You may have noticed that Thoughtfaucet got a new homepage. For the next week I’m sending visitors to my most viewed page to a site that isn’t on Thoughtfaucet.com. Why? Because I want to offer some help for someone who has been a long time supporter of me. Giving up my homepage for a week seems a pretty small thing for me to do for someone who was among the very first to encourage and support my first forays into business use of social media.

The details are all available via the Thoughfaucet homepage (if you’re reading this from the Thoughtfaucet blog just click the “Thoughtfaucet Makes Things” text in the nav).

Conducting this program gives me the chance to make as much good from a crumby situation as I can:

1. A friend is directly helped.
2. Someone may have the opportunity to use my services at a discount.
3. The software running the auction, Winwinapps, is built by a friend, so I’m able to give some feedback to her on her new tool.
4. I get to test the SEO impact of “losing” my homepage for a week. You’ll get to hear about it too.
5. The multitude of tangential benefits that come from doing the right thing.

If you are unable to participate in the auction as a bidder, please help me spread the word as far as possible. That helps a ton too. We’ve already started to receive bids and my hope is that we at least make it to my normal rate by the time next Thursday rolls around and the bidding is closed.

Thanks!

Gahlord

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.

Thoughtfaucet President/Janitor Gahlord Dewald will be presenting at the BuzzRE Orange County event on Thursday, April 29 alongside others including Dustin Luther, Linsey Planeta, Stacey Harmon and Dale Chumbley.

The event looks to be a jam-packed day of serious social media and web strategy content. Gahlord’s presentation and notes will likely find their way onto this site when it’s all done, but if you’re in Orange County you should definitely check out the full event.

Register for the BuzzRE OC here.

I’ll be presenting on social media and analytics at RETechSouth this week in Atlanta, GA. My presentation will be about how you can use analytics to improve your use of social media. Who might like this presentation:

• Anyone who wants to get started in social media but will have someone yammering at them about that pesky thing called ROI.
• Anyone who wants to get better at using social media.
• Anyone managing other people who are using social media.

RETSO Speaker Twitter List

Also, I figured attendees (and those who can’t make it) might like a Twitter list that had all the speakers in it. So I made one. Here’s the Twitter List of #RETSO speakers (though, since it’s my list I couldn’t add myself to it).  The Twitter List version is a couple pages, be sure to check them all. Or just follow all of them via the TweepML #RETSO Speakers List. I hope you like it.

Here is Garron’s introduction:

The half-day event is certain to highly engaging and filled with useful information for anyone working in or around the real estate industry (or any other lead generation business as well). The topics include:

• Twitter Strategies for Your Business presented by David Gibbons
• Blog Content and Promotion presented by Dustin Luther
• Search Engine Optimization and Change presented by Gahlord Dewald
• Building Your Online Persona presented by Garron Selliken

Register for the HomeQuest 2010 Social Media Summit.

Thoughtfaucet President/Janitor, Gahlord Dewald, will be teaching an introductory web design course for Burlington Public Schools this spring. The class is 10 sessions, from 6pm to 9pm on Thursdays starting February 4, 2010. The class meets at Burlington High School and is open to all ages.

This class will be helpful for:

• Company employees tasked with updating and maintaining the company website.
• Small business owners looking to make their own website
• Anyone considering a career in web design
• Workers who want to get a better understanding of how to make sites rank better in search engines (aka SEO)
• Hobbyists and students who want to know more about how the web works

The goal is to get to be able to design and code functional website by the end of the course. Students will be using the same tools for web design and development as professionals. The class will make use of the Burlington Technical Center’s Careers in Design and Illustration Mac lab. All of the tools used have PC equivalents, so don’t be too frightened if you’ve never used a Mac.

Topics covered include:

• How the web works
• Hand-coding HTML
• Using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to implement great designs
• Designing and developing for good SEO (search engine optimization)
• Making content for the web: text, pictures, video
• Advanced tricks and tips for web animation and other neat functionality
• Understanding your web traffic: Installing web analytics software and understanding reports
• Make a theme for the Wordpress Content Management System (CMS)

It’s going to be fun. Students who complete all of their assignments will walk away from the course with a fully functional website and good foundation in web design. By the end of the course you’ll understand things like “XHTML/CSS W3C compliant code,” “Properly coded meta-tags and semantically structured content for SEO,” and “No. Flash isn’t the great satan, you just need to use it in the right way.”

If you want to take this course, call Pasquale DiLego (802) 864-8436. Class size is limited, so to reserve your space it’s best to let DiLego know you’ll be there.

I think this BTVSMB is going to be great because these speakers represent solid strategic thinking plus making things people like. I’m psyched. So psyched that I want you to come too.

The contest: Doing Business in Vermont

Here’s how you can win a free ticket to the Feb 1, 2010 Burlington Social Media Breakfast:

1. Write 500 words or less about what you like best about doing business in Vermont. Feel free to include some pictures/video/media if you want, in addition to the words.
2. Post your entry someplace where I can read it.
3. Let me know that you posted (a link to this post is one good way or send me an email or whatever) by 11:59pm January 25th .

Me and my secret panelists will read the entries and select a winner of the free ticket by January 26, 2010. Students can write about why they want to stay in Vermont and do business here after they graduate. The winner will collect their ticket at the event: there is no cash replacement value or anything like that.

Gahlord will be speaking on the Realtor.com blogger conference call this coming Thursday. Audie Chamberlain says it best: “We’re excited that Gahlord will be sharing some great insight and education on how to use web analytics make life better for Realtors and their clients.”

Dewald will be presenting on specific analytics reports to look at for the end of the year as well as web analytics reports to watch in the coming year. There’s going to be time for Q+A as well so come with questions.

You can sign up here.

Thoughtfaucet President/Janitor will be teaching “Introduction to Animation” for Burlington College this Spring. The class will meet at Thoughtfaucet on Pine Street in Burlington to make use of stop-motion and other traditional media production tools here. The course is a part of Burlington College’s successful Cinema Studies program.

“I always enjoy teaching this course at Burlington College because the students are exceptionally engaged and creative.” says Gahlord Dewald. “Having gone to Marlboro College, myself, I value the approach of Burlington College — a stronger focus on learning outcomes than letter grades. Plus, a list of of their film alumni and faculty is pretty much a directory of the top talent working in Vermont right now. I’m honored to be a part of that group.”

Throughout the semester, students will be exploring a variety of animated media including 2D traditional drawing, stop-motion 3D work, pixilation, sand/coffee painting and other experimental techniques. Flash 2D and Blender 3D will also be touched upon if time permits. And, of course, students will watch cartoons.

The focus of the class is give students a solid introduction to the principles of animation and also to production techniques that will enable them to make their own animation in a variety of media. While computer software will definitely be a part of the class, the focus is on learning animation–not pressing buttons. Well, maybe the capture-new-frame button in stop-motion.

Animation Course Details:

Introduction to Animation CIN/FIN235

3 Credits

First day of class is January 19th, 2010

Tuesdays 11:45 am – 2:45 pm

There will be a lab fee of $100.

Enrollment is limited to 12 students.

Current Burlington College students should speak with their academic advisor to enroll.

Non-Burlington College students can audit the course by filling out the Non-degree Student Registration Form and sending it to the Burlington College Office of Admissions or call 800-862-9616

Hi, you’re probably reading this because you came from the little link in the Thoughtfaucet Twitter profile. Here’s just a quick rundown of how Thoughtfaucet is going to be using that account:

Auto-publishing blog posts. Yeah we know you read somewhere that this was bad etiquette. Well, it isn’t. If you want actual engagement then it’s always better to go with a real human. We recommend Gahlord (of course, then you’ll have a lot of nordic skiing stuff mixed in with your web makery, but at least he’s human).

Sometimes responding directly. We will be checking in and monitoring mentions, but maybe not as often as you’d like. If you really want to get in touch, using the contact form on our website works great.

So consider the Thoughtfaucet Twitter account pretty much a little tentacle out there in Twitterland, hoping to bring you to content you like.