Bob Boilen is a person I consider to be a music evangelist–someone who promotes music because of a deep, heart-felt love for artists and all musical styles. In early 2008, Bob began a new series titled “Tiny Desk Concerts.” Independent and record label affiliated musicians alike were invited to perform live in the offices of NPR’s All Songs Considered. The performances were recorded and presented in audio and video formats to the public. The result has been intimate, authentic performances that feel much more personal and real–the tight office space does not accomodate the use of vast musical gear or production equipment. The artists often arrive in street clothes, voices ready, and acoustic instruments in hand. The sound of a small audience can often be heard, responding to the musician’s chatter between songs–and sometimes during songs as banter contributes to the overall groove of the performance. The viewer experiences a higher level of authenticity and originality than they are normally afforded by studio recordings or heavily produced videos–the Tiny Desk Concert experience is a setting, which I think, enables us to connect personally with the artist. Don’t mistake, studio recordings and music videos are still viable formats that are artistic and enjoyable. However, there is something special about the Tiny Desk Concert format that makes the experience personal–there are more skin tingling moments here than can usually be had elsewhere.

I applaud Bob Boilen for his ingenuity in creating this unique experience. Listening to and talking about music is probably something that seems old and familiar for him–maybe something that isn’t always as fun day-to-day because it is part of a job. Yet Bob’s insight regarding a unique way to share the performances of emerging musicians and experienced artists with the rest of us is simply brilliant and something that others overlooked. Bob, thank you for helping me to experience music in a personal, unique, and meaningful way!

Included below are a few examples of the wonderful performances that may be viewed by visiting the Tiny Desk Concerts website or the NPR Music YouTube Channel.

Raphael Saadiq performs on NPR Music Tiny Desk Concerts

Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros perform at NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concert

Tom Jones’ Tiny Desk Concert at NPR Music

K’Nann NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

Jakob Dylan: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

The overall sound and feel of The Mynabirds’ music is a delight to listen to. The chords and lyrics evoke the sound of the 1960s and bands like The Mamas and the Papas.  NPR’s Ken Tucker reviewed the band and showcased several songs from The Mynabirds’ new album on May 18, 2010. You can listen to the story here:

Spinner.com also featured the music video for The Mynabirds track titled Numbers Don’t Lie:

A live performance of Numbers Don’t Lie was recorded at SXSW earlier this year too:

For an even more in depth look into advertising, copyrighting, and creativity consider viewing the documentary Art & Copy. This documentary, directed by Doug Pray, also includes a section about a family owned billboard company — which gives you a parallel story, to that shared in Up There, into how billboard advertisements are designed, manufactured, and installed.

3×3 from Nuno Rocha on Vimeo.

The thoughtful design of communications, products, processes, and standards enables us to move through a busy day with less frustration, effort, and adaptation. The things we do and the things we use are better because of feedback.

Vision, inspiration, creativity–all of these are important for invention, innovation, and initiating change. However, big ideas fail when deemed impractical or unusable by our peers.

Want to be successful in life and work? Share, listen, think about what you hear, and make thoughtful adjustments to your efforts.

If you use feedback effectively, you will gain support for your idea, be alerted of potential problems early, and ultimately reach higher levels of success.

It is nice to see a large company adding options that enhances a user’s privacy options.

The repeated modifications to how private data is handled has made Facebook seem less trustworthy and credible. In addition, the lack of tools for managing what we have historically posted and shared is disappointing–not having the ability to search for and manage legacy content we’ve shared (e.g., comments on friends walls) is especially bad for younger Facebook users who don’t fully understand the implications of permanently sharing nearly everything with the world.

I love staying in touch with all of my friends and family, but Facebook just isn’t Facebook anymore.

Leo Laporte, a tech guru who I admire, deleted his account live on episode 42 of his show This Week in Google–mainly because he also is concerned and tired of the repeated privacy modifications.

Jason Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo.com, wrote a post titled The Big Game, Zuckerberg and Overplaying your Hand. In the post Jason lays out a timeline of actions Facebook has taken to hurt partners, developers, and encroach upon the privacy of Facebook users.

In Price of Facebook Privacy? Start Clicking, Nick Bilton writing for the New York Times, describes how Facebook has chosen to share user’s personal data with third party sites and how confusing management of Facebook privacy settings is. In short, Facebook users are now automatically opted-in to sharing personal data with third parties. Applications that Facebook users install are no longer required to dump personal data after 24 hours.

Bilton’s article included an infographic titled Facebook Privacy: A Bewildering Tangle of Options which illustrates the 50 settings and 170 options the average Facebook user must navigate to manage their privacy as well as changes to the Facebook Privacy Statement since 2005. Bilton spoke with and quoted Facebook representatives who said:

“There are always trade-offs between providing comprehensive and precise granular controls and offering simple tools that may be broad and blunt,” said Elliot Schrage, vice president for public policy at Facebook. “We have tried to offer the most comprehensive and detailed controls and comprehensive and detailed information about them.”

The New York Times published a post to their Bits Blog titled Facebook Executive Answers Reader Questions. In this post, Schrage replies to the user question “Why simply set everything for opt-in rather than opt-out?”

Everything is opt-in on Facebook. Participating in the service is a choice. We want people to continue to choose Facebook every day. Adding information — uploading photos or posting status updates or “like” a Page — are also all opt-in. Please don’t share if you’re not comfortable.

Leo Laport discussed this response during episode 43 of This Week in Google and I agree with Leo’s overall assessment: by using Facebook we were opting in to share personal information with friends and family whom we specifically choose and/or confirmed relationships with. We did not join Facebook to have our personal information made public for Facebook to use as they deemed necessary. Even if you take the effort to “lock-down” your privacy settings, friends who have not done the same will likely unintentionally share information about you as they use Facebook and Web sites connected to Facebook.

Businesses and organizations also are having difficulty managing their corporate identities on Facebook. As part of my social media consulting work I have contacted Facebook multiple times to request that administration rights for Facebook Pages representing organizations, that were created without authorization by fans, be transfer to proper representatives. Facebook’s policy clearly indicates that fans should create groups and only official/authorized corporate representatives should create pages (which are intended to be official platforms for musicians, public figures, and organizations). Facebook sent curt support request replies indicating that they would not transfer administrative rights away from original Facebook Page creators. I learned from a colleague at another organization that Facebook will assist businesses to consolidate/transfer Facebook Page rights when they purchase Facebook advertising services. So, if you spend $50,000/month on Facebook ads, then you can have your organizations page. Nice guys. Really nice.

The ability to manage our personal information has been reduced and continues to be encroached. Facebook is putting spin on unethical corporate behavior and hoping that we will all continue to offer up personal data for them to leverage for profit.

I decided to spend a day moving links and comments from my Facebook profile to my personal blog. I intend to leave my Facebook account open, so that people can still find me, and so that I am able to manage my personal identity on Facebook. But, I have stripped personal information from the account, and left a note for where my friends can now find me (i.e., by visiting my blog).

Facebook, I really really liked you. But, I don’t think we can be friends anymore.

Lately, my thoughts have lingered on how I use my resources and the value of my behaviors and actions. During the week a usual day consists of eleven phases: waking, getting dressed, feeding myself, commuting to my job, working from eight to five, commuting to my home, exercise, walking the dogs, eating dinner, watching a television show with my spouse, and going to sleep. Weekends are more loosely defined routines consisting of errands, rest and recovery, family time, participation in a community church, and other reactive actions/activities.

I am thankful for my health, a wonderful family, and employment that feels meaningful. I consider myself lucky to live in the United States of America. The education I received from the public education system and state university enabled me to be prepared for many great opportunities. I’ve been blessed with an abundance of opportunity, friendship, work, and family.

Yet, most of the time I don’t feel happy or fulfilled. I feel driven to learn more, grow stronger, be more effective and productive, help others, to support our community, the region, and the state in which I reside (i.e., Michigan). I do feel happy when I am working on challenging problems and when my actions appear to have a positive impact that supports the success of my partners, employers, family, and friends. Beyond my family and employment responsibilities—I have begun to wonder what might be possible if I tried to help people with whom I don’t have routine interactions (e.g., neighbors, strangers, local non-profits, government, etc.). I believe I could budget one hour most days for work with others. My outreach efforts would involve approaching others, to ask how I could help them, to share my knowledge and/or abilities. The hour could be spent doing anything from running errands for a home bound person, performing tasks that require physical labor, listening, building business plans, creating new Web sites and communication tools, etc.

I’ve also been considering the lasting effect of such actions. Some tasks will only provide short term value or relief. It seems to me that the best actions would be those that enable others to sustain, duplicate, or spread the value produced by our interaction. I need to think more about how to effectively be available for opportunity, leverage available resources, and move into action.

In closing, the thoughts and concepts on this page are what have been weighing on my mind lately. I am going to continue to think about this and consider next steps. Thanks for taking the time to read this!

To all my friends out there, know that I think of you often. I wish time would slow down a bit, and that we could hang out more, enjoy some good food, and talk about all the great things we are planning to do.