10 years ago I used the front page of a little website I built called Slashdot to ask Kathleen Fent to be my wife.

Truthfully, I was pretty sure she would say yes.  We’d been dating for a couple years and I had known for several months that I was going to propose.  I eventually settled on the idea of doing it on Slashdot, but I wasn’t exactly sure of how or when. As Valentines day drew nearer, it just became obvious.  My self imposed deadline made sure I wouldn’t chicken out. Continue reading →

In 2009, Slashdot ran a story about Star Wars Uncut, a crowd sourced fan creation where individuals sign up for 15 second clips from what is now known as Episode IV: A New Hope. At the time I was just tickled by the silliness of the whole concept.  And It took years for them to put it together, but what they assembled was pretty amazing.  It’s over 2 hours long, and it’s on Ye Old YouTube:

[ http://www.youtube.com/embed/7ezeYJUz-84?fs=1

I can’t imagine another movie bringing together fans like this… and I won’t lie.  It’s no masterpiece of cinema.  But hundreds of individuals came together and each made their own 15 second block interpretation of Star Wars history.  These hundreds of clips were painstakingly assembled together with impressive skill:  the editor did a really good job of blending sound from one piece to another… The audio levels are constant, and intelligently mixed even when individual shots split over the boundary between adjacent blocks. Hundreds and hundreds of clips from around the world using countless different cameras both virtual and real.  This was a serious undertaking of epic frivolity.

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For my final chapter in my Ford/NAIAS adventure I want to write about Ford’s marketing efforts directed specifically at this so called “Community Influencer” group.   Besides focusing on the traditional auto industry press, they flew out something like 150 bloggers and tweeters, put them up in a hotel, bussed them around Detroit… and then crossed their fingers, hoping that they would say nice things about the Ford Fusion.  A risky experiment to be sure… did it pay off for them?

The face of this event was Scott Monty, a blogger and tweeter who runs Fords social media program, (as well as a personal site about Sherlock Holmes).  He wore a tie, which made him stand out amongst his guests. The influencers themselves were a hugely diverse group: I spent time talking to folks who run gadget websites, farms, parenting advice sites, eco/green sites, as well as one of the most popular photographers on Google+. I don’t know who made the roster selection- if it was the Ford folks or the reps from Ogilvy, but from my perspective it seemed like they had done their homework, with one notable exception.

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Day 2 for the Ford Community Influencers was entitled the ‘Design Fantasy Camp’.  We were promised a peak inside the design process for a modern automobile.  The itinerary included a blend of the old (clay modeling) and the new (virtual design, CG rendering) and how modern testing is done when actually building a full scale prototype is prohibitively expensive.

I joined up with a group of randomly sorted folks given white wristbands with orange dots, and was bussed over to the Ford Product Design Center.  I don’t live that far from here, and I’ve driven by these buildings before, it was a bit odd to be actually let inside… I was hoping for Oompa Loompas and a host clad entirely in purple velvet… I was let down on those points, but overall pleased with what I saw.

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I recently got an email asking me if I would like to come see the epic Detroit Auto Show known as NAIAS on Ford’s dime.   This is the big deal show win the area: the local news covers it like crazy, and for as long as I’ve lived here I’ve always wanted to check it out.  I’m not doing anything particularly urgent, so I decided to go see the shiny.  If you’d like to just skip my words and look at pictures of said shiny, you are welcome to do so.  I totally understand.

Monday night they treated us to a snackish dinner at the Henry Ford Museum.    For those of you not from around these parts, it’s actually a pretty incredible place.  They have old airplanes, and a zillion cars.  I had seen the place during the hottest days of summer for the Maker Faire a few months ago, and was really excited to see it less crowded.  The Ford “Community Influencers” event itself was held in a new exhibit tracing a long line of cars from every carmaker you can think of, as well as a bunch you can’t.

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