Creating this post is a mixed bag for me as many of you who know me, know that I advocate that Creativity is a Science and not an art or some abstract personality-based thing. And, I even have the mathematical proof to back this creative science which I wrote about in the late 1990s and published in my book, Always Creative, where I presented the math - i.e., Creativity = Infinity minus Pie-R-Squared, where Pie-R-Squared is the area of a defined circle of what’s working.
But the science of creativity aside, living creatively is also a mindset and two things recently reminded me of this.
First, I was in the process of digitizing many of the motivational tapes in my library, one of which was a six cassette series by Nightingale-Conant that featured Dr. Wayne Dyer’s “How to be a no-limit person.” Note I had purchased these tapes in the early 1980s long before CDs and MP3 Players hit the scene hence the cassette conversions.
At the end of that series, they gave a free sample lecture from one of Wayne’s other books, “What do you really want for your children” where Dr. Dyer talks about creativity. In this sample lecture, which I’m including here in this post as mp3 audio clip, Dr. Dyer defines creativity as follows: “… You don’t become creative by being like everybody else … Especially if you were raised to fit in and be like others … Creativity is about how you apply your own matchless-self to everything you do …”
And here is the mp3 file as a down load click here
To a great extent I like what he says and concur, but I have some problems in that he is giving a philosophical approach first without providing the scientific basis on which such philosophy can ride. Thus on some level he is promoting the idea of creativity as being merely an approach to life when that is only partially correct, which leads me to the other data point.
Around the time I was digitizing said cassettes, I enjoyed a lively debate with one of our pool attendants during a quiet afternoon when not many others were pool side. She started the conversation with, “I’m just not creative, at least not compared to my brother and this accounting class I’m taking is really soooo uncreative.”
I laughed. As a business school trained accountant, I told her that accounting can be extremely creative, just look at Enron, MCI-WorldCom, forecasts of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, etc. And one can quickly grasp how numbers and the numbering of numbers can get wildly creative.
There is even an old accounting joke to this effect that goes something like this:
An employer is looking to hire a new controller and interviews three people: one young, one middle aged, one older, all CPAs.
The employer asks the first prospect, the younger one, “How much is one plus one?” To which the young accountant says, “Two.” “Are you sure?” “Yes absolutely. One plus one is always two.”
Then the employer interviews the second prospect, the middle aged CPA, and asks the same question, “How much is one plus one?” To which the CPA said, “Well, it’s usually two, but sometimes it can be two and a half or one and three quarters depending on how you value inventory, spoilage, returns, etc., but yes, most of the times one plus one is two.”
Then the employer interviews the third CPA and asks the same question, “How much is one plus one?” To which the older CPA states, “What do you want it to be?”
Guess who got the job and guess why we have so much fuzzy accounting in governments and public companies despite our best efforts to legislate transparency
Back to the pool attendant.
Ultimately our conversation got to how creativity-expressed comes in many shapes and styles - e.g., Your creativity might not look like others as she was comparing her creativity level to her brother’s and how he seemingly can riff with new ideas in a given dept and she can’t quite compete in said dept.; We spoke about how creativity comes in many forms and how visual creativity is different from accounting creativity which is different from music and/or painting and/or acting and/or physical creativity, etc…
Which brings me to the final point and that is of brainstorming. It seems like most people think that brainstorming is being creative when in truth, brainstorming and idea generation is only 25% of the creative science.
The other 75% of the creative process is where the rubber really hits the road. This includes selecting one or more of the ideas from the brainstorming process, implementing said ideas, measuring the results of said implementation, then analyzing the results by comparing them to where you were before you had the ideas you just implemented.
I’ve even heard this from the heads of top advertising agencies. In particular, one president was discussing a certain weight-loss food brand and he said, “Chuck, coming up with the new marketing ideas is the smallest part of the process, perhaps less than 10%, and yes it is the fun part. But, the implementation of the marketing campaign is the larger part of the process. Project management of getting all the items printed, out into the stores on time and within budget, without any mistakes in copy, colors, brand messaging, etc.”
This agency executive even went on to say that his team got paid $2 million per year to manage the account. One million was for the creative consultations and the other million was to manage and implement. He confessed that the second million was a royal pain and full of traps and gatchas and that he would gladly give up that second million but also knew that it would only be a matter of time before he would lose the first million if all he did was the creative. Thus while this executive could riff on new marketing ideas in his sleep, he also knew that creativity expressed and implemented is a package and not just brainstorming.
While things may have seemed quiet on the front page for most of June, we were busy away working behind the scenes. Specifically in laying the marketplace foundation for digital downloads of Royalty Free Media Clips as well as installing new CoolTea Forums and upgrading our Blog.
We are very excited about offering Royalty Free Media Clips and have thousands of images, hundreds of video and audio clips in the works so more on this as the year unfolds.
The Blog upgrade is cool in that new plugins allow us to create slide-show of images and image galleries right in the posts - bravo to Team WordPress and the Open Source Community
As to our new CoolTea Forums, we hope that you will find them educational, thought provoking and inspire you to join-in (FREE with valid email).
Currently, the Forum topics we have include:
Entrepreneurship - Starting, Growing and Revitalizing Your Business
Below is the seven minute video produced by Guiding Eyes for the Blind that features a licensed version of Katie Scott’s Song for VanDyke which can be heard around 5 minutes into the clip - congratulations Katie!
My first introduction with computers was circa 1975 with mainframes, punch cards and programming simplistic slot machines with random fruits - e.g., cherries, lemons, oranges, and dollar signs - any combination of which would spin and land in three-pane lucky display screen.
It was also a time when I started to begin the journey through boyhood puberty and migrate into the ongoing evolution of manhood, personhood, humanhood, et al.
It was during this boyhood time while programming random numbers that I was first exposed to some fundamental concepts for achieving ongoing success with computers (e.g., managing the three levels of inputs, processing, and outputs). Thus part of my early picture included computer teachers and experts beating into my growing computer-awareness, “Garbage-in is Garbage-out.”
This became obvious, tactical, hand-felt wisdom with the early punch cards as those cards that were less than perfectly punched or less than perfectly flat were promptly spit out and rejected as unusable. Thus no amount of nifty logic or elegant programming referencing random fruits, berries, and/or dollar signs would ever see the light of day, but I digress.
Moving forward and years later - circa 2001 during days of explosive growth with DAWS (Digital Audio Workstations), project studios and technical advances across the digital audio spectrum, I enjoyed a conversation with an audio engineering expert and friend who candidly stated, “You know Chuck, in my business they call it turd polishing - if the client gives you inputs that are turds, no matter how much audio polishing you do, it’s still a turd.”
Yikes - new multimedia information and different take on conventional wisdom of garbage-in and turd-polished outs.
However, I was recently reminded that we can work with less than perfect inputs on creative level through some “happy accidents” and turn out good stuff.
Below is my point - visually. One of my clients handed me material that was 5-Diamond in spirit, nature of story, and content level, but it was a lot less radiant in the areas of digital resolution and digital quality.
This is a sensitive area and let me state that I honor all those on the digital paths. We all start somewhere and the spirit of this piece is to highlight how we can work creatively with things we think might not work, yet continue to work with what we have and move forward in getting better in using what we have to accomplish our mission at hand.
In this case, the client handed me 18 minutes of video footage from single-chip camera that was hand-shot (e.g., no tripods, no external mics, no lighting, no script - more akin to documentary style shooting), highly compressed as mpeg1 320×240, along with a handful of stills that were 1-2meg jpegs each.
Mission from client was, “Here is our story - how best can it be told effectively online?”
The answer is in the proof below with the ending video result.
Knowing neither the video or stills were commanding (digital resolution wise that is), we decided best to split the screen and use both videos and pics at the same time to tell the story, thus in part distract you from overly focusing in on either one at a time and seeing the granular pixations or other blemishes.
In the finished clip below, on one side you see pictures with the Ken Burns effect with panning and cropping. On the other side of the screen you see the video that corresponds to the story in the pics moving along.
Whenever either the stills or the video gets weird (e.g., quality of color, lighting, shakiness, etc) we then dropped an effect on that clip and voila - all of a sudden, things that seemed like mistakes (e.g., pictures out of focus) became awesome transitions that moved the story along with added effects and emotional dimensions.
But happy accidents with effects and visual polishing was only part of it.
The other part was how to sonically pull the viewer thru the story and hence the need to find some fun, offbeat music that could drive yet fit with the various live recordings of volunteers, pastor, and background beats -> Enter the soundtrack, “Gobble Gobble Funk” by you know who!
In the end, I think this piece works really, really well in telling the client’s story.
The last thing I will mention is the title, “Feeding the Angels Among Us.”
This was perhaps the hardest part about scripting and editing this piece. My customer who pays the bills is obvious, but his stakeholders and the constituents they dance with is something that is multilateral, highly diverse and commands respect from all levels.
Some how to say, “feeding the needy” seemed untruthful to those pictured here in this video. After all, these “stars” played a part in the role of life’s give-in-take and somehow there seemed to be a higher truth in naming the title, one that those standing in line, when viewing this clip, would also be proud of.
Which leads me to concept of - is it more blessed to receive or to give?
I don’t know but it seems like sometimes those of us who give can feel entitled to a little moment of self righteous - e.g., “Hey, I just did something for somebody - doesn’t that count for something, somewhere, on somekind of karmic scorecard?” - and I often wonder if the other person who receives isn’t really an Angel in disguise who isn’t silently saying, “Dude, if only you really knew - it is I who is willing to serve as your reminder that God gives us each different talents and skills. Thanks for sharing and best of success with your unfolding generosity of time, gifts, talents, investment in Highest Good, et al.”
The following is an account of a missing office chair and happy customer service ending … the essence of which can be enjoyed per the following letter and here is the pdf version
22 April 2008
Mr. Ronald L. Sargent
Chairman & CEO Staples.com
500 Staples Drive
Framingham, MA 01702
Re: Take a Seat and Sit on This - Herculean Customer Service in Danbury CT
Dear Mr. Sargent and Team Staples:
As I pen this thank you note, I am happily sitting on my new cushy, replacement Global Task Chair courtesy of many honorable customer service efforts on behalf of store personnel at your Staples Mill Plain Road, Danbury Connecticut location.
My ordeal started several years ago when I first started hunting for office chair replacements. My multimedia studio had several beautiful Herman Miller Aeron chairs that I spent dearly for but since a car accident and new found titanium-infused bones, the Aeron’s rounded hard-plastic sculpting at the bottom of the sitting surface dug into my left femur bone such that I needed to find replacement chairs effective immediately.
Enter Staples and your line of Global Task chairs.
My initial customer-buying sales reasoning echoed , “Hey, the cushioning is right, the grey color pleasing, and the multi-directional levers to tilt in almost any manner were all very exciting options, but it was the lifetime warranty that sealed the deal.”
My Staples Global Task chair enjoyed a pleasant average life in my studio - bouncing between video edit station, adjusting nicely for 88-weighted musical keyboard station, plus wheeling over to the office station.
A couple of puppy-dog bite marks and scratches here-and-there on the wheel base, and a plastic right arm rest requiring duck tape given some of the repeated desk bumps over the years, all said and done it was a good trusty chair.
But then one day the back broke - just snapped as I leaned back. Screws, or at least partial pieces along with wood shavings fell to the floor and I immediately knew another office chair adventure was in the cards.
None of the Staples store personnel where thrilled to see me when I came wheeling through the automatic glass sliding doors with my broken chair in the lead. An announcement from the customer service counter was made that could be heard throughout the store’s PA, and soon a young gentleman approached offering to help. I showed him the guarantee and the Staples product bar codes under the sitting-part of the chair, and he asked for time to confer with store management.
When he returned, I was given two options - I could either get a store credit for the current retail value of the chair ($125 versus the $300-plus I initially paid), or I could leave the chair there and see if they could order the replacement parts.
Neither of us had been down this path before so I asked him what his preference would be, and he said, “Chuck, your warranty does state that we have first option to replace defective parts. The guy who services our furniture is gonna be in here tomorrow, so if it’s all right with you, I’d prefer we see if we can get the replacement parts, and I’ll give you a call once I hear back.”
Fair enough. I left without my chair but felt great that a warranty / guarantee effort was set in motion. I wasn’t sure going in if I would be tossed out because the manufacturer went out of business, lack of store receipt, etc., so just knowing that options were on deck was a breath of fresh air in our seemingly time crunched, often unresponsive, mega-store, impersonal, not-my-problem, hurried culture of ours but I digress.
Two days went by when a voicemail was left, “Mr. Scott, we spoke to the Global rep. Your new chair back is on order. We are also going to replace your tape-ducked arm rest as a professional courtesy. Parts should be in during the next couple of weeks, so I’ll call you when it’s ready.”
Yippee! My old, trusty chair that had been with me during so many late night editing sessions and played the seat to many a musical performance would be returned, to be somewhat akin to the comfort of a favorite old shoe.
For several weeks I sat on a hard metal fold-up chair. Then after four weeks I decided to call to check on the status. My Staples customer service champion was not in, so I asked to leave a message for him, which they reluctantly took down. I could almost hear his inner voice say to me over the phone, “Dude - I’m busy. Why do I have to write down this message, and why can’t you just call back tomorrow morning when he’s in?”
The next day I was about to follow-up until I played back the morning voice mails, and there was one of panic from my Staples customer service hero. “Mr. Scott. Can you please call me at your earliest convenience. It’s Important.”
With that I thought, “Okay - here we go, they changed their mind and the parts were never ordered, not available, or management changed their mind about supporting the guarantee.”
It turned out that parts arrived, but during the waiting process my chair was mistaken as junk and tossed out.
Then the drama started to play out. Apparently a frustrated management team mused, “How could we let this happen. Now we owe the guy a new chair. Somebody is gonna have to buy this guy a new chair, and it’s not me. I just hope he doesn’t want one of those $600 leather chairs. How the heck …”
When my hero replied and chimed in during management huddle, ” … but he’s the customer. He had a guarantee. We promised.” Said hero was promptly told to leave work effective immediately hence the cell phone call I got from him as he was driving home per management request.
I asked if this was just bad timing and if better picked up another day or two once management cooled down. I asked if he would prefer I support his suggested next steps or if he’d prefer I deal with management directly, which is what happened next.
I was given the name and number for head manager. I called and got directed to his office when an assistant picked up, claimed the manager was busy, and asked if he could take a message.
At this point, I started to laugh at what kind of message to leave given all the twists and turns, so I started at the top,
“This is Chuck Scott, and I’m the guy with the missing chair.”
“Oh, yea! We know who you are. How can I help you?”
I asked if my customer service hero’s job was in trouble and what could we reasonably work out given all that went on.
Suffice it to say, I drove up there that afternoon before the assistant manager’s shift ended and rolled away with a floor demo model that is very close in style to my original trusted old one.
Without naming names, Jonathan, Jim and Rob at Team Staples know who they are, and I just wanted to go on record of appreciation for all of your Danbury CT Staples customer service efforts.
Cordially,
Chuck Scott
PS - On the way out, I did purchase an extra padded memory foam cushion. Now, only if you sold designer foot-stoles to accompany said chairs!
The following info was on our CoolTea home page for a while hence are parking it here in the blog for reference:
Congratulations to the Danbury Animal Welfare Society (DAWS) - since the March 27th Woof On! Event at St. Stephen’s, DAWS has gone on to make the cut from a nationwide pool of a thousand-plus shelters and has now earned a seat as a Top 20 Finalist for the Zootoo Million Dollar Makeover.
Follow this link for photos from our March 27th event, and below is the three minute DAWS video that was shown at the March 27th Woof On! event at Saint Stephen’s - enjoy!
Earlier today I posted the Elliott Scheiner audio clips and am now in the process of archiving the project files when I came across a handwritten note to myself -
Mono Wins
The note was written in the middle of the night when the computer was busy rendering the master files and was a reminder to me for the next morning as to where to pick-up and which files would ultimately get published and streamed on this web site.
The original recordings were 44.1khz stereo wave files and I did all the editing at this resolution yet knowing I was ultimately going to kick it down and go to the web with mp3 clips. Thus part of the compression issue became one of stereo vs mono and balancing finished compressed file size with server-bandwidth costs and audio-quality.
Consider the fourth clip - Part 4 of 4 - it was the largest master file weighing in at 212 megs as finished stereo wave cd quality. I knew I wanted FM-radio quality for the mp3 versions (not CD but not AM either) thus rendered all four wave files first to stereo 96kbits 44.1khz for a total file weight of 40.9 megs as compressed mp3s … then I rendered separate versions to mono 64kbits 44.1khz for total weight of 26.9 megs.
While the audio quality is slightly inferior, the mono version was the winner because most of the audio is speech - thus the need for preserving sonic spectrum wasn’t truly necessary except for the killer sonic bug at the beginning of each clip that features me on keys, Jeff Wells on Sax, and Kasha (my 19 month old Labrador Retreiver - or perhpas better stated, “my wife’s Lab …”).
Sonic branding is a term I first heard a couple years back when talking to a staff composer for one of the most successful Soap Opera’s on air. We were talking about his business and skills when he said, “You know Chuck, the best shows on TV have Sonic Brands - that signature ditty that you can hear from another room and know that someone in your house just tuned into Cheers, Seinfeld, Taxi, American Idol…”
He went on to add that from his perspective, not enough American corporate managers are even aware of the importance of this branding let alone using or managing it effectively.
Point noted and ever since our discussion, I’ve been mindful about developing and managing my own sonic brands as well as those for clients for whom I’m retained.
Previous to my discussion with composer friend, I had composed a neat ditty for many of the CoolTea and GoBoardRoom audio clips - one which I referred to internally as “Purple Guy” but when I found myself selling a variation of this mix to a client, I was then at a cross roads for developing a new, more updated, more me, kind of signature for ChuckingIt.com and ChuckScott.com branding.
Hence the ditty, aka Sonic Brand, you hear in the Elliott Scheiner clips.
On February 4th 2008, legendary audio recording engineer Elliott Scheiner (Beck, The Eagles, Steely Dan, Van Morrison, Fleetwood Mac, Natalie Cole, Bruce Hornsby, plus others) spoke at East Coast Music Mall about his record producing experience and take on the music industry today.
I was lucky enough to attend this free recording workshop and had my trusty portable recorder with me hence the following four clips from that evening - enjoy!
Part 1 - The Music Business Industry and Trends
This audio clip is 10 minutes in length and 4.9 meg mp3 file - click here to download the clip … Some of the points Elliott discusses in this clip include: How he got started as New York’s first freelance recording engineer; Where to find the most work; Why The Eagles did not release their album on iTunes but went with Walmart instead; The reality of copy protection; Radio Head’s experience selling albums; and, How our culture has completely failed musicians and artists.
Part 2 - Working with Recording Artists
This audio clip is 12 minutes in length and 5.7 meg mp3 file - click here to download the clip … Some of the points Elliott discusses in this clip include: Common denominator in working with great artists; Getting the unique piano sound for Bruce Hornsby; Tracking vocals for Toto and how technology has made artist lazy; Crazy guitar players and their signature sounds; and, Getting work that is just fine vs good or great.
In my opinion, the story Elliott shares about Bruce Hornsby is really powerful lesson for all business people - it is one about the power of creative-tension, working with people who don’t get along, and the difficulty in selling something new - in this case, a new piano sound - and one that would go on to break the charts!
Part 3 - Mixing, Mastering and Surround Sound
This audio clip is 14 minutes in length and 6.8 meg mp3 file - click here to download the clip … Some of the points Elliott discusses in this clip include: The amount of time it takes to mix a record; Working with samples; Mixing Steely Dan’s Gaucho in surround sound; Mixing with satellite speakers; XM and Sirius codecs changing the surround mix changes the copyright; Monitoring levels and speakers; Kids and bass today; Loudness wars; Getting country music to sound great; Order of mixing instruments; and, the importance of hiring mastering engineers.
Part 4 - Audio Recording Tools, Technology and Techniques
This audio clip is 20 minutes in length and 9.5 meg mp3 file - click here to download the clip … Some of the points Elliott discusses in this clip include: Going digital vs analog; Software effects and EQ vs their hardware equivalents; Being a minimalist and using mics properly; Not depending on compressors and having the artist work the mic; Salvaging old reel-to-reel tape recordings; Consoles; Tips for people running project studios; Watching the levels in a mix; Cost of building analog room vs digital room; and, the cost and risks when working in new rooms.
After being live with our CoolTea Classifieds for over 30-days, I was curious to see what the view-to-click ratio was for the ads that you see along the right side of your screen when viewing the classified listings.
Turns out the number is just a little bit higher than traditional direct mail responses.
In the old days with direct mail (analog materials with real postage circa mid 1980s), getting a two percent return was considered a good thing. Meaning if you sent out 10,000 brochures to a targeted list, you could expect two percent or 200 recipients of your mailing to respond to your offer (e.g., call you, mail in the tear-off, etc.).
Today there are many new advertising and direct marketing models springing forth - some are bogus in my opinion and others are really exciting. For example, Google ad-words is something most people know about and is a system that leverage PPC (pay-per-click) and pay-per-views.
I’d love to hear from some of you PPC experts about what you think is a good ratio for you and your clients so in the spirit of sharing, I’ll go first and share the following as a data-point.
In the first month of CoolTea Classifieds running the small banner ads you see on the right, not the text listings, but the blinking, rotating graphic ads with links, on average each ad in our database was viewed by 4,000 people and generated 127 click throughs.
Thus these ads achieved a 3.175% click response (127clicks/4000views) - not bad for the first month.
Moral of the story IMHO, fifty-bucks per month is a bargain price for classified ads that brand your message to 4000 and generate 127 people clicking into your site / offer.
In my previous post, I mentioned how and why CoolTea created a backend process to decline inappropriate Classified Listings. Well, we also had the reverse issue and needed to develop an admin system to extend and renew various classified listings - anywhere from an added 30 days to an additional 6 months.
Here’s why - when we came out of the gate with our new classified application, we were uncertain as to the volume of listings that might ensue. Part of good web design is planning for scaleability - thus too much success can bring down a site just as easily as failures in bad code, bad design, wrong business models, etc. Thus part of good web architecture is planning for accordion growth - e.g., how do you scale up with demand, and/or, how do you scale down to keep the burn rate (money) manageable, thus in this case we thought a 30 day cap on listings would be a good balance.
But then something interesting occurred and that was the bulk of the listings posted were for time-insensitive services - meaning photographers and writers and personal trainers, their listings were not date sensitive like a “job wanted” listing which expires as soon as the company hires a suitable candidate.
Thus the question became, how could CoolTea be of better value to our customers creating service listings? After all, it seemed silly to ask people to come back every month and recreate or renew their own listing just because we put a 30-day time stamp on it to protect ourselves from floods of posts.
Voila - the answer was akin to declines - create code that shows listings that are about to expire and allows are admins to determine if the listings are appropriate for renewal, and if so, determine how many months or days would be appropriate extension to add to the listings, then automatically extend those listings.
So even though we still say, “listings are valid for 30-days” - don’t be surprised to find that if you create a good listing that is not time-sensitive, that as a professional courtesy our admins will extend it for you so you continue to experience additional exposure.
My first introduction with computers was circa 1975 with mainframes, punch cards and programming simplistic slot machines with random fruits - e.g., cherries, lemons, oranges, and dollar signs - any combination of which would spin and land in three-pane lucky display screen.
Earlier today I posted the 
After being live with our CoolTea Classifieds for over 30-days, I was curious to see what the view-to-click ratio was for the ads that you see along the right side of your screen when viewing the classified listings.
In my previous post, I mentioned how and why CoolTea created a backend process to decline inappropriate Classified Listings. Well, we also had the reverse issue and needed to develop an admin system to extend and renew various classified listings - anywhere from an added 30 days to an additional 6 months.
