Palenists photo by ahockley

On Thursday June 4th here at Nemo we hosted a discussion in partnership with Group Y, with the tongue-in-cheek title Who Killed Social Media. [Audio stream of the event is here.]

The panel comprised of myself, Dave Allen (@DaveAtFight : Fight – [Update] Co-Founder, Fight LLC : James Todd (@jwtodd : twine.com) – Software Engineer at Radar Networks, for Twine, Matt Savarino (@Ridertech : ridertech.com) – Lead Information Architect at K2 Sports and creator of Ridertech, Lee Crane (@leecrane : leecrane.com) – an action sports online veteran along with Tony ‘Frosty’ Welch, Web, Community and Social Media Strategy Personal Systems Group at HP, Community Manager for theNextBench.com (@frostola : frostyland.com). The panel was moderated by Marshall Kirkpatrick, VP at ReadWriteWeb (@marshallk : readwriteweb)

We had a very lively discussion based around my belief that the term ‘Social Media’ is best left for marketers to use as they mistakenly consider social media a sales ‘channel.’ I prefer to think about the ‘Social Web’ starting with the premise that anyone who opens up a browser is participating in it. It is no longer about platforms such as Facebook or MySpace, it is not about confusing Twitter as a social network, it is about how Reputation Management is now critical and necessary and also how you handle your brand’s ‘Experiential Awareness’ as I call it. Google is moving into the social web space – as Frosty notes in a follow up post after the event: “You may ask yourself why Google has decided to add more weight to the social web. The answer in my opinion is that they realize that when a viral event is happening, people aren’t using Google to find out about it. Instead they turn to the searches on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube.”

A glaring example of what people are saying can be found by looking into the eMusic fiasco. I believe that the firestorm of criticism that eMusic came under from its subscriber base could have been avoided entirely if the company had simply taken out an insurance policy in the form of a Community Manager. Think about that next time you try to persuade reluctant executives that Community Manager is a real job, and if they still baulk tell them its not a salary but a business expense – online community insurance! eMusic failed at Reputation Management on the Social Web. I sensed that the audience in the room resonated with the idea of insurance – especially post the Dominos pizza melt down.

The most contentious point of the night, one that caused audible groans in the audience, came from Frosty – “SEO or SEM, in my opinion, will be dead as you know it within 6 months.” It was a powerful statement that he backed up later in a post – “I didn’t make this statement for a wow or shock factor, but because it’s something I believe. Also I don’t believe its a new revelation. If you keep up with Steve Rubel (@steverubel : Micro Persuasion), Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang : Web Strategy) and others, you can see where the social web is heading, and what impact it is going to have. Especially on search.”

Clearly Frosty has opened the bottle and the genie can’t be put back in. Read all of his thoughts on the subject here.

More links:
Semantics Killed Social Media
Social media kills SEO
Transcript of the Panel

Search the thread on Twitter: #whokilledsm

Portland School of Rock Pixies show w/ Frank Black from mark lewman on Vimeo.

Teenager of the year Frank Black joins Portland School of Rockers Hannah Lewman (guitar), Julian Hixson (guitar), Oscar Gayet (guitar), Nola Versfelt (bass), Max Griggs (drums), Jacob Weber (vocals), and Michelle Brayson (vocals) for Where Is My Mind.

The sold out show featured all the classics, and the energy between the kids on stage and the 500 kids in the crowd was so awesome. This was the first time performing for many of the students.

Pampelmoose, Nemo, DJ Joelskool and Lincoln MKS- Part 4 from Dave Allen on Vimeo.

Once again we road test the Lincoln MKS. This time, celebrated Portland DJ, DJ Joelskool gives the rig a once over testing the gadgets like Bluetooth and the navigation console as well as the pounding stereo system..

Previous episodes:

A Lincoln MKS and Von Von Von – Part 1

A Lincoln MKS with Von Von Von – part 2

Von Von Von Critiques the Lincoln MKS back seat – Part 3

Pampelmoose, Nemo, VON VON VON and a Lincoln MKS- Part 3 from Dave Allen on Vimeo.

The test drive continues as Von Von Von plays his ’slow music’ as we get the Lincoln MKS down to 3 MPH on the way back from the airport en route to Nemo.

Click image to play

As Dave continues the test drive he took the Lincoln MKS out to Portland International Airport to pick up his friend, the acclaimed Belgian electronic artist, Von Von Von, who has just returned from exile in Europe. Hear what Von has to say about coming out of exile and what he thinks of the Lincoln MKS…

Click image to watch the video.

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The Lincoln MKS (left) the acclaimed Von Von Von (right)

The Ford Motor Company and their Lincoln division have chosen Nemo’s Dave Allen as a ‘digital influencer’ and handed him the keys to a fancy red Lincoln MKS for a few days. Dave was tracked down by Ford through his highly trafficked music blog, Pampelmoose, that he runs for Nemo. Dave will be in full Top Gear mode for the next three days as he runs around Portland. Yesterday Dave used the car to pick up the acclaimed Belgian New Wave electronic artist, Von Von Von, from Portland International Airport and we will shortly be posting a video of that trip. Stay tuned for all the pics and video and a final overview of the driving experience from Dave.

There is always good reason for Portland to celebrate having our local basketball franchise, the Trailblazers, in the NBA playoffs especially as they are returning for the first time in five years. Expectations were high going in to the first game at home against the Houston Rockets but unfortunately the Blazers got spanked losing by a 27 point margin and with it some home court advantage. They rallied for a strong win in game 2 beating the Rockets by four points and now they head to Houston to try and pull off two in a row in the Rockets’ house.

I am no basketball expert but I do enjoy watching the games and trying to work out the inner workings and efficacy of any of the teams. Without delving too deeply into the psychology of teamwork it is always clear that those team members who generate the best stats are the ones hailed as the ‘leaders,’ the ‘winners’ even the ‘legends.’ To coin a phrase – ‘the squeaky wheel gets the oil…’

Put simply, as fans already know, basketball stats are all based around points scored, rebounds caught or the number of assists per game – the higher a player is in those rankings the more he is seen as the teams leading player. If you take a look at the Blazers home page you will note that the players’ stats are proudly displayed in a prominent position. And if you look closely you will also note that the Rockets’ Shane Battier appears to come up short on those stats compared to all the other players. There is much more to those numbers than meets the eye.

Meet Shane Battier and consider this:

Michael Lewis – NY Times “Tonight the Rockets were playing the Los Angeles Lakers, and so Battier would guard Kobe Bryant, the player he says is the most capable of humiliating him. Both Battier and the Rockets’ front office were familiar with the story line. “I’m certain that Kobe is ready to just destroy Shane,” Daryl Morey, the Rockets’ general manager, told me. “Because there’s been story after story about how Shane shut Kobe down the last time.”

Last time was March 16, 2008, when the Houston Rockets beat the Lakers to win their 22nd game in a row — the second-longest streak in N.B.A. history. The game drew a huge national television audience, which followed Bryant for his 47 miserable minutes: he shot 11 of 33 from the field and scored 24 points. “A lot of people watched,” Morey said. “Everyone watches Kobe when the Lakers play. And so everyone saw Kobe struggling. And so for the first time they saw what we’d been seeing.” Battier has routinely guarded the league’s most dangerous offensive players — LeBron James, Chris Paul, Paul Pierce — and has usually managed to render them, if not entirely ineffectual, then a lot less effectual than they normally are. He has done it so quietly that no one really notices what exactly he is up to.”

Shane Battier is what Michael Lewis has coined The No-Stats All-Star and he is an efficiently deadly competitor. As Lewis says – “Here we have a basketball mystery: a player who is widely regarded inside the N.B.A. as, at best, a replaceable cog in a machine driven by superstars. And yet every team he has ever played on has acquired some magical ability to win.”

The stats, as used by the NBA and also by every major sports team, do not always tell the truth. The Houston Rockets’ owner, Leslie Alexander, was a supporter of stats but also suspicious of the way the stats were interpreted. At one point he said that “I’m not even sure we’re playing the game the right way.” Alexander hired Daryl Morey to get to the bottom of all the data. When Morey arrived the Rockets had two highly paid and highly prized players – Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming – so Morey was tasked to find quality players cheap enough to keep the team under the NBA salary cap – in short time he came across Battier. When Morey presented Alexander with the idea of buying Battier he perplexed even the man who had hired Morey to rethink basketball. Lewis again – “All I knew was Shane’s stats,” Alexander says, “and obviously they weren’t great. He had to sell me. It was hard for me to see it.”

Consider this excerpt from the same Lewis article – “Battier’s game is a weird combination of obvious weaknesses and nearly invisible strengths. When he is on the court, his teammates get better, often a lot better, and his opponents get worse — often a lot worse. He may not grab huge numbers of rebounds, but he has an uncanny ability to improve his teammates’ rebounding. He doesn’t shoot much, but when he does, he takes only the most efficient shots. He also has a knack for getting the ball to teammates who are in a position to do the same, and he commits few turnovers. On defense, although he routinely guards the N.B.A.’s most prolific scorers, he significantly reduces their shooting percentages. At the same time he somehow improves the defensive efficiency of his teammates — probably, Morey surmises, by helping them out in all sorts of subtle ways. “I call him Lego,” Morey says. “When he’s on the court, all the pieces start to fit together. And everything that leads to winning that you can get to through intellect instead of innate ability, Shane excels in. I’ll bet he’s in the hundredth percentile of every category.”

Morey discovered that stats make players selfish which makes sense if you consider that better stats are always going to be a plus for a players’ career. After watching Battier play for more than two years Morey considers him the most unselfish player he has ever seen – “Last season when the Rockets played the San Antonio Spurs Battier was assigned to guard their most dangerous scorer, Manu Ginóbili. Ginóbili comes off the bench, however, and his minutes are not in sync with the minutes of a starter like Battier. Battier privately went to Coach Rick Adelman and told him to bench him and bring him in when Ginóbili entered the game. “No one in the N.B.A. does that,” Morey says. “No one says put me on the bench so I can guard their best scorer all the time.”

And yet there is one set of stats that Battier does well in – plus-minus, which simply measures what happens to the score when any given player is on the court. Michael Lewis again – “A good player might be a plus 3 — that is, his team averages 3 points more per game than its opponent when he is on the floor. In his best season, the superstar point guard Steve Nash was a plus 14.5. At the time of the Lakers game, Battier was a plus 10, which put him in the company of Dwight Howard and Kevin Garnett, both perennial All-Stars. For his career he’s a plus 6. “Plus 6 is enormous,” Morey says. “It’s the difference between 41 wins and 60 wins.” He names a few other players who were a plus 6 last season: Vince Carter, Carmelo Anthony, Tracy McGrady.”

Whoever works for the Portland Trailblazers checking the stats better be aware that on paper Battier is a marginal NBA athlete at best, yet in reality on the court he is a NBA superstar.

Game 3 is at Houston Friday April 24th 6:30PM on ESPN and locally on KGW.

Read Michael Lewis’ article.

Exploding Car on Broadway from Front Ave. on Vimeo.

The house slide above Terwilliger

Hyper-local can be summed up easily as ‘all the news in your zip code.’ Wired Magazine Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson captured it nicely too in a post titled The Vanishing Point Theory of News. The idea of hyper-local is further validated by the success of sites such as Yelp and Outside.in; they drill down to the zip code level to bring us all the news that’s fit to print, or not as the case may be.

I was hiking with my dog in my Hillsdale neighborhood yesterday and some thoughts percolated to top of mind – one being that hyper-local is an awesome idea yet that thought was immediately tempered by the next; hyper-localized information means having easy access to all the news in our communities, we are made aware, therefore we have to accept responsibility for what happens in our communities. There will be no excuses.

I could have stopped right there, it would have been a good Twitter-esque moment. But no. I have actually been paying attention to what goes on in my neighborhood and it’s not always pretty..

From tragedy and despair to new thinking.

No vehicles, a blessing

My regular hike leads from my home in the residential neighborhoods of Portland’s West Hills, down narrow musty lanes and streets to Terwilliger Boulevard [known to locals as the Terwilliger Highway - you may already sense where this is going...]. Where Terwilliger crosses the SW Capitol Highway the road is now closed to vehicles but not to hikers and bicyclists. A few weeks ago a house slid down the hillside that I can see ahead of me taking two others off their foundations as it cascaded toward Terwilliger. Road closed. Despair for the families involved but thankfully no injuries.

The house collapse has created a chain of events that can be seen as an opportunity.

First and foremost, as vehicles can no longer drive along the boulevard it is possible for hikers and bikers to enjoy the serenity of walking Terwilliger’s tree-lined curves without inhaling exhaust fumes or having to be constantly vigilant of motorists speeding to work. Remove the automobile from the equation and we are suddenly back on the path to nature. Of course the traffic has to go somewhere; the detour funnels it through Hillsdale along the increasingly congested Capitol Highway, up through the dangerous cross-section at Sunset Blvd and the Wilson High School entrance, and on back down to the severed umbilical that is Terwilliger where commuters, one to each car, can speed off toward OHSU.

Here’s the opportunity for Hillsdale as I see it: make things difficult for drivers.

Two fairly recent developments in Hillsdale [in the last 4 years] changed the character of the neighborhood – one positively, one negatively. The Hillsdale Library, completed in 2004, is both architecturally and holistically a perfect example of how Hillsdale should be developed. The Watershed building on the other hand is just the opposite. And yet the library, as good as it is, is not perfect.

The library is a wonderful building to look at – a mix of modern eco-friendly materials, an open inviting design that allows complete transparency throughout and although it is a thoroughly modern building it has hints of neo-classical architecture, a good mix for housing the books within. Its problem? It has added to the areas automobile congestion. Drivers attempting to park on the streets or enter the parking lot below the building create mayhem just a half block from the already overloaded intersection at Capitol Highway and Sunset Blvd. And why the library’s underground parking entrance was placed right opposite the parking lots for the Hillsdale Post Office and Liquor Store is beyond me. The pedestrian crosswalk indiscriminately dropped at the corner of the library at the junction of SW DeWitt St has to be the most risky crossing in Hillsdale for the old and young alike.

Meanwhile the Watershed building at the southern end of Hillsdale’s strip malls is an eyesore. [Calling this building the Watershed is apt. Here's one definition of the name's meaning - A critical point marking a change in course or development.] There is nothing to love about this building. Although the ground beneath it was once a brownfield it was at least an open space that afforded a view across Bertha Court to the well-designed public housing just off Bertha Boulevard. The Watershed was perceived with a noble cause – a 51-unit senior affordable housing project – and is also an environmentally-friendly building but it is architecturally dull and has a ludicrous light tower perched on its NW corner that proclaims Hillsdale – such a folly and a waste of money. A retail condominium has lain empty since the buildings’ completion and the low retaining wall that runs along Bertha Court opposite provides a perfect sanctuary for the nicotine-addicted residents to sit and smoke throughout the day. Smoking is a choice and I’m fine with that but it’s a shame that as our local children walk to school they must pass these smokers. This building does not represent the future of Hillsdale.

Back to the problem of cars.

Another Hillsdale development with potential is the advent of the local Farmer’s Market. Along with the Food Front Cooperative taking over the old Wild Oats market, the local community now has easy access to organic foods which in many cases are locally grown. Yet once more the local “planners” failed to estimate the amount of traffic that the Farmer’s Market would create. The entrance to the market across from SW Sunset Blvd and Capitol Highway is now as congested and dangerous to pedestrians on Sundays as it is on weekdays. I don’t see this as progress; the car has dominion over the pedestrian and bicyclist in Hillsdale. Those that think this way will reduce our vibrant urban community to that of a bland, automobile-saturated sprawl reminiscent of the worst of any of Portland’s suburbs. Why doesn’t the Farmers Market and its boosters provide shuttle buses, bike racks and safe pedestrian access?

Shopping local, supporting growers and eating locally grown organic foods are all fine acts but not at the expense of clogging up the community with more cars. Talk about carbon footprint.

To add salt to the wound our hyper-local newspaper the Southwest Community Connection, the same paper that insists on calling the strip malls along Capitol Highway ‘Hillsdale Town Center,’ recently had an article titled ‘A New Look For The Heart of Hillsdale.’ This ‘new look’ according to the architecture and planning firm SERA is a way to “strengthen the qualities of what is Hillsdale” and “to over time create a more focused activity center or plaza.” Business folks in the district are all over it. As happens all too often in Hillsdale, business and automobiles trump residents and community.

The plan as presented by SERA is to create three high-density commercial and residential zones by extending roads through the middle of what is known as the “Sunset Triangle,” some green space that is bordered by Sunset Blvd, Capitol Highway and SW 18th Drive. But don’t worry, the designers “imagine the roads to be tree-lined boulevards with a European air.” If they truly imagined a “European air” they would understand that in Europe buses, light rail, pedestrians and cyclists predominate in towns and villages and many cities – not the automobile. The ‘European’ tag is just pure marketing fluff, an attempt to soften the blow that this development would create in the community.

I presume SERA has already asked the question of Hillsdale’s residents, [although I wasn't included], of what exactly are the strengths of Hillsdale that this phrase invokes – “strengthen the qualities of what is Hillsdale.” If they had asked me I would have these words for its qualities – urban, green, democratic, aesthetic, forward-thinking, family-friendly, bike and pedestrian-friendly, educated, local, supportive….. If they had asked me of my dislikes they would include the ugly buildings that dot Capitol Highway such as the abandoned gas station next to Baskins Robbins, the bizarre architecture that houses the Mexican restaurant Casa Colima, Starbucks [Baker and Spice next door is local and has better coffee,] the traffic, lack of bike lanes and most importantly the nightmare that is the junction at SW Sunset and Capitol Highway – will it take a pedestrian or bicyclist’s death to make someone pay attention?

Nature has a way of dealing. Capitol Hwy in December

Hillsdale simply does not need more businesses and homes crammed into its green spaces. It is hypocritical folly to suggest that the very same decisions that create suburban blight should be made on behalf of Hillsdale’s residents. Hillsdale also does not need to create more roads for automobiles. In fact the community should be doing the exact opposite and work on creating more bike and pedestrian-friendly streets in our neighborhoods.

Here’s a quick example – SW Sunset Blvd. The city should remove all the “traffic calming speed bumps” as they do not work. Drivers have discovered that they are low enough that by speeding up they can clear them more conveniently! The city should put in either stop signs at every junction or traffic circles to slow cars down. It could also narrow the street by putting in chicanes that slow traffic by funneling and are used very efficiently in Europe. Pedestrians and bicyclists should be considered more important than cars…

The Hillsdale District, as it stands today, is a model community. It has the potential to be as strong a destination as the Hawthorne, Clinton and Belmont Districts in SE Portland. It is an urban oasis with charm and character yet it is being blighted by the automobile and wrong-headed thinking such as the idea of under-grounding our utility cables. The money that would be spent on a pet project like that, one that benefits no one, should be put toward a holistic and sensible urban community plan. One that reduces traffic and improves the safety and quality of life for Hillsdale’s residents and those that are attracted to the district as they go about their activities that support local businesses. Filling in our green spaces with more roads and buildings, even if they were “tree-lined boulevards with a European air,” is simply wrong. Cars should come last.

Surely the community of Hillsdale understands that creating more roads and streets for vehicles that burn scarce fossil fuels is a redundant idea – an idea that is not aligned with Hillsdale today nor one that should be in its future.

[where: 6344 SW Capitol Highway, OR 97239]

Liz trying an ice cold Coors

We can never get enough, we have to always come back for more. The StudioNemo RSVP list stood at 1,532 by the afternoon of Oct 31st. On the night the lines were long, both to get in and to get a drink, but people persevered and the vibe was one of mass fun, good times. If you were at the party you can watch the slideshow above to find yourself or check out our Flickr page. Here’s to next year!

Canon G10 review – New but not improved from Dave Allen on Vimeo.

Now those of you who know us well at Nemo, and particularly StudioNemo, would surely understand that we take our cameras very very seriously indeed… Well, we have lived with and loved the Canon G9 for some time now. In fact we loved its ability to be a basic blogger’s work horse so much that it became standard issue around the shop. So naturally we were waiting with baited breath for the new, shiny updated G10 model…. uh oh… read on and watch the video, it gets ugly.

From Nemo’s Trevor Graves – “This is the review I have been excited to write for months. I have read the rumors on the blogs about Canon discontinuing the G9 and all the new and improved features for the G10. I pre-order the rig on Amazon and sure enough it’s delivered today October 3rd, 2008. With the excitement of a 10 year old I ripped open the box and unleashed the new toy.

That is where the excitement ended.

Being intimately familiar with the G9 I intuitively reached for the Video function of the G10 as I have heard about the new and improved DIGIC 4 chip and the ability of it to produce HD quality video on an SLR. How exciting to have better video!! Wait, what’s this, small video format and NO TIME LAPSE feature. WTF??? I pay $50 more and Canon drops features that turned me on to the G9 in the first place. WTF!!! I am pissed! Who was the genius at Canon that is living in a bat cave to lose sight of what makes the G9 wonderful in this new world of bloggin! Was the decision maker a frustrated SLR engineer that wanted to get their rocks off on a 14.7 megapixel CCD sensor? Why even have the G10 at all. Other point and shoots are smaller and have a large enough meg for decent prints, the larger SLR have better quality and better everything so why go with this G10 product that has nothing more to offer than less noisy images in low light and a faster processing speed that is negligible to the end user any way. WTF??? The over under dial is handy and more convenient but come on guys, I can tweak that exposure on the back end in photoshop and the G9 over/under function wasn’t that horrible. Shit even the lens cover looks cheaper than the original G9 lens cover. I bet this one scratches the lens in its poor construction too. WTF? You could have at least made that better for $50.”

Well, Canon, seems like there’s some ’splaining to do….

This must be one of the better exit letters I have read. Completely transparent and open without any finger-pointing or playing of the blame game. Everyone in business today should take note of how gracious being radically transparent can actually be. Leather Storrs took the high road and should take a bow. Many people in business and politics today can learn a lot from this simple statement.
[Found on PortlandFoodandDrink.com]

“Rocket will close Saturday, November 8th. Economic pressure and critical dissatisfaction combine to make continuing on our current course impossible. We are, however, resolved to keep our beautiful space and our magical garden for as long as we can. To that end, we intend to become a private venue. We hope that you will consider Rocket for your functions: holiday parties, birthdays, receptions, hip-hop throw downs, pinochle tournaments and any other events you can imagine. We will also sponsor several events of our own: wine dinners, thematic menus and roof produce driven dinners. Despite the current national vogue of finger pointing, I’m afraid the responsibility for our failure lies squarely with me. In an attempt to wow and titillate I forgot the fundamentals of a pleasant dining experience: thoughtful, delicious food served expertly. In a fever for molecular gastronomy and cute, clever combinations, I alienated customers and critics. Bring on the humble pie.

This is not a tragedy. Employees will be paid, debts will be honored and there will be no absconding with cash. There are no investors left holding an empty bag. The ripples of our closure are contained.

We would like to extend an invitation to you to join us one last time in the coming weeks. We will host a tequila dinner on November 5th . That will be fun. Other than that we will continue our dinner service, Tuesday through Saturday, from five until whenever. There is still plenty of produce to pick and liquor to drink. We’d love to see you in Rocket and we hope you’ll keep us in mind in the future. Please forward this message to anyone who might find it helpful and remember to subscribe to our newsletter.

Sincerely,

Leather Storrs”

NubbyTwiglet.com: An Art Retrospective

Nemo Design is very excited to present NubbyTwiglet.com: An Art Retrospective by Nemo’s own Shauna Haider, opening on Friday, October 03, 2008. The show will run through Monday November 03, 2008 at Nemo Design: 1875 SE Belmont Street in Portland, OR.

Stripes, shoes and letter forms are collaged into tight, slick pop art on wood and ceramic that are sealed in epoxy resin.

These sturdy and fashion-conscious collages are produced by hand in single editions. Personal photos are edited and combined with fashion magazine cut-outs to create graphically-charged collages that blur the lines between fine art and design.

The Black & White Graphic Insight series is an ode to my love of graphic design. Stark lines and a heavy mix of a mostly black and white palette are a bold contrast to the natural surfaces.

The largest and most complex series yet, Black & White Graphic Insight aims to spark a new-found appreciation for collage as a fine art form.

For further information, please visit http://www.nubbytwiglet.com.

Directed by Aaron Rose and Joshua Leonard

Co-director Aaron Rose will introduce the film this Friday at 7:15PM, Saturday at 3:00PM and Saturday at 7:15PM and will hold a Q and A afterward. Cinema 21.

BEAUTIFUL LOSERS celebrates the spirit behind one of the most influential cultural moments of a generation.

Here’s the synopsis:
In the early 1990’s a loose-knit group of likeminded outsiders found common ground at a little NYC storefront gallery. Rooted in the DIY (do-it-yourself) subcultures of skateboarding, surf, punk, hip hop and graffiti, they made art that reflected the lifestyles they led. Developing their craft with almost no influence from the “establishment” art world, this group, and the subcultures they sprang from, have now become a movement that has been transforming pop culture.

Starring a selection of artists who are considered leaders within this culture, Beautiful Losers focuses on the telling of personal stories. It speaks to themes of what happens when the outside becomes “in” as it explores the creative ethos connecting these artists and today’s youth.

Watch the trailer here.

B-Day ride to Bend 08 from Steve Hoskins Jr. on Vimeo.

Two of our Nemo guys, Steve and Morgan, grab the bikes and head Southeast from Portland, climb over Mt Hood, ride through the reservation via Madras, stop off in Redmond and finally hit Bend. Amazing.

Mark Lewman our CD at Nemo who works on the Nike 6.0 brand came up with the idea of freezing the 6.0 shoes into blocks of ice, so Nike found a rad ice sculptor guy to come out and carve an 8 ft tall Mogan Mid. See below.

Then the kids had at ‘em to see who could be the fastest to thaw out the shoes and win a free pair.

More pics here.

Stop 3 of the AST Dew Tour is in Portland this weekend. And if you are 21+ you can come to the AST After Party – click here for info and to RSVP.

Magic Flashlights from Mike Benson on Vimeo.

Nike 6.0 at StudioNemo from Dave Allen on Vimeo.

Video of Josh Letchworth shooting 6.0 athletes Ben Horan, Nigel Sylvester and Trevor Jacob at StudioNemo.

Art 4 Life at StudioNemo from Dave Allen on Vimeo.

There’s never a dull day at Nemo but when kids come in the energy level always kicks higher. Here’s a bunch of kids from Art4Life art camp putting together a poster for their class with the StudioNemo crew.

HCSC Photo Workshop -Day 3- Tim Zimmerman from Dave Allen on Vimeo.

The HCSC campers woke to Mother Nature playing a game with the weather. The mountain was socked in. While they waited for the clouds to lift, Tim Zimmerman instructed the class all about digital workflow, processing and storage. The clouds lifted on High Cascade and we hit the snow. Molly Aguirre, Hanna Teter, Jeremy Jones all hucked for the workshop shooters.

HCSC Photo Workshop 2008- Bud Fawcett from Dave Allen on Vimeo.

Nemo’s Trevor Graves heads up to Mt Hood every summer to share his experience as a snowboard shooter with the kids at the High Cascades Snowboard Camp. Here’s a first look at the team getting set up on day one. Each year they open up the workshop with a historical slide show from Bud Fawcett. Bud was one of the original gangstas of snowboard photography. The historical sense of snowboarding isn’t as well established as surf and skate. It’s a shame. Bud keeps those authentic real moments alive in his stills.

Here at Nemo, we were lucky to be graced by the VP of Business Development at Ning, Rachel Masters on Friday (read Dave Allen’s account here). What’s notable about Ning’s web-based platform is that it that allows you to create your own social network for anything and is fully customizable in almost every way imaginable.

One of the most beneficial elements of Ning I discovered is the option to use your own domain name. In essence, Ning can be built to function as your main website and many corporations and bands have leveraged this option with fantastic results. The band Good Charlotte uses Ning as their main site while Saturn has created an official gathering place for fans and employees of their line of cars.

Speaking of Saturn, they are a sponsor of the Bravo hit show, Project Runway. Now on its fifth cycle, this season features Portland alum Leanne Marshall of the chic Leanimal label. Though she first auditioned for the show in 2007, waiting out a year turned out to be to her advantage. She took the downtime to further develop her point of view and refine her designs and it shows in the crisp yet voluminous designs.

It’s true that Portland is a hotbed of creative talent. And, as the success of Ning and other social networking platforms have shown, connecting with like minded individuals needn’t be a chance encounter any longer. Whether you’re a fan of Saturn cars, Project Runway (or anything else for that matter), the odds are that a social network is only a click away.

As CNet reports today, Hollywood and YouTube may be edging towards their own version of Pax Romana. Meanwhile, beyond the learned walls of the law courts and Google’s battle with Viacom, we here at Social Cache have been scratching our heads over Viacom’s position.

Obviously Viacom is up in arms over what it argues is copyright infringement whenever one of its artists’ songs are used in a user-generated video. Their lawyers are even arguing that in most cases they want to set aside the notion of fair use. That in itself is ridiculous as in a lot of circumstances Viacom has stepped over the edge of copyright boundaries. In 2007 Viacom sent YouTube 100,000 takedown notices! And as this video from the EFF points out, many of those videos that Viacom had asked YouTube to remove, were not infringing anyone’s copyright.

We ourselves received a takedown notice and had a video removed from YouTube. The video was of one of our numerous snowboarding expeditions to Mt Hood and it included a clip of a song by the group White Zombie. We could have argued that under the law if we had used the music for parody, for comment, for criticism, for news reporting or for non-commercial use then we’d be in the clear. In this instance it was the latter – non-commercial use. We couldn’t be bothered, we weren’t that attached to the video and anyway, like millions of other folks, we put up videos at an alarming rate. Here’s our latest.

So here’s the Nemo and Social Cash POV. By removing our video Viacom denied thousands of people the pleasure of hearing a White Zombie song. One of its own artists! And no money was changing hands. One solution – Viacom should provide YouTube with a license from a roster of its artists who agree that their music can be used in a video for non-commercial use. In return YouTube provides its users with a simple license that allows users to add music from these artists to their amateur videos for non-commercial use for a small fee of, perhaps $3.00. Now Viacom and its artists get a share of this revenue, YouTube users won’t receive takedown notices, and Viacom can go a long way to recouping its, no doubt, millions of dollars it is spending on these lawsuits.

You’re welcome. Let me know why it won’t work….

Meanwhile over at MySpace, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation has a business that’s built on the backs of thousands of unsigned musicians. Who is looking out for them?

Other than an elongated literary adventure through Cormac McCarthy’s ‘Border Trilogy,’ reading ‘All The Pretty Horses,’ ‘The Crossing’ and ‘Cities of the Plain’ in the summer of 2005, followed in 2006 by reading McCarthy’s masterpiece, the aweful ‘Blood Meridian‘ [and I use aweful by way of its true Middle English definition - "Filled with awe, especially: 1. Filled with or displaying great reverence.",] I’m not inclined to reading novels. McCarthy’s ‘The Road’ and ‘No Country For Old Men’ were both outstanding and Martin Amis turns out great work but I prefer non-fiction; currently I am buried in E.O.Wilson’s ‘Consilience’, re-reading Robert Wright’s ‘The Moral Animal’ and am halfway through John Gray’s ‘Al Qaeda And What It Means To Be Modern’ having finally finished his ‘Straw Dogs: Thoughts On Humans and Other Animals’ for the third time. This summer’s less than light reading list just grew by two – the Amazon package today contained John Gray’s ‘Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and The Death Of Utopia,’ and ‘Heresies: Against Progress And Other Illusions.’

Otherwise I’m keeping an eye on the Madonna – Guy Ritchie marital farce.

An oil rig off the coast of California

Here in Portland I am seeing signs that the price of gas is making a difference in how people get around the city. Bus ridership has spiked, there are less cars on the road during the commuting hours and bicyclists seem to be everywhere. Yesterday as I walked my dog along the banks of the Willamette River, I noticed far more sailboats than the motorized variety. Maybe the price of gas is making Americans think twice before getting into the car? Maybe.

I carpool to the Nemo warehouse and it’s still a drag to see that of those cars that are on the road I’d guess that 95% of them are occupied by only the driver. And don’t get me started on the hypocritical Prius owners who fly past at speeds that exceed the legal limits. And on Sunday’s the Hillsdale Farmer’s Market is filled with people buying fresh, locally-produced organic food while the parking lot and the surrounding streets are crammed with their cars. None of this makes sense. If you’re concerned perhaps you can leave a comment on their blog.

It seemed that once gas went through $4 a gallon and the $100 fill up entered the public’s economic equation we’d see a marked change in the way we would use our energy. Unfortunately that’s really not the case.

Portland is one of the more environmentally-friendly and green cities in North America. If we can’t break the automobiles stranglehold on our city then what hope for other cities that are less friendly toward buses and bicyclists? Portland has also shown strong support for ending the war in Iraq. If we disagree with the Iraq war, and the inevitable future Middle East wars that will be fought over oil and water resources, what will we Portlanders do at home to reduce our dependence on foreign oil?

I argue that if we are unwilling to drastically reduce our gasoline use then it is hypocritical of us to oppose off-shore drilling in California and drilling and exploration in Alaska. We simply can’t have our cake and eat it.

Today, President George W. Bush plans to lift a presidential ban on offshore drilling to combat soaring energy prices, a largely symbolic move unlikely to have any short-term impact on the high cost of gasoline.

Who will stand in his way this time?

Related Post: I’m Sick of the Co-Opting of Green

Well not exactly. Portland, Or, the home of Nemo and thousands of cyclists has a problem it seems. The price of gas, the economic slump and the fact that Portland is a cyclists dream city has led to an uptick in the amount of folks biking everywhere. Inevitably they run into vehicles, and I’m speaking both literally and figuratively.

It’s causing a lot of friction. Case in point being this video of a fracas, that took place outside our offices here at Nemo, between a motorist and a cyclist caused, according to the driver, by the cyclist not obeying traffic lights. The biker literally attacks the guys car with his bike.

On the local blogs both sides have weighed in about who’s right and who’s wrong but there is only one solution – car-free streets for cyclists and pedestrians [who are treated worse than cyclists by drivers if you ask me.]

That’s not a boast. Another answer to that question is simple; if you write a blog, you own PR too.

Press releases by the thousands hit editors desks and inboxes daily. The best editors have no doubt created a system for separating the wheat from the chaff when it comes to a good story, but they are still gatekeepers although their gates are becoming smaller and easier to bound over. We are in the age of PR 2.0 as Brian Solis calls it. He as written a paper entitled ‘The Social Media Manifesto – Integrating Social Media into Marketing Communications.‘ He spells out his case very succinctly and avoids most of the jargon that you might expect in a paper on this subject [although some clichés remain.] You can read it here.

A Press Release? Here’s one definition from many that I found online – ‘An announcement of an event, performance, or other newsworthy item that is issued to the press.’ The definition is straightforward and very, very dry, a phrase that unfortunately describes every press release I’ve ever seen. So how does your story get noticed through the crowds and the white noise?

You could go crazy with all the options that are available but I’m thinking that a less is more approach may be more effective. Again common wisdom suggests that you should use Digg, Del.icio.us, MyBlogLog, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, etc, etc. Although those tools are all undoubtedly useful, the problem is that you have to manage all of these accounts and that is time consuming. Also is your story relevant, to say your Facebook group? In fact have you asked yourself – “Does my company even need a Facebook group?” Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. And of course this all begins with the best story that you have to tell, otherwise all of your efforts using any social media will fail. A non-story is a non-story, period.

This is our current approach at Nemo:

We have multiple blogs and bloggers and we experimented with social media for a while before jumping in and writing about our ideas and thoughts. Social Cache is an example of how we intend to participate as thought-leaders and contributors. We are not selling anything here.

Our blogs have distinct voices and authority in the areas of music at Pampelmoose, fashion at Nubby Twiglet, art and design at strange|beautiful and photography at Nemo Productions & Photography.

We create videos and upload them to YouTube and Vimeo [33,460 folks watched that one,] and we drop our photos off at our Flickr site.

We have a Muxtape so you can listen to what we are listening to.

We have LinkedIn profiles for all of our executive staff, here’s our Creative Director, Mark Lewman’s. We even have a Facebook group. [I'm struggling with this one, more later.]

We are lacking in the blogroll department. We need a stronger blogroll on Social Cache.

We have our own Ning social network specific to our company. It’s been in private beta but soon it will be unleashed to the world. Here’s a sneak peek of some of the Nemo team celebrating the delivery of new web sites that we built for HP Blackbird and VooDoo PC. Click those links to see our work.

Find more videos like this on NEMO

When it comes to PR and marketing at Nemo we are following the basic rules of social media. We listen and we participate. We wait to be invited in. We start conversations. We encourage comments.

And we love our employees, even when they leave us…watch the video below.

Find more videos like this on NEMO

Our very own Nubby has an art show in Portland on July 2nd. I won’t embarrass her by rambling on about how great her work is, just go see for yourself if you’re any where near PDX.

“A new collection of graphic black + white artwork from Nubbytwiglet.com, the Black & White Graphic Insight series is an ode to my love of graphic design.”

Black & White Graphic Insight
Reception: July 2nd, 6-9 pm
Show runs July 2nd to August 3rd, 2008

@ Vino Paradiso
417 N.W. 10th
Portland, OR 97209
Gallery Paradiso website

Antony and the Johnsons in concert with the Oregon Symphony, conducted by Nico Muhly, and part of the 2008 Time-Based Art Festival

September 5, 2008 at 8:30 pm Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall

Starting at 10 am on Friday, June 27, 2008 PICA will begin a special MEMBERS ONLY pre-sale for tickets to see Antony and the Johnsons in concert with the Oregon Symphony, conducted by Nico Muhly as part of the 2008 Time-Based Art Festival. Available to the general public on July 11th, 2008, tickets range in price from $20-$75 and seating is assigned.

Not a PICA member? Join now to to be the first to buy your tickets and receive the discounted member price. You can also become a member by calling 503-242-1419.

Weezer cover Radiohead’s Creep, live in Portland from Dave Allen on Vimeo.

Weezer came to Portland last night and rounded up 200 local Portland musicians and fans via a radio call-out from KNRK 94.7, our local alternative radio station. A few of us here at Nemo got the tip so we headed off down to the Oaks Park Fairground pavilion to watch everyone stream in and learn the songs, practice a little and then have a great time performing with their favorite band. The video here is the band and their fans performing Radiohead’s ‘Creep’.

In an age when it is difficult for bands to break through the white noise of popular music culture, Weezer have come up with an interesting idea – tour up the west coast dropping in on radio stations and inviting their fans to come jam with them. They record each nights’ performance and then they will select the best cuts for a limited edition CD to follow. Judging by last night’s crowd it’s the perfect way to engage directly with your fans in an unassuming and non-pretentious way.

Find more videos like this on NEMO

Nemo hosted Shayla Hason’s Hope Is A Muscle photo exhibition last night. Here’s the video with Shayla discussing her work with the Portland Rock N Roll Camp for Girls.

HOLOCENE’S 5 YEAR ANNIVERSARY WITH…
The Shaky Hands
Starfucker
Horse Feathers
DJ Beyonda
DJ Magic Beans
come celebrate one of the most cherished & established venues
in the portland musical landscape…congrats guys!!!

HOLOCENE
1001 se morrison
8pm till late
21+ celebrators
FREE! FREE! FREE!

Nemo Design presents Shayla Hason’s Hope is a Muscle: Photos from the Rock n’ Roll Camp for Girls exhibit opening on Friday, June 06, 2008. The show will run through Tuesday, July 01, 2008 at Nemo Design: 1875 SE Belmont Street in Portland, OR.

“It has been a great honor to watch the camp grow, and with every session to see the girls gain
knowledge, confidence and strength in a single week. As a documentary photographer, I am most interested in the small, sublime moments at camp and the interactions between the girls in the days leading up to the showcase,” said Hason, who has been taking photographs at the Rock n Roll Camp for Girls since 2001, the second year of its existence.

The Rock’n’Roll Camp for Girls, a 501(c)3 non-profit, builds girls self-esteem through music creation and performance. Providing workshops and technical training, we create leadership opportunities, cultivate a supportive community of peers and mentors, and encourage social change and the development of life skills.

Nemo Design is a Portland-based integrated branding, marketing and design shop. Nemo Design’s capabilities include brand strategy, design, motion graphics, interactive development, film, video, print and photography production.

What do you say, Portlanders? We’ve got some fancy new containers but what are we going to do with all those leftover yellow plastic bins? One container can be used for glass, as everything else gets tossed into the new blue thingy with the wheels, but what about the rest of the yellow containers? Where do THEY go? Being that we are one of the leading green cities of the world, surely we should be able to think of something more creative to do with them then simply tie them together like plastic sausage links and float them across the river to our brothers and sisters in Vancouver, Washington.

So what do YOU think we should do with all the extra yellow bins? Whoever comes up with the best idea should win some sort of new Pampelmoose prize that we invent just for you. Hm. We need a good prize. I don’t know…perhaps…the 563 promo cd’s settling on Dave’s desk right now? Yes…you could recycle them for him! I mean, how long could it possibly take to shred 563 cd’s?

As for me, I vote for building a big yellow Qbert environment in the middle of Pioneer Courthouse Square. Yes…that would be awesome. Now gimme my 563 cd’s!

Posted by Jon Ragel

Nemo’s search for an Executive Integrated Producer has ended – we welcome Dan Roth to the Nemo fold. With Dan we’ve added another employee who joins our long list of /slash personalities. Snowboarder, mountain biker, traveler and gourmand (so he likes good food right?) His mom grew up in South London so that’s a plus and she met his dad in NYC which might also be a plus…..and then the traveling began. Although Dan has spent a good part of his life in Portland he has also lived in Switzerland and spent 8 years in the Côte D’Ivoire on the west coast of Africa (that’s the Ivory Coast for those of you who don’t read French.) Dan joins Nemo from Lingo Systems where he spent 8 years rising from his initial position as Project Manager through Senior Project Manager to Operations Manager. Prior to that he spent 3 years as an Account Executive at TMP Worldwide a company he joined after leaving Bank Of America.

Here’s a message from SqueakeClean, who’s in the Nemo circle of friends one way or the other, talking up his crazy fun times working with Kanye West on the Glow in the Dark Tour. From Sam in his own words:

“Hey all!
I just spent the last month orchestrating Kanye West’s Glow In The Dark Tour. It was one of the most inspiring creative endeavors I’ve ever been a part of, as Kanye is a very inspiring person to work with. He is SO PASSIONATE about making everything he does great in a time when there is a great deal of mediocrity in mainstream music. Seeing his crazy HUGE vision come together for this tour from inception to reality was unreal.

Kanye first asked me to do a remix of his song “Flashing Lights” for a video styled after an old school horror flick. He loved the cinematic qualities I added to the music and asked me to orchestrate his tour. As we developed the sound for Glow In The Dark and he began to figure out how it was an epic space story/adventure, we began to realize it had a strong Star Wars aesthetic. At all times, we had two screens of Star Wars Episodes 4-6 playing on the TV’s at the studio. What I ended up doing was redoing almost all of the songs somewhere between John Williams’ Star Wars score and Vangelis’ Blade Runner score, and also doing segues between most of the songs as well. This means big orchestra, brass, woodwinds, timpani, and tons of synths to help Kanye tell his space adventure story. I also ended up bringing in Skywalker sound (the people who did all the sound design for the Star Wars movies) to do sound fx for the show to enhance the experience for the audience, and we mixed the show in surround sound so it is really like going to see a sci-fi movie in the theater. Kanye had the most amazing people build his set and he even got Jim Henson to build him an alien! Kanye figured out this crazy way for all of his songs to tell this amazing story which takes place mostly in his spaceship and on an alien planet, where all of the songs (along with some dialogue) tell the story.
It’s an amazing show!! Go check it out!!! Glow In The Dark!! Coming to a galaxy near you…”

Glow In The Dark Tour is coming to Portland.
6/3/08 Portland, OR Rose Garden

Here’s the link to Kanye’s blog (which is really cool), where he posted some stuff about our work together…

Peace!!
Sam

Check these out:
Squeakeclean website
Squeakeclean MySpace
Squeakeclean T-shirts

Portland, Oregon’s Sameunderneath clothing company appears to fit the bill for a company that markets itself as sustainable and environmentally-friendly. In their own words from the ‘about’ section of their website:

Sameunderneath + Cashmere
Sameunderneath is proud to present its new line of cashmere garments. This luxurious, natural fiber is noted as providing light weight insulation without bulk. Appropriate for all climates, a high moisture climate allows insulation properties to change with the relative humidity in the air. The finest fibers are gathered from the underbelly, shoulder or neck of the Cashmere goat. Our cashmere is sourced from China where the hair is removed by hand with a comb. This aids in the goat’s natural shedding process.

Sameunderneath + Bamboo
Sameunderneath’s collection is produced with one of nature’s most sustainable resources, BAMBOO. This 100% biodegradable plant has the capacity to acclimate to the environment and continue to grow at a rate of 2 inches every hour! Bamboo’s innate antibacterial functions naturally wick moisture and prevent odor. Unlike other antibacterial additives, bamboo is also hypoallergenic. In addition to being plentiful, finished bamboo fabric is extremely soft so using bamboo fiber in all of our garments gives our clothing a comfortable, luxurious feel. This type of versatility cannot be found with cotton, making bamboo considerably more resourceful. Bamboo fiber is mankind’s contribution to the protection of natural resources, rare minerals and the consideration of global balance.

Portland Powerhouse!
Marie Watt Will Lecture About Her Work!
The Public is Invited (it’s free, tell your friends)
Monday April 14th, 7:30pm Sharp!
PSU 5th Avenue Cinema
510 SW Hall St. at SW 5th Ave

Marie Watt (born 1967) is a contemporary artist living and working in Portland, Oregon. Part Seneca, Watt has created work centered on contemporary Native American themes. She holds a B.A. in art from Willamette University and a Master’s Degree from Yale University. She has also studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts.

Watt’s art is primarily lithography and sculpture. For her sculpture, she uses a variety of materials, including everyday objects, as well as textiles, alabaster, slate, and cornhusks. In 2002, her stone sculpture Pedestrian was installed along the east bank of the Willamette River in Portland. Her work has appeared in several exhibitions in the Pacific Northwest and beyond.

In 2004, as part of the Continuum 12 artists series, an exhibit of her work opened in New York City and the George Gustav Heye Center of the National Museum of the American Indian. The exhibit includes Blanket Stories, a sculpture made of two towers of wool blankets, with each stack sewn together with a central thread. The blankets are ones Watt collected over several years, including many Hudson’s Bay point blankets that were given to Native Americans in trade by the Hudson’s Bay Company during the 19th century.

Nemo Design Bike Polo from Pampelmoose

The Nike ad.

The man himself – Saul Williams

Click to hear what Easter Egg has to say..
We pulled it off. Brooklyn’s Your 33 Black Angels made it to town after driving all night from Southern Cali arriving in time to rock the house at Nemo Design – more on that later. First up, the night kicked off with Portland’s party DJ, Easter Egg. Here he gives us some of his thoughts before he hit the laptop and the Nemo Web Cam…Ratatat – Cherry (Easter Egg’s Bellmore Remix)