Eigg: Where Our Fringe Story Began

In 2023, we took Eigg the Musical to the Edinburgh Fringe for the first time, and what a whirlwind it was. We had been invited to open the festival for Greenside at their Infirmary location, which was an extraordinary opportunity for our little company. Suddenly, we were arriving in Edinburgh not just with a new musical, but with the responsibility of helping kick off the festival.

Eigg the Musical, Greenside Gala performance at Edinburgh Fringe

The days leading up to opening were a blur of rehearsals, technical preparations, last-minute adjustments, and figuring out how the Fringe worked while we were actually doing it. There was a lot to take in, and more than a few moments when everything seemed to be happening at once. But we got through it, and when the time came, the company was ready to tell the story we had brought all the way from Denver.

Eigg the Musical, cast performs "Reform starts now!" at the Edinburgh Fringe

Our opening audience included The Guardian, The Scotsman, Getty Images, Alamy, and some of the other big names in the press. It was quite a moment to see Eigg, a musical about a small Scottish island and its remarkable community, being introduced to such a wide audience. The response was wonderful. People connected with the music, the humor, and the story, and it was especially meaningful to see how much the show resonated in Scotland.

Cooper Kaminsky as Keith Schellenberg in Eigg the Musical

That first Fringe taught us an enormous amount about producing original work, working together under pressure, and taking a show beyond the place where it was created. We came home with new friendships, unforgettable memories, and a few lessons learned the hard way. Looking back, Eigg was more than our first Edinburgh production. It was the beginning of a journey that would bring us back to the Fringe year after year.

Sometimes the destination explains the journey

Maybe We Were Always Headed Here

The new Viewmark® website is live, and while quite a bit has changed, the story behind it really hasn’t. Founded in 1992, Our little agency has always lived at the intersection of creativity, technology, media, and communication. Over the years, that has meant producing digital experiences, developing marketing strategies, creating content, supporting artists, composing music, producing theatrical work, and finding new ways to connect ideas with audiences. Looking back, those things were never as separate as they might have seemed. The same thinking that goes into building a compelling digital experience goes into producing a theatrical one. Both begin with an idea. Both require an understanding of the audience. Both depend on storytelling, design, technology, collaboration, and a thousand practical decisions that ultimately determine whether the idea connects. Our new website brings those pieces together.

Viewmark Home Page

Today, Viewmark is a media production company with a particular passion for the performing arts. Our work encompasses music composition, theatrical producing, creative development, media production, marketing, licensing & rights, and the methods we've developed through decades of putting ideas into practice. Some of that knowledge comes from behind a computer screen. A great deal of it comes from rehearsal rooms, recording sessions, theatres, festivals, workshops, photo shoots, editing suites, print shops, marketing campaigns, and conversations with audiences. That's the Viewmark story. The new website gives us a better place to tell it.

Viewmark Licensing Options

We've also approached the new site as something more than a collection of finished projects. Throughout Viewmark.com, you'll find the work alongside the thinking behind it: the methods we've developed, lessons we've learned, productions we've created, media we've captured, and projects that have taken us from Denver to New York to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and beyond. You'll also see more of our theatrical work coming together under the Viewmark name. Productions including Eigg the Musical, BANNED, Absurd Hero, Broadside, and earlier projects such as WYSIWYG and SISYPHUS are all part of a much larger creative history. Each represents a different idea, a different group of collaborators, and a different moment in our development. Together, they tell a much more interesting story about what Viewmark has become.

Viewmark YouTube Channel

Where We Were Headed All Along

It's tempting to describe a new website as the beginning of a new chapter. This one feels a little different. It's less about becoming something new and more about finally having a place that reflects what Viewmark has been building toward for years. Creating the work. Developing the work. Producing it. Promoting it. Documenting it. Sharing what we've learned. And finding ways to give good ideas new stages. In that sense, the new Viewmark isn't really new at all. It's where we were headed all along.

Broadside Takes Its Bow in Edinburgh

We just wrapped up our 2026 run of Broadside at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, bringing to a close an extraordinary chapter in the life of this new musical. From the first notes on the page to rehearsals and performances in Denver, and finally taking the company across the Atlantic to Edinburgh, it has been quite a journey.

At its heart, Broadside explores the years leading up to the American Revolution through the words, music, personalities, and printed broadsides that helped shape public opinion long before the first musket was fired. Bringing that story to audiences at the world’s largest performing arts festival gave us the opportunity to see how the show connected with people far beyond where it began.

https://www.youtube.com/@viewmark

Edinburgh was also an important part of the development process. Every performance taught us something about the music, the storytelling, the characters, and where the piece can go next. We came home with wonderful memories, valuable feedback, and an even clearer sense of the future of the show.

Critics agree, Broadside is America's next big Musical

The reviews are now in and audiences agree, Broadside is America's next big musical.

Broadside cast poses at Vintage Theatre before heading to Edinburgh

SPEAK THE SPEECH
(Professional Critic)
Review by Rebecca Mahar

⭐ “The company provide excellent performances that lift the whole piece, fully committed, comically cheeky, and holding beautifully to their harmonies even while dancing and dodging each other…”

⭐ “Live music…is simply arranged and refreshing, recalling the kind of tavern rooms and meeting halls parts of the show take place in.”

And perhaps our favorite thought for the future:

⭐ “With further development, and a longer running time, it has the potential to be the next fascinating musical about early American history.”

AUDIENCE MEMBERS (edfringe):

John (Audience member) 16 Aug 2026
⭐ "We really enjoyed this musical. We’ve been attending the fringe for a long time and this production had some of the most lovely harmonies and singing we’ve heard in recent memory. The group seemed to also really enjoy working with each other. Thank you!"

Declan Farrell (Audience member) 16 Aug 2026
⭐ "This was an excellent show. The performance was full of energy. The songs were really enjoyable and the acting made me feel that i was a witness to the revolution, really great show. I would go see it again. I would give it 5 stars, well done."

Danny Wright (Audience member) 14 Aug 2026
⭐ “Brilliant storytelling! There’s a real heart to this show. The music is cracking, and the harmonies are absolutely gorgeous. You can feel how much the company are enjoying singing together, and it gives the whole thing such warmth and energy.”

Matt (Audience member) 13 Aug 2026
⭐ "Very impressed with the performers and the storytelling!"

Mike (Audience member) 11 Aug 2026
⭐ "A wonderful show with great songs and harmonies, and a large talented cast. They have traveled a long way to tell their story and it's only on for a few more days, so don't miss out."

Marjorie (Audience member) 9 Aug 2026
⭐ "Impressive ensemble of actors (we were shocked how they all fit in the space)! Fantastic singing, amazingly beautiful harmonies and an interesting story I didn’t know much about. Totally worth the affordable ticket. "

Matthijs (Audience member) 8 Aug 2026
⭐ "Great show! Definitely recommend seeing this is if you are looking for a musical with catchy tunes and a powerful message."

History Finds Its Voice in Broadside

Review: Broadside the Musical

One of the most compelling aspects of Broadside is its confidence as a piece of theatrical storytelling. Rather than simply recounting the familiar milestones of the American Revolution, the musical chooses an unexpected guide: Phillis Wheatley. It is a fascinating dramatic choice, giving narrative authority to a woman whose voice was so often questioned during her own lifetime. By allowing Wheatley to frame the story, the production quietly reminds us that history is not only shaped by those in power, but also by those whose words endured despite every obstacle. Shonsharae Tull brings grace, intelligence, and quiet strength to the role. Her portrayal grounds the production, providing a thoughtful perspective that ties together the political upheaval with the deeply human stories unfolding around it. Rather than dominating the stage, she elevates it, making Phillis Wheatley an essential presence throughout the evening.

Sonsharae Tull as Phillis Wheatley

Patrick Brownson delivers a memorable portrayal of Governor Thomas Hutchinson, capturing both the dignity and frustration of a man watching the world shift beneath him. Equally compelling is the nuanced relationship between Margaret and Thomas Gage, whose marriage provides the emotional heart of the production. Their divided loyalties offer a deeply personal perspective on a conflict too often reduced to politics. Meanwhile, the fiery Dr. Joseph Warren and Paul Revere lead the Sons of Liberty with conviction and urgency, balancing idealism with revolutionary zeal.

Patrick Brownson as Governor Thomas Hutchinson

The production is equally successful in its visual world. The period costumes create a convincing eighteenth-century Boston without ever feeling museum-like, while an elegantly simple set makes effective use of colonial barrels, hand-printed broadsides, and even a beautifully incorporated clavichord to establish both time and place. Rather than relying on spectacle, the production favors carefully chosen period details that enrich the storytelling, allowing the characters to inhabit history while keeping the narrative immediate, authentic, and accessible.

Tanner Kelly as Sam Adams with his pseudonyms

Perhaps the evening's most delightful sequence is the play-within-a-play, where the production embraces its theatricality with wit and charm. It pairs beautifully with the Daughters of Liberty, whose spinning circle becomes both a place of resistance and sisterhood as they quietly weave their way through the Revolution. It's a clever reminder that history is often moved forward not only by speeches and battles, but by ordinary people finding extraordinary ways to act.

Gunnar Bettis as Paul Revere acting as the Governor

Like many new musicals, Broadside is not yet a finished work. There are moments where pacing, transitions, and dramatic focus could be sharpened, and a handful of scenes would benefit from further refinement. Yet those are the kinds of challenges that arise from execution rather than conception. The underlying architecture of the piece is remarkably strong, suggesting a work with the potential to grow into something genuinely significant.

Kelly McAllister plays John Adams with passion

At its heart, Broadside is less about celebrating the past than examining the ideals that emerged from it. Liberty, equality, and freedom are presented not as settled achievements, but as aspirations that every generation is challenged to redefine and defend. By the final curtain, the audience is left contemplating the enduring American experiment, not as a completed story, but as one still being written. If Broadside continues to evolve with the same imagination that inspired its foundation, it has every opportunity to become an important new work of American musical theatre.

The cast on set at Vintage Theatre

Verdict: Broadside may still have refinements ahead of it, but its imagination, emotional intelligence, and inventive approach to history make it one of the more promising new musicals to emerge in recent years. It's a production with a solid artistic foundation and the potential to grow into a lasting work of musical theatre.

Recommendation: A must-see for lovers of new musicals, American history, and thoughtful theatre. Whether you're drawn by the Revolutionary story, the soaring period-inspired score, or simply the chance to experience an original work finding its voice, Broadside is well worth your time.

Before Feeds and Timelines, There Were Broadsides

At Viewmark, we’ve always had a soft spot for that kind of communication. Not because it’s nostalgic, but because it’s direct. Human. Made to be seen in real life, passed hand to hand, read out loud, argued over, laughed at, remembered. That’s why we’re proud to support this year’s production of Broadside the Musical as we head toward our country’s 250th. And it’s also why this partnership means more to us than a single season or a single show.

Broadside the Musical

The best collaborations don’t start big

When people talk about “supporting the arts,” it can sound like a one-time gesture: a check, a logo on a poster, a quick round of applause. But the truth is, the most meaningful work, onstage and off, doesn’t happen in one dramatic moment. It happens through continuity. Through showing up. Through relationships that have time to deepen. Over the years, Viewmark has been lucky enough to work alongside a small, fiercely committed group of creatives, artists who keep building, year after year, in Denver and abroad. They’ve never treated theatre like a disposable product. They treat it like a living practice: something you return to, refine, and offer back to your community with intention. That kind of long-running collaboration is rare in any field. In the performing arts, where everything is temporary by design, it’s especially rare. And we don’t take it for granted.

Tom Parson of Letterpress Depot with a Broadside of Broadside

Why “Broadside” feels like the right story right now

There’s something poetic about supporting a show called Broadside in the lead-up to the 250th. Broadsides were the original “share” button; bold, public, and unapologetically physical. They weren’t optimized for clicks. They were optimized for impact. They carried news, satire, argument, and urgency through streets and taverns and meeting houses. They didn’t disappear after 24 hours. And that’s the point. The messages that matter still move fastest when they’re bold and a little ink-stained. In a moment when so much of public life happens on screens; fast, fragmented, forgettable. Broadside the Musical insists on the power of live gathering and the stubborn, beautiful slowness of making something real together. No algorithm. No scroll. Just voices, bodies, story, and the electricity of a room full of people paying attention at the same time.

What we’ve learned from working with artists

Working with this creative team has reminded us, again and again, of a few simple truths:

• A small group can have an outsized impact. The scale isn’t the point. The clarity of purpose is.
• Craft matters. Audiences feel the difference when something is built with care.
• Community is the real infrastructure. Sets get struck. Posters come down. But relationships are what keep the work alive long enough to matter.

That’s one reason we’re proud to stand behind this production: not because it’s easy, but because it’s earned. Because it’s built on the kind of sustained effort that doesn’t always make headlines, but makes culture.

Viewmark endorses theater troupe, receives 4 stars in Edinburgh Scotland

Call it "luck" that a Viewmark supported theatre troupe led by Colorado director Kelly McAllister, was given the opportunity to open this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the world’s largest performing arts festival and one of the greatest celebrations of arts and culture on the planet. Each year, Greenside Venues randomly selects just twenty shows to open the festival. The event invites professional theatre guests and media from around to world to preview the works of several performing arts organizations who have traveled to Scotland to participate in the festival.

BANNED cast backstage at Riddles Court

It was the second year in a row for this troupe to be invited to perform in Edinburgh and expectations were high. Viewmark, who now focuses on the performing arts community, identified the show as a candidate for their new strategy. After all, last year the group’s show received five-stars and became a local sensation for its stage portrayal of the community buyout of the small Isle of Eigg in the Scottish Hebrides. Then, the show went on to be selected by Broadway World readers as the Best New Musical of 2023; naturally, Viewmark was delighted when the troupe agreed to return in 2024 and accepted the endorsement.

BANNED cast opens Edinburgh Fringe

Early on, the troupe discussed how the new show needs to be different than “Eigg.” and the members decided to reinvent “WYSIWYG,” an April Alsup musical about the sensitive issues of online dating, gender and sexuality. The new musical has now become known as just “BANNED,” since it follows a group of gender misfits through the events leading up to their debut at a local performing arts festival. There were all sorts of clever marketing tactics deployed that followed the clandestine theatre troupe to the festival.

BANNED cast attending "Tattoo" at Edinburgh Castle

After opening night it was clear that the theatre troupe had another hit on their hands. The Scotsman, Scotland’s National Newspaper, gave the show four stars and praised the composer April Alsup. “The songs are strong and memorable, in nicely complex arrangements too – tunes are swapped back and forth in complicated ensemble numbers, and the cast offers glowing harmonies as well as vivid solos.” It also hailed the actors, the choreography and declared that “Online dating gets a merciless take-down, while the pleasures of sex are dutifully celebrated.”

BANNED cast celebrates opening night at Posto Pizza

“Best of all, however, BANNED offers a deeply human perspective on issues of gender and sexual identity, its flawed characters navigating their own mistake-filled routes through pronouns, preferences and plenty more,” the review continued. “It’s a complex, compassionate show of missteps and misunderstandings, and one that warmly applies the tolerance it requests of others onto its own damaged but likeable characters.”

BANNED cast heads home from University of Edinburgh

Theatrical success doesn’t come about in a vacuum; it really does take a village to mount a new musical production and Denver has a vast array of organizations that support the performing arts. From rehearsal spaces to performance venues, from theatre professionals to theatre goers, this community is the perfect place to incubate a meaningful, relevant and important show for international stages.

For more information on “BANNED the Musical” or to watch a video of the Edinburgh performance run, visit youtube.com/@viewmark

Viewmark sponsors Denver's Performing Arts Project

Viewmark announced today that it has inked an agreement to support Denver's Performing Arts Project with knowledge, technical expertise and financial support. The plan provides a roadmap for upcoming Colorado productions and/or touring shows to use Viewmark resources. We are confident that our commitment to Colorado and the Performing Arts Project will make Denver a better place to live.

Viewmark staff near Fairplay Colorado

Viewmark changes course and future direction as principals retire.

It's been over 30 years since I founded Viewmark. We were one of the first web design firms in the country and were on the ground floor of an exciting new industry. It's hard to imagine a time when you could visit all the new websites of the month, I remember Bill Gates saying the web was just a passing fad. One year, Viewmark won gold, silver and bronze for web design at the Colorado BMA gold key awards. We built the eCommerce system for Baby Einstein (now Disney), the ticketing engine for Central City Opera and the CMS for so many more.

Right before the millennium, we won "best education site" on the web with HP, we received an International EMMA award and I met Tim Berners-Lee at the MOMA awards ceremony in San Francisco. It really has been quite a ride and I really have enjoyed every minute of it. Life has lots of twists and turns and you never know when an opportunity like that will present itself; in any case, over the last year I've been able to wind the company down and position it more as an organization dedicated to supporting the performing arts in retirement. Here's to the next chapter, cheers and happy new years to come!

Celebrating 20 years of Pubcon!

This year we're celebrating 20 years of Pubcon. It seems like it was just yesterday we were in London. Now 20 years later, we're all gathered to talk about search engine marketing and optimization in Las Vegas for a simple one day affair at a downtown Pub on Fremont street. Congrats all!

Joe Laratro, Brett Tabke, Dana Todd, Glenn Alsup (Pubcon Keynote) 2006

Glenn Alsup Pubcon Super Session 2006

Performing Arts Awareness Case Study

Jeremy Bullmore once said "Brands are created like birds create nests". 

OBJECTIVE: Provide support for the creative efforts of our employees through the Performing Arts Project.

BACKGROUND: Viewmark is primarily a web design firm, but there always seems to be someone involved in some sort of extracurricular performing arts project around Denver. We believe that by helping our employees get visibility for their creative endeavors, we help them, our company, and the Denver community.

CHALLENGE: Create an effective online brand awareness playbook for the Performing Arts Project with an emphasis on providing the Denver community and our employees with a promotional avenue for their works.

SOLUTION: The PAP Internet Implementation Strategy for Performing Arts Professionals. A blueprint that utilizes Viewmark's expertise and fundamental principles of marketing, methods & measurement. It includes guidelines for websites and social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Blogger, YouTube, Spotify and SoundCloud, as well as powerful procedures and analytics for participants to get the most out of the World Wide Web.

RESULTS:: Over the the last few years, the Performing Arts Project has seen an increase in visitor traffic to their website by several orders of magnitude. At the same time, Viewmark employees have a conduit for their creative passions and a strong sense of company loyalty.

Hosting Milestone with AWS

We've maintained a rack of servers at Viawest (now Flexential) and formerly RMI (Rocky Mountain Internet) for 25 years. So it was quite nostalgic to breakdown our cabinet and move all our servers to storage and recycling. Over the last few months we've moved all our customers to the AWS platform. We even have a physical server in Frankfurt for our German customers. We have no regrets with Viawest, they were a good company, but the Amazon cloud was just a better fit for us moving forward.

With international SEO, a little goes a long way.

I have been fortunate to have traveled internationally rather extensively in my life. Early in my career I worked for a very small company that was acquired by a very large one. At the time, there was no such thing as video conferencing or the internet and we (the product marketing staff) were asked to visit a lot of different areas in the world to discuss 3D modeling technologies.

It’s ironic because the intensive traveling actually inspired me to start Viewmark. It was just a coincidence that new digital delivery platforms emerged, like CDs and the internet, that helped solve the intrinsic burdens associated with global product marketing. In essence, the new digital communication mechanisms allowed anyone to “have their cake and eat it too” by making it easier to sustain professional relationships around the globe without sacrificing significant time with family and friends.

Still, I can tell you from personal experience that there can be a lot of value in immersing yourself in a foreign country. Any American who has worked in Europe for an extended period of time will tell you that making an effort to speak the language of the country you are in goes a long way, but I readily admit that many of the responses to my attempts came back in English.

This reminded me of an experience I had in Sweden many years ago. It was in the late 80s and I was on one of those whirlwind marketing tours of Europe. I arrived in Stockholm after a long week on the road and decided to take a quick swim. The solarium was on the top floor of the hotel and when I entered I found that everyone was swimming naked. This is not commonplace in the States, but I said to myself, “When in Rome do as the Romans do”. After taking a short swim, I settled near the entrance, then several Americans walked in. Stunned with my appearance, they ask me, in English, if there was a sauna in the area. All I remember was responding with the only words I knew at that moment “Krona, Krona, Krona”.

In some ways international search works the same way. We have found that regional search engines like, Baidu, Naver, Yandex, etc. favor results for web pages where the titles and descriptions can be easily deciphered in the native language of the search engine and the major search engines have country specific sites where the results focus on links that are written in the country’s main language.

There are published reports that show the US percentage of global search traffic at 22% and if we add ~11% for countries around the globe that use English as their first language (UK, Australia, Canada, etc.), we can surmise that only one third of the world uses English when searching on the internet. Note: This is not to say that only one third of internet users will read English content. We feel this is significantly higher.

When a user arrives on your web site you can easily detect their language preference. Translation firms use spreadsheets or APIs to integrate content into their systems for localization and the costs for doing so are relatively low. At the same time, content management systems give you the ability to seamlessly provide the localized content on your web site.

International SEO is not one size fits all, but a little can go a long way! We have seen double-digit percentage increases in a company’s overall search volume by simply localizing page titles, meta descriptions and message bundles. The question to ask is: How global is your company and how well are you prepared to leverage the international search opportunities that are currently available?

VIP – Are you part of the link paparazzi?

It can be fun to draw analogies between the real world and cyberspace. For most people, the acronym VIP means “Very Important Person”. The media, and especially the tabloids, focus a lot of time and effort on following their every move. We all seem to get in on the act; for example, when someone knows a VIP there always seems to be a tendency to name-drop them whenever possible.

In cyberspace, I think of VIP as “Very Important Page” and the analogy to a very important person can be made in an eerily similar way, but keep in mind, search engines don’t understand human traits like infatuation. Traditional advertising concepts like “celebrity sponsorship” are not familiar to search engines and don’t really work very well.

I’m glad search engines don’t seem to get “star struck” like humans and try to concentrate on web pages from topic authorities instead of the celebrity sites. It makes the search engine optimization (SEO) process a little bit more predictable. However, many web site owners and search engine marketing (SEM) firms still seek out web pages with high page rank (PR) in an attempt to get a link placed to their web site from them.

This reminded me of a time in my life when I was required to travel coast-to-coast a few times a month on business because our New York 3D graphics firm had been acquired by an engineering software company in Los Angeles. Well, I quickly became an American Airlines Advantage Gold Member and was upgraded to first class on just about every flight I took. As a result, I flew with the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Keith Richards, Whitney Houston, Andy Williams, and Frank Gifford to name a few.

My colleagues were all excited about it since they got to hear a lot of interesting stories about the celebrities, but for me it was just too much time away from family and friends. Interestingly, search engines would have probably considered my Hollywood anecdotes valuable information if my business was celebrity gossip, but they certainly would not have indexed them in relation to engineering software design.

There are many instances where a link from a specific type of web site can quickly move your rankings higher in the major search engines, Sites like Wikipedia, Academic and Professional Associations deliver much higher value than any celebrity site ever could. Search engines pay very close attention to how sites link to you and how you link to them.

So this brings me back to the VIP analogy. Of course it is important to have links from sites with high PR value, but I believe it is more important to concentrate on links that are from authority web sites from within your vertical industry or community. Soliciting a link just because it is located on a web site with a high PR value is like grabbing a camera, jumping on a motorcycle and joining the link paparazzi.

One picture is worth a thousand words, but a video subtitle is worth a thousand pictures.

Many years ago I worked for MAGI (Mathematical Applications Group, Inc) in Elmsford, NY. The company was a pioneer in computer generated imagery and 3D modeling technology. In 1966 they started developing software based on the concept of tracing radiation from its source to its surroundings. Eventually, the software was adapted for use in computer generated imaging by tracing light instead of radiation, making it one of the first systems to implement the concept of ray tracing.

The software was a solids modeling system, in that the geometry was a series of solid primitives (boxes, cylinders, extrusions, etc.) along with combinatorial (Boolean) operations. The combination of the solids modeling and ray tracing made it a powerful system for generating high quality images like those seen in the movie “Tron”. The graphics and engineering application side of MAGI, called MAGI/SynthaVision was started in 1972 and finally sold to Lockheed in 1985 to be integrated with CADAM.

At the time, CADAM was one of the most widely used CAD/CAM systems on the planet, but considered by most to be just a computer aided drafting system. I remember traveling around the world speaking on the subject of solids modeling. I often used the expression “if a picture is worth a thousand words then a solids model is worth a thousand pictures” since we could make an infinite number of pictures from a single 3D model.

I did a little research on the saying and found that Fred R. Barnard originally created it when he coined the phrase “One look is worth a thousand words.” Printers’ Ink, 8 December 1921, p. 96. He changed it to “One picture is worth a thousand words” in Printers’ Ink, 10 March 1927, p. 114, and called it “a Chinese proverb, so that people would take it seriously. It was immediately credited to Confucius.

This got me thinking about how search engines have a hard time building context from web videos. Unfortunately, spiders can’t watch a web video and extract the relevant information like humans can. Metadata can provide an overview, but is fairly limited in size. Well, this lead me to the video subtitle and the possibility of using an XML document to feed the subtitle to the video, as well as the search engine.

There are several methods for identifying spiders visiting your website. Once you’ve identified your visitor as a spider crawling for keywords and phases, you can replace the video on the page with the exact “word-for-word” account contained in your video subtitles. Clearly, you would NOT want to abuse this technique since search engines have been known to verify user agent delivery implementations and there are a variety of tools to view your website as the search engines do to validate your results.

This method seems to be particularly powerful for localized content since video subtitles are commonplace in foreign countries, but you’ll want to translate your page title and Meta description too. The cost to translate a video script usually comes out to be somewhere between $0.25 and $0.35 per word so providing the context of your video in multiple languages is very reasonable today.

So this brings me back to the old saying “One picture is worth a thousand words”. I wondered if Mr. Barnard were alive today if he would agree with me to reprint it for Internet users as “One picture is worth a thousand words, but a video subtitle is worth a thousand pictures”.

I said “You look fat in those pants”

Authoring content can be a labor of love or a laborious chore. Few people are gifted with the talent of successfully communicating their most refined ideas and perspectives the first time around. Have you ever wished you had the opportunity to respond to someone in a different way after the fact? Have you ever thought of something else to include in a correspondence after hitting the send button?

On the surface, there are some cases where modifying predated content makes sense; for example, let’s say you move your office, wouldn’t it be convenient to automatically replace your latest contact information in past eMail correspondences? Branded eMail application have “dynamic” content features so text in your eMail can actually be changed at a later date. This got me thinking and I have to admit that I have some reservations about possible abuse.

The overall topic reminded me of a friend I had when I was single. Let’s just say he wasn’t the most politically correct individual on the planet. Back then, going out on Saturday night to meet new friends sometimes included dancing; unfortunately, neither of us were very handsome and it was always intimidating to make the first move.

We would blurt out something original like “Do you want to dance?” and I’d say 9 times out of 10 the response would be an apologetic “not really” or “not right now”. Well, in the event that this happened, he later told me that it helped his pride to say “I said you look fat in those pants”. I’m guessing he had some sort of inferiority complex, but he would probably explain it as “getting the last laugh”.

Most of the time, web site content is published in a well-defined manner. Many content management systems archive revisions through workflow processes and applications like Wikis provide a good history of content modifications. However, with the proliferation of authoring tools that don’t track and/or timestamp changes, I’m afraid the practice of altering predated content goes somewhat unnoticed.

What people say and when they say it (content and publishing) cannot be considered subjective. Next generation web applications can address this issue with the widespread acceptance of emerging metadata standards like Dublincore. Now, this brings me back to my friend and his callous remarks, I later told him that consoling his victims about his insensitivity and lack of honesty landed me on the dance floor on several occasions.

Does your dog bite?

Consolidating analytic applications into a centralized corporate metrics initiative can make anyone feel “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”. Most organizations start the journey with an evaluation of the applications being utilized in the corporation and concentrate on a laundry list of features and requirements. The process generally consists of scoring each application’s strengths and weaknesses and when the process is complete, a winner is selected and the implementation begins.

Unfortunately, catering to the metrics needs of a diverse set of individuals and divisional requirements can be a challenge for any single reporting mechanism. Many metrics initiatives actually fail because the personnel they are intended to help can’t figure out how to get the data they need to make their business decisions from. Interestingly, the needs are usually a specific set of performance results not easily aligned with the corporation’s laundry list of application features.

The other night I was watching an old Peter Sellers movie and couldn’t help drawing an analogy. Clouseau was in the lobby of a hotel when a lady with a dog approached. He kneels down to pet the dog and politely asks, “Does your dog bite?”. The lady softly replies, “No, my dog doesn’t bite”. Suddenly, the dog digs into Clouseau’s hand and he quickly backs off. He exclaims, “I thought you said your dog doesn’t bite”, to which the lady explains, “This is not my dog”.

As I watched the scene it reminded me of how important it is to ask the right question and how easy it is to misinterpret the answer. Over the years, we have been involved with many corporate analytic implementations and there are two major headlines that have emerged for me. One: everyone wants something different, and two: the process has to be clear and simple for everyone.

Clearly, consolidating corporate metrics into a single application can remove ambiguities, streamline processes and reduce overall costs. Ironically, as the number of users increase, so does the inherent complexities of fulfilling the unique needs of each user in a single “one size fits all” application.

To institutionalize analytics and business intelligence applications more effort needs to be focused on the process of how individuals receive the information they need, instead of the actual features and usage of the metrics application. Today, most major metrics applications can answer the majority of questions we need to know, even some that are free. The challenge is to provide each individual with their unique answers in a consumable way for all.

Search, Branding and the Bottom Line

A relatively new phenomenon for every company’s marketing arsenal can be found with search engines. In most cases, people think of search as a way to take advantage of a working transactional model. After all, it is hardly rocket science to build predictive models from conversion analysis of searchers visiting your web site. Most companies can tell you, with varying degrees of certainty, how much additional revenue should be generated from any increased level of search traffic.

It is even possible to ascertain the average number of searches across the major search engines for any specific keyword or phrase in a given month. Less common, but perhaps more important, is to be prepared for increased searches from other marketing vehicles driving search. It would truly be a shame to have competitors capitalizing on your other campaign drivers through search. In practice, this could be handled by dayparting increased P4P spending for the days and hours following the ad broadcasts.

The reason this doesn’t work so well in reverse is that search is mostly a “pull” mechanism for your clients. Today, television, radio, and direct mail are mostly “push” mechanisms for you. Considering campaign timelines, it is hard to imagine a pull mechanism like search driving a push mechanism like television.

A less quantifiable use of search is for branding purposes. Someone once said, “Brands are created like birds create nests”. In any given day you are exposed to numerous product advertisements, expert advise from family and friends, as well as, inquires you make using search engines. All these events makeup your perception of a specific brand.

Measuring the affect that search has on brand is challenging to say the least and some companies are more suited to utilize brand building techniques than others, but all companies can benefit by using search to better define their brand in one way or another.

It is safe to say that customers are not thinking about your products all of the time; however, during these times, there are numerous opportunities to present your company in subtle brand defining ways through search. A direct correlation between application content and transactions can be established using both quantitative and qualitative methods.

Parabolic skis and web widgets (aka gadgets)

Being from Colorado, I like to go skiing in the mountains at least a couple of times a year with the family. It feels like a responsibility and justification for living in a climate that can be cold for many months out of the year. It’s strange how, at the same time, I always notice that the skis and associated hardware have changed slightly. You know, the color and design of the skis or maybe the way the boots and bindings work. I’m usually intrigued enough to see if the change could improve my ability to ski or to enjoy the experience.

Skiing in Colorado typically starts at about the same time as Webmaster World’s annual conference in Las Vegas, which kicked off on November 11th at the convention center and ended with the traditional pubcon gathering at the Hofbrauhaus 4 days later. I always enjoy catching up with friends and getting the latest information on the search engines and web development trends. If you have a web site and you want to promote it, this is the one conference no one should miss.

This year I noticed that every session had rows of tables for participants to place their laptops on, unlike past years, when we only had chairs and took session notes manually. I observed people multi-tasking from the rear of the conference rooms. IMs, eMails and tweets were flying back and forth on a variety of devices. I even noticed someone answering customer support messages from their web site using Live Person right in the middle of a session.

It made me wonder if I was missing something. I remembered my old skis and how they had lasted for so many years. Could there be similarities with web development? It seems like a bizarre correlation, but underlying web technologies are moving ahead at a relatively slow pace. We’re just bombarded with a lot of extraneous items that make it feel like things are moving faster than they truly are. The number of options and tasks that we have to monitor has surely increased, but underlying changes in technology happen slowly.

I guess what I’m trying to do is draw a correlation from my latest ski adventure to my latest web conference; after all, it is that time of year and I recently purchased a new pair of parabolic shape skis. Besides the significant difference in my ability to carve up the mountain slopes, I noticed that nearly everyone is now using the relatively new technology.

So what do parabolic skis have to do with this years Webmaster World conference sessions? During the widget (aka gadget) session, one of the presenters showed a slide that overlayed web usage and web traffic to corporate sites and social networks. It showed how valuable it can be to find ways to embrace Web 2.0 technologies and provide your content on these networks (and devices) in the future.

It seems like only a few years ago that we were introduced to web widgets, even though they have been around for more than a decade. I believe that is about the same time that Elan introduced parabolic skis. After attending the gadget session at Webmaster World this year we built and served-up several custom gadgets. Somehow, it reminded me of carving up the back bowl at Copper on my new skis…piece of cake!

Marketing is from Venus and IT is from Mars

Behind the scenes of any good web site implementation is a solid marriage between Marketing and IT. There’s really no playbook here, every company seems to have a little different process for how the two departments should work together and it’s really interesting how the interactions between the two have a lot of similarities to a real world marriage.

Let’s not kid ourselves; every marriage has issues, the ones that last for a long time just figure out how to make the best out of the ups and downs. The ones that don’t, move on and start the process all over again. I actually got married when I was 19 and divorced at 24, we were just too young. I remarried when I was 40 and we are still going strong. Now my parents, they have been married for over fifty years.

I think the things that make a good marriage can be found in similar beliefs, goals and a genuine friendship for one another. Some people say that couples that last a long time have a lot in common, others say that opposites attract; in either case, there needs to be mutual respect from both parties in the relationship.

In business, vendors often work with only one side of their client’s house and it sometimes feels like there is a “don’t ask don’t tell” policy in affect. Many companies, as odd as it might sound, actually utilize vendor services because they can remain “under the radar” for some period of time.

The Marketing folks think that IT doesn’t understand their business goals and the IT folks think that Marketing doesn’t have any long-term technology vision. Well, I can tell you from personal experience that this can put the vendor in a rather precarious position.

In a real world marriage, this sort of extracurricular relationship seems to begin in a similar way. You can easily imagine someone confiding with a friend on how their spouse doesn’t “understand their needs”. This innocent discussion could progress into a relationship when the acquaintance tries to help out their friend. Eventually, the outside faction is exposed and often made out to be a rogue charlatan.

To avoid this sort of situation in business, I guess the vendor could insist that their activities be fully disclosed to all other parties in their client’s company, but can this really up to the vendor? In many cases, to win the business the vendor needs to present assets not currently available from inside the prospective company and that might directly compete with other parties involved.

This brings me back to the marriage metaphor. My observation is that good chemistry between Marketing and IT is rare and the exception, not the rule; afterall, the relationship isn’t built upon the same underlying principles as a real world marriage. Still, it may be said that “Marketing is from Venus and IT is from Mars” or vice versa of course.

Obviously, it is important for Marketing and IT to have clear communication paths, but sometimes the biggest problems are solved by the most minute details. This morning I got up and ask my wife to be my Valentine and I can tell you that even with all life’s ups-and-downs this small gesture confirmed that we are in our marriage together.