just another blog pressed for words

One of our Art Directors, Brian Leech, is still new to both M! and Boston.

Somewhere around 1am last Saturday night, he and I ducked out of a bro-fest house party in Charlestown, the storied neighborhood in Boston’Ts northeast corner.

Two right turns and three blocks later, 221-feet of beautifully lit granite obelisk (yeah, I Googled that) challenged our path. I’ve visited and climbed the Bunker Hill Monument, but Brian had no idea such a thing existed in the middle of quiet Boston. Brian, one of Modernista!’s most cherished resources, meet one of America’s unchallenged equivalent.

3.6% of U.S. land falls within the National Park system – almost 100 million acres in all. Incredible. Point is, there are a lot of National Parks into which you might literally stumble – in the middle of cities or the middle of nowhere.

In support of Ken Burns America’s Best Idea documentary that is currently running on PBS, we worked with some frighteningly capable folks at FL-2 in Denver to create a digital discovery experience of our 396 parks, monuments, battlefields and parkways.

No one hates the National Parks. But not enough people love them. Check out http://thisisyourland.nationalparks.org to see why you should. And to plot next moves when escaping floundering house parties.

Emilio Acosta Farro of Peru, Aditza Maria Orozco of Nicaragua, Josephine Navalta of the Philippines and Ben Kiwanuka’s Group of Uganda. How do I know these people? I don’t. But I loaned them each $25 and they are all paying me back.

Emilio Acosta Farro on his one hectare farm in Sialupe Baca - Lambayeque, Peru

With Kiva, you pick the person (or group) to loan to. Within 6-12 months that person pays you back. Then you can loan that same $25 to another person of your choice, or withdraw your money to your PayPal account. The loans “are helping a real person make great strides towards economic independence and improve life for themselves, their family, and their community.” (www.kiva.org/about)

Kiva has made micro-lending fun and accessible, with a simple, easy to use website built with open source technologies. For me, open source is the way to go. There are no licensing fees with PHP (programming language), MySQL (database), Apache (web server), and most flavors of Linux (operating system). That means Kiva can keep their website costs low, and focus on the more important matter at hand—helping people. I’ve had discussions with clients about using these technologies. In addition to being very stable and having a very large support group of developers, the cost savings of open source is quite attractive, particularly in these financially challenging times.

So check out Kiva, and see what you think. I don’t know about you, but I’ve spent more than $25 on a few Friday (liquid) lunches. I think this Friday I’ll brown bag it, and give my $25 to my new Guatemalan friends. How about you? If loaning $25 to Toeung Savon in Cambodia isn’t your thing, you can still do some good, and get a little something for yourself, at www.joinred.com.

I am pleased to announce that Modernista! has been included in the PanelPicker voting process for the 2010 South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival. With the advent of neuromarketing, neuroscientist and researchers have been directing their expertise to marketing, using MRIs to analyze consumers’ brain activity when exposed to different stimuli. And companies like Google are using mathematics to develop advertising solutions. Will digital marketers become scientists and mathematicians or will creativity triumph?

The founders of Modernista!, Lance Jensen and Gary Koepke, among others, will debate whether advertising is an art or science: Big Brother in Your Brain: Neuroscience and Marketing. Hints of what is to come, can be found here.

You can help us attend SXSW by voting. SXSW is a community-driven event and your voting accounts for about 30% of the decision-making process. The SXSW Advisory Board, which is a group of industry professionals from around the world, and SXSW staff are also involved in the process. Voting will close on Friday, September 4th, so make sure you vote soon.

Register to Vote

Vote for “Big Brother in Your Brain: Neuroscience and Marketing”