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Top 3 Things I Learned at CiviCRM Meetup in NYC

Tonight was another CiviCRM meetup group for the NYC area. It was a pretty good turn-out considering everyone was worried about the snow tonight. Alas, the ones who didn’t make it certainly missed out.

We had a basic case study from Alice on using a new module with CiviCRM to help with custom fields. Her team has been using it for canvassing voters and really is a unique idea. It’s good to know that some of those things will make it it core. We then broke out into our group sessions (my idea 2 months ago I might add) and I was VERY happy with how that went. I started with the newbies group, where Alice went through a basic introduction using the top menu bar and discussing what the purpose is of each component. It was very well run, I learned some invaluable tips, and I think all the people there to review the product for possible inclusion into their systems left with what they needed. I was happy to have a core understanding of what I can do for the Tommy Foundation.

The other break outs were with those having database issues, as well as reviewing other case studies and advanced developer questions. For me, I had some more questions about theming with CiviCRM and Drupal, so I went to another break-out group with Joseph, one of the employees of our generous host Rayogram, who really broke it down for me. What I learned, and I’m sad to say, is that I’m pretty disappointed with the actual procedures that goes into theming. I was hoping there was some kind of method for connecting images in CiviEvent like is used in Drupal, where you simply upload a file, it’s registered with the node, and then can be added to the Event. Suffice it to say, it is a very manual process to associate pictures with an Event template. This is a MAJOR drawback for events, as who wants to hand code an if-then statement manually for an organization that might have 20 events a month? What about adding an awesome Flash object? The answer is no one, including me.

Though I may have left with a less hopeful mindset when it comes to implementing CiviCRM for our organization, I have to say the NYC MeetUp itself is fantastic. The people there are knowledgeable, and it is a phenomenal resource that you just can’t get through on-line tutorials and mind-numbing pages of documentation. If people are not attending meet-ups, they are missing the boat by just being able to ask questions to people on the front lines. I have no doubt that we will stick with CiviCRM, if only because I learned the community is dedicated to making it a much better product and over time I have faith it will fill our needs fully.

I’m hoping for the next meet-up I’m able to attend that there is more talk about Drupal integration, as it seems this is where the rubber meets the road for interacting with the data and our constituents. In fact, a one day detailed boot-camp along the lines of a Drupal Boot-Camp would be most helpful. It would need to include a major spot on theming, views integration, permissions, back-up and other admin procedures, and some other issues. I would certainly pay for something like that, and I feel others would too with the solid core group Alice has helped put together.

Thanks for checking in, and please don’t forget to vote every day in February for our Foundation in the Pepsi Refresh Challenge, the only autism organization qualified (AND WINNING SO FAR) in the month of February.

Donald Lobo

Not sure why you are not using a node page to hold all the event details and content. I think ...

12 February 10 at 07:54

admin

You're absolutely right, and that's my solution as well. I'll have to add the fields to a specific Events content ...

14 February 10 at 17:07

5 Steps of Workflow for Producing a Green Screen Promotional Video Quickly

I just finished producing the promotional video for the United States of Autism Pepsi Promotional Challenge. GO VOTE THERE EVERYDAY IN FEBRUARY!! Suffice to say, it took nearly a week of filming, post-production, and everything in between while still being employed full time somewhere else. I only wish I had more time to make it better, but there’s a saying that you only have time, cost, and quality and you can ever get 2. Here’s the process I used which worked out pretty well for a one man crew:

1. For my recording, I used 24F, shutter speed of 1/48 and adjusted the iris here and there on a Canon XH-A1. Made sure to use a boom mic on the camera. Color correct your camera’s white balance there on the spot to save yourself time. When recording, get good lighting of your subjects. 3 spot lighting at minimum, one key light, a backdrop light, and a fill light. Log and capture to your computer in Final Cut Pro. Put all of your shots into numbered bins, starting at “01″ instead of “1″. It may take a few extra minutes, but it saves you a ton of time. For the capture, I used the Easy Setup HDV 1080/24p setup. Worked great, and no problems. Normally HDV sucks for Green Screen, but it came out ok in the end.
2. On the FCP timeline, create a rough cut of your entire video with the green screen in the background. Make sure to trim the edits as close as you can while still leaving some dead air in the clip to pull the noise from later. You can then go clip by clip and select an in and outpoint for each one on the timeline. Do so (you can use “i” and “o”) and then export it as a quicktime movie file (the first selection under export) and put it into a folder called “unkeyed movies”. Then move on to the next clip. Tedious, but it works.
3. Import the unkeyed movie into After Effects CS4. Create the same formatting structure you used in FCP to make it easier to navigate. Import the movie by double clicking in the project window, and then turn it into a comp by dragging the movie to the new comp button at the bottom of the project window. Drag the comp and the movie into it’s new folder in the project window. On the timeline, create a new solid and colorize it. Place it under the movie in the timeline. Add your keyer effect to the movie clip. I use Primatte Keyer Pro, it’s the best keyer BY FAR in terms of quality and speed and has been used in multiple full length features. Make sure to add the spill killer in the effect, restore detail, and adjust the levels just a tad if you need to. YOU HAVE TO DO THE COLOR CORRECTION HERE. Once you’re happy, add it to the render queue and it into a folder called “keyed videos”. Use best settings.
4. Open up Adobe Soundbooth CS4. Some people like Soundtrack Pro, or something else, I’m used to Soundbooth. Import each clip from the “unkeyed video” folder individually. Locate the dead air using your highlighter tool and capture the noise print, or the area where the sound you want to get rid of is the only thing you hear. Click on “Noise” in the tasks bar, and use the best settings you can. Each clip is different. Make sure you normalize the sound once your done. Save it into a folder called “modified audio”.
5. Go back into FCP. Import the “keyed videos” and “modified audio” and match it to its respective folder. Then, go through and replace each clip on the timeline, replace the green screen video track with the correlating “keyed video” track and do the same with the audio tracks and the files in your modified audio folder. You’ll have to delink the video and audio. Voila, it should be ready. Just be sure to adjust your audio a little, as the best lighting always comes from having good audio. You can find music soundtracks in Soundtrack Pro and just match up the timing as best as you can. Adjust your clips to match the musical timing and clean up any color. Add any extras you want from CS4, like an ending, and you’re good to go. Export it from FCP as a quicktime, and upload to youtube.

That’s about it. If you don’t have these programs, you can download trials of the Adobe Software for 30 days. They work great in trial mode. Final Cut Pro is a toughy, I would use Adobe Premier then since you can get it in a trial mode. You’ll have to use Keylight in After Effects if you don’t already own Primatte Keyer Pro 4. Hope that helps someone out there!

Now go vote for the  United States of Autism in the Pepsi Promotional Challenge! GO VOTE THERE EVERYDAY IN FEBRUARY!!

Mac Tablet: Phantom Menace or The Last Crusade?

The only thing that has taken longer to come out for tech geeks then the Mac tablet was Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Sure, one was 16 years in the making, but I ask you, which one was it? The Newton was started in 1989, 20 years ago now, which is before recent college students were born and Milli Vanilli was king of the charts. Is this the direct ancestor to our mobile salvation? Will it be like when so many of us that stood out in the rain the night before, camping out wearing ridiculous costumes and droves of media outlets interviewing us fools? Or will it be like another part of 1989, when one of the best movies ever came out: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and we all wanted desperately to “choose wisely?”

Ok, maybe we were a little over-crazed for Phantom, but we were right about Crusade! Essentially, nothing will ever live up to all the hype, and even though this has the iPhone OS and will help people get pregnant, there’s a limit. I mean, are we going to get Jar Jar Binks or Sean Connery? This thing could have a million great additions, but what centrally do we want? If it’s going to be productive, let’s get the basics that Jean-Luc Picard had and what we need for the non-profit sector:

1. Video Camera -  For Wi-Fi Conferencing for our decentralized families
2. Nice 10″ Screen – Big enough for little autistic children’s hands that have little control over their fingers
3. Good OS X Connectivity (CONFIRMED WITH IPHONE OS!)
4. Headphone Jack for SquareUp (Picard would have used that if they had money in the 24th Century)
5. Good battery life – For fundraising on location and retail outlets

Other then that, all of these rumors are kind of pointless and I expect the stock to go down a little from today in the next 1-2 week range because people are going to be as disappointed as they were with the original iPhone and the “Cut-and-Paste” crisis. Everyone wants OLED, Face Recognition, and all kinds of gadgety stuff. But let’s not forget what the point of the tablet is: mobile simplicity made beautiful. Unlike George Lucas who likes to destroy beautiful things, Steve seems to be more on point, though “strangely dressed” as our artistically post-modern knight. He is right, and this will be the most important thing he’s ever done – long term.

Now, for the miracle, if Steve could only get Lucas to stop writing his own movies…

Carpe Diem: Why Jenny McCarthy Sucks Out the Marrow of Autism But Chokes on the Bone

In one of his truly serious roles and perhaps his best, Robin Williams starred as the inspirational teacher Mr. Keating in the film Dead Poet’s Society. At the fictional school Welton Academy, a 1950’s elite men’s boarding school, he teaches his boys what the Latin phrase “Carpe Diem” means through the works of Whitman and Thoreau.  He inspires them to greatness, to break conformity, to let life drip from their soul, and to suck out the marrow of life so that when they had come to die they would not have found they had not lived. Filmed at my boarding school a few years before I attended, I always had a particular connection to the film and its message walking the same magical halls as these fictional characters. Some weekends, I would even spend time looking for their cave sanctuary in the woods, not realizing until much later that it was all a set. Yet, it was always fun to look for my own respite to the madness of boarding life in the make believe world of their rebellion.

One of the boys he teaches, Dalton, the feisty rebel of the group, begins to take his zest for ‘seizing the day’ to a whole other level, emblazing his chest in lipstick with a lightning bolt and renaming himself Niwanda, learning to play the saxophone to communicate his passion for women, and in what would be his most daring adventure, standing unexpectedly in the school assembly with a fake ringing telephone asking if the president would like to take a call from God telling him He thinks women should be allowed to attend Welton. Suffice to say, the last stunt lands him in the presidents office with a good beating and makes him a hero to the student body. Regaling his story to his closest friends in study hall afterwards, he’s interrupted by Mr. Keating. Surprisingly, to all the students there, Mr. Keating disapproved of Dalton’s stunt:

Keating: Mr. Dalton, that was a pretty lame stunt you pulled today.

Dalton: You’re siding with Mr. Nolan [the president]? What about carpe diem and “sucking all the marrow?”

Keating: “Sucking all the marrow out of life” doesn’t mean choking on the bone. There’s a time for daring, and a time for caution, and a wise man understands which is called for… [leaving with a smile] A phone call from God. If it would have been collect, now that would have been daring.

Yesterday, Jenny McCarthy sent out a twitter message that immediately reminded me of this fictional conversation:

JennyfromMTV: I live next door to Conan. Maybe I should knock on his door and give him a hug to make him feel better. Or at least a handjob with lotion.

Please understand this, but oh, my beautiful and crass Jenny, why did you just sucker-punch my child with autism and yours my dear reader if you have one?  I don’t think she does so purposefully, but she’s kind of like a big happy sloppy dog wagging their tail all over the place in a tiny room. They don’t mean it, but they just destroy things sometimes when they get excited. She’s trying to suck out the marrow of life, but here, she’s choking on the bone just as Dalton did.

Remember that Jenny McCarthy is a leader, whether she wants to be or not, and judging by the attention and amount of money she puts into her books and groups, she wants to be.  She is a good leader for her portion of the movement, beautiful, feisty, and not afraid of the fight. Yet, leaders at some point must come to the realization that they are responsible for something bigger then themselves. When she talks about jerking off Conan O’Brien even jokingly, that perception of her gets tied to the autism brand, which is the very same brand getting tied to my son, and affects his funding, the narrative of his life, and his fight with the world. It makes it harder for me to tell potential donors, “Yeh, I’m working with biomedical treatments for my son,” and have them say “Isn’t that like Jenny McCarthy stuff?” It’s not that these people can’t be persuaded, but her desire to be authentic and in your face is making lives harder in many cases unnecessarily. If Angelina Jolie can go from blood necklaces and stealing husbands to UN Ambassador and a symbol of mercy, Jenny should be able to stop living in the past of her MTV persona and understand what is now called for in her life. The simple vulgarities of her nature which served her old self so well steals money from our children and hurts their future.

Please don’t misunderstand me, I love Jenny McCarthy. To this day, I refuse to see her old Playboy shots because I respect her for where she is now in her life and afford her the courtesy of common decency deserving or not. She even had enough brains to choose a man like Jim Carrey who figured out what it means to be authentic years ago. But I hope one day she comes to the realization that being authentic is not necessarily staying true to your old self and refusing to “sell out”, but living outside of yourself and be humbled by the responsibilities and love you have for all those that depend on you. Can she seize that day, can she finally answer Whitman’s call of, “Oh Captain, my captain” and live out of the fullness of her new self?

If we are to live together in this movement, let us live abundantly from a place of dignity, humbleness and responsibility. And, perhaps, at some point, the movement should stand up and call Jenny collect.

I have a feeling she’s daring enough to answer.

Phineas, Ferb and the Future of Mankind

My wife always tells everyone that the reason we have Disney on in our house all the time if for our 11 year old son, but really, we watch all the shows. I mean, sometimes you just need a break from the constant violence and sex on TV and you need a little humor, know what I mean? One of my favorites is called “Phineas and Ferb“, a show about 2 young kids who spend their time trying to figure out what they’re going to do on their days off from school. Once you hear Phineas say “Ferb, I know what we’re going to do today,” the plot begins. Hilarity always ensues whether from their secret-agent pet platypus Perry (Agent P) and his nemesis Dr. Doofenshmirtz dueling it out to their sister Candace always trying (and failing) to bust them for their over the top ideas and stunts. It’s pure comedy genius.

The beautiful part about the show is how the boys have a crew that always comes with them, and ultimately, the show is always about the people and not the machines they create. It’s a lesson that I wish technology companies pursued more as they went about their business. Take the recent problems with the Google-Microsoft-Apple war. I never thought of myself as a huge Apple fan-boy, but over the years I really have taken to simple principle I see in all their products: DESIGN MATTERS. Technology is as much about art as it is about wizardry. (If you want wizardry, watch Wizards of Waverly Place)

Take the Apple Tablet that everyone is talking about. Rumors have been going around since 2006, and it’s only now, 4 years later we get it. The problem is that Steve kept sending it back because the design sucked. People call him a control freak (They made a film about it), but the reason is because he understands technology that doesn’t interface well with people is not just useless, but well, just ugly. Donald Norman discussed the art of design it in his seminal work, “The Design of Everyday Things“. Here are the 7 key elements and see if Apple follows them:

1. Use both knowledge in the world and in the head
2. Simplify the structure of tasks
3. Make things visible
4. Get the mappings right
5. Exploit the powers of constraints-Natural & Artificial
6. Design for Error
7. When all else fails, standardize

Unfortunately we can’t standardize computers like we can screws (Righty Tighty, Lefty Loosey), so we’re left to understanding all these machines interfaces the best we can. People can’t remember everything, so they create mental shortcuts to cope. If the person can’t remember how to use it with their shortcut, they have to quickly learn the interface, or use what Norman calls “Knowledge left in the world.” If it’s not at about a 3rd grade level, then it’s too much. I mean, really, how hard is it to learn to use an iPod? A mouse? A GUI? Not inventions of Steve, but made more human with better design. The interfaces are standardized intuitively across all the products… nearly perfectly.

This is why I can’t stand Microsoft or Google. For Microsoft, it’s all about feature overload, which is cool if you want to spend the time to figure it out, but how often do you want to spend time learning a tool versus using it to actually live? Or how about Google’s inane drive to Open Source everything? How many PHP programmers are there in the world to figure out API’s for 100 different apps? Probably just enough to keep making Google billions in a race to the bottom for margins.

Everyone who knows me knows for me it’s always about the personal touch, and not just for the techies. If technology doesn’t serve people, it’s not worth it and our culture loses something. If Apple gives that up when Steve is gone, then so be it. Hopefully there will be another company that comes along that makes design the most important piece of the puzzle.

I guess, in an ideal world, maybe a Phineas and Ferb could take the job. People might ask the boys, “Aren’t you a little young to be designing your own techno-gadgets?” Phineas’s reply? “Why yes, yes we are.” And they would make it perfect anyway. Now, if we could only figure out where Perry went…