Alex Bogusky on Defining Success

Don't exaggerate. Don't complicate. Very humble versions of success can lead to a wonderful life adventure. You don’t have to make it seem grand for it to become grand as it becomes reality.

Don't settle for that one thought, though; there's plenty of good stuff in here. Read them all, and remember the road to becoming Homeless Gwen* is a long one, riddled with as much bet-hedging as risk-taking. So take calculated leaps of the latter.

(You can probably forget the last two sentences I wrote because I was just looking for a reason to shoehorn that homeless American Girls doll in somewhere. Her belt doubles as a headband!)

v for Alex + v for Gwen.

---

*Because that's what you're scared of, right? OK, probably less homelessness than abject mediocrity.

Hi, from Sweltering Tatalon!

This is a photo my aunt took of the aftermath of Typhoon Ondoy in Tatalon, a barrio in Quezon City, Philippines. She posted a complete album on Facebook, which, I guess tellingly enough, is how I found out about it.

The shots are emotionally rending, and only partly because of the devastation. You glimpse kids scavenging, people sorting through rubble, and get a sense of what the day-to-day is like: bitter, even without the exacerbation of a natural catastrophe.

A handful more:

There's a power in images that manages to bring a tragedy home, but these also take on a personal significance: my parents left that place. They had trouble doing it, and still more trouble carving a new life out of strange soil.

Still, they succeeded, and succeeded so well that I managed to avoid absorbing their experience. Now I'm elsewhere in the world, feeling all down-and-dumpy because I failed to hold up my end of grocery store conversation today.

Perspective: Priceless™! And brought to you by your social network of choice.

Help the victims of Typhoon Ondoy at the Philippine National Red Cross site. You can also follow the goings-on in real-time via #typhoonondoy.

'Poor Little Girl, Alone in Paris.'

The Man™ likes to say that when he wants to give me angst. But if I'm alone in Paris, it's more my fault than the city's.

It's the wee hours of the morning on a Saturday night. Still recovering from London. And instead of going to a birthday party for a good friend, I stayed in eating chocolate cake and abusing the internet.

My footprints:

• The Greatest Star Trek Directors - This list makes me mad because I bet the majority of people that boosted JJ Abrams have never watched another Star Trek movie. You should see at least three before you ethically permit yourself to vote. Just sayin'.

• Star Trek XXX: The io9 Review [NSFW] - The lower you scroll, the curiouser it gets. But if you're wondering about the genre itself, it can be summed up in three generalities (provided by the above link):

It's always about the original series crew for some reason

it's always kind of silly, since the porn producers are relying on a "parody" loophole to make Trek porn without getting sued

It always features a Spock who's skeevy and/or unsexy.

• Obscene interiors: Ever noticed the backgrounds in porn? Or how effective the Photoshop green screen is at capturing every last chest hair?
• Rhino Records: 1973 - 2009 - Depressing data for music lovers and aesthetes alike.
• The Obamas with the Spanish Prime Minister's goth daughters (via Twitter someplace. Isn't this prime AFP material?):

• Gorillapod. I want one of these more than I want painless childbirth.
• Chuck Norris Facts - in French! "Chuck Norris ne se mouille pas, c'est l'eau qui se Chuck Norris." They're not all funny though. I found it while Googling for the Chuck Norris Wikipedia page, which is a whoppin' 3 results down. Chuck Norris Facts come first. And that on its own merits a bullet-point.
• Wrong Hole, which is really only exciting to me because Scott Baio is in it. You gotta love the sight of that wholesome face (barefoot! and in a sweater!) in such a sensational context:

I mean, right?!

• My Little Memory. It's the Concentration game you remember from childhood, Frenched-up and brought to you by Clinique. I saw it in a Facebook ad and played once for a chance to win a year's worth of this stuff I'll never use. But after all that Star Trek porn, I was so charmed by the tame oh la la! graphics that I played 500 more times. Apparently I suck at Concentration though.

And that, my friends, is how I've blown away the last six hours.

ad:tech London: Hashtags for Today's Auditorium Sessions

Hallo, folks. Rough start today; the party at the Kensington Roof Gardens last night was chill, long-lasting and laced with vodka. As a result, attendance this morning is thin and slightly haggard.

But for the valiant, some good news: wifi is now available in the main auditorium. That means more people can participate in the Twitter orgy. (*does a little dance*)

I'll be livetweeting a few sessions today: Trends & Predictions 2.0, What Makes Young People Tick Online?, and The Shifting Rules of Engagement in Digital.

Here are the hashtags for auditorium-based events this morning and afternoon, in the event you want to either join the conversation or start one.

o Keynote Presentation: A trip to the future... #at09future

o TRENDS AND PREDICTIONS 2.0: Interpreting global market trends to forecast the future for your business & community. #at09trends

o WHAT MAKES YOUNG PEOPLE TICK ONLINE? Engage youth audiences with meaningful dialogue, relevant content and targeted incentives. #at09youth

o JARGON-FREE APPROACH TO TARGETING: Right person, time, message, place. Sounds simple – so how’s it achieved? #at09target

o KEYNOTE: Loyalty, transparency, conversations and giving a damn! #at09loyalty

o CREATIVITY IN DIGITAL: Featuring Match.com and Playboy. How match.com remains the brand of choice for people looking for love. #at09matchplay

o THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN CONSUMER DIALOGUE: Blogs, UGC and communities – how are they changing the way people engage online? #at09engage

If you just want to lurk, visit search.twitter.com and run a search for the hashtags you want. Also be sure to check out #adtechlondon, an ongoing stream of what everybody's seeing, doing and selling.

ad:tech London: Wedding Organization to Engagement, and Vice-Versa

This week I'm in the city of Big Ben for ad:tech London, which kicked off this morning with a keynote by Managing Partner Thomas Gensemer of Blue State Digital, who explained -- as much as he could in a 30 minute space -- what keys to success characterized the Obama campaign.

This particular ad:tech is unique because we're trying something new and scary: livetweeting a number of the presentations. A feature called Picture on Picture enables us to broadcast three projections at once: a video projection of the session, the presentation (if panelists have any PowerPoints) and a dedicated window for the Twitter feed.

Each presentation has its own hashtag, which you can find in the ad:tech programme and which enables us to separate panel-specific tweets from general #adtechlondon tweets. For example, here's the material from the Obama keynote.

The cool thing about this experiment:

o It's new territory for ad:tech, an attempt to reap practical real-time application from a tool that's captured the imagination of both brand folks and citizen users.

o You can see commentary while the speaker is presenting, enabling you to catch things you missed and also input feedback if you think a given point is exceptional or total crap. (Seriously. The ad:tech folks were like, "This is part of the new environment. We should all welcome that kind of feedback.")

o People that get overlooked in the QA can air their views right over the speaker's head -- which certainly contributes to a session's entertainment value.

Caveats:

o There isn't any wifi in the auditorium, which means livetweet feedback is limited to users with 3G phones.

o Attendance is thin -- about 200 pre-reg -- which means that while the crowd's a little more intimate, there isn't a great deal of participation.

Still trying to work out the perfect formula. At the very least, I'm glad it's something we're trying and not just talking about. In the meantime, follow conference-related tweets at @adtech_london. Feedback that isn't batshit-insane* will receive a warm fuzzy reception.

---

* When I started tweeting as @adtech_london early this morning, somebody on Twitter ran off-field with the Obama conversation and tried converting my religion. Come on, there's a place and time for that: college on the quad.

Riverside Romance: Paris vs. Tokyo

Chelsi wraps up her three-month sojourn in Japan this weekend, so I'm hoarding all the cultural comparisons I can while the gettin's gewd. Here's a shot she took of a couple in the Japanese countryside Tokyo:



And here's a shot I took of a pair by the Seine, fortified by a now-empty bottle of wine:



Love love love. Same language, different dressings...