Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Man in the Arena

Tonight while doing some administrivia, I listened to Brene Brown's  2nd TED talk on Vulnerability.
IN it she quotes Roosevelt and cites his quote as a lifesaver. It made me think about my nephews who are hockey players. I want to post this note on their Facebook walls next time they have a massive loss in the arena. Maybe I should even message them. Anyway, here from the speech "Citizenship In A Republic" delivered at the Sorbonne, in Paris, France on 23 April, 1910 :
                                      
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."


I really appreciate that part about the critic not counting. I've had a couple of finger pointers around me, and I tell you, inviting them to participate in that which they are criticizing in order to improve it sure has a way of sobering up their drunken revelry of blame. I don't feel shame for trying, nor a need to make excuses for the "do" of others. Cold and timid souls, enjoy the sidelines.

   download PDF of complete speech  

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Prezi Issuu Slideshare

Recently I've been exploring how to make an interactive, narrative magazine online. Why? I can't afford to create one in print yet and a brilliant friend suggested I explore ways to use the internet to get the magazine out there.

What do I want from the online experience? Clickable links, non-linear narrative option, can translate to print (maybe), easy to view and use, fun, more exploration than passive viewing.

I've been wandering around shops in downtown Canmore Alberta,  and have found some truly beautiful, fun, intriguing things. And I'd like to write a little story to go with them.

I checked out Issuu first and it looks fantastic and intimidating. I'd need to be a real graphic designer to create something in there that looked any good. Or at least that's what it feels like to me. If we ever do a full-on print version of the magazine, you can be sure that I'll take those files and put them up on Issuu.
Check out Highline Magazine's Winter 2011-12 to see just how magazine-like the experience is. There are Issuu aps too for a better mobile experience. What I don't like is that the links aren't clickable so it's a more passive experience like reading a magazine. You are a viewer, not an explorer. It's linear.

Then I went to Slideshare thinking, "You can click on links and embed video on Slideshare." I also discovered that you can add audio too but it looks like a lot of flipping back and forth between iMovie and Slideshare, so I said, "Forgettabout it." Forget audio. Slideshare is linear too though, and while that has its advantages, I wanted to see what else was out there.

Last year I experimented with Prezi, doing meeting minutes from the Canmore Community Garden brainstorm in Prezi. It was fun to do, and a great way to organize lots of inspirational images. You can pack a lot visually into a Prezi inserting key words in text, but surround the word with pertinent images. I might have to experiment with Prezi again to create the magazine journey that I'm thinking of. The thing is, I like to do the work and leverage it a few times. As Highline does print files that can upload into Issuu, I'm pretty sure that Prezi doesn't work very well for offline experience. So the energy gone into making a Prezi doesn't translate into other media.

More research ahead...any suggestions anyone? Anyone?