Busy day today, but the results are slow…
Emails at 1080
More tomorrow…
Category: Crazy, Disconnected Stuff…
Email count is 1,006, officially crisis mode…
Some group of spammers thought it was cool to send me product “Questions” about some BCM stuff- why do they even bother?
Great day otherwise, got January Newsletter Out the Door, will cover a bunch of Poetry stuff, and a laundry list tomorrow… would love to see a great bounce in stats tomorrow…
lots of book stuff to follow up on and lots of editing to do as well. Lots of nebulousness apparently…
Oh, I did send one story to editing today, and really kicked forward on a second, hoping to have 3 done by the end of the week… ok, bye..
Off to see a bad Movie, but I wanted to document today’s activity. Contract for Sharon’s book signed, sealed and delivered… Art BCM site totally revamped and almost ready for content. very excited about that… lots of work to do in the next day or two on it, but it is looking MUCH better… 2012 is less about infrastructure, and all about content!
Email is at 769, haven’t pruned in too long…
Big night for the Audio site, did ALOT of infrastructure work to try and catch it up to the book site… Audio has been deteriorating fast because I haven’t been paying attention to it, so I wanted to really get back in the swing with it. I feel good about where I ended.
686 on the email today, did no purging.
Big Day tomorrow, delivering some flyers for J.A. Giunta’s reading on January 7th, having lunch with the awesome Sharon Skinner and will be doing more website updates, sending out an email newsletter for both Anthology and Brick cave Media. Got some shopping to do, and some decorating to finish.
Gotta finish a couple stories soon as well and get them out.
good day, down to 765 messages in the in-box, tons of Christmas music played, couple jobs applied for, and new stuff added to the store. Breakfast with Joe. Lasagna for lunch. You probably don’t much care.
Lots of database work today, which really helped me get books back into Barnes and Noble that I had pulled from a 3rd party… AND sets me up to move much more efficiently with the flood of new material I’ll be dealing with in 2012… Mandatory City Power Outage in the AM means I’ll be mobile for most of the day, then a flood of audio and video work tomorrow night…
I use Filemaker (don’t hate), and I’ve been working with an awkward database to track Brick Cave Media’s products, create product numbers and sort of act as a “master reference” whenever I needed information about a product. like, “What is the uRL of Joe’s book at Amazon?” kind of stuff.
Problem was, I hated it, because it was not particularly dynamic (in design, the software was fine). Years ago, when i had Anthology magazine, I had a sweet FM database setup to track submissions as they came in, got reviewed, and were accepted or rejected- it was sweet dynamic, we kept track of contacts and the whole nine yards.
This database was none of that, it was flat, and cumbersome to utilize the data I wanted when I wanted it. Since that time (2010), I have created a new database for keeping track of our relationships with bookstores in the country, and while it didn’t need to be all that, I pulled the two together because I wanted to access the BCM product numbers as choices to document what we sent to the bookstores, and I just felt sad for it. It was pathetic.
Pathetic no more.
I broke down today, because I needed to get a set of books back into B&N that I had pulled from Smashwords (nothing to do with Smashwords, they’re cool), and I know I just needed to spend the time and fix this database and make it right.
So I reformatted the whole thing, top to bottom, built in the dynamic fields to track ISBN’s by store and keep track of changes and updates. I can now pull up a list of the URL’s for each store a product is in. I reformatted my product Identifiers to make them more streamlined.
My next phase, which I did not get done today, but laid the ground work for, was tracking sales by store and breaking out reports based on whatever bat-shit crazy thing I decide I want to measure. Eventually, i would love to be able to import data form each store and have it populate the sales information for me, but that’s a bit above my pay grade at the moment
The best part, all the books got back into B&N lickety split, and it felt awesome…
Alright, let’s do this, two 20 minute presentations to build, 2 hours of footage to work through, 30 second intro video to make, 100 print books to sell… 2 new audio albums to finish up, 80 people to convince to come and see my two 20 minute presentations, and a couple e-books to release- It is going to be one hell of a week… Bring it!
I am sitting at Sunday coffee, typing an update on my iPad. It has been a particularly challenging week, although the weekend has been much better. I look to next week with some optimism.
Be finishing up preparations for filming next weekend. There is a ton to do in regards to that, but I’ll stay on it solid all week.
Newsletters for both Anthology and Brick Cave will go out on Monday, and I am hoping that we get a ton of response from them- lots of call to action there.
Tucson Comic Con is fast approaching, and I need to start figuring out the booth setup. Well have copies of Most of our products there, and looks like well have a guest in the booth on Saturday (more on that at the BCM sites).
Mostly this week is about film prep, and getting more messages out promoting The Last Incarnation, so it will be a busy, busy week.
I mean, we never met. I never emailed him. I never sought him out when I went to Cupertino, or to MacWorld
Yet it makes me incredibly sad that Steve Jobs is gone.
It’s hard to verbalize, but I feel like I lost one of my biggest advocates, as a creative person. The one person that understood the most impactful and yet minimally intrusive balance of technology for creating.
What I do know, is that every ‘thing’ I have created in my lifetime, everything of value, has involved his vision. From publishing a magazine, to promoting poetry, to broadcasting radio, to making a feature length movie- everything I have done has involved working with the results of his vision.
It’s not something you can just pick up the next day and carry on, it never was- that was the point, connecting the human experience to the machine.
Stuff was fun to make because he made things that were fun to use, things that bring emotional joy to the touch.
And that’s gone now.
My first brand new mac, not used, but brand new to me out of the box- was the 1999 iBook, orange. I still have it. I learned young to never cast things away wastefully. It was probably the most exciting purchase I had made of a new item. I remember the keynote that introduced it. I remember Phil’s great ‘leap of faith’ to show how awesome wi-fi was. I remember the Re-Mac guys saying they believed it was the first orange iBook in Arizona. Just opening an Apple product is a joy.
I remember his mantra about the joining of Liberal Arts and Technology, how it was so important to manage to those ideals. I remember Michael Dell saying Apple was going to go out of business. I remember the iPhone, and while I wasn’t too excited when it first came out and waited for it to come to Verizon, how much I realize now that it is such a powerful tool in my everyday life.
I remember waiting to go on vacation until the day we got out iPads so my wife and I could play with them while away.
I think about all the work I’ve done, and how as one person I can manage a movie studio, recording studio, publishing company and literary nonprofit all from a single technological command center of 3 macs, 1 iPhone and 1iPad.
His love of fonts and work on MacWrite would lay the groundwork for the desktop publishing revolution. His love of music and his work to make MP3′s available as a viable business also made it possible for me and millions like me to make their work available to mass audiences. I could go on and on, his achievements will be chronicled by many far more qualified than I.
Without that vision, none of that would be possible. I, and everyone that has been creative on a mac, and iPod, or an iPad- owe him gratitude for this.
He has always been a hero to me,
And I never even knew him.
Goodbye,
Thank You.
Good sales news from the weekend, so things this week are looking up.
The weekend was busy, not alot of time to work and update BCM stuff, but got caught up on Anthology events, and made some updates tot he Anthology website. Gonna try and sew up some Sacrifice stuff today, and continue the easylink rollout we started this weekend. Still working the Operation “Hello, My name is…” campaign, and results are ok, really any response is positive.
Also will try and solidify the November schedule a little, finish up The Last Incarnation work, and get a bunch of promotional material ordered.
Also looking to start setting groundwork for post Thanksgiving work. should be a great day… Now if the Sox can just win a couple games this week…
