Everzalez: Adventures in Media

Social Media Identity Crisis

Sep 202011

"Social Media Identity Crisis" by Jim Everton

You might call it a split personality disorder contracted by spending too much time online.

Strawberriecake goes back to high school. Someone said I looked like Strawberry Shortcake all grown up. And since I’m not short, I combined the leftover words: Strawberriecake. Strawberrycake (with strawberry spelled correctly) was already taken as a username on many websites. I spent time grabbing pieces of video here and there and playing on YouTube and Flickr.

Then there was Product of the Suburbs on MySpace – experimenting with meeting random strangers online was still frowned upon in those days. People kept assuming we were from New York, and we wanted to keep it real. We are from a North Dallas suburb.

The first and only comic made about our life as a young couple.

And now – WebAnna, a combination of all the personalities. She blends in with Everzalez (a combo of my last name and my husband’s last name), a story about a happy couple making art.

I felt confident in my online voice while I was in Dallas and Austin. But after coming to a whole new city to work in a new job at a new company, I got a little nervous. Sometimes I’d see tweets fly by and wonder if that’s how I should be tweeting.

In a recent article about improving your Klout score, Michael Todd wrote, “Decide very precisely why you are online. Trying to be everything to everyone is a recipe for disaster. Produce content and comment mainly in your niche or niches.”

He’s right. The most successful people I know on Twitter have a niche; what’s my niche?

Am I over thinking this? Probably. This over thinking and over analyzing is how I went into a K Hole and worked myself into a social media identity crisis.

This internal dialogue was also the reason I interviewed Amanada Q. She seems so secure in her online voice. Her main advice: Just be cool, man.

I also talked about this with Jared Degnan, and he said he had a similar experience; it’s like a mid-life crisis for people who have been online since before MySpace. To help give himself direction, he creates rules. This is sort of like a mission statement, but a little more casual.

These are my rules:

1. Stay positive

2. Respect the medium along with the message

"Always believe in yourself. Do this and no matter where you are, you will have nothing to fear."

3. Post about what makes the world go round: news, money, politics, culture and all forms of art

4. For Everzalez, we’ve always had “adventures in media.” We love that there are all types of media, or mediums, to tell our story.

5. Be yourself / keep it real / be authentic

6. “Start believing in yourself.” – Michael Todd

Those last two rules are what really cleared it all up for me.

I’d love to hear of any similar experiences you have had and/ or any words of advice. Don’t be shy – leave a comment!

Managing the Funk

Sep 192011

Waiting for the bus gives Jim time to reflect on the day.

After surviving the summer, we are now entering the sixth month of being car free.

Although Anna has had breakdowns. When the sun beat down and reflected off the pavement and back up her skirt, Anna would find herself having to snap out of a heat spell. The sun’s effects on your emotions can be quite complex.

However overall we have discovered the many benefits of going car-free. Most importantly is the lack of road rage in our lives. When driving in Atlanta, you are able to resist road rage at first, but the slow burn of hatred begins to twist your soul. This is more intolerable than heat craze.

Further, we are well prepared in the event of an apocalyptic event in which there is no oil and we have to evacuate on foot. We also know that we are at least getting a minimal amount of exercise whether or not we choose to go to the gym that day.

Just because you ride MARTA doesn't mean you can't look fabulous

Going car free means we have to do a good job planning out our meals, which has helped us save money.

Knowing your neighbors is also helpful, because sometimes they’ll stop and give you a ride. We have also been grateful to all the people who have given Anna a ride home from work on late nights.

A big part of this summer was also about managing the level of sweatiness you can get away with in different public settings, such as work, the grocery store or going out with friends. All of these have different levels of tolerance.

In the case of work, it was absolutely mandatory Anna showered after making the mile-long trek to the train station in the summer sun. The only way to do this was to get a gym membership in the building where Anna works. Steady exercise also helps in making the hilly, mile-long walk easier.

Getting caught in the rain isn't as bad as it seems.

In walking around the city, we mostly find ourselves talking about multiple matters of life and love as well as taking on important questions like:

What if we lived in a world where the mosquitos grew to be the size of birds?

Anna would carry around a gun. Jim thinks a stick is sufficient.

How often do you think the city would have to pick up the remains of mosquitos that had been killed? They would have to do so on a regular basis, and that would create jobs. No one would want to step over the remains of a large mosquito on their way to the grocery store.

Getting close under an umbrella can bring you figuratively closer together too.

Horror. Shock. Gasp. This is the reaction people would have to the mosquito remains. It is also usually what we are met with when we talk about not having a car. We have met few people who also solely rely on public transportation (however, we know many people who use both).

What has surprised us both about the amount of walking we have done is the fact that we don’t want another car. The thought of paying for insurance, a car payment, gasoline, maintenance, and all the other fees associated with having a car, does not seem worth the cost.

This has also given us the strength to take on a few other vices:

- Sugar
- Coffee
- Beer

The Beach Wizard and the Crystal Skulls

Sep 182011

One day while walking along Central Avenue in St. Petersburg, Florida, Anna and Jim came upon a small new age shop. Always on the lookout for new materials to create jewerly, they walked in and started to admire the small stones arranged on the counter.

The owners of the store we polite and likable. They talked about their experiences with the stones and spoke of a man who would come with a great stone collection. Jim and Anna promised to return to meet this man.

When they arrived back the next day, Anna could not take her eyes off the vendor. Standing at 6’4″, his wavy, dirty-blonde hair and a handlebar mustache contributed to his beachy vibe. He wasn’t dressed like a wizard, but his Louis Vuitton fanny pack seemed noteworthy.

“You can go and meditate with the skull for a dollar a minute,” the owner of the shop offered. Anna broke her gaze and turned her attention to the partially-opened door in the back of the room. “The crystal skulls are said to have many properties that help people unblock their chakras.”

Brad: "It's probably some kind of hunting lodge for rich weirdos... I'm here - there's nothing to worry about."

“Thanks,” she said, attempting to conceal an instinct to run.

More people came inside the shop, and the attention of the owner and the stone vendor turned away from Anna and Jim, who were drawn to the back of the room.

“A crystal skull?” Anna asked, looking at Jim. “I’ve never heard of this before.”

“Don’t you remember Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? Most of them are found in South America, and they can’t find any tool marks on them. People believe they have some sort of energetic properties.”

Anna and Jim examined the stone carving. Gathering her strength, Anna walked up to one of the men and asked if she could photograph the skull. They exchanged glances and agreed to let her photograph them for free. She jumped quickly in and out of the room.

“I don’t know anything about crystal skulls,” Anna admitted. The stone vendor told her the two skulls, representing male and female energy, were found in Mongolia. There were only 44 like them around the planet, and they were around 2,000 years old. He may have also said something about aliens.

An impeccably-dressed woman entered the store. With blonde hair and a manicured look, she didn’t seem to match the surroundings. She walked right up to the stone vendor and gave him a kiss. At that point, she was rushed into the back room with the skull. The door closed behind them.

“What sort of special properties do the skulls have,” Anna asked, looking for more of a ghost story than any sort of science.

“They stay with you,” the store owner said. “One woman said she felt better after spending just one minute with them. Another one came back four weeks later and said he could still feel the skull’s energy.”

Understanding the impacts of curiosity on cats, Anna and Jim concluded they had no further questions. They thanked everyone in the store for their time and walked out, satisfied with the photograph as the souvenir from their vacation.

Plus K Friday

Sep 092011

You might call me a competitive person. I compete against myself to do better, and I always want to win. When the situation calls for it, I love to trash talk.

So when the group of people I work closely with started sending out a Daily Klout Score Card, I knew I had to step up my social media game. I want to see my name at the top of the card; not because I feel like I’m better than everyone else. But because it just feels good to be… winning.

Klout.com is a tool that measures your online influence, or your online clout. It calculates your interaction across multiple social networking sites to generate a score between 1 and 100. According to their website, the average Klout score is around 20. From there, “the score becomes exponentially harder to increase as you move up the scale.”

My score is currently at 63, but it was once at 67. I recently went down a K Hole, but that’s a subject for a whole other blog post. Now my goal is to reach a score of 70 before November.

Friendly competition is fun, but I also love to collaborate. That’s where Plus K Friday comes in.

At the beginning of the summer, Klout introduced a new feature to allow people to vouch for your influence. You can now acknowledge someone’s influence in a particular topic by giving them a +K.

For example, according to Klout I am influential about social media, creativity and Austin. If someone wants to vouch for me, they can go to my profile, click on “Topics” and hit the “Give +K” button next to the topic. A user can only do this five times a day, so you have to use them wisely.

For those of you who have random topics like clowns, puppies or peanut butter, the wesbite says you can remove them by hovering over the topic name. An “x” will appear. Click it to hide the topic.

While the Klout website says receiving +Ks will not actually increase your Klout score, I find that it does increase interactivity and THAT leads to a higher score.

I also equate giving a +K to giving a recommendation on LinkedIn. Anytime I give someone a +K in a topic, I like to tweet about why I gave them the thumbs up. Then hopefully they will gain more followers on Twitter.

Are you also familiar with the term “Follow Friday?” It can look like #FF or #FollowFriday on Twitter. People use the term on Twitter to recommend other people to follow. There have been many complaints made by the online community that #FF has lost it’s impact. I’m hoping that +K Friday can bring back the spirit of #FF.

Dress Patterns (Feedback Requested)

Sep 052011

Austin continues to inspire our artwork and so do the people in it. A little over a year ago we were hanging out in one of our favorite TexMex spots when designer Eric Oltersdorf suggested that our work would translate well into textiles. The idea intrigued us, and we began making pieces specifically for this purpose.

Since Jim’s recent work has been about patterns in life and nature, the idea of textiles seemed to be a perfect fit. The patterns begin as paintings, drawings, or prints that we scanned/photographed and digitally cleaned up. Then we uploaded them to Spoonflower, a website that allows you to print custom fabrics.

We also recently made contact with an Austin designer about turning the fabric into dresses. This is still in the works, so keep an eye out for a blog post of someone actually modeling the finished product!

Below we’ve posted the fabrics that are currently under consideration to become a dress. The smallest image here is a 8’x8’ swatch. The next largest is a “fat quarter” and is 21’x18. The final image is an example of a yard of our fabric.

We would really appreciate your feedback and suggestions of how to improve our designs. You can click on the image below to see it bigger. Let us know which one you think would make a cool a-line dress.

- Jim and Anna

INFORMATION FIELD