I love this idea. The head of affiliate relations for Learfield Sports (Keith Kowalski) posts a brief (60 sec) video, explaining a new text alert service for keeping radio affiliates up to the minute on changes to broadcast times due to weather. Nothing fancy here. Just pointed the Flip camera and popped the advisory up on YouTube. Our sports ops folks are making excellent use of their website (WordPress) which serves 40+ networks.
I got mine today. More on that in a moment.
I think just about everybody dreads performance evaluations. Managers hate doing them and employees hate having their work “evaluated.”
All managers know this is something that should be happening on an ongoing basis. But it’s so uncomfortable (remember that scene in Office Space with the “Bobs”) it usually happens only once a year, usually at budget/raise time.
Employees don’t hear a single word of the evaluation (assuming there’s a face-to-face with the boss) because they’re just waiting to hear how much of a raise they got. They also question whether the boss has any idea of how they are really “performing.” At least that’s how I remember it, before I parachuted out of management, landing safely in Learfield’s Internal Services Group (accounting, engineering, IT).
A couple of of years ago the head of ISG asked for my ideas on how to evaluate what I do. (Huh. Why didn’t I think of that?) I suggested he ask the people I worked with (and for) what they thought, keeping their responses anonymous, of course. He liked the idea and we’ve done it that way (for me) for the last two years.
Most of this year’s feedback was positive (modesty prevents me from sharing) but I do have some areas that still need improvement:
“…can be sarcastic but almost always in fun. Steve lives and breathes the web both at work and in his off time. The downside is whatever he is working with or reading at the time, you are going to hear about it at least as much as you want if not more.”
“Steve Has a tendency to be flippant and arrogant if you don’t agree with this assessment that the world revolves around the Web (and Apple). Sometimes we have clients that need something simple or have a need that he doesn’t agree with. Patience, and understanding that other points of view may be valid, would be appreciated in those instances.”
“Steve is very creative and talented. With that skill set comes a certain degree of “attitude” that isn’t always well-accepted/understood by others.”
Guilty as charged. I’m something of a smart-ass but I’m working on changing that. (Sharing this here is a small part of that effort).
But I like this kind of performance review. The anonymity makes it easy to get the cold hard truth. Every encounter with a co-worker or client is an opportunity to get right … or get it wrong. Keeps a boy on his toes.
As far as I know, I did the first live video feed from a committee room at the Missouri state capitol. I know, you’re asking yourself why would anyone bother. You could ask that about a lot of important-but-not-too-interesting news.
We’ve been streaming audio of debate in the Missouri House and Senate for 8+ years and recorded audio of lots of hearings, but never video. Finally all of the pieces of the puzzle seemed to be in place: hardware, software, wifi.
I used a little Logitech webcam (on the tripod); the Casio Exilim for back-up (on the small tripod) and ran it (the LogiTech) through CamTwist up to USTEAM. I think I can skip CamTwist next time. You can sample a few seconds below.
It ain’t CBS but I didn’t have wait on the sat truck, either. Next time, I might just try this on the iPhone if I can get close enough.
I don’t remember how I happened across Jonathan Brownfield. One of those six degrees of Twitter things, probably. Jonathan is a professional sports photographer and has shot games involving “our” teams so that was probably it.
Along the way he mentioned visiting family in Missouri over the holidays so I tweeted him with an invite to stop by for lunch/tour/interview. Today was the day.
Here’s some background from one of Jonathan’s websites (for those that take a pass on the interview):
“While in high school, I started working as an assistant for Sports Illustrated photographer, David Klutho. That marked the beginning of my career as a professional photographer. This lead to having over 20 photos published in Sports Illustrated.
When I started college I began working for the University of Missouri Athletic Department and became their Head of Photography. Besides shooting, I coordinated a group of photographers to make sure every home event was covered.
During my sophomore year I was recruited by Hooters to photograph some of the local girls for the 2008 and 2009 calendars and the 2008 Miss Hooters International Beauty Pageant.
I currently shoot sports for US Presswire.
Now days my work is regularly seen in USA Today, ESPN Magazine, and in the LA Times.”
Did I mention that Jonathan is 23 years old?
I made a list of questions to ask a professional sports photographer only to discover that Jonathan has branched out from that (still a passion but now kind of a weekend thing). I rambled on with my questions so I’ve chopped the visit into two, 20-minutes chunks. The first one is mostly bio and social media. The second finally gets around to some sports stuff.
I was very impressed with Jonathan. Accomplishing what he has at 23, it would be easy to conclude one’s poop is odorless. He is what your grandmother called “a nice young man.”
You can see some of his photography here. He blogs here. And he’s @johnnybond86 on Twitter.
We completed a make-over of one of Learfield’s websites yesterday. Like most companies, we’re watching our expenses, so I was pleased to bring it in for the $59 I paid for the theme (not counting my time and some IT help with site prep).
Since the beginning of the year, we’ve converted a dozen websites to WordPress and the process has gone very smoothly. With 50 users working in half a dozen offices, we needed a very friendly content management system and WordPress has delivered. Both for the people working in our newsrooms and for me.
There are literally thousands of plug-ins for every conceivable task. And they’re all free (or donor supported).
I’m not a designer but the variety of affordable WordPress themes is staggering. After a good bit of looking, I found myself coming back again and again to two providers:
StudioPress has great-looking themes that cost about $60 each. Use as-is or have one customized for a couple of hundred bucks.
Thesis is the theme I chose for our news networks. Out of the box, it’s a clean, minimalist design. We can add a coat of Candy Apple Glitter Flake paint later, but for now, I wanted something that was easy to manage under the hood.
Both of these developers have great support forums and documentation.
I’ve spent less than $2,000 on the refresh of ALL of our websites. Aside from some great help by our IT folks, and the day-to-day content posting by our news and sports staff, I support all of these by myself.
If quick turn-around is a requirement, StudioPress/Thesis + WordPress is a winning combination. If the content has been assembled, I can get a site up and running in a matter of a few hours.
Fast, inexpensive and fun. For the win.
Photo by Jim Foucault. Silhouette is big old satellite uplink dish.
Zena is the traveling companion of Mike Mah, a pain management specialist who “practices healing techniques through martial arts.” They visited Learfield in 2006. Mike insists Zena rides on the motorcycle with him, hence the goggles.
Iowa State and University of Iowa football fans can now text university staff to alert them to problems. Like some drunk ass clown sitting behind you screaming obscenities. Or a lost child or something.
They just punch in 97178, then type the word ALERT, before sending a text message (including your seat location).
Hawkeye officials implemented a new text messaging system before the season, in order to give fans quick and discrete access to ushers as well as security and medical personnel.
The texting program is part of a larger communications agreement with Learfield Sports (company I work for) and FanDriveMedia. Full story here.
A couple of weeks ago I got a call from one of the guys in our Minnesota office. He wanted a website to serve the advertisers of one of our networks. Said he didn’t really have a budget and he’d like to have it by the first home game, to be played in a brand new stadium (just over a week away). They were going to have lots of photos and didn’t have a good way to share them with fans and sponsors.
I purchased a WordPress theme (from Studio Press) for $65 and paid another hundred or so to have it customized (thank you, Rebecca). Ten days later the site was up and running (still adding content, obviously).
I’ve been at this long enough to be amazed that I could give the guy a credible website for $200 in a week-and-a-half. AND because it’s WordPress, he –or one of his interns– can update this site thorughout the season. I remember when this would have taken months and cost thousands of dollars.
When I started at Learfield Communications in 1984, the business was operated from a 3-story brick house on McCarty Street in Jefferson City, MO. The rooms were jammed with desks and partitions and the kitchen was the “common area.” In this photo (below), you see Clyde, Clarice Brown, Bob Priddy (all still with us) and a few others.
This image captures that time very well. There was very much a family feel to the company. The days of high-tech conference rooms were many years in the future. This is one of several images I scanned from a contact sheet (thus the poor quality). The original prints are undoubtedly buried in a box in some closet.