Bill Cammack

re: Chris Brogan’s “Your Voice”

I think there’s something more important / useful than learning voice. That would be learning to listen to yourself and discover your own voice.

Learn your own patterns, your own perceptions, your own priorities and values. The more aware you become of your own personal “voice”, the more efficient you’ll be in expressing yourself and the more you’ll enjoy what you’re doing, which makes it easier to write A LOT in a short amount of time.

Then again, it depends on what one is writing about… I can’t write about surfing, because I don’t surf. I’ve seen “Point Break” and other beach movies, and I’ve even watched a competition or two on television, but I have no personal experience with surfing, so A) it would take me a long time to write something about surfing, and B) whomever actually surfs would know that what I’m saying is completely inauthentic. If the goal is to write horror films or stories about people flying around on brooms, then, yeah… I think that needs to be learned! :D

Your (Chris’) particular voice may very well be ‘merely’ a series of writing tricks….. except it’s YOUR collection of tricks and you deploy them in your own particular fashion. The individuality is in the selection and use of the tools, not the tools themselves. The ‘value’ of your voice is found in the same place. Your perception is what separates you from the next writer. It’s all about how you perceive things and then how you express yourself to the reader. I see a table, you see a chair, someone else sees a collection of wood. Making others aware of a different way of seeing things is value right there.

Person vs Material is an interesting question. I think the first time, people in general read for material… After that, they read for the person… assuming it’s the same material. I think that if they disagree with or just plain wouldn’t like to believe what you have to say about things, they won’t return to read more, even if it’s on a topic they’re really interested in. OTOH, if you have an interesting take on people flying around on brooms, they might click on your new article about auto repair…..

I think that what makes someone’s ‘voice’ useful to someone else is relevance and competence. If you’re talking about issues that are interesting or important to that person and they respect what you have to say about it or how you see it, you’ve gained someone that sees you as an authority on that topic. If that person decides to check what you have to say on other topics, they may gain respect for your views in general and not just on that one topic that they clicked on from a search engine that one time.

Interestingly enough, IMO, it all comes down to individuality, and perhaps the luck of the draw… How much life experience is someone bringing to the table to be able to talk about certain issues? How much training did someone pursue to learn “writing tricks”? How often can you say about that person “he/she has a point there!”? How narrow does that person’s range appear to be in different topics that they can talk about intelligently? Where has this person gone and what have they put themselves through in order to formulate the concepts they’re expressing right now?

I’ve actually learned some of this over the last few months. The ‘value’ isn’t in the production values or the writing tricks & gimmicks. The value is in what YOU take for granted that other people have no idea about and have no way of finding out about unless YOU tell them about it, take them there and show it to them…..

Having read the archives of HollaBackBOSTON, HollaBackNYC and HollaBackDC, that I found out about the other day and posted about… I gained more of an understanding of what their complaints are.

[Disclosure: Anyone who actually KNOWS me knows that there's nothing I like more than an attractive chick, and I'll be the FIRST one to check her out... regardless. :D]

The way I can empathize with what they’re saying is to consider bums that we have on the streets of NYC. For instance, you might have a bum standing outside of McDonalds, who has taken it upon himself to act as the doorman. As you go inside, he’ll hold the door for you and perhaps say something pleasant to you. On your way out, he’ll hold the door again, and then ask you for some change. That’s pretty annoying. First of all, it’s not like he has an actual JOB with McDonalds. Second, it’s not like you ASKED HIM to open the door for you either time. Third, you go to McDonalds all the time and open your own doors, so what in the world do you need HIM to open the doors for, and FOURTH, why would you choose to pay him for a service that you didn’t ask for. That’s a couple of levels more annoying than going to the bathroom in a restaurant or club and finding out that there’s some guy whose job it is to stand next to the sinks and hand you paper towels, and he expects you to tip him. :?

The reason I see the bum @ McDonalds as a simliar situation is that he’s attempting to interrupt whatever you were doing, saying or thinking in order to try to get some money for you, totally to HIS benefit, and none to yours. This would be similar to the guy on the street that makes some complimentary statement to a woman so maybe he can ‘get on’ in the near future. The reason it’s NOT similar is that I’m a guy. I have all these fantastic, aggressive male options available to me, such as telling the bum to shut up or mind his business, saying I don’t have any change, or letting him know I take offense to him bothering me and if he keeps it up, I’m going to do something about it.

One difference is that many women are intimidated by male harassers and aren’t willing to attempt to get them to cease and desist. This makes sense, because most men like women that are smaller than they are, so they would be physically intimidating to the women. Another difference is that women can’t act like they don’t have what the guy wants. The fact that the guy has chosen to try to get some from her indicates that he’s already decided she has what he wants. The bum doesn’t know whether I have change on me or not. If I tell him I don’t have it, and he persists, there’s going to be a problem.

This is where I empathize with the HollaBack series the most, because a lot of the women who post there aren’t willing to do anything but talk to or about their harassers. Some guy says something or touches them or does something he knows damned well he shouldn’t be doing, and their only recourse is to talk about how ugly he is or how old he is or how out of shape he is or how badly he smells or how pathetic he is or how disrespectful to women….

The pattern is clear, though. In the vast majority of the cases, by the women’s own posts, the men didn’t give a damn AT ALL what the women thought or wanted, and they still don’t. This is something they understand, but they don’t seem to benefit from this knowledge. Knowing that the guys don’t care what they think or say doesn’t cause them to revise their complaints to a more efficient format that might bring about education and perhaps some degree of change. It’s the same reason why the porno industry is big business. The women look good, do what the guys want them to do, and have ZERO opinions about ANYTHING. It stands to reason that if you take someone whose only interest in women is how good they look and “what they’re good for”, and put him on the street and he does whatever he does, it’s not an effective retort to say stuff like:

“you’re old enough to be my father”
“you don’t even know me”
“your breath stinks”
“you’re disrespectful to women”
“would you treat your mother or sister like that?” (my personal favorite :D)
“have you no home training?”
[flipping the bird or cursing him out]
[some statement to him that she wasn't "dressed sexy" at all]
“did I ask you to talk to me?”
“I didn’t give you any indication I was interested in you”
etc etc etc etc etc…….

I think HollaBack’s idea of the women taking pictures of the range of guys from pervs down to regular guys just trying to meet a woman he finds attractive is a good idea, although a dangerous one, for obvious reasons that I won’t bother to go into. Apparently they also give speeches and have other programs that they do. I think that’s great, because increasing education and awareness is key, IMO. They’re never going to outlaw guys trying to talk to girls… That’s just not going to happen. Society’s set up so that guys have to chase girls, period. That’s why guys court women and take them out to dinner and buy them drinks at the club, etc etc. It’s all an attempt to gain favor with her so he can eventually get whatever it is he wants from her… sex, a relationship, free food, a place to stay, money, whatever. Biologically, women are more of a commodity than men, simply by the incredible difference between how much sperm men have and continually create, and how few eggs women are born with and then they don’t get any more. It’s never going to be different, so the best bet is to increase awareness that women feel endangered when guys press up on them in the street.

So… With my new understanding of what the issues are for women being harassed in the street, I decided to take a walk tonight and pay attention to the interactions I had. I walked to a bar without incident. The male “doorman” checked my ID without incident. The female hostess greeted me without incident. I ordered my beer from the male bartender without incident. The few people that needed to get by where I was standing, some male and some female, excused themselves, I made way for them and they went by without extraneous comments. I left the bar without incident. I walked around the neighborhood some more, passing individuals, couples walking together and groups… no incident. I went into Barnes & Noble. I asked a woman there with a laptop if she was using a wireless connection. She wasn’t. I asked this guy behind the counter if B&N had wifi, he said yes, and got me a pamphlet on it. I thanked him and left. I ordered food from a female cashier and didn’t hear any extraneous remarks from her or from the waitress that was hanging out near the front of the place. I went to another store, then walked back home without incident.

Just about every one of those situations is mentioned in a story by some woman on those HollaBack sites, and I’m sure whatever other support groups that were created for this kind of thing. I can’t imagine how annoyed I’d be if every time I went to do something, someone tried to strike up a conversation with me or get something from me. For me, it would be like bums standing in front of every place that I want to go into and always asking me for change! :D Still, I can’t fully “get it”, because my aggressive nature makes me see situations like that as a challenge, not something intimidating. I don’t feel pressure… I just feel annoyed.

Anyway… Good luck to the HollaBack Girls. Some of the guys on those pages are legitimate creeps and need to be prosecuted. A lot of the guys are just “boys being boys”, and I can tell you, as one of the boys, a lot of them just don’t get it as far how the women feel physically intimidated by their street raps. A lot of guys aren’t going to care one way or the other, and they’re going to enjoy women as they see fit. I think that there are also a lot that would change their ways of being if they received some sort of education that what they consider flirtation and socialization is seen by many women as harassment and physical intimidation.

On the way to the subway, I called Masami. It turned out that she was already downtown and hanging out with a friend of hers. Perfect. One door closes, another one opens. :D We decided that I’d buzz her when I got downtown….

The subway ride was uneventful. I got to the store and went to the display where they have all of the digital cameras out for you to check out. I had already checked and knew that they had the NV3 in stock. What I didn’t check was whether it was WORKING OR NOT ON THE $&(%#* DISPLAY! :evil: So, of course, I got to check out the Sony, but not the Samsung. The sony didn’t have a memory card in it, so that meant you couldn’t use “fine” mode (30fps). You had to use regular mode (15fps). It was very cartoonish, and as I panned from side to side, it was very jerky. I was aware of what fine mode looked like already from kitykity’s post, so I wasn’t concerned about it. The NV3 was another situation, entirely. I was sure it took good video from Randolphe’s stellar review of it (besides saying it didn’t work well in low light). That was one of the things in the Sony’s favor. Part of their advertisement is how well the camera works in low light.

The NV3 is flat black. The W70 is bright, reflective, mirror, metallic silver. The NV3 zooms without changing form. The W70 has this big “HEY! I’M TAKING FILM OF YOU” zoom lens that telescopes towards the subject(s). Besides speed issues that I mentioned in the previous post, people have completely different reactions to cameras from video cameras. It’s like they don’t think you can take video with them or even good video with them or get sound with them. It helps for the realness of the moment, because people aren’t “acting like they’re on camera”. Another benefit is that it goes right in my pocket. With a video camera, you have to bring other bags, etc. The NV3 shoots an extra video mode, which is 720×480@20fps. I couldn’t decide, especially without seeing ANYTHING working on the NV3, so I called Masami to find out where to meet up with them. Another thing I had noticed that was REALLY annoying about the W70 is that the wide/telephoto lever is on top of the camera, facing the front. I don’t know WHO came up with that idea, but it’s really dumb. You have to hold it in a really strange and uncomfortable way to utilize the zoom. The NV3 has the lever on the back of the camera, in perfect position for you to one-hand the shot and still zoom.

So I met up with Masami, and she was with her friend Laetitia who was visiting from France! (Sweet! 8)) We strolled down to Veniero’s Italian Bakery on 11th street & 1st avenue for some amazing desserts. Maybe an hour later, we started making moves so the ladies could “get their shop on”, and then I needed to go back to the store to choose a camera.

I needed to get the camera now because “the moment” was unfolding right in front of me, and I was aware that I had ZERO ability to record it. Since I was heading out specifically to get a camera, I hadn’t brought my Canon. We got to the store, and it was crowded, yet they only had two attendants working the camera section. It was completely retarded. People were stacked up waiting around, browsing cameras, like I had done earlier that day, waiting for someone to help them. Meanwhile, the guy that was working the area was ringing up a customer, and the girl working the area was getting rapped to by some guy that was talking about taking a camera hiking or something. :? I guess he couldn’t tell she wasn’t interested in guys. Anyway… I got in position and as soon as he finished saying whatever he was saying, I told her that I wanted the Samsung camera. I told her this to try to be really simple for her. With the amount of people there, and only two workers, I decided this would be the best thing for her, as opposed to complex sentences. She STILL looked at me like she didn’t know what I was talking about. I had already asked the guy for his take on the cameras, and he had told me how the NV3 is also an mp3 player and he had been the one that pointed out the non-telescoping lens. I also knew the NV3 can be used as a voice recorder, so since the cameras were the same price, and the only benefit to the Sony was the low-light capability, I went with the NV3… basically off of Randlofe’s review of it, since I never actually saw it in action.

So the chick was really crabby, like she was having a bad day… which I can understand, because she was working while I was shopping. :D I’m sure that when you work in the service industry, you have to deal with a lot of jerks and people that make your day miserable on a regular basis, so I just rolled with it and thought it was funny and amusing. She just had this “I don’t care at all about serving you” aura to her that was really funny to watch, being that she was dressed up in a little colorful outfit, specifically placed there to be the human interface between the customers and the cash register. She was probably new to the job and was just doing it to get money anyway. If the job wasn’t so easy, she’d probably quit and do something else… or nothing.

So I bought the Samsung NV3, and I got a 2gig memory card with it. I read the manual just enough to figure out how to put the battery and memory card inside, then I turned it on. I took a couple of test videos, and they looked perfect, right out of the box. I looked at the instruction manual, and it doesn’t tell you how to use any… and I mean just about ANY of the features! :D There’s another manual that’s on the disk they give you, so maybe that has more information.

Next, we were off to Uptown Lounge to test out the Martini selection (Chocolate, Lemon, Apple…..) but not without stopping first @ a shoe store along the way… because… well… you know how it goes! :D

heh. Thanks for my CCIR award, Rox. :D [Chief Commenter In Residence]

It’s partially from browsing beachwalks.tv that I decided to make the switch to WordPress. There’s a lot of functionality that Blogger doesn’t have, in a tradeoff for ease of entry into blogging/vlogging.

I think beachwalks.tv’s interesting, because each episode is really the *beginning* of a conversation. I’m sure that other people have similar issues and questions, and your show gives them a starting point for introspection.

This week, Jonny’s guest speaker on Reinventing Television was Eddie Codel, producer and co-founder of Geek Entertainment TV (GETV).

==> Watch The Video! <==
==> “Read The Text Chat <==

The show uses webcams and tele-conferencing to bring people together to discuss cutting-edge issues in video blogging.

Air-time is Thursday nights @ 10pm EST. You don't need a webcam to be involved... just a broadband connection & browser to see the video and a telephone to call the toll-free conference number to listen in.

Tags: ReinventingTV, Reinventing Television, Jonny Goldstein, Phovi, Eddie Codel, Geek Entertainment TV, Bill Cammack, ReelSolid.TV

Last night, I checked out Reinventing Television, hosted by Jonny Goldstein, with special guest Bre Pettis.

==> Watch The Video! <==

The show uses webcams and tele-conferencing to bring people together to discuss cutting-edge issues in video blogging.

Air-time is Thursday nights @ 10pm EST. You don't need a webcam to be involved... just a broadband connection & browser to see the video and a telephone to call the toll-free conference number to listen in. I definitely learned a few things I didn't know and I'm looking forward to next week's show, featuring Geek Entertainment TV.