Filmed in Vancouver: jPod

jPod
If you haven’t seen this truly local TV show, or even heard of the book, I highly suggest you watch it now!

Local author Douglas Coupland wrote JPod back in 2006 and it was picked up by CBC in 2008 as a TV show. With Alan Thicke’s name attached to the show, it seemed like a keeper. Unfortunately, the show only lasted 13 episodes and when CBC announced that it was canceling the show, fans protested. I guess it was inevitable – the show got moved to the dreaded Friday night 9pm slot, where almost all TV shows seem to go to die.

The show (and book) centres around a group of five game designers, whose last names all begin with the letter J. They work at Neotronic Arts (gee, doesn’t that sound familiar?), and they’ve pretty much figured out the system to do as much or as little work as they want… until a new boss shows up. The show is very clearly set in Vancouver, with SFU setting the stage for Neotronic Arts headquarters and various parts of North Vancouver as the main character’s home. Check out a very comprehensive preview below.

Bonus!! Some of you may recognize Kaitlin from her very, very brief scene in Battlestar Galactica (also filmed in Vancouver).

While the TV show got canceled, it did cover quite a bit of what happened in the book- albeit some parts were changed to create a slightly different storyline from the book. Since CBC took down their jPod microsite, I guess we’ll have to settle with jPod: Season 1 on DVD from Amazon.

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Posted in Filmed in Vancouver | 5 Comments

The Point of Twitter?

Adam Grossman, Senior Media Relations Advisor at ICBC just posted this on Twitter and it really made me think.

Now just for full disclosure, Adam recently held the position of Director of Education for the Canadian Public Relations Society, Vancouver Chapter (of which I am a student member) and was kind enough to be one of my interviewees for the Public Relations program at Kwantlen entrance application. In short: He pretty much always makes me think.

However, I’m not sure what to make of his tweet. While it’s certainly true that there are just some businesses (and individuals alike) who don’t truly understand the purpose and value of Twitter – and by extension, social media – there are also companies and individuals who do understand both.

Now, I can infer two messages from Adam’s tweet:

  1. Twitter is for businesses to use as another channel for customer service.
  2. Twitter is for businesses to use to engage customers and stakeholders to build long lasting relationships.

Personally, I think Adam’s going for the second meaning but the conclusion I came to first was actually the first message.

Plenty of businesses use Twitter for customer service. Just look at @WestJet, @ClearlyContacts and @JetBlue. It’s pretty obvious they’re doing great things with Twitter. And there are plenty of businesses using Twitter for promotion (ones that come to mind are @DeDutch, @Lululemon and @Yyoga).

The problem is, Twitter makes it very easy for companies to fall into the Customer Service trap because it’s easily trainable, easily understood and easily measurable – but only if you have the manpower to do it. It’s also very easy for companies to fall into the promotional trap as well. But we all know that’s not the point of Twitter.

So what is the point of Twitter (and by extension, social media)? (drumroll please…) To Be Social.

I’m not going to go to a party to try and sell someone a service or product, just like I wouldn’t go to a party to fix someone’s computer or internet. I’d go there to meet new people, start conversations and share interesting things.

If you want a great example of a company doing social things with social media, just look at @OldSpice. Just look at their OldSpice’s Youtube Channel. The marketing team launched this yesterday and already, they have an incredible amount of response videos to their fans on Twitter, Yahoo questions, Youtube and other channels! Isaiah Mustafa (their spokesbadass) probably spent the better part of last week filming thirty second (to one minute) PERSONALIZED responses to celebrities and Internet fans all over the world. This video is particularly interesting because he grants an interview via a video response!

There’s no doubt that these responses take time and money to craft (and craft well), and there’s no question that Old Spice has the budget to do these things. But even on a limited budget, companies can very easily start conversations within their existing customer base and invite new people to join in. The best part is that it doesn’t always have to be about the product or service – it could be a strong opinion on something semi-controversial, or simply bringing awareness to an otherwise mysterious business model.

Don’t believe me? Try it. You’d be amazed at the results.

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Posted in Social Media | 1 Comment

Top Six Ways I Maintain My Work/Life Balance

Dilbert rocks!
Too often, I find myself stretched thin between real work, school work, house work and other errands, which inevitably leads to more work. Needless to say, this leaves precious little time for myself to relax and just turn off my brain. In the time I do have, I try my best to spend some time with friends, or just on my own. Here’s a list of my top six ways to maintain a (somewhat) healthy work/life balance.

  1. Watch TV. A lot of it. I’ll admit, I watch way too much TV. In the regular season, I’ll be watching up to 20 odd shows, and in the summertime that drops down to about six or seven. Even so, that’s at least 2 or 3 shows per day! The best thing about too much TV? Hosting get-togethers with friends to do a season premiere viewing at your house! What could be better than having friends over with a bunch of snacks watching some quality TV?
  2. Read my RSS feeds. This is what my Google Reader tells me: From your 161 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 10,215 items, starred 6 items, shared 4 items, and emailed 0 items. It really doesn’t seem like I do anything in small quantities, and while about 25 of those feeds are job sites, the majority of my feeds provide entertainment. Whether it’s the LolCats RSS feed, or the RedFlagDeals RSS feed, I’ll always find something funny, interesting and topical.
  3. Social Networking. I’m fairly active on Twitter (albeit not so much these days) and I’m also on Facebook – a lot. I’m also the girl who’ll have tabs in Firefox dedicated to Gmail, Google reader and Facebook at all times, and Tweetdeck, MSN and my Outlook running in the background because I want to be up to date on everything. This also extends to my blackberry, albeit to a lesser extent. Now, I don’t see this as work. In fact, Martin Waxman of Palette PR made a strong argument for staying connected while on a vacation.
  4. Playing World of Warcraft. Yep. I play World of Warcraft. In fact, if you like, you can check out the two characters I’ve nurtured over the past six months – Elyria, a level 57 night elf hunter and Leslee, a lvl 80 human warrior. WoW is harmless enough when you play in moderation but I can see how this game could seriously take over someone’s life.
  5. Simple pleasures: drawing a bath.
  6. Nothing like a nice hot bubble bath to sooth a day’s worth of hard work. Paired with a really good book (currently wanting to read: Sookie Stackhouse books) and some bubbly, it’s easy to just let the stress of a day melt away in a tub of hot water. That reminds me – I need to go pick up a bath bar at Lush!

  7. Hot Yoga Session. This is truly me time. I go to hot yoga classes for myself, to better my body (which really needs some work), calm my mind and reboot my system. Not to mention buying really cute hot yoga outfits! It’s not hard to carve out an hour to 90 minutes for this workout every couple of days, and it’s so worth it.

Well, there’s my top six ways of maintaining work/life balance. How do you do your maintenance?

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Posted in Life in General | 1 Comment

Why Harry Potter is EPIC.

C’mon. Tell me you didn’t get shivers watching that.

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Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Everyone Worth Knowing by Lauren Weisberger

You may know Lauren Wiesberger for her book-turned-movie, The Devil Wears Prada starring Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt and a score of talented actors and actresses. I’ve to confess: it’s definitely one of my favourite movies of all time.

So when I was at the library and spotted Everyone Worth Knowing, I was ecstatic. This would be my third book by Lauren, and I was thrilled to have something new to read.

Everyone Worth Knowing is about a 27 year-old New York banker named Bette Robinson who uncharacteristically quits her immensely demanding 80-hour-workweek job (which, to me, read more like a call centre job than anything else, complete with soul sucking-ness). While she majored in English at college, she really didn’t know where her life was headed… Until she landed a job at a posh up-and-coming PR firm, Kelly and Company.

Now, as an aside – I managed to pick up a book that just happened to have its main character discovering her talents at PR firm. I knew nothing about this book, didn’t even read the jacket cover, and just went with it because of the author.

So while we join Bette in her adventures of PRdom, I got to thinking about what my education was like in comparison to what Weisberger’s definition of PR was. While PR isn’t just about events, celebrities, photo ops, blind items on Page Six and gossip in general, it really gave me a couple thoughts to what publicity could do for an organization – be it good or bad.

You see, the main character, Bette, somehow gets tangled up in a “romance” with hotshot playboy Philip Weston. Despite copious amounts of (incorrect) gossip, this romance works to Bette’s advantage, giving her a career a positive push. She could literally do no wrong. Whether it was a picture of her and Philip Weston coming out of a club at 3am (which apparently is early in Manhattan) completely wasted, or if it was a more scandalous item, Bette’s boss would applaud these misinterpreted antics simply because it got the company’s name in print, reaching the “right” audiences.

Eventually, Bette tires of this lifestyle – partying until sunrise, working straight through the day, operating on very little sleep, and ditching her pantsuits for more ‘fashionable’ clothes. Is this a true representation of the PR world? I think not!

All in all, it was a fun, light read. Weisberger’s view of the PR world (it was pretty specific to event PR) gave me some insight into the power of a well maintained contact list of clients, media and other names, and I also learned a bit about throwing events.

So if you enjoyed The Devil Wears Prada, I’d highly recommend this book. Just keep an open mind about the world of PR.

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Posted in Books, PR, Uncategorized | Leave a comment
  • Hi! I'm Lesley, and I'm a 27 year old college student, studying Public Relations at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. This site is dedicated to frugal living and how not to go completely insane while living on a shoestring budget. If you feel so inclined, you may also donate to the "Send Lesley to School" fund! Trust me, you won't regret it!