A professional eye for compelling images.

Just in case you’ve missed the re-launch of our PunkLogic Site over there. Have a look.
We hired Andrej Kadacik from Artisan Photography for our shoot. He is fun to work with as he thinks creatively and really applies himself to a project.

Everybody’s an expert

It is exciting, that production and publication of media is now in EVERBODY’S REACH. Cost is no longer preventing getting your message out. Making a start with a business has not got huge cost implications. For many projects we don’t need to resort to stock photography and still can add ‘real pictures’ to any website.
We pride ourselves, that for the Noosa Biosphere website we have not used ANY stock photography – we were fortunate to have access to Andrew Seymore’s archive(Noosa Journal) and supplemented with diy shots from the community. And this fits well with a website focussing on community engagement. However even for Noosa Biosphere it is worth using professional photographers to support specific purposes. For example the social board was engaging people into their yarning circles through a community snapshot project (link will follow). If you want to make a subject really compelling and ‘media’ effective it is always worth hiring a professional photographer.

The value of  hiring a professional photographer

Everybody’s got an uncle’s gardener building websites in her spare time (web dev), a cousin who is good at picking curtains (art director) and everybody’s got a personal digital camera (photographer).
Everybody can become an internet publisher! The results are out there – some are extremely interesting, some are very effective, but there is also a fantasmical amount of tosh out there. The internet is great exactly for that reason. As a business it is wise to take a gamble.
If your organisation is setting out with a purpose and you want people to trust your product or service you need to get professionals with expertise and experience on site.

• You might be able to  knit a jumper – doesn’t make you a fashion house.
• You might be able to draw a house – doesn’t make you an architect.
• You might be able to stick two length of pipe together – doesn’t make you a plumber.
• You might be good on a F1 game – doesn’t make you a F1 driver.

There might be ‘freak’ examples where the following rule doesn’t apply BUT for most of us mortals it does:

Some measure of talent, education, practice and experience make people good at their job.

And this is also and especially valid ONLINE.

We recommend:

If you run an organisation – business or not-for profit – if you are an expert in your field, get experts from other fields to work with you for your success. It’s more fun and the results are so exciting!

If you are a professional – work with professionals.

If you want good images on your website, use a photographer.
Oh, and if you do something interesting online, something that is good for people and the planet AND you are passionate and professional about it – come and see us at PunkLogic.

PunkLogic at Red on Thomas

The Creative Alliance‘s Catalyst Club is meeting regularly on every last Tuesday of the month. These evenings are hosted by selected (willing) people. For the 25th of August the Catalyst Committee have asked us, PunkLogic, to host the evening. This is how ‘Digg my tweet’ – a light hearted talk and exercise in social media – came about.

“Digg my tweet”  is at ‘Red on Thomas’, Thomas Street, Noosaville
25th of August 2009 – at 5:30pm
$5 (SCCA members) / $10 regular contribution for nibbles
Open to anybody considering themselves working in of affiliated with creative industries (whatever that means) – See the invitation here. Join the conversation.

Jackson and Matt will give a brief overview about what social media is about and what it does. Also some simple instructions on where to start, what’s likely to work and what isn’t. Jackson will run a little experiment on the night. Find instructions on his post over there.

Join us, it’ll be fun.

Knowledge Worker Athletics

A nice and re-asuring reminder for GTD converts who fall as frequently off the wagon as I do.
via http://blog.validateyourlife.com/2008/06/27/productivity-heros/

Biosphere loveliness

nearing completion: the prototype

We are finally in full-on production mode for the Biosphere online experience. It’s great to work with our committed and competent team.

We’ll shortly launch our ‘work in progress’ site – this is going to be the start of the community engagement plan. We hope we will be able to clarify, de-mystify and in some cases simply put things right, that have been mis-reported. We’ll also be able to get feedback, insights and suggestions form the community.

Let the conversations begin. Looking forward to it.

Bettina

The poll re Anna Bligh’s letter

The poll is anonymous, please vote or add your comment on ‘other’.
This is about the letter that went out to parents grade 3,5,7 and 9. For more information see my previous post below  ‘A Queensland Mum’s Rant’.

btw. Professor Masters preliminary recommendations in full here.

You are most welcome to leave comments below. Someone voiced the idea of boycotting testing the tests… let me know and we set up another poll…

A Queensland Mum’s Rant!

This letter was handed out to parents at our primary school.

My daughter had taken these tests Anna Bligh refers to last year. She did very well and the teacher had skilfully protected the children as much as she could from the stress it could have potentially injected. This was the teacher’s achievement, and I was grateful for it. Generally me and other mums found the testing process itself still disruptive to learning and also hard wearing on my 8 year old.

Some comments from our Mum’s mailing list to the letter above were:

E. said
Was anyone else horrified by the Anna Bligh letter re our children’s education and the testing which went out to grade 3,5, 7???

A. said:
Wow – I hadn’t seen it before.  What the??  … Is she saying that passing the test is paramount and requires rote-learning/practice…. as opposed to the more obvious strategy of lifting our standard of education overall through best practice teaching and appropriate funding??
Way too much emphasis on one bloody test… it obviously reflects poorly on the government and they are trying to cheat their way out of the bottom ranks through scare mongering.

H. said:
I don’t think there is much I can add to this except – I concur.
I was most put out with the letter E., was wondering if I was the only one.  C’s teacher has pointed out that it is now in May where it used to be in August, putting even more pressure on the kids and teachers, as they have less time to cover the ‘stuff’ to be tested.

my thoughts:

Improve test results with more testing – BRILLIANT IDEA! It gives the message that we don’t really want to improve standards in numeracy and literacy,  we just want students to get better at being tested, so we use school time to run same tests more often.
It’s  like trying to reduce teenage pregnancy by dishing out more pregnancy test kits.
Whatever happened to the idea of an education system aiding the forming of well-rounded, creative and truly educated citizens? Showing our children how to learn, how to investigate, how to be creative, how to find REAL SOLUTIONS to problems creatively instead of running more mind numbing test procedures.

The tone of voice of THE LETTER itself makes me feel like putting on a dunce hat and standing in a corner!

…’I was disappointed with the overall results’…

Well Mrs. Bligh, I am not happy with your attitude! I’d like to have you and Professor Masters take theses tests a few time in a row, just to see if it advances your growth in any way at all.

But you know what takes the biscuit for me as a Web usbility professional??
Follow Anne’s link and tell me where the booklet is.
http://www.qsa.qld.edu.au/
Mrs. Bligh couldn’t ‘arrange’ for an easy to find link, or a search field or even arrange to include a DIRECT LINK to the booklets in her letter … ok – poor usability on government websites regularly gets my goat… BUT STILL!!
( I followed ‘Assessment Bank’ on a hunch and found it – but considerate, helpful or polite this ain’t!!)

5% ??? Get outta here! Time to Get up!

I’ve  just donated a few bucks to get this advertisment shown on TV at the Boxing Day cricket match.
Get up!:

Even as he was announcing woefully inadequate climate targets on Monday, Prime Minister Rudd was setting aside over $130 million for an ‘information campaign’ to sell us his sparse climate package. Doesn’t it remind you of the kind of climate policy John Howard would have announced?
Thousands of GetUp members are donating to air this ad during the Boxing Day Cricket Test, to an audience of millions.

We are being taken for a ride. This has to change.

‘Name that thing’ – collective naming fun

Our clients sometimes struggle with creating a name for their online business. Here is our collective name finding technique. A process that is fun and gets results.

1. Find a lot of words you like in context to your project.
   I often use an online thesaurus for this: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/joy
2. Collect all your suggestions – you could use google docs for this. Here is an example.
   Set up a doc. Invite your team members / stake holders to add words.
   Set the type fairly large – I use the subheading (H2) style for this. It also gives you good line space.
3. When you’ve got enough: Print (3 copies)
4. Cut individual words into snippets
5. Meet as a group
6. Jumble words around on a table (Alcohol optional)
7. Note down your favourite combinations.
8. Set up a little survey and let friends rank your ideas.

This naming technique encourages lateral thinking and makes you look at word combinations in a fresh way.

Poll Test again! impressive results hehe!

	Answer Text	Votes	%
	get lathered	2	67%
	get laid	1	33%
	Other…	0	0%
	get intellectually stimulated	0	0%
	get wet and have a laugh	0	0%
		3

Noosa Journal | Business Section

Jackson goes ape

Not a single quote from Jackson. He is livid. Jackson however has a pretty face and is terrific with shapes, colours, tags and cheese melts.

And have I mentioned: PunkLogic are now at NoosaBoardrooms? Come and see us. Our phone nr is +61 7 5430 6610.

awfully clever hi hi ho ho

Noosa is on fire

for the record

Jackson goes ape