December 2008 Archives

E.O. Wilson is one of the world's preeminent scientists, conservationists, professors and advocates for "biodiversity", a word he is credited with its first usage.

Dr. Wilson has authored over 35 books and won two Pulitzer Prizes.  And it all began with an insect found, with few exceptions, all over the world in rural, urban, suburban and developing places: the ant.

Of course, there are thousands of different species of ant (some yet to be discovered) that live in colonies of elegant social complexity.

"Dr. Wilson insisted on being called 'Ed', but I just couldn't," says Denny. "Here I was in Dr. Wilson's office and lab in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard and he wanted me to call him 'Ed'.  Come on."

Dr. Wilson made his first academic breakthrough linking social behavior between ants and humans.  He is the scientist who first studied biogeography, the geographical spread of species. According to Dr. Wilson, "We're running out of land.  The two major challenges for the 21st century are to improve the economic situation of the majority and save as much of the planet as we can."

Denny adds, "all this talk seems daunting and may set one up to over-reach without understanding.  Not true.  His writing on social behavior and science is some of the most well-written, thought-provoking prose I have read, especially regarding the complex interaction and connectivity between humans and all other species."

Denny had arranged for a one-hour interview, to be mindful of the great man's time.  "We were there for three hours.  I asked some questions.  He asked some questions.  Dr. Wilson is a generous genius with courtly manners and unmatched curiosity."

E.O. Wilson's books can be found at any good bookstore.

Further reading on E.O. Wilson is also available at Discover, Esquire, The New York Times and Wired.

Dana McGough, DavisDenny's stalwart PR manager, spent her Thanksgiving vacation in Honduras, visiting her friend Emily, who is doing missions work teaching on the rural outskirts of Tegucigalpa.

Dana's departure from the Birmingham airport was uneventful, and the flight peaceful.  Upon descent to Tegucigalpa, she felt a great slam shudder the plane from underneath as it touched down on the runway.  Dana looked up from her book in shock, and was stymied even further by thunderous applause from her fellow passengers.

Note to readers: Tegucigalpa, the capital city of Honduras, has the second-shortest runway in the world, and any pilot who lands without incident gets a well-deserved ovation from the passengers.

Dana and Emily soon made their way to the street market in town to sample the local delicacies, including a fantastic dish of papusa.  They also snacked on lychees (or rambutans, depending on your source), a small tropical fruit resembling a spiky red urchin (on the outside) and a pale, seeded eyeball (on the inside).  There were Dunkin' Donuts shops on every corner, and political billboards everywhere.

Dana had a thrill-packed ride up to Emily's mountain village in a "rapidito," one of many buses outfitted for mass transit.  These buses traverse Tegucigalpa, as well as the winding mountain roads nearby, and the drivers do not know fear.  Dana was only thrown into the aisle once, but with much more grace than Kathleen Turner in Romancing the Stone.  Our intrepid traveler regained her seat just in time to marvel at the boarding of a concessions seller, hawking tamales and other wares.

Emily teaches at the Academia los Pinares.  Read the recent Birmingham News article about their correspondence via the web with students of Mt. Laurel Elementary School.

After class each day, Dana sampled the wonders of Honduras, from the rainforest to the city market to the towering Big Jesus.  Her Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday was a sumptuous spread of baked vegetables, vegetarian pot pie, pumpkin rolls, pineapples, and fresh-baked bread.  

Dana remarks that she heard Big Jesus isn't as big as the one in Rio, but still.  Pretty gosh-darn impressive, and looming over a massive Coca-Cola sign.  The statue was erected in 1998, right before Hurricane Mitch ravaged Honduras; many residents felt it was divine retribution for erecting a graven image.

At ground level, Dana didn't see any snakes in Honduras, much to Ben Burford's relief/chagrin, even in the towering forest.

When asked for any advice to give those visiting Honduras, Dana doesn't hesitate: "Beware the stuffed frogs!"  At nearly every souvenir shop, she met an array of red stuffed bullfrogs, their black eyes glinting and peering en masse at wherever she stood. Dana considered buying a batch as disconcerting stocking stuffers, but couldn't bring herself to touch the things.  "I was frightened, amused, and somewhat bewildered by their popularity.  They were everywhere."

Come Tuesday afternoon, Dana was enjoying a frozen yogurt at Hobby Airport in Houston, and checking a backlog of 50 hojillion e-mails.  She had zero jet lag on Wednesday morning; for all the miles between home and Honduras, they aren't even in different time zones.

More of Dana's pictures from Honduras are available on the DavisDenny Flickr page.

Infinite Jest (the book) is the best-known novel by David Foster Wallace, who died by suicide in 2008.  It comprises over 950 door-stopping pages, not counting the 80+ pages of endnotes.  It took me about 10 weeks.

The plot loosely orbits around "Infinite Jest" (the film within the book), a movie so captivating that mere seconds of viewing render one hypnotically, psychotically devoted to constant viewing, even to starvation and death.  The main characters are the students of Enfield Tennis Academy, the residents of Ennet House (a rehab facility), and the spies and terrorists in pursuit of the master copy of Infinite Jest.

Wallace weaves a Byzantine level of complexity and factual information into the story.  Topics include drug rehab, Québécois separatism, terrorism, depression, competitive tennis, dysfunctional family dynamics, toxically habitable jungles, and a government-mandated replacement of the Gregorian calendar by annual corporate sponsorship, setting most of the novel's events in Y.D.A.U., the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment.

It swings between poignant, horrifying, and terribly silly, and an example of that is in the sentence right before this one.  

Most of the characters are fleshed out in a caricature of humanity so ridiculous it shouldn't be so compelling. It's as if you saw every lurid detail of an elderly accountant's maddening existence; from her passive-aggressive husband, to her stultifying job, to her dysfunctional upbringing under guacamole-addicted foster parents, to the nights she steals onto the grounds of the local zoo to carefully lay down in the flamingo pen among a scattering of purloined feed, watching them adjust to her presence and eventually crowd around, her vision engulfed in soothing pink and the only sound their efficient, deafening, mastication, before she peels away in the predawn hours, clipping the guard's shack with her El Camino.

It's kind of like that.

The story is all too easy to get lost in, with constant detours and tangents on the road. Processing each one while keeping a bead on the central plot quickly becomes a higher level of the Atari classic Millipede, dispatched bugs crowding your blaster while the game careens on. Wallace only briefly indulges in the navel-gazing verbal acrobatics of "high literature."

Anyone who reads Infinite Jest should prepare for a long trek through the hinterlands, and countless unanswered questions at the end, but it's a rewarding, hilarious trek.  As one fan wrote, "Yeah, it's long.  But is it long enough?"

Sometime in August I received an email about the PRSA T3PR conference in New York.  I normally ignore these notifications, as most involve seminars I can't afford or jobs I don't need.  This one, though, caught my eye.  T3 stands for Theory, Tactics and Technology, and since it targeted high tech public relations practitioners, I thought it could provide some valuable insight into the evolving world of online public relations.  The fact that I'd never been to the Big Apple before didn't hurt, either.  After securing the proper clearance from the higher-ups at DavisDenny, I wasted no time getting prepared.

Flight? Check.
Hotel? Check.
Long lost friend with a vehicle, working knowledge of the subway, and good advice on where NOT to go in New York?  Check.

I arrived at the conference after my first bout with the subway, just in time for Paul Gillin's keynote.  Gillin, a Senior Fellow of the Society for New Communications Research and creator of Newspaperdeathwatch.com, had two major insights.  The first was that "search is the new circulation," referring to how we use Google to find relevant information and what that means for subscription-based publications.   The second was that by definition "a blog [is simply] a way of displaying information."  I've explained more times than I care to count that "blog" is neither a dirty word nor a teen internet diary; Gillin reinforced that point beautifully.

Peter Shankman presented next, first ripping his shirt open to reveal a bulletproof vest (protection against another social media personality in the room, with whom he'd recently had some heated exchanges online).  As CEO of Help A Reporter Out, Shankman has become a prominent figure in PR circles.

His advice: don't do anything in social media you wouldn't do in real life.  About one notorious Facebook application, he asked, "Would you throw a sheep at your friends in real life?" Laughter erupted.  He also noted that as PR practitioners, "Never before have we been able to screw up quicker, in front of more people." Despite this, Shankman was quick to acknowledge that the opportunities we have to communicate for our clients are far greater than the negative implications of new media.

George Wright from Blendtec came loaded for bear, with data linking his company's viral video series, Will It Blend? with a 700% increase in sales.  It seems that pureed iPhone was a worthwhile investment after all.  Wright was a crowd-pleaser, eventually producing one of their blenders and mincing a full-size lawn rake to pieces.

Here are other notable quotes, from the all-star panel discussions:

 "The era of mass media is giving way to one of personal and participatory media, which will profoundly change both the media industry and society as a whole." - Among the Audience, The Economist

Good advice on public relations in the era of social media via David Armano (not in attendance): "Treat everyone like an A-lister."

During a panel discussion regarding social media's return on investment, the Phil Gomes, SVP with Edelman Digital, rhetorically asked: "What's the ROI of a pilot's radar?"

There were too many speakers to mention, all with expert opinions on this groundbreaking period in communication history.  The biggest surprise for me, though, was the sheer number of social media skeptics.  Many were unaware that there was a back channel of discussion on Twitter around the conference.  That is, until the announcement two hours in, that T3PR had become the number one trending topic on the popular micro-messaging service.

I met some very cool and knowledgeable people at T3PR, many of whom I follow on Twitter to this day.  I'm a content provider as well - feel free to follow me, @C_Collins.  

After the conference, I made my way into the big city.  I navigated Times Square at dawn, and met up with a friend, to begin another, completely different adventure.

All in all, my trip was both enlightening and exciting. I finally rode the subway, ate a slice of New York pizza, strolled through Central Park, and heard some up-and-coming independent NY bands.  The most potent moment of all though, was visiting ground zero on September 11th, 2008, at 9:11 p.m. And yes, I'll definitely go back again soon.

- Chris Collins

When asked why anyone would want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane, a skydiver's usual stock response is, "The door was open!"  The special type of crazy people who seek this out have two options: tandem jump, and accelerated freefall.  Tandem jumpers need next to no preparation, since they are strapped to the chest of an instructor the entire time.
   
Accelerated freefall, on the other hand, requires eight hours of instruction and training for a solo trip.  My recent high-speed descent was a birthday present from my dad; naturally, I chose the second, manlier option. I'm the third in my line to skydive, so I knew it was only a matter of time before I undertook this rite of passage.

After several hours of jittery memorization and mock-jumping, I met my other instructors, Sue and Jason.  They would be escorting me down, holding either side of my flight suit. Before I knew it, we were making our way to the roaring door, last in line.

I stepped to the portal, and after one last spot-check, felt my adrenaline max out as I stepped sideways into nothing.  The first few seconds after leaving the plane is spent accelerating in a pinwheeling freefall, the horizon spinning as your inner ear freaks out, desperate for some kind of grounding.  My attempts at steady breathing came out in a quavering shriek.

Incidentally, another part of AFF school is the use of hand signals, since the infernal, roaring wind of freefall drowns out all speech.

They also keep you busy as possible, mostly to keep your head in the game while the altimeter winds down.  Traveling at 243 feet per second is not the time to get distracted.  The photographer drifted across in front of me a moment later, and I lost my train of thought with the realization that "OH MY GOD I'M FALLING FROM THE SKY!!"



I pulled my pilot chute seconds later; my main chute billowed, my feet flew upward, and I felt hung suspended in the tranquil stillness just below cloud level. 

This was cut short by a terrifying moment of not seeing ANY airfield or parachutes below; it's disorienting to be utterly lost even when you have a bird's eye view.  I smacked my firehead bitterly, yelling, "Why does this always happen, anytime I go ANYWHERE, I always get lost, stupid, stupid!"  Then I remembered to steer the parachute, turned around, and found the airstrip for a rough landing minutes later.

Skydiving seriously turns the volume down on one's day-to-day worries and fears; I highly recommend it.  On the drive home, as I rolled down the windows and watched the speedometer creep up, I thought, "Why, this isn't fast at all!"

Ben Burford stepped up to the center stage at Bryant Denny stadium this fall, thanks to his darling wife Jean.  After she placed a winning auction bid at the Arty Party, the College of Arts & Science's annual fundraising shindig, he got a turn directing the University of Alabama's Million Dollar Band at a home football game.  It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance for the 1974 Alabama graduate and lifetime Tide fan.

Upon finding out, Ben first rose from his dramatic swoon, then sagely chose the game against Western Kentucky, a team Bama was heavily favored over, to overcome any possible Burford jinx or hijinks.  "I would hate to do an important game and have us lose," Burford remarks.

The day of the game, Ben had a tooth-rattling cup of strong black coffee for breakfast.  He donned his crimson collared shirt with palm trees (Chillwear), khaki shorts (REI), and University of Alabama Crocs (Bama Fever).  He lastly donned a treasured relic, the Crimson Tide bow tie formerly borne by Tuscaloosa "colorful personality" Shorty Price.

When the time came for the National Anthem, Ben was directed to a tall ladder, prominent before the band and assembled thousands.  A nameless assistant asked him, "Mr. Burford, are you gonna be okay on that ladder?"  Ben, the experienced front man for decades-spanning cover band Chevy 6, waved the fretting youngster off and got his groove on.

"What struck me the most was, I'd never realized just what a fantastic organization the Million Dollar Band was, how dedicated, attentive, and courteous they all are.  They all work their butts off."

Ben and Jean spent the rest of the game tearing it up in the student section with their son, Frank, watching the Tide roll to a 41-7 victory over the Hilltoppers.

Ben Burford is a partner at DavisDenny. For more of his exciting and colorful adventures, be sure to read Ben's Brazil Bacation.

LA: "So Dana, when did you take charge of the internship program?  Because I'm just going to write this story as if its creation was at your hands."

DM: "Sounds good to me.  Even better that it's true."

One of many features that set DavisDenny apart from other communications firms is our ongoing intern program.  DavisDenny employs full-time interns not just in the summer, but year-round. 

Students (and graduates) from universities across the Southeast and beyond have worked and learned at DavisDenny.  From the nearby schools of UAB, Alabama, and Auburn, to farther institutes such as Sewanee, LSU, and the Universities of Georgia and Kansas, our interns have brought a wide range of backgrounds and experience.

Since she earned her stripes as a DavisDenny intern in 2000, Dana McGough now manages our ongoing intern program, and interviews candidates several times a year.  For the record, she started doing so in 2004.

"It's a highly competitive opportunity, so the smart applicants get in touch with us well in advance."

Dana goes on, "One of the first things I tell our interns is that they're not going to be just getting someone's coffee every day.  That's insulting to them, and insulting to me - I can get my own coffee."

"We pay our interns because they work full-time.  They go to meetings, they have projects, and they are subject to real world deadlines."

Applicants who can maintain a 40-hour work week are preferred, since they will be working as actual employees.  During their tenure they can benefit from experience in public relations, media buying, event coordination, research, and many other areas of the communication business.

There is some coffee fetching, after all - just as much as they need in the morning.