Feb
01

Painting on a White Canvas

“Hey, Du4, where ya been?!”

As is evident from the shameful lack of updates here at Must. Be. AWESOME!!! central, I’ve spent quite a few months producing copious amounts of elbow grease instead of flapping my gums. Some of this work has been alongside and in conjunction with my friends Tim Newberry and Jon Iadonisi at the White Canvas Group, about whom I’ve written before. Tim and Jon have built an awesome technology and design collective, something akin to a privatized version of DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which built the internet!). WCG has hit a number of home runs, particularly in the launch of their GridMeNow product. Their work, dedication, and creative spirit has inspired me numerous times as a freelancer, and I’ve come to call Tim and Jon great friends.

That’s why we’re all proud to announce that they’ve just hired me as the White Canvas Group’s Director of Operations.

“Say what?!”

Indeed, I thought freelancing would be the end-all, be-all for me, but one aspect of that life became overwhelmingly crushing: when you’re on your own, you hardly ever have a team to call your own. Teams function in mutually supporting ways, from collaborative to social. One thing I learned about myself in the past couple years was that I don’t learn so well on my own; it takes the varied perspectives of a multidisciplinary group to challenge me and from that, I fashion knowledge. One great thing about the White Canvas Group is what a great team Tim and Jon have built. I’m going to learn as much as I contribute here, if not more.

“What about mustbeawesome.com?!”

As part of our deal, WCG has acquired my mindshare in its entirety, including much of the speculative work I’ve written about and performed here on mustbeawesome.com. We haven’t quite figured out how all of that works into the larger WCG business strategy, but for the short term, I won’t be updating the blog anymore. The archive will stand for now but the possibility exists we may integrate some of the mustbeawesome.com content into WCG’s web presence in the future. All I can tell you now is stay tuned to whitecanvasgroup.com for more as it develops.

“So what’ll you be doing, dude?”

We haven’t quite sussed out what “Director of Operations” means just yet, but the crew here at WCG have made it pretty clear I will be doing a LOT. Developing next-level digital influence strategies. Creating and teaching new methods of cyber-tradecraft. Designing, gaming and blowing up social network analytics in a big way. Investigating methods of enhancing human performance and testing them. I ain’t even kidding. Stuff’s about to get real over here, ya’ll.

“So what’s next?”

“The future, Marty!” It’s the beginning of an awesome new adventure for me, one that will take me to strange and interesting places. Who knows where that’ll lead just yet, so all I can say is stay tuned. You know how I like to party, so there will likely be a little celebratory happy hour in the near future. If you’d like to go or just want to say hi and talk about WCG, drop me a line at chris at whitecanvasgroup dot com.

Jan
20

Melt Faces at Mad Rose Tavern, Feb 2nd

I’m spending more time offline in 2012 planning and executing events and building integrating marketing plans around those events. Many of these projects are exploding through client work, some as experiments via my volunteer time in cause-based organizations. I’m learning a ton from it though, and I’m putting a lot of the lessons learned to work in my other passion: MUSIC.

Last year, I started two rock bands. VA Stripper grew out of mine and guitarist Andy Petrick’s love for 1990s rock, a passion we both shared experiencing the music scene at SXSW 2011. For various reasons, VA Stripper never quite got off the ground explosively, so we started another act. This act – Brains of J – paid tribute to one of our favorite ’90s bands still rocking today, Pearl Jam. Both are very different projects, and both give us very different satisfaction in performing. Brains of J is a headlong dive into the music of Pearl Jam, while we plan on writing our own music as VA Stripper at some point in the very near future. However, both use similar methods of integrated event marketing to get fans to come see our shows.

Hence, the Must. Be. AWESOME!!! call to action:

Come see both bands Feb 2nd at Mad Rose Tavern

If you’re in the DC/North Virginia/Maryland region, consider coming to see both VA Stripper and Brains of J for our first full-on rock show. Joined by DC sensations The Vandelays, we’ll have a solid show of facemelting from 9pm till closing time. The Mad Rose Tavern sits within spitting distance of the Clarendon Metro station on the Orange Line. View a Map of Mad Rose and the surrounding area.

Be sure to grab one of us and tell us what you think of the show too!

What else can you do to support us?

Engage, baby. Here are a few things you can do to keep track of us:

Enter your email address:

Email Format

 

And in closing… some FACEMELTING!


Brains of J – “Hail, Hail” Live at The Front Page from Chris Dufour on Vimeo.

 

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Aug
16

Come Join the Fun at Rando Happy Hour

Image courtesy Spectacle Theater.

So… every few months I put on one of these Rando Happy Hours, which is essentially me just mining my contact database and telling everyone at the same time where I’ll be drinking one evening. What ends up happening is a really fun social experiment wherein I get to see how the varied people in my offline network interact together.

There’s no goal: it’s totally rando. Hence the name. However, what ends up happening at these things are odd little personality collisions between people who would normally never talk to each other, and I love watching it happen. For instance, one of my music buddies might rub shoulders with a buttoned down colleague of mine from the Pentagon, resulting in commodious AWESOME talk about favorite bands. People have even found new leads on jobs and work through the amorphous blob that is the Du4 grid.

So if you’re in the DC/NOVA area, feel free to come join us in Shirlington on August 30th for a brew. The details follow–

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Jul
22

Links of the Week: July 22, 2011 Edition

‘Wired’ Magazine Forecasts the Death of the Printed Monthly Comic

Damn decent analysis from Comics Alliance on the evolving debate over printed versus digital comics. CA’s Doug Wolk guest posts for Wired and puts a comprehensive evaluation on all sides of the issue, favoring the coming doom of the $4 monthly printed comic. I’ve been saying this ever since the iPad debuted, but DC Comics‘ recent announcement that all of its future titles will be released digitally the same day as print is a game changer. Moreover, digital comics provider Comixology recently sold Warren Ellis’ entire epic Planetary for a mere $25, a quarter of the price of DC’s Absolute Edition and on par with trade paperback pricing. It’s bold publication decisions like this that will continue to hammer away at the frayed, yellow pages of print comics, badgering the aging black shirted slobs of yore into submission and inviting new audiences to experience these AWESOME comics. Had they thrown in the Planetary specials that weren’t included in the Absolute collections, I may have forked over the cash.

Why Can’t We Preorder Digital Comics?

With more proof that Comics Alliance is becoming my go-to source for coverage on the digital comics debate, David Brothers offers a compelling argument for comics publishers who are trying to figure out to make money off digital offerings in this early stage. While the numbers on digital purchases are not so enticing to comics publishers today, they are trending upward (and will probably explode by the end of the year with DC’s “Great Experiment”). Brothers argues for setting up a preordering program for digital comics similar to how customers can preorder comics from their local comic book store. This could be a good way of tracking trends on digital offerings as well as marketing to the supposed “new audience” DC has cited is circling well outside physical comics stores. I think this isn’t a bad idea but ultimately for this to work, you have to bring the costs down on digital comics. I would pay a year’s subscription for almost any title if you could get each issue under $0.75. What’s more, publishers could also make some serious bank by preordering digital bundles of classic comics stories. I like where the thinking’s going; we just need to keep moving the football down the field.

Warren Ellis at the 2010 Comic Con in San Diego

Warren Ellis. He braingasm you. Image via Wikipedia

 

A Collection Of Rambling On The Subject Of Digital Comics

Warren Ellis, writer extraordinaire and Mad Space Bastard, weighs in on the digital comics debate. A negative tongue from Saint Warren is a likely kiss of death for your product, so Graphic.ly better be paying attention to his UX concerns on their iPad app. Ellis counters comics publishers’ digital strategies with the simple yet elegant solution he devised for his web serial Freakangels: serialize a page a week online then collect finished stories into print editions for on-demand sales. To an extent, he plays to the Old Print Wankers more than those of us at the edge of the digital evolution, which I found odd, but then again, he’s seen the receipts come back on his own digital work.

Anonymous vs. NATO: Get your popcorn ready

So, remember when NATO was all like, “Donchu DARE come all up on mah porch!” and Anonymous was all like, “Bitch, PLEEZ!” and then the internet exploded??? Yeah. This was a topic of great interest at IO Europe a couple weeks ago mainly because no one knew how to deal with it. Purported “cyber-experts” were more in favor of getting their systems completely OFF the internet instead of figuring out creative ways of defending against attacks like LULZsec and responding appropriately. A large part of this fear, I believe, comes from simple inequity in information assurance professionals these days– they don’t know their Googles from their Farmvilles. So ignorant posturing of the kind seen in this article will just antagonize online attack groups like Anonymous. They don’t have to get an operation approved by 10 echelons of command like we do.

New 3D Looney Tunes Announced, Archive Mel Blanc Recordings To Feature

I’ve been fairly disappointed in Warner Bros’ revamped-for-the-21st-century Looney Tunes Show, which has earfucked me with simpering, inane impersonations of the Mel Blanc’s original character voices and insanely horrible musical numbers. So to discover that a creative animation director built new Looney Tunes shorts around archival recordings of Blanc has me giddy as shit. Hopefully, this provides the impetus for more AWESOME GENIUSES like this director to cut up and reinterpret existing Blanc recordings into new takes on his classic characters. I gotta believe the technology is getting close, right?

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Jul
20

Video: The Four Thieves #du4roadtrip

p247.mov Watch on Posterous

I had the good fortune of catching these kids performing on the streets of downtown Nashville, desperately sweating it out to shimmy a couple bucks from tourists too hot to care much. When asked their name, one of the lads said “The Four Thieves. The fourth guy’s in jail.”

Perfect start to an illustrious career in musicianship and performance.

Jul
20

On the road with Du4

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On the road with Du4 (mp3)

Jul
19

Ladies & gentlemen, from Nashville, TN…The Four Thieves.

Media_httpimagesinsta_ncbiz


Taken at Gruhn Guitars

Jul
15

Links of the Week: July 15, 2011 Edition

Decades after duty in the OSS and CIA, “spy girls” find each other in retirement

I kind of adore this story about two old ladies living in a retirement home who suddenly remember each other worked for the OSS (the precursor of the CIA) in World War II. The video is hilarious. One of WaPo’s better pieces, I think. More of this, please.

Writers in Hollywood

As I learn more about the world of writing in Hollywood, I’m comforted by the observations of old guard prose scribblers like Raymond Chandler. In this 1945 Atlantic article, Chandler describes the differences between Hollywood scriptwriters and the novelists with whom he counted himself. Chandler’s AWESOME style is on display here, maintained from his fiction writing into this piece. It’s a notable historical portrait as well, rife with comparisons to the Hollywood film scene of today.

The Black Futurists

The World Futurist Society tipped me to this description of an AWESOME looking exhibit at the Sargent Johnson Gallery in The African American Art and Culture Complex in San Francisco. The exhibit features works of black futurists, from science fiction writers to bass players from outer space. People call it “Afrofuturism.”

Homefront and Propaganda In Video Games – What Are They Trying To Tell You?

G4 has a fun list of video games with brief queries about their inherent propaganda value. Most take the form of “war porn” games like Call of Duty, but there are some surprises. I had no idea, for example, that Teh Mad Christians had created a Left Behind video game adaptation where you apparently combat the forces of darkness with… prayer. Kinect that shit up, preacher!

Not Giving Up

Naltorian seer Jamais Cascio delivers a sanguine third option to the debate over how transformative future technologies like AI could either enslave humanity or set us free. Cascio argues that technology is already part of who we are; that Rejectionist and Posthumanist perspectives on bio-technical evolution ignore fungible interpretations of humanity. I enjoy Cascio’s commentary not just because of his unique perspective, but also because of his engaging writing style. This is a man who once briefed a social business crowd on how the future will be made of people, so I find it compellingly AWESOME that the guy’s writing just FEELS GOOD. He’s good people, and you should get there.

Is this the roster for DC’s new Justice League?

We can now confirm that this AWESOME Jim Lee is indeed a portrait of what’s being referred to as the “DCnU” Justice League. Set for debut in just a few short weeks, rumors circulated rampantly about DC Comics‘ relaunch of its entire line of comics. People were horrified, outraged, amazed, and excited for such a crazy turn of publishing events, all circling around the consolidated relaunch of every title to appeal to new readership. DC press releases since haven’t been as encouraging (there’s some good stuff but there’s also plenty of mediocrity) but this image is still something to get excited about.

The new cast of Geoff Johns' and Jim Lee's JUSTICE LEAGUE.

Disorienting Brand Conversions

My Modern Met logo designer Graham Smith makes your brain hurt with these weird brand swaps.

Image via My Modern Met

Anti-grav self portraits reveal the everyday life of a person who can levitate

AWESOME, AWESOME photoblog discovered by io9 of Tokyo photographer Natsumi Hayashi. Hayashi’s self portraits involve a degree of photography legerdemain where she sets up the shot then jumps to capture the effect that she’s actually levitating. It’s a supercool story of someone fudging reality to create abject beauty. The photos below are some of my favorites.

Image via yowayowacamera.com

Image via yowayowacamera.com

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Jul
14

Draft These Badasses to Improve US Communication Enterprise

Pundits, researchers, textperts, and academics all love to talk about how they would fix the United States’ fragmented, crapped-out communication apparatus. The overarching web of demon seed spunked across drab refurbished halls in the Eisenhower Building on 17th Street NW barely covers the Sarlacc maw of offices, officials, and assholes manning the guns of This, Our National Communication Nightmare. All suggestions for reform mandate – nay, demand! – leadership in renovating this sad enterprise, this broken transistor, these crusted lips. Though none of these tremendous gasbags has deigned to ask the question most important to we lowly peasants of the pen: “Who shall lead us?” Submitted then, for no approval, is this list of AWESOME, kermodial badasses. Executives in 21st century organization and innovation. Preeminent princes of creativity. Visionaries of the better and the righteous.

Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter.

Image via Wikipedia

Jack Dorsey – Creator & CEO, Twitter

Just interviewed The President using crowdsourced questions from Twitter. Twitter. A social media tool that has archived millions of impressions from people around the world and is on the way to becoming so ubiquitous that it’s considered a utility by some. Elegant simplicity and craftsmanship are his weapons. I think he knows a thing or two about designing a communication enterprise.

Image via The Guardian.

Andy Carvin – Senior Strategist, NPR

“The Crowdsorceror” who mounted a one-man content curation campaign in realtime around popular protests and demonstrations in the Middle East that later became known as the Arab Spring. Compelling, earnest believer in the power of people. His examples inspire legions of communicators to standing applause at his speaking engagements. To Carvin, community comes first. Imagine his style of realtime information gathering applied to intelligence or information operations problems.

Image via TVNewser

Jon Stewart - Host, The Daily Show

America’s funnyman turned mega-popular fake news host, consumed by millions of Americans as “real” news. Despite obvious satirical takes on journalism, staunchly defends That Which Is Right by attacking The Wrong, from Fox News insidiousness to Cramer’s role in puffing up the housing crisis. Genuinely loves America. Imagine his tenure leading government international broadcasting efforts.

 

 

 

 

Image via brosephstalin.com

Tim Hwang – Founder, Web Ecology Project, The Awesome Foundation, and The Institute for Higher Awesome Studies

A philosophical cog caught between the wheels of web analytics and netnography. Cultural researcher and student of human interaction offline, online, and elsewhere. Observer of society, real and imagined. Teamed with the right agencies, his timely insights about social communities could make AWESOMEthe work of thousands of government communication professionals.

Image via AV.com

Fred Wilson – Venture Capitalist and Managing Partner, Union Square Ventures

Social entrepreneur and investor in socially transformative technologies. Believes in the transcendant like Hashable, Etsy, Foursquare, GetGlue, Kickstarter, and more. Blogs regularly about the whys and wherefores, the how-to’s, and the aspirational dreams of his investments. Imagine a federal executive who apportions program funding according to the good of society versus short-term gains or even strategic objectives.

Image via Gawker.

Peter Thiel - Serial VC, Hedge Fund Manager

Avowed investor in the impossible, from artificial intelligence to social networks like Facebook to data analytics supergiants like Palantir. Believer in not just debating future technology and social innovation but making it happen. Convener of social creatives to discuss building an objective American future. Elusive yet visionary. Skates the edge of politics with controversial libertarian-esque views on economics and democracy, a modernist perspective badly required by an ever evolving communications ecosystem.

Image via bookgalaxo.com

Tony Hsieh – CEO, Zappos

The man who brought happiness to millions and made fun a core capability of his company. Committed to making the world a happier place, a mission sorely needed in the personnel departments of hundreds of government agencies.

John Lasseter - Chief Creative Officer, Pixar

The man who built an animated powerhouse out of a tiny studio no one believed would succeed. Since producing some of the most endearing animated films in the modern age, has merged his multibillion dollar studio with Disney to usher in a new era of Imagineering. Our communications enterprise, currently swarmed with ill-trained personnel that barely understand the social phenomena happening around them, requires creativity of this man’s magnitude.

Image via Screencrave.com

Image via Headshift.com

Lee Bryant – Co-founder & Director, Headshift

A social business maestro, he advocates for clients to change the way they do business instead of simply hanging shiny new social media toys on their websites. Understands the complex challenges of technology’s promises and shortcomings in solving organizational and communications problems. Also, very British.

Image via The Huffington Post

Baratunde Thurston – Vigilante Pundit, The Onion

Champion for The Right in all things Wrong. Outspoken advocate for diversity, a trait we see too rarely in government. His infectious influence could inspire legions of public diplomats, strategic communicators, and information operators at all levels. Laughter mandating shot caller of madness. Imagine his effect teaching communicators in institutions across government how to be AWESOME and not just govvies.

David Kilcullen – Counterinsurgency Guru

An early advocate of fighting ideologically against al-Qaeda versus hand-to-hand. Believer in people-focused counterinsurgency security. Sees war as competition managed by influence instead of shootouts and bombings. Widely regarded as the smartest man on the planet when it comes to strategically understanding the wars of the future. If the Defense Department continues playing in deployed communications – and it will – then it will need a shamanic leader like this man to responsibly pilot the interagency minefields such across-the-board coordination that will require.

Image via The Washingtonian

Official portrait of United States Secretary o...

Image via Wikipedia

Robert Gates – Former Secretary of Defense; Former Director, CIA 

The ultimate honest broker in all things government. From his perch as SECDEF, fought interminable battles with service cultures and DOD dinosaurs, breaking down inflated budgets and streamlining operations. Put this same right-is-right tenacity to work reforming and leading the rehabilitation and redesign of America’s communication enterprise across agencies, and we will see magic.

 

 

 

 

Mae Ferguson. Kind of a badass.

Mae Ferguson – President & CEO, Fort Worth Sister Cities International

People forget citizen and cultural diplomacy are cornerstone elements of strategic influence, and because of that, they remain ill coordinated with the rest of our national communication apparatus. Mae has the terrier-like tenacity and management expertise to round up the various bit parts of cultural programs and get them working properly in alignment with national influence goals. A long time nonprofit leader, she has achieved a lot with strangled budgets and limited personnel. Disclosure: she’s also my Mom. :)

Who am I missing?

I know you’ve got some ideas about kermodial badasses we need to draft into service of our faltering national communication enterprise. Tell me who they are in the comments.

Jun
10

Links of the Week: June 10, 2011 Edition

Been a while since I’ve stunk up your linkses. Lots popping in the world of AWESOME. Let’s see what’s up.

Welcome to the Glee Lantern Corps

I hate Glee. I love Green Lantern. Makes for an interesting mix.

10 innovative digital books you should know about

I haven’t audited every one of the digital books Peter Meyers lists here, but there are some fairly AWESOME looking concepts. I really think tablets are the future of transmedia storytelling and that the book experience needs to be redefined for them. There’s an incredible app listed here from the New York Public Library that’s downloadable for the iPad: every photo and article they have from the 1939 World’s Fair, which is an AMAZING experience on the iPad.

U.N. Report Declares Internet Access a Human Right

I don’t think people realize how huge the implications for this are. The U.N. is basically saying a human’s access to the unrestricted information on the Internet is equal to that same human’s right to be free. In the wake of the Arab Spring, this sets up immense shifts in the ubiquity of the global Internet, perhaps even paving the road for the persistent integration of web connectivity to human biology. This is a big moment that will appear on historical timelines decades from now.

ComicsAlliance Recaps The ‘Smallville’ Series Finale

I make no secrets about my loathing of Smallville, a television show that could have presented a thoughtful yet entertaining mainstream exploration of Clark Kent’s pre-Superman life to a wholly new audience. Instead, the show featured cheesy “re-imaginings” of classic Superman comic book stories, horrible dialogue and characters, and outright disrespect of everything that makes Superman special. And yet, it ran for ten fucking years. What insipid assholes actually thought this was a good show??? In any case, Smallville’s series finale retained the degree of silly ridiculosity established in the 10 years prior with everything from killer planets to Tom Welling never actually putting on the Superman suit. Chris Sims and David Uzumeri at Comics Alliance continue their horrified deconstruction of this television travesty in the wit-filled mockfest that any Smallville review deserves. Definitely one for laughs.

There’s Something Happening Here…

Futurist Venessa Miemis tipped me off to this dark, dark vision of the future, where the optimism of our modern social and technological advances is crushed by the realities of today’s economic and political downfalls. Dave Pollard, writer of the blog How to Save the World, presents an extremely well-researched and sourced assessment of the current state of the world and how he thinks we are all on an inevitable downslide into hopelessness and decay. Pollard notes several observations of evidence for this assessment that make a lot of sense despite my own personal hopes for a better world in the future. It’s a frightening punch to the gut that everyone should check out and comment on. This is our world we’re trying to save here, people.

Bleeding Cool’s Coverage of DC Comics’ Relaunch Announcements

Last week, I wrote about DC Comics’ ballsy move of relaunching its entire line of comics with new #1 issues and publishing them digitally on the same day they see print. This week, DC has slowly rolled out announcements of new creative teams and directions for their 52 new titles in September. The content is not as impressive as originally thought. Initially, this was presented as an opportunity to recast its universe into a more modern, future-looking and diverse playground for new audiences to discover. Unfortunately, the selection of creative teams for some of these titles is backward-looking, in my opinion. The Batman titles, for example, feature the exact same creative teams as they do now, just mixed up a little bit. They also include two titles written by artists who have since been unable to get their books out on time. I’m not sure how revolutionary this is going to be for modern audiences.

DC's rebooted TEEN TITANS #1 by Scott Lobdell and Brett Booth.

There are some positive indications, however. DC is taking this opportunity to indeed ratchet up the diversity factor in their books. We’re seeing more women, more heroes of color, and more international representation amongst team books. It also looks like a design edict has come down the pike from DC Editorial to ensure women’s costumes are much more appropriate for modern audiences, as opposed to the pervert suits we’re all used to. I think these are all positive steps toward modernizing the DCU for maximum appeal to that key young demographic that has proven so elusive to them over the past 20 years. I’m most intrigued by the inclusion of a brand new title featuring Batwing, the Batman of Africa:

 

BATWING #1 by Judd Winick and Ben Oliver.

Although, I would have been much more impressed in DC’s attempts to diversify their lineup had they given an ongoing title to the Muslim Batman of Paris:

 

Nightrunner – the Batman of Paris! He’s a Muslim, y’all!

 

Get clickin’, y’all!

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