so that it looked like a rod-style mask it would work. More research necessary.

It is true that they can be incredibly gimmicky, but that’s sort of the nature of all new technologies. Could be that, as Seb Lee-Delisle recently remarked “Augmented reality is 2009’s page turn effect.” But I wonder what folks said about television, radio and early computer art. Someone’s got to play with this stuff. Guess it’ll be me.

The more I work on these AR (augmented reality) pieces the more ideas I get about using them. Not just in a commercial sense (AR greeting cards etc etc etc). But in a narrative sense. As I explained to a gentleman from NY who came to the Dark Arts opening, at the basic level, AR is just a simple gateway for data exchange. If you have possession of the AR glyph, then the system can reveal data to you. Or, in the case of GPS-based systems, if you are in a specific location then the system can reveal data to you. I think there’s some fun possibility for narrative in there somewhere. Or maybe I’ve read Gibson’s “Spook Country” too many times.

Here are a few more photos of the augmented reality “Mask” created for the Dark Arts gallery show.

Side view of "Mask" an augmented reality project created by Gahlord Dewald

Augmented reality mask by Gahlord Dewald created for a Burlington, Vermont art gallery show