@Rest: aaron rester's blog

Monday, December 7, 2009

 

In Which I Land on Boagworld

This past week's episode of Boagworld featured yours truly doing an audio version of my review of Prezi.com (originally featured here). Boagworld is the only web design podcast I listen to religiously and I've highly recommended it before; aside from being quite informative, the hosts, Paul and Marcus, are very entertaining and exceedingly funny... maybe it's the British accents? It's a pleasure to be associated with such a great resource for the web design community.

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Saturday, May 3, 2008

 

Presentations: Podcasting & New Media

Late last year, along with Renee Basick, the Interim Director of the Chicago Media Iniatives Group, I did a couple of presentations on podcasting and new media. The first, entitled "An Introduction to Podcasting," was presented in November to a group of University of Chicago IT folks as part of the University's "Get IT Together" initiative. The presentation was (gulp) video-recorded, and you can watch it below. In it, Renee and I address the logistical and technological issues surrounding starting a podcasting initiative in a higher education environment, using my experience in starting the CHIASMOS program as a case study. The advance publicity for this presentation may be the first and only time anyone has ever referred to me as an expert in anything.




The second presentation, "Embracing Web 2.0 and New Media Communications," which was an expanded version of the presentation in November, was presented at the Council for Advancement and Support of Education District V's annual conference in December. While this one wasn't recorded, you can check out our slideshow below. If you download the prsentation, you can also read our notes that went along with it (which will make a lot more sense than just looking at the slides).


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Thursday, March 6, 2008

 

Actually, Make That 30 Seconds of Fame

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about being mentioned on one of favorite podcasts, Freelance Radio. Well, I am feeling the Freelance Radio love once again -- "Walk On" by the Lost Cartographers was selected as the outro music for Episode 10. Thanks again to the crew over at Freelance Radio for the shout-out and for all their excellent work.

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Monday, March 3, 2008

 

Designing With Your Ears

On a recent episode of Design Matters, Petrula Vrontikis said something that, well, made my ears perk up. When host Debbie Millman asked whether she preferred working by hand or working on the computer, Ms. Vrontikis responded that she works "mostly... with [her] ears." Listening, she reminds us, is the root of design work -- listening to what your client says, and translating that into a piece of visual work, is what good designers do.

Of course, what your client says and what they think they want may be two very different things, but we'll leave that for another day.

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Wednesday, February 20, 2008

 

My 15 Seconds of Fame

In an earlier post, I mentioned that one of my favorite podcasts is called Freelance Radio; it discusses all manner of topics relating to doing freelance work of any sort, from dealing with difficult client to drumming up new business. I just happened to listen to Episode 9 of Freelance Radio, which features a "Mailbag" question from yours truly about how the practical matters necessary to prepare oneself to freelance full-time (don't worry, I'm not going to quit my day job just yet). Thanks to the folks at Freelance Radio, and keep up the good work!

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Monday, January 21, 2008

 

How To Stay Sane On The CTA

My Roscoe Village apartment and the University where I work are only about 8 miles apart, as the crow flies. Somehow, though, I manage to spend nearly three hours a day trapped in the belly of the beast known as the Chicago Transit Authority, or CTA. In between doomsday scenarios and derailments, I've used my daily public transportation sentence to get a fair amount of reading done. In the last couple of years, though, much of my commuting time has been spent listening to podcasts. Here's a quick guide to some of my favorites, listed by topic:

Music:

Paste Culture Club
- Paste is almost my perfect music magazine: heavy does of alt.country/americana and indie rock, with occasional forays into underground hip-hop and the just-plain-weird. While they may throw in a few too many earnestly mediocre singer-songwriters, I'll take that any day over the Frankenstein's monster Rolling Stone has become -- the reanimated corpses of Boomer nostalgia acts steered by the criminally insane brain of top-40 teen-pop (shudder). Paste's biweekly podcast features full-length songs, interviews, and news about new releases.

Sound Opinions - Featuring Chicago's own major-paper rock critics, "The World's Only Rock-and-Roll Talk Show" was on WXRT when I moved to town, and has since moved to Chicago Public Radio. I'm pretty sure it's one of the only shows on public radio where you'll ever hear people wax on about the talents of Ghostface Killah.


Design:

Design Matters - Sterling Brands' Debbie Millman (she designed the Burger King logo, among others) interviews some of the top designers in the field (Steven Heller, Milton Glaser, etc.), along with other cultural luminaries like Malcolm Gladwell.

Be A Design Cast - A group of young designers from (of all places) Omaha puts together this entertaining bi-weekly podcast. They too interview design big-wigs (including Debbie Millman), but don't take themselves (or much of anything, except Mountain Dew can redesigns) too seriously.

Freelance Radio - Not really a design show, but applicable to those like myself who do freelance design work. The hosts discuss things like contracts, time management techniques, and client horror stories.


Web Design:

Boagworld - Hosted by two Brits who run a web design company called Headscape. The dynamic between old friends Paul, the often-cranky designer type and Marcus, the ex-pop-star salesman/project manager is itself worth listening to the show. The fact that it's full of interesting news, reviews, and interviews is just icing on the cake.


Miscellaneous:

This American Life - Single-handedly responsible for making me a member of Chicago Public Radio, TAL is the most popular podcast on iTunes. I actually listened to all 300-plus episodes on the web before they began podcasting, which means I wait with baited breath each week to see if the lastest podcast will be a new episode or a rerun.

The Story - Kind of like TAL, but daily.

Savage Lovecast - "America's only advice columnist" Dan Savage is even funnier live than he is in his weekly column. Warning: anyone who doesn't find hilarity in the idea of elderly grandmothers inadvertently pleasuring their pet parakeets probably shouldn't listen.

So -- any suggestions for ones I should absolutely add to my list? I'm all ears.

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