Social Media - Christopher Arnold Designs

Social Media

May25

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Vine 101

Posted in: Apps, iPhone, Social Media
So, despite my best efforts to resist, I gave in and have been using Vine for the last month or so.

(Aside: I would be remiss if I didn’t give a shout-out to my colleague, Laurie Blandford, who was enthusiastically sharing Vine with pretty much everyone in the office after she got hooked by it. This is all your fault, Laurie. All. Your. Fault.)

But I must admit – it’s actually an app (and social network) that I have fun using.

A LITTLE BACKGROUND

So, for those unfamiliar with Vine, you may be familiar with its parent company, Twitter. In the same way that Twitter makes you be concise in 140 characters or less, Vine allows you to record and share up to six seconds of video.

Yes, you read that right. Six seconds of video.

This was the source of my initial apprehension with the app.

As a multimedia journalist with a background in digital video production, I’m used to producing content anywhere from about 30 seconds up to nine or 10 minutes in length, with the average being one-to-two minutes. But six seconds?

Yes, six seconds. Just go with it.

USING VINE

Here’s a quick look at the Vine app’s interface.

The Vine app, which is available only on iPhone, is amazingly simple to use. It doesn’t burden the user with an abundance of functions or controls. Simply press the ‘Camera’ icon in the upper right-hand corner, then tap the screen to record video. It will record for as long as you press the screen, up to six seconds. When you take your finger off the screen, it will pause, allowing you to cut to another scene if you wish.

Users can add hashtags, tag users or add location information to their posts as well, which are functions familiar to users of Twitter, Instagram and other media.

You can only share video that you record using the Vine app. So, if you happen to have a five-second clip shot with your phone’s native camera – sorry, not going to work.

WHEN IT WORKS…

Creative people thrive off creative challenges. While exploring what users are sharing on Vine, I found a few sources of inspiration, including:

1. Stop-motion animation. There’s lots of it on Vine, and a lot of it’s done really well. Like this one, by yelldesign, which is featured in the Editor’s Picks section:

2. Brian Carroll. Who would’ve though post-it notes and lip-synching would be a recipe for fun on Vine? Apparently, Brian Carroll did, and he’s one of my favorite Viners because of 6-second clips like this one:

3. Loops. When your first frame and your last frame are the same (or pretty darn close), you can create a pretty interesting clip that loops on and on and on. Like this one, by Charlie Love.

HOW I USE VINE

I’m still discovering my “Vine” voice, but so far I have:
- Experimented with stop-motion and plan to do more;
- Used it to share quick behind-the-scenes/scene-setter visuals (from photo assignments and work events) with my Twitter followers (as well as the Vine community);
- Taken lots of videos of my basset hound, Missy – like this one:
What can I say? I’m a sucker for my furry, four-legged, brown-eyed girl.

HOW DO YOU USE VINE?
Follow me on Vine, or connect with me on Twitter and share with me some of your own Vine creations. You can find me on Twitter as @carnolddesigns.

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Sep8

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GRAIL NASA Tweetup, day one

Posted in: Events, Photography, Social Media

Wow.

That pretty much sums up the first day of the GRAIL NASA Tweetup, in which 150 lucky Twitter folks — myself included — came from all over the world to learn about the GRAIL mission, take a special VIP tour of Kennedy Space Center, and bask in all sorts of space awesomeness.

Attendees began gathering at the Visitor Complex at 7 a.m., collecting credentials and meeting our fellow tweeps, putting real life faces to the avatars and Twitter handles we’ve come to follow.

The festivities began at 9 with a round of introductions, where we got to learn a little bit about our fellow attendees. Educators, artists, tv and independent film producers, even a meteorologist were in among the space enthusiasts in attendance.

Participants came from Washington, Texas, Colorado and other states, as well as some international visitors from Spain, Great Britain, Australia and Canada, to name a few.

From here, we boarded the buses and prepared for our tours. The crowd on bus number two quickly proved to be an excited, rowdy and snarky group, so we of course quickly dubbed ourselves ‘the fun bus’ (although I’m sure other bus riders would debate that).

Our first stop on the tour? The Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB).

The VAB left more than a few of us looking up. It’s a massive, massive facility, and we got to walk inside it. But as impressive as that was, it was quickly trumped.

Yes, that is a space shuttle. Endeavour, to be precise. And she is still a beauty, even if she is still being readied for her final retirement home. And we couldn’t get enough of her. I mean, she’s flown in space!

Wow.

Next, our bus took us across the road to the Press Mound, which was a bittersweet moment for me.

I’ve had the privilege of photographing space shuttle launches from this site, and I remember it as a lively, well-kept spot bustling with video crews and photojournalists. Today, it felt like a ghost town. That iconic countdown clock, above, still drew interest and photos, but the grass had been left to grow tall, and there was an overall stillness to the place that just reinforced the fact that the shuttle program has ended.

But NASA’s mission has not, and as nostalgic as I am for those good times three miles away from shuttle liftoffs, I believe better times are ahead for human space flight. Like everything else, it’s evolving.

Among our final stops on the tour was launch pad 17B, at right in the above photo, from which GRAIL is scheduled to launch 8:37:06 a.m. on Sept. 8. If you look closely, you can see the Delta II rocket already on the pad, hoping the weather doesn’t delay its flight.

Again, wow.

After lunch, we were back in our conference room for a wonderful series of speakers, beginning with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, below.

Bolden has also flown in orbit on the space shuttle four times, commanding two missions and deploying the Hubble Space Telescope.

He also introduced his friend, and surprise speaker, Nichelle Nichols. Uhura herself, seen below.

We heard from Jim Adams, NASA deputy director of planetary science and received a presentation on the GRAIL MoonKAM project by members of the Sally Ride science team. Students will get to take their own photos of the moon via the MoonKAM. Maria Zuber and Sami Asmar educated us on the science behind the GRAIL mission. Doug Ellison showed off NASA’s ‘Eyes on the Solar System’ 3D environment, and Vern Thorp and Stu Spath talked about the spacecraft and Thursday’s scheduled launch.

And while participants eagerly tweeted away during each of these presentations — it was a Tweetup, after all — the day’s final speaker admitted afterwards he wanted to engage the audience in such a way that we would have to take a break from tweeting and focus solely on him.

I think astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, above, succeeded in that goal, even if he did kick off his portion of the afternoon by composing and sending a tweet before all of us.

He was even gracious enough to hang around afterwards and talk to attendees, sign autographs and take photos for some starstruck tweeps.

All in all, the first day of GRAIL NASA Tweetup exceeded anything I could have imagined.

I can’t wait to see those twin satellites launch Thursday morning.

Go GRAIL!

To follow along with Tweetup tweets, search for the hashtag #NASATweetup and or #GRAIL on Twitter.
Sep7

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Watch NASA’s Tweetup live Wednesday

Posted in: Events, Social Media

Curious as to what I’ll be doing with the NASA Tweetup on Wednesday? Well, starting at 3 p.m. tomorrow, NASA will stream a portion of the day’s activities live on its Ustream channel. I’ve embedded the video below, so when it goes live, you should be able to see it here, too. Enjoy!

Live video by Ustream
Sep2

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More NASA GRAIL Tweetup goodness

Posted in: Events, Photography, Social Media

In case you haven’t seen it, above is the finished poster, in real life, which did arrive Wednesday. I think it turned out great, (thanks again to Mpix, who I use for just about all of my printing needs) and can’t wait to see it with all of the participants’ signatures on it — in silver on the black portion, and in black on the white areas. I’ll be sure to get a picture next week of it signed.

In addition, I finally received the email I’ve been eagerly awaiting: the official itinerary for the Tweetup!

Pardon me, while I slip into geeky mode for a minute.

Below is the first day’s activities:

7 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. – Registration at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex (@ExploreSpaceKSC)

9 a.m. – Welcome by Trent Perrotto (@NASA) & Veronica McGregor (@NASAJPL) in the Debus Center (entry at 8:30 a.m.)

9:05 a.m. – Meet the tweeps

9:50 a.m. to 1 p.m. – Tour of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (@NASAKennedy) and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, including stops at the Vehicle Assembly Building and Press Site launch countdown clock, Launch Complex 17 and #GRAIL, and Launch Complex 41 from which Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity (@MarsCuriosity) will launch

1 to 3 p.m. – Break/Lunch on your own at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex

3 p.m. – Jim Adams (@NASAJim), deputy director, Planetary Division, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, introduces Administrator Charles Bolden

(NASA Television begins http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-tweetup)

3:20 p.m. –MoonKAM (@GRAIL_MoonKAM) presentation from the Sally Ride Science (@SallyRideSci) team

3:40 p.m. – Sami Asmar, GRAIL deputy project scientist, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)

4 p.m. – Maria Zuber, GRAIL principal investigator, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

4:20 p.m. – Break

4:30 p.m. – Eyes on the Solar System (@NASA_Eyes) demo with Doug Ellison (@Doug_Ellison), JPL Visualization Producer

5 p.m. – Vern Thorp, manager, NASA Programs, ULA (@ULAlaunch)

5:15 p.m. – Stu Spath, chief spacecraft engineer, Lockheed Martin (@LockheedMartin)

5:30 p.m. – Neil deGrasse Tyson (@NeilTyson), Frederick P. Rose director at the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History (@AMNH)

6 p.m. – Group photo in the rocket garden

And on September 8:

6 a.m. – Arrive at the NASA parking lot to board buses.

6:30 a.m. – Buses depart for Causeway launch viewing

8:37:06 a.m. – First launch opportunity for GRAIL mission

9:16:12 a.m. – Second launch opportunity

Post-launch – Board buses to return

As part of the Tweetup, I’ll also get a ticket into Kennedy Space Center, and I’m thinking the day of the launch might be a great day to use it. Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke will be making an appearance and talking about his experiences on the moon and in space, and Nichelle Nichols — Lt. Uhura from ‘Star Trek’ herself — will be on hand to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the first airing of the Star Trek series by signing autographs and taking photos with visitors.

I can’t wait!
Aug31

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T minus seven days until GRAIL Tweetup

Posted in: Events, Photography, Social Media

UPDATE: The official NASA itinerary has been sent out, which you can see here. Also, the poster DID arrive Wednesday, and you can see that here, too.

A photography nut. A space nerd. A little bit of a social media addict.

What are ‘three things you should know about Christopher Arnold?’

Ding ding ding!

Thanks to a NASA tradition of connecting with its Twitter fans, I get to put those three things together next week when I attend the Tweetup for the GRAIL launch. GRAIL, which stands for Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, will launch at 8:37 a.m. Sept. 8, and participants in the Tweetup are sure to get a spectacular view of it if it goes off on time (knock on wood).

This launch will place two spacecraft in orbit around the moon, which will then measure and map its gravity field.

Prior to the Thursday launch, however, we select participants will take part in an as-yet-to-be-determined schedule of special events which might include anything from behind-the-scenes tours to meeting scientists who’ve worked on the mission, to talking with astronauts. You can learn more about NASA Tweetups here.

The excitement is growing among the approximately 150 tweeps who get to be a part of this, as seen throught the growing Twitter, Facebook and Google+ activity among all of us. Ride sharing, extracurricular activities and lots more are already being collaboratively decided by some oh-so-eager members. We’ve also got participants designing patches and tee-shirts for our Tweetup, which already feels like a little bit of a geeky family reunion.

As a token of appreciation to our hosts at NASA, Tweeps will be signing a special ‘Thank You’ poster which will then be given to our coordinators. Several of us submitted designs to the GRAIL Tweetup Facebook Group, with fellow participants voting on the design they wanted printed.

I’m happy to say that one of my designs (pictured above) was selected, and if the United States Post Office’s website is correct, it should have been delivered to my house today.

I cannot wait.

You can follow me on Twitter (@carnolddesigns) to see what I post during the visit, or you can also follow NASA’s official Tweetup account at Twitter.com/NasaTweetup. Or, you can search for the hashtag #NASATweetup to see what other participants are saying.