Monthly Archives: April 2009

Parents acting badly…

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Now I don’t claim to be a perfect parent, but I try to be the best one I can be. When I see other parents being not so good role models I kind of cringe. Our kids are our future and who we will leave the world to. Are they not entitled to at least good or decent role models while growing up?

Friday I took my kids to a packed Southwick Zoo, and a family cut in front of us and a line of like 500 others that went down the road. My immediate reaction was to tweet pic them and out them but I realized that wasn’t any better. I smiled at their kids and let it go.

Today a guy with his kids in tow tried to pass me by heading across a double yellow line just because he did not agree with me letting a person out of the CVS parking lot while at a stop light. When I pointed to my head like he should think he sped his car into on coming traffic and pulled up alongside to flip me the bird.

I reminded him he had his kids in the car and that he was in oncoming traffic. He sped off narrowly missing a head on collision. The incident was enough to upset my 6 year old daughter however. It upset her dad even more.

We all need to share the earth folks. Please if you have your kids with you, try and be a good citizen if not for yourself then for them.

My Interview on PTVlive

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I thought it went well and I was glad to contribute. Here
is the link. My thanks again to Matt Mamet and the
folks at PermissionTV for having me as a guest.

http://www.permissiontv.com/about/blog/57/2009-04-23-ptv_live_episode_16_creating_online_video_content

Permission TV Live appearance

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I have been asked by Matthew Mamet to be a guest of PermissionTV live tomorrow 4/23/09 at 3:00pm EST. Not sure what the questions will be about but I hope I am an interesting guest. I suspect questions will range from those about Brilliant Video Productions to new video tools to sports but I am not certain.

If you wish to tune in you can at 3:00PM http://www.permissiontv.com/go/live/

You can tweet questions to #ptvlive

If I Have multimolded you with this message I apologize.

Marathon Day BBQ 2009

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I decided to Have friends over for a BBQ and throw a live feed of the Boston Marathon online live from Natick. At some point early the live feed shutoff, not sure why but it did. I rebooted it and it was fine until I shut it off myself after the last runners passed by.

The Kids had a great time and we ran into more kids that we knew and fed them all hot dogs and BBQ chicken.

There were 2 Americans that both finished third in the Boston Marathon this year. Ryan Hall finished third in the Men’s and Kara Goucher finished third in the Woman’s race. Definitely the best USA finishers in quite awhile.

Ernst Van Dyke (RSA) won the Men’s wheel chair race and Wakako Tsuchida (JPN) won the woman’s wheel chair race. Deriba Merga of (ETH) won the Men’s Marathon and Salina Kosgei of (KEN) won the women’s Marathon.

Viral Video of the Week

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I will update these weekly with changes. This one brought tears to my eyes.

http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/x8ymn0_susan-boyle-on-britain-got-talent

Playoff time in Boston.

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We are at an exciting spring time here in Boston. The Weather is finally getting better and both the Celtics and the Bruins are starting their playoff push. The Bruins are vast improved over 2008 but still need to vanquish their arch rivals the Montreal Canadians to advance and although they had the best overall record in the East they still need to play it loose and fast to be successful. If they get into a brawl they will loose focus.

The Celtics have a much tougher road to Hoe. KG, the Big Ticket Garnett will reportedly miss the playoffs entirely so my seeing gang green even making the conference finals this year is a long shot at best. I can see them advancing from the first round but being pushed hard by Chicago. Celtics in 7 maybe.

The Marathon will run yet again this Monday and I will go on a limb and say a Kenyan will win. They have dominated the Boston Marathon in both the women’s and Men’s races the last few years so I think I am safe with this prediction.

SBANE on Mogulus

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I was able to stream the SBANE New England Award presentations to the web as I filmed them for SBANE on Thursday of this past week. I stream it live using my laptop. We had a few connection issues with the Internet feed (power, wireless router) but once connected the feed stayed strong and connected on the Mogulus side.

Vistitors viewing said it was a little dark but then the room light was all we had after the sun set in the West. The flash video I saw that was recorded looked pretty good and the sound off my camera that was feeding mogulus surprised a few people in it’s clarity.

The trick now of course is getting others to want this service at their events and having the resources to pay for it. We call that Monetizing the message I believe.

All and all the TEst went very well and everyone was pleased with the Mogulus platform and it’s capabilities.

The Bensleygram

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My dad wrote to all of us years ago with updates about whatever was going on with him while us kids were all in college. He was in transition from working at CBS news to fulltime farming and I guess he needed that outlet. What he didn’t realize was he was creating social media, and if it had been in email form ( email came much later) he was in fact creating a constant contact by writing monthly and keeping us all up to date.

I changed my blog name from Brilliant Video Productions blogging to the Bensleygram for two reasons. The first in honor of my dad and his wanting to be social. I also did it because much of my blog was about other things besides video production so to say it was Brilliant video productions blogging wan’t really accurate. Sure it’s my job but I am not producing video 24/7 although sometimes I wish I was.

I also wrote a Bensleygram to my friends and they thought it was pretty funny. I wrote about observations, sports, comedy, I sent pictures I ran thru a copier, I even had a guest illustrator make a cartoon once. I will continue to blog about whatever, but I just wanted to blog today about the name change. Hope all is well with you where you are currently.

The Fast and the Furious

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I attended a very good SBANE breakfast event this morning where the speaker was Suzanne Bates from Bates Communications. Her talk was entitled Motivate like a CEO and was very good. I loved the reference to the mandarin symbol Wei Chi and the concept of in crisis there may be danger but also opportunity. Her talk was well received by the standing room only crowd which was also good to see at an SBANE event.

Tomorrow I will be shoot the SBANE innovation awards presentations for the Gala that happens in may. I will also be streaming it via Mogulus and anyone interested in taking a peak should see http://www.mogulus.com/brilliantvideoproductions tomorrow 4/16/2009 after 3pm.

Last, Mogulus has just launched a new product called procaster. I am really excited about it and it may also be whats next in video streaming. They have a windows version already in release at http://www.procaster.com/ and a mac version due soon.
Go Mogulus Go.

In defense of learning.

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Chris Brogan wrote a great blog about GM and all the flack he was taking about being at GM. His comments about taking the time to step back and learn what works and what does not work is far more important then what happens to GM or Ford or Chrysler.

We as a people have a chance to evolve here. We have a bleak picture about what has not worked. But rather then get caught up in all the emotional stuff is this not the time as Chris suggests that we must learn and implement real change?

Change is scary, and it triggers its own set of emotional responses. Is it not worth it at this point? Should we have not stepped back and implemented change in the 70’s during the Oil Embargo and the fall of the Shah of Iran? We failed to learn then.

Are we destined to not learn again? I certainly hope not.