on the shore of the ultimate sea

In the hopes of one day proving competitive with an acquaintance who’s so far plastered me on the chessboard (D., give me another month), I’ve been playing quite a bit more chess than usual, and, as a corollary, reading books on strategy and following weekly chess columns in newspapers. Compare, if you will, two tellings of this week’s scandal, French grandmaster Vlad Tkachiev’s drunkenness during the Calcutta Open:

The first, from New York Post chess columnist (and grandmaster himself) Andy Soltis:

Snooze and You Lose: A Russian-born grandmaster scandalized an international tournament in India this month by passing out drunk during a game.

And this got the chess world arguing about a technical point:

Was it ethical to wake him up?

Vladislav Tkachiev, ranked 58th in the world, fell asleep during his third-round game at the Calcutta Open. His opponent, Praveen Kumar, didn’t want to win the game on forfeiture and asked tournament arbiter R. Anantharam to wake up Tkachiev.

But after more moves, the 35-year-old Tkachiev fell asleep again. Other players took turns waking him, but to no avail. After his allotted 90 minutes had expired, Tkachiev had played only 11 moves and was declared lost.

After photos of the sleeping grandmaster appeared in Indian newspapers, Anantharam came in for a torrent of Internet criticism for allowing the farce to get that far.

But he said he was just following world chess federation rules. “The scene of many players coming to his board and watching him sleeping was a disturbance to the nearby boards,” he wrote.

Nonsense, responded GM Nigel Short. Tkachiev should have been woken up only to remove him from the playing hall where he was “causing widespread public embarrassment.”

What an idiot, right?

However, take another look, from the Financial Times‘ Leonard Barden (no slouch himself):

The Kalkota (Calcutta) Open this week made news headlines when the French champion Vlad Tkachiev appeared comatosely drunk at the board and lost his third round game on time.

Attitudes have changed. In 1935 Alexander Alekhine was the worse for drink in some world title games, while in 1949 Sweden’s No 1 Gideon Stahlberg drank a cognac at the board before sacrificing a knight for a winning attack.

The shocked reaction to the Tkachiev episode was in line with a current zealous environment where a master can lose on time if a few seconds late for the start of play. Tkachiev soon recovered and the drunk game was his only loss in seven rounds.

(Emphasis mine.)

Quite the difference between the two, eh? One has a drunken player disrupting the entire tournament with his enduring shambolic behavior, the other noting arbiters can end a match if it’s a matter of “a few seconds” before the start. Nevertheless, knowing he went on to win the rest of his matches makes quite a difference in the quality of the story.

Further, Barden writes in the Guardian: “In Tkachiev’s case, jetlag was probably a factor as he flew to India with hardly a break after winning the French championship, and the drunk game was his only defeat in Kolkata.”

This isn’t the first time Tkachiev has made headlines, and certainly won’t be the last. It will probably be the only time I resort to a chess media compare and contrast here, though.

We’re gettin’ down to the nitty-gritty, ladies and gents.

8/25: Hills! The final installment of our torturous hill workouts. 1/4 full, 1/4 half, 1/2 recover x 6. Untimed. Ugly.

Ugh, glad to see these hill exercises go. Yuck.

8/29: 8.5 miles, into Manhattan, summer streets, ~10 min/mi, AM

This was a good, fun, nice run. Into Manhattan, across the Brooklyn Bridge, up the street they had closed off for the Summer Streets program, cab back home. Perfect.

9/1: 5k, 22′18″, improved from 23′09″ on 7/7

This was another 5k test to determine pacing and tempo runs for the remainder of our training. I improved slightly, which is surprising, considering my lack of training. Most improved award goes to Angela, who shaved a whole 4.5 minutes off her last time. What a difference a few months’ dedication makes, eh?

Inputting my time into the McMillan Running Calculator says I should run 7′50″ miles and finish a 13.1 mile event in 1:43:05. I kind of doubt this–all my long runs have been pretty slow. Who knows. I’m not sure if you have to buy Mr. McMillan’s training philosophy or not to get those results. But maybe I can still break the 2-hour barrier out in the Hamptons.

9/3 4.44 miles, 40:51min, 9′09″ miles, AM

I felt shitty this entire morning run. Like I was wearing a suit of my skin that wasn’t quite fitting right. I hoped to slough it off after a mile or two but it stayed on for an entire abbreviated loop of Prospect Park. iPod/headphones steadily pumping out the jams didn’t help. I don’t know.

9/5 9 miles, 96 minutes, 10′40″ miles, AM

Nine miles along the Upper New York Bay, following the greenway under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, through Bay Ridge and towards Coney Island on a beautiful sunny morning. We ran part of the route today along 4th Avenue, a stretch that the NYC Marathon covers in just a few months. Locals accustomed to runners cheered us on, as if this was somehow more meaningful than a run-of-the-mill Saturday training session.

I checked in with Jack to see how his mom was doing, and got good news. (Remember Jane Zhang?)

I’ll let Jack give the news: “We’re done with chemo and about one and a half weeks into a 3-week radiation plan. Spirits are high, her white blood cell counts are back to normal and we’re enjoying the temperate Michigan weather!”

Absolutely fantastic! There’s nothing like a Michigan fall to give you some comfort after a tough round of chemo. Don’t forget, the advanced treatments that cure cancer come about because laboratories receive funding and are able to research new cures. The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society works to provide scientists and doctors with grants and education to help the front-line battle blood cancers.

FUNDRAISING UPDATE:

Lots of big stars this week as each runner with our team met their $2,800 in minimum fundraising. Thanks to everyone who came out to our bar nights and fundraisers, all the Crain folks who chipped in to the team effort, the Crain Foundation for pumping up each of us in a major way, and, last but not least, Elliot, Jessica and Peter. Thanks so much guys, for your kind words and awesome donations.

We’re in the homestretch, so now’s the time to dig in and hook me up with some dough. Three more weeks. Let’s do it.

Want to help? You should sponsor me here!

Henry’s Lake sunset, originally uploaded by nparish.

Mostly vacationing and rehab, really.

Well, charity run training diary update fans, there’s a reason why I’ve been absent since our last check-in. That IT band issue really had me slowed down on the training front.

After my 7/25 trip around the reservoir I shut training down completely, began a mini rehab program in earnest and took about 10 days off running in hopes of driving the problem away. Unfortunately, it’s still around. But, I’ve learned largely how to contain the pain, am working on efforts to restore the muscles whose weakness contributes to it and have been back on schedule over the last few days.

The rehab has mainly come from stretching sessions with my new invaluable training tool, the foam roller. I hit the roller twice a day for 30 minutes, whether I run or not, to iron out the kinks in my legs, not just the parts that scream during excruciating IT band stretch. I’ve also got a brace/strap contraption I wear during runs, a big-ass tube of Ben Gay and a bag of frozen peas that’s used solely for post-workout icing. Also, hip hitches and resistance bands are building up the parts of my glutes that have been degrading since I stopped weight training in May.

Luckily, I was able to do some fun cross-training in Montana, wading through deep, fast rivers in pursuit of oncorhynchus mykiss, oncorhynchus clarki and salmo trutta. Between the cold water and the lateral work involved it helped a lot. (Check out the photos–no pain there!)

Getting back, though, I realized I had a lot of work to do, and would have to train back to my previous level. And fast. The race is in less than a month. Unfortunately, the marathon is out of the question at this point, but I think I can still hit my original goal: a sub 2:00 finish in the half event.

8/16: Slow, short. 2 miles in 25 minutes, AM

I had planned to go across the Manhattan bridge, back via Brooklyn and home for about a 7 mile trip, but shut it down when a twinge kicked in early. This was irritating. Even though I felt some pulls in Montana, on heavy hikes, humping up and down canyons in felt-bottomed boots, I hoped those weren’t around anymore. Home to rest and ice.

8/22: Slow, long. 6.5 miles in around 2 hours, AM

Finally last Saturday I had a breakthrough. A long, slow run without a huge amount of discomfort. Rehab was paying off.

This is really only a few miles off our target for this stage in training (8-9 miles) so this weekend I’ll probably bump it up to 8.5 on our long Saturday run.

Best of all, there wasn’t any pain after I stretched and iced post run. Jump for joy! (But don’t pull anything.)

ON FUNDRAISING:

We’re getting to the point of no return. Fundraising ends September 8th. I still need your donations to fulfill my minimum obligation, so now’s the time to pull your moral compass out of its pouch and help make a difference.

So many of you have already responded to the call. Jocelyn, Merrilee & Rance, Cousin Ian–you’re the best. Thanks. Thanks also to all of you that came out to support us during our open bar last week. You’re golden. I couldn’t have done this without you.

For all you fence-sitters, now’s the time to get into it.

Want to help? You should sponsor me here!

MC Hammer, of all people who’ve mastered the dark arts of social media, wrote an Op-Ed piece for Ad Week extolling the virtues of Twitter for connecting to fans without intermediary media. (Though some have suggested it was the work of a ghost writer.)

While new social media platforms seem to pop up every day, I’m strongly behind Twitter, a micro-blogging tool that has become a game changer for me. The platform offers celebrity brands the means to build and develop relationships in an intimate and personal way. The friendly and efficient interface links to video and audio and integrates with various other social media outlets with ease. That means my brand can live on a wide variety of platforms where fans might find me.

(Emphasis mine.)

Unfortunately, ten days later, his cousin, a co-star of his reality show, is accused of raping a woman who he met via Twitter in a Livermore, CA hotel room. I will refrain from a lay-up, empty-netter of a joke out of respect for the gravity of the situation.

Photographer Caroll Taveras emailed the other day with some end-of-project news from her Photo Studio project, which you may remember from our visit this winter. Selections are online, and there’s a book in the works, and, according to Caroll, she’s going to be bringing cheap (but great!) portraiture to more cities. Stay tuned!

(ps., turns out, as you can see above, I made the website, alongside Stefan Ruiz, a photographer and briefly creative director of the iconic magazine Colors.)

(pps. In other eminent Brooklynite news, Jim Hanas, my predecessor at Creativity/AdCritic, has a nifty full-pager explaining why you’ll never be famous in the Post today. The story is based on a talk Jim recently gave at his lecture series, Adult Ed, which I have shamefully yet to attend. Congrats, Jim–if they didn’t tell you about the perks, by dint of the Post filing you in the Opinion/Op-Ed columnist bin you’ve earned a one-year trial membership to the John Birch Society and a 2010 copy of G. Gordon Liddy’s ‘Stacked and Packed’ calendar.¹

1. I kid, but while working on the desk at the Post I got into a protracted phone conversation with one of Liddy’s radio producers that called for some esoteric sports stats and he sent an autographed, dedicated copy of the calendar to me at the paper in thanks. I put it in my mail cubby to take home later, as I was due at the bar that night and didn’t have safe transport, but the next day it was gone. [↩]

A public service announcement from nickparish.net, originally uploaded by nparish.

Nothing like the Apollo missions has been seen since, and some believe nothing ever will be.

"The Apollo programme is arguably the greatest technical achievement of mankind to date. And it was carried out successfully, against the backdrop of a difficult political situation in the USA, caused in large part by the worsening of the human and financial cost of the Vietnam war.

This just came over the e-wire regarding Barack Obama’s presidential campaign winning Integrated and Titanium Grand Prix awards at Cannes over the weekend…

June 30, 2009

Statement on receiving Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival Grand Prix Titanium and Integrated Campaign Awards:

“The Obama Media Team is honored to accept these amazing awards in recognition of the outstanding work done by so many people at the Campaign, in particular the New Media Group, alongside the multi-agency consulting team led by AKPD Message and Media and GMMB.

“The communications agency roster includes: Dixon Davis Media Group, Murphy Putnam Media, Shorr Johnson Magnus, Squier Knapp Dunn Communications, Message, Audience and Presentation, FUSE, Blue State Digital and The Strategy Group. Research firms include: Benenson Strategy Group, Anzelone-Liszt Research, Bendixen and Associates, Bennett, Petts and Blumenthal, Brilliant Corners, David Binder Research and Harstad Research. All of these firms and the Obama for America staff share in this incredible honor.

“But we couldn’t have done it without all those volunteers, who knocked on doors, hosted events, made phone calls, contributed whatever they could afford and stood in line on Election Day to make their voice heard. Most of all, we must thank President Barack Obama, the best client anyone could ever hope to have.

“It is humbling to receive this recognition among so many groundbreaking campaigns around the world.”

In addition to being the highest profile political campaign ever awarded at Cannes, it is likely the most collaborative. I count 19 communications and research firms sharing the Lion, at least the ones that were mentioned on the email I got. Maybe the trophies will travel around like the Stanley Cup to each partner company, but if I were running a political communications, design or research agency, it would be worth the €1999.00 to get advertising’s highest honor for the office shelf¹.

Someone may have left Chicago’s Mode Project off the list, though–according to Mode’s website it had a pretty big role: “[Mode Project was] one of the main creative partners in the campaign, assisting its longtime client and the lead agency, AKPD Message and Media. Mode Project oversaw the design of the now famous Obama logo and produced more than 200 broadcast commercials and additional digital content during the course of the primary and general election.” You may remember them from this space previously, as they commissioned one Aaron Draplin to collaborate on some recovery logos.

It’s a conspicuous absence, and maybe strikes at the heart of the creative-versus-rational debate Bob Garfield gets into here when the cool, interesting company that designed the logo is left out of the celebratory dogpile: “the messaging was as creatively barren as it was tactically brilliant. There was no ‘Morning in America’ in this campaign. No ‘Daisy.’ No any single thing that stood out. Cannes has just awarded two Grand Prix to a back office.”

Well, a very talented back office, with political geniuses David Axelrod and David Plouffe running the show, but still one that required the iconic ‘O’ (that ironically headed the email as you see here, yet whose creators weren’t given any dap). Mode Project even produced the video that introduced David Plouffe’s Cannes appearance, made possible by Omnicom’s DDB (watch it at the studio’s site). The Guardian’s Mark Sweney reports here Plouffe dispelled the myth the campaign was 2.0–Plouffee called it “old school,” surely one for which a logo is integral.

So, I’ve asked the spokesperson from GMMB (also an Omnicom agency) a couple more questions about its Cannes strategy and will see if the Mode snub is just an oversight. Maybe it is. Hopefully this isn’t this year’s BBDO-Big Spaceship credit fracas; it would be a shame to ruin the further celebration of optimism and choice with squabbling and politics.

Funnily enough, in the course of dashing off this post things seem to have developed. A colleague received an emailed release from Mode just a few minutes after I received the release from GMMB:

OBAMA FOR AMERICA CAMPAIGN WINS TOP PRIZES IN CANNES
Mode Project, Creative Partner to AKPD Message and Media, Part of the Winning Media Team

Chicago, IL – (June 29, 2009) — The advertising and marketing campaign that helped propel Barack Obama into the White House has been honored with the two top prizes — the Titanium Grand Prix and the Integrated Grand Prix — from the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.

Chicago-based Mode Project was one of the main creative partners in the campaign, assisting its longtime client and the lead agency, AKPD Message and Media. Mode Project oversaw the design of the now famous Obama logo and produced more than 200 broadcast commercials and additional digital content during the course of the primary and general election.

Of the Cannes win for Obama for America, Mode Project’s Colin Carter says, “We were honored to be a part of the Obama for America campaign and congratulate everyone on the Obama Media Team in this historic, game-changing endeavor. The Cannes honor is the highest in advertising and knowing we contributed to the successes of the campaign gives us a sense of accomplishment, second only to the election’s outcome.”

Mode Project (http://www.modeproject.com/) is a Chicago-based creative production studio providing motion design, production, editorial and interactive solutions to agencies and brands such as AT&T, ecko unltd, Obama for America, Sunsilk, Tropicana, Kellogg’s, Gatorade since 2002.

So, got any info as to why different agencies and companies involved in the historic campaign may be playing politics in the wake of the Cannes awards? Or is this just an innocent, simple oversight where the email I got was the one that forgot to give praise to the creative parts of the campaign, reserving that for another PR list? Let me know…

1. maybe that’ll help the Lions keep the lights on after this year’s fest was reportedly off some 40%, but surely they had some cash salted away [↩]

UPDATE: Last night’s meeting went great. I schlepped on about becoming a better geek, Matt from McCann introduced some tools to make anyone into a rabid Twitter fiend and James from Saatchi poked the crabby bear that is the age-old debate on advertising’s merits as art and the ethics of creative borrowing. Good times. Hopefully the ladies enjoyed as much as we did.

check out the slides and resources links

As we approached our CaT: Creativity and Technology event last week (which went swimmingly, thanks for asking) I began to think more and more about the prevalance of augmented reality in the panels and presentations that we were putting on. AR, along with data visualization, was one of the day’s most discussed topics; at least four of the presenters on the agenda spoke of the technique.

We had a few practitioners together, so I wanted to ask them what I’m sure many attendees were thinking: Is this a fad, or what? I’ve seen the rumblings and mutterings to the same effect, and a post today by Iain at Crackunit is prompting even more debate.

While I’m in general tilting toward the cynical side when I see a tool get hyped quickly, I’m pretty confident as we extend the size and strength of mobile data networks, get larger screens at home and become more comfortable interacting with webcams that we’ll see applications of Augmented Reality move away from cool visuals and into a realm of great utility. Already, mobile apps like Wikitude are making use of the technology but once data streams there get larger expect even better stuff. (Tangentially, I talked with the creators of a bunch of apps for a recent Creativity story.)

Obviously, as in everything, advertising professionals stand a good chance of ravaging the practice, but I don’t think that’ll matter. Even if they do, useful, interesting applications stand stock apart from tawdry gags. The USPS box simulator Tait mentions from AKQA is a good example of this and the Ikea example below it is great and traditional as well.

My.IKEA from Robin Westergren on Vimeo.

But what are they keys to deeply significant AR projects, other than a growing infrastructure of fast mobile connectivity, increase in display size and webcam adoption?

• Coordination with product/package design across multiple areas to create unique activators: Consider being able to pullall the Kraft products from your cupboard, place them with their tags facing the webcam and then seeing the different hot meals you could combine them to make. The sort of heavy interplay across multiple product lines that’s necessary for this to be good won’t come from a one-off project, though.
• Dynamic, rapid interplay with other backend parts on the visualization tip: Wieden + Kennedy did a virtual Easter Egg hunt in its office with Photosynth and Google Street View’s just introduced Smart Navigation. Both services are good at imitating 3D-like experiences from flat images. I can’t imagine we’re far from finding a bridge. Imagine going to Disneyland or a National Park and being able to bring your trail map to a viewer location and pop out an AR map to note landmarks and see what you’re in for. This won’t work, though, unless the stuff in back comes together seamlessly.
• Useful and compelling content and interactions: This last one may be the most obvious but it’s also the most important. Any Crystal Pepsi/Pet Rock scenario begins with people thinking of the AR applications as tired and a waste of time, developing a resistance to the technology and ignoring it. There are already a few barriers to engagement, namely the amount of time and technology it takes to fire up the interaction. As those come down, you’ve got to make sure what’s on the other end counts.

Wikipedia has an exciting list of potential AR stuff (such as, when projectors get really cheap, you can do cool stuff like this: “Any physical device currently produced to assist in data-oriented tasks (such as the clock, radio, PC, arrival/departure board at an airport, stock ticker, PDA, PMP, informational posters/fliers/billboards, in-car navigation systems, etc. could be replaced by virtual devices that cost nothing to produce aside from the cost of writing the software.”)

Thinking AR stuff will quickly go away or decline in quality is a normal cynical reaction (and one I had at first), but it doesn’t seem like, in this case, it will. Advertisers will certainly make thorough use of the novelty and entertainment aspects, but the rate of innovation inside the AR community will allow more and more meaningful interactions should brands choose to dedicate resources to well-thought-out projects.

I was quite surprised yesterday when my colleague Ann Christine Diaz told me about a story she was working on—Jason Rohrer, renowned champion of the indie videogame movement, signed to be repped by a commercial production company.

In this case, Rohrer’s one of three big new hires by Tool of North America, which traditionally represents TV commercial directors, but is making a foray, along with most anyone in the space concerned with keeping the doors open, into digital creation.

Rohrer’s a very interesting guy, who’s cited by many as one of the top game developers working today, especially among the indie/artsy set (he was also honored as part of this year’s Creativity 50–and that’s no small beer). Esquire magazine had a great story recently about his commitment to craft as well as honorable ideals concerning our relationship with nature and the advancement of an equitable and responsible society. (To be succinct, he’s something of an ascetic who fought to preserve his family’s yard as a meadow, eats vegan food and doesn’t refrigerate anything.) He’s got the values I wouldn’t have thought to be attracted to working in advertising.

‘Ho ho,’ you say, ‘This is interesting, another artist brought under the spell of the wicked advertising industry. How soon we’ll be seeing him leave, jaded, when his true genius is squandered.’ And you’re right to think that way–it’s a bit like Thoreau writing Quaker Oats spots for Wilford Brimley.

what does Rohrer signing to Tool mean for gaming? and ads?