Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

The first Winter Youth Olympic Games will begin in Innsbruck, Austria on January 13, 2012.  I will be travelling there with a family group next week to watch the games, experience the skiing, scenery, and villages in the Tyrol area of Austria but most especially, to support our niece who is representing Canada for Alpine Skiing.

Roni Remme is just 15 and has already demonstrated that she is someone to watch.  She is one of only two young ladies chosen for the Canadian Youth Olympic Team for Alpine Skiing, and in the youngest age possible for this event.

Her ‘fan club’/family will be sporting red and white hats knit by her maternal grandmother and red sweatshirts with the following graphic (of her competing in the Whistler Cup), purchased by her paternal grandfather.  I do hope we don’t embarrass her too much.  :)

I’ll publish updates from Innsbruck on Roni’s and other Team Canada results as well as any new adventures.  The famous Kitzbuehl downhill race will be happening nearby, while we are there so we may go watch that, as well.

Go Roni!

To keep track of events and schedules, here are some URL’s:

http://www.olympic.org/

http://www.innsbruck2012.com/en

www.youtube.com/innsbruck2012

The athlete list can be found here:

http://www.innsbruck2012.com/en/sports/athletes

http://www.innsbruck2012.com/en/sports/athleten/103444_remme_roni

and results on the FIS site:

http://www.fis-ski.com/uk/604/1228.html?event_id=30465&cal_suchsector=AL

In early October, I heard an advertisement on 95.1 radio station about the First Annual Wasaga Beach Short Film Festival.  Wasaga Beach is a neighbouring community to Collingwood (our weekend retreat) and a common beach/resort destination from Toronto (just 1.5 hour drive).  When I was in high school, we would often drive up for the day and sometimes camp nearby.  And when my sons graduated from high school, they came up in droves to rent cabins at Wasaga and celebrate.

As an amateur photographer and videographer, I was intrigued by the opportunity to produce a video for this competition but also conscious of the fact that the entries were due in two weeks.  I originally planned to develop a short film, working together with some others in my family.  There are 5 categories for entries – Romance, Action, Documentary, and Comedy (all 4 to 8 minutes in length) with the fifth category being a 30 second advertisement for Wasaga Beach.  Following the release of my novel, “Vision Speak”, I’ve been exploring how to tell stories using other media, or perhaps mixed media with my writing, so this seemed like a nice chance to experiment with video production.

It came down to the weekend before the entries were due, Canadian Thanksgiving Weekend, which was unbelievably hot for mid-October in my area of the world.  It was hot enough to go to the beach, swim, and shoot some film.  With such limited time, we ended up just submitting one video in the Ad category.  There just wasn’t enough time to produce a longer film for this first event.

Since then we are among the finalists and the Film Festival has placed all the final videos on Youtube.  The Gala event/Award ceremony is on January 21st in Wasaga Beach, however, we will be in Austria for the Youth Olympic Games to watch our niece compete for Canada in Alpine Skiing at that time.  So, our sons who participated in this production will go to the event and hopefully collect our prize.

Here is our video, entitled “Share the Magic at Wasaga”:

In previous posts, I’ve shared a little bit about the ups and downs over the past year of first releasing my novel, “Vision Speak”, with a publisher that didn’t work out and ultimately making the decision that I needed to move on.  Since then, I got my rights back and last month, re-released “Vision Speak” via “Future Day Publications” (my company), printed by Ardith.  The beautiful new cover for the book was designed by my sister, Rebecca Marsden. 

As I am very busy with my job in the software industry and have slowed down promotional activities for the moment, I’ve been experimenting with a new medium for sharing my work – Youtube,  I’ve created a Youtube channel called “Future Day Productions” which will have a mix of personal videos, “Vision Speak” related videos and video-blogs (vlogs).  I’ve included a couple of the first videos I’ve recently produced below.  These are a novice effort but fun to do and I’m excited by the possibilities.  Perhaps I’m having too much fun mixing in a variety of pictures and video clips.  You’ll have to let me know if you have some suggestions..

Introduction to “Vision Speak”:

Dreams and Wizardry on Silver Creek:

For the Winter 2010-11 issue of Women with Vision magazine, I’m on the cover.  As is customary for Vision magazine’s ‘cover girls’, the feature story is my life story.  Lorraine Leslie, editor of the magazine, wrote the story.  My cover shot and the picture included inside the magazine were taken by Catherine J Capek, an extraodinarily talented photographer and good friend.   In fact, I look so fabulous in her pictures (aided by the great work of Mac Cosmetics at the Bay) that I might stay in hiding and let people think I look like this everyday.     If I were really vain, I might fashion a paper bag for my head and paste this picture on the front.  Fortunately, at 48 years of age, I am not as hung up on my appearance as in my younger years.  So, I’ll forego the paperbag.  My friends can continue to rave about the picture and wonder how I managed it.

This issue came out two weeks ago.  I read it once but couldn’t do it again.  Now with a bit of distance, I can begin to talk about this experience.

Before I share my perspective and so that this is not misconstrued as being negative in any way towards the writer or magazine, I’d like to say a few words in general about Women with Vision (WwV) and Lorraine.   Lorraine is an admirable woman who pulled herself up from rock bottom to build an inspirational magazine and women’s networking groups who meet regularly around Southern Ontario, with roots in the Georgian Triangle.  It really astounds me what she has accomplished and I hope she tells her own life story in the magazine one of these days.  The article she wrote about me, based on material that I shared with her and sent her, is nothing but positive and I thank her for it.

But there are a few mistakes and, as I’ve also learned from a previous article written about me in the Era Banner, a common format for this type of article is to “quote” the person being interviewed to bring the story along.  However, because in real conversation, one explains something in fits and starts and long paragraphs – not short sound bites – the tendency is to paraphrase and shorten what one says to lead the story along more effectively.  But in so doing, sometimes the original intent can be misconstrued.  And generally, one is not allowed to proofread or approve the story before it goes to print.  So, it is a natural reaction, I believe, to cringe a little bit when you first read such a story about yourself at the same time as the rest of the world.

In fact, it’s not just the little inaccuracies but actually reading some of the things you say in print, is always uncomfortable.  I should be used to that by writing this blog.  You’re probably thinking, yeah right Eden, obviously you’re not shy and you want people to see you and hear about you.  But that’s not exactly true.

Plus for me, it caused some conflict between my mother and I, which always launches me onto an emotional rollercoaster, perhaps the one I rode for most of my teenage years.  As Lorraine’s story about me relates, I was once a bit of a ‘rebel’ and surviving my teenage years left behind a few scars.  

In this generation, with so many people on Facebook or LinkedIn, with blogs and twitter and youtube, with the inexplicable fascination with reality TV, real-life trainwrecks, and memoir style non-fiction, privacy is becoming less of an expectation.  People are sharing their day to day thoughts and feelings, experiences, embarrassments, angst, break-ups, desires, and even what they had for lunch with anyone who cares to listen/read/follow.

My sons – aged 23, 20, 19 don’t seem to think anything of this.  They update their status on facebook regularly, telling their hundreds of ‘friends’ what’s happening, where they’re going, how they feel about the Leafs, their exam that day, their birthday present or whatever happens to be on their mind in the moment. 

For me, I am on Facebook (personal and fan page for Vision Speak), Twitter, LinkedIn, now Youtube and of course I have this blog and my Vision Speak web site but I am not yet ‘comfortable’ with my online presence and being a ‘public’ person as compared to my kids’ generation who take this for granted.  As an author who wants to share my work with the world, I have moved in this direction but I have to confess that every step along this path is uncomfortable (like wearing underwear washed with fiberglass). My inclination is to run back inside, shut the doors, close the blinds and hide.  I rarely update my Facebook status and most of my tweets are retweeting interesting quotes or science stories or blogs.  I’ve not yet reached the stage where I can daily or hourly share my activities or innermost thoughts in these shared public forums. 

Well, perhaps until today.  My story is out there now so I might as well face it.

This relates to the “generational comfort” of having a public presence that our kids have always known.  Those of my generation seem to be mixed, some have embraced this (take my old high school friend Karen who first convinced me to go to Facebook a few years ago) but many of us are still not quite comfortable although we are ‘out there’, still others won’t consider joining Facebook or Twitter.

If we consider the older generation – my parents and grandparents, for many of them they can’t fathom what everyone is doing on Facebook.  They abhor the idea of sharing their day to day existence in this manner.  They grew up with an intense need for keeping certain things private.  Even now, in their 60′s and 70′s, there are aspects of their ‘story’, their youth perhaps, that they don’t want people to know.  These are things that many of us wouldn’t think twice about advertising on our status and our friends wouldn’t think twice about commenting on.  But for them, it’s deeply personal.

So imagine someone of this generation, someone who is extremely private and uncomfortable with people knowing the intimate details of their life.  Then think about how they might feel if some of this information is published because they are part of someone else’s story. And if those details are a bit mixed up, it might be even more embarrasing for them. 

The thing that I’ve come to realize is that we all have a story.  And everyone’s story is interesting.  There are inspirational aspects that everyone could share with the world and it might make a difference to someone.  This is one of the great things about the way our culture is going, the opening of our private lives.  (Of course, there are some bad things, the sensationalism, the obsession with Snooki and Brangelina and crazy housewives and the like..)  

But truly walking in someone else’s shoes can be educational.  And every individual’s life story involves how they came to exist on this planet, their upbringing and early life, their struggles to reach adulthood, their failures and triumphs, and of course, the significant people in their life, the people who love them and support them.  In other words, it’s impossible to tell your life story and not tell a little bit of your parents’ story too.

In my case, by becoming an author, by choosing to share  my story with the world, I’ve signed up for some degree of this public life but my mother, who has no interest in this, did not.  And this, I believe, is the heart of the conflict.  Yet, she is also proud of me and supportive.  So we move on.

Lorraine has asked women who have been on the cover to share their feedback about this experience.  I’ve asked for more time.  The first week, quite honestly, was very stressful.  The second week, I deliberately put the magazine out of sight and out of mind. 

Now, I’m almost ready to come out of hiding.