#the creator of this video should be doing interviews/teaching interviewers how to conduct an actual heartfelt and respectful interview

[just-fandomthings]

Interviewers should take some notes on how to properly conduct an interview— aka they should ALL be asking to clarify boundaries before they begin

[tjkiahgb]

Cyrus’s Doppelgänger: An Investigation

I’m reminded of a joke from an old episode of The Simpsons.

In the episode, Homer takes a job in a different town. Shortly after he and the family arrive at their new house, his eccentric boss, Hank Scorpio, shows up to greet them. He talks about his moccasins and tells Homer he left him a pair, but if Homer doesn’t like them, then neither does he. He takes his moccasins off and tosses them away.

This exchange, which lasts all of five seconds, has led to years upon years of furious debate on the internet, which is weird because normally the internet just lets stuff go.

What did Homer mean? Did he say “Yes, once” because he just saw that very thing happen moments ago and the joke is about him being stupid? Did he mean he saw that same thing happen prior to that day and the joke is about the randomness of life?

The whole thing is so vague and absurd that the answer isn’t clear and both choices can be considered workable solutions.

Why do I bring this up?

Because I believe Andi Mack has a similarly ambiguous joke.

One which has caused a lot of strife.

One which has been on my mind for well over a year.

One which I determined I needed an answer to.

This called for an investigation. And not just any investigation. A cool, trendy, documentary series-style investigation, with multiple parts split up by stylish titles.

After half a year of research -- reviewing hours and hours of tape, conducting hundreds of interviews, and reading some notes -- I believe I may have found an answer.

This whole mystery begins back in episode four of season two. Titled “Mama,” the episode was directed by Eyal Gordon and written by series creator Terri Minsky herself.

In a scene that occurs about midway through the episode, Jonah teaches Cyrus how to skateboard and he says, “You’re one of a kind, Cyrus.”

To which Cyrus responds...

Stop and think about this for a second. What exactly is the meaning behind this joke?

I believe before we can begin to investigate any possibilities, we have to first look at the definition of the word “doppelgänger.” And the best way to do that is to go to the source.

One of the earliest English dictionaries ever produced is A Table Alphabeticall, published in London in the year 1604 and written by Robert Cawdrey. There are no known images of Robert Cawdrey so I made one.

Cawdrey’s dictionary still exists today. It is kept in the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford.

Now, I’m not a professional investigator, but having watched quite a few of these documentaries, I knew the best move was to always follow your instincts. So I followed my investigator’s instincts and booked a first-class ticket on a non-stop flight to England to see the dictionary.

Well imagine my surprise and disgust when the stuffy librarians at Oxford wouldn’t let me handle the dictionary or highlight the passages I wanted. I tried to explain to them what tumblr was and they didn’t get it. They told me I couldn’t have their precious little dictionary even after I told them I came all the way from America for this!

And then someone started trying to tell me that Cawdrey’s dictionary was published almost 200 years before the invention of the word “doppelgänger,” so even if I could dig through A Table Alphabeticall, I wouldn’t find it in there. Let me tell you, I did not take that well. There was a lot of yelling on both ends and then they called security on me.

Long story short, I returned to America $12,000 in the hole and no closer to solving the mystery.

Once back in America, I decided to go to the Merriam-Webster website and look up the definition and take a screenshot of it.

I tried to make it look old-ish though. It looks like a scan from an old book, right? Okay. Cool.

Now, look at those definitions. The word “doppelgänger” is literally German for “double-walker.” Keep this all in mind as we move forward. We’re not talking about shared interests here. We’re talking about clones, we’re talking about mirror images, we’re talking about twins separated at birth -- things of that nature.

We’re also talking about ghosts? I don’t think this is a ghost thing though, so let’s ignore the second definition.

It’s also, I guess, just literally anyone who has the same name as you? That’s ridiculous. So, what, every John Smith has millions of doppelgängers? Dumb. So dumb. Ignore that definition, too.

Let’s just hone in on the one about seeing your look-alike.

So, when Cyrus says he’s met his doppelgänger, who is he talking about?

Fans, in discussing this joke before, had considered Iris as a possible solution.

In fact, it’s sort of commonly accepted that Cyrus is talking about Iris because she was still a part of his life at that time so she could easily be on his mind, and they share a lot of similar interests.

And, frankly, she’s really the only person this joke could’ve been about, if it was a reference to someone we’ve actually seen in the show.

But let’s think back to the definition of a doppelgänger. Does that really sound like it’s describing Iris? Again, this isn’t about those shared interests. This isn’t about how much you gel with someone. This is about seeing your visual counterpart.

For a refresher, let’s take a look at both characters from an earlier episode.

Now, the differences are subtle but I think if you really look closely you can tell they aren’t doubles because they look like entirely different people.

I believe we accepted Iris as the answer because she was there. It was convenient and it allowed us to move on. But thinking about it now, it was clear that choice was just to provide us comfort. That doesn’t mean it was correct. Far from it.

So, no, Iris clearly isn’t Cyrus’s doppelgänger. And if that’s the case, then who might he be talking about?

There had to be another answer. But what?

The trail went cold for several months.

Until one day I was rewatching the season two episode, “For the Last Time,” and found a game-changing clue.

In “For the Last Time,” Cyrus and Andi prepare a time capsule for Buffy before she moves away.

In the scene in which the two place objects into the time capsule, Andi chooses to add a picture of them at Costume Day in the 6th grade.

There! Stop!

Zoom in and enhance!

More! Zoom in and enhance more!

Not good enough! Zoom in and enhance more!

Dammit! I thought. Why was this happening to me, of all people? I was running an investigation, not a tile art workshop! How come when I shouted “enhance” at my screen it didn’t enhance?!

Faced with a dilemma, I did what any veteran investigator would do: I threw more money at the problem. After spending $2,300 on a completely new computer setup in an attempt to enhance, failing to enhance once again, and then spending two days going back and forth on the phone with IT specialists, I was told “enhance” was not a thing.

My inability to enhance was another tremendous blow to the investigation.

Or it would have been, except that the picture appeared another time in the show, in the season one episode, “Terms of Embarrassment,” when Bowie put it in his video for Andi.

Should I have started this chapter with this picture? Probably!

But I wanted you to know I had to suffer through several long conversations with IT nerds where they were constantly rude to me about what I could and could not do on a computer. They kept making snide remarks about how I spent way too much on a setup I didn’t need, and I kept telling them I called to get tech support, not a lecture. It was very trying.

Anyway, now that you know that, let’s “enhance” this picture.

Just as I had thought: Cyrus Goodman, wearing a costume.

But what was that costume? Who -- or what -- was he dressed as?

The hard work began again. After weeks of research, during which I spent thousands of dollars purchasing and reviewing Blu-ray movies and television show collections, I was finally able to make an educated guess. His costume appeared to be the fictional character Bunga.

To confirm, I went looking for official Bunga costumes on the internet.

I found only these toddler-sized ones:

Not a match to Cyrus’s costume. A set-back to the theory to be sure.

However, I assumed that Cyrus, since he is marginally larger than a toddler, also ran into the same problem I did and therefore had to make his own Bunga costume.

Luckily, if you were looking to make such a costume, there are a few pictures online of homemade Bunga costumes that could help guide you in the process, like this one I found from an enthusiastic fan on Pinterest.

Seemed like a match to Cyrus’s costume. The theory was back on track.

All of this led to the next important question the investigation needed to answer: who is Bunga?

Bunga is a character from the animated TV show, The Lion Guard.

This is Bunga.

According to one of the greatest sources of man’s collective knowledge, The Lion Guard fandom wiki, Bunga is Timon and Pumbaa’s adoptive nephew.

This raises a lot of questions, not the least of which about the nature of Timon and Pumbaa’s relationship.

Also, can you just adopt a nephew? What legal rights does that give you? Those of an uncle? What are those? Is that just the right to pick up your nephew from school when his parents are busy? The right to drink too much at a family gathering and start talking politics? The right to take your nephew to a horror movie he’s too young to see that’s going to give him nightmares for the next decade?

I interviewed several lawyers who told me Avuncular Law was not a thing. They also didn’t want to go on record answering hypotheticals about talking animals adopting each other. This didn’t really impede the investigation in any way, but it was wildly unsatisfying on a personal level to not get these answers.

Anyway, The Lion Guard fandom wiki tells us that some of Bunga’s personality traits include: “[having] a soft spot for baby animals,” “[being] somewhat of a comedian who likes telling jokes to his friends in which they sometimes find funny,” and “also at times, Bunga can be clever at times.”

Bunga is also considered very “brave.”

All told, it’s easy to see why Cyrus might be drawn toward Bunga. He shares some of his lighter traits, while he also likely admires Bunga’s courage.

So we know that Cyrus watches The Lion Guard and likes the character Bunga.

But what does that have to do with anything?

Well, if you dig a little deeper, here’s where the connection gets interesting. According to IMDb, Bunga is voiced by Joshua Rush.

Now you’re probably asking yourself the same thing I was: who is Joshua Rush?

Joshua Rush is an actor.

According to IMDb, he’s 5′7 and a half, bilingual, and also, Alec Baldwin once played a character named Joshua Rush in the 1980s.

I don’t know what that means.

What I do know is this: on Joshua Rush’s IMDb page are a collection of pictures of him, and that’s where I found the most staggering turn in the investigation yet:

I let out an audible gasp upon seeing this.

Now, mind you, I’d been so deep into researching this post at this point that hadn’t slept in well over four days and I was on so much cough medication I forgot shapes, but this was still absolutely shocking to me.

Look at these two side-by-side:

The image on the left is a promotional still from Actor Joshua Rush’s IMDb page, the image on the right is of Cyrus from a season one episode.

Now there are obviously some slight differences, like their facial expressions or where on their shoulder they rest the strap of their satchel, but besides that, Actor Joshua Rush’s likeness to Cyrus is stunning.

In fact, you might almost say he’s a mirror-image, a double, a... doppelgänger?

So that leaves us with the final question to be answered: has Cyrus Goodman met Actor Joshua Rush?

Picture, if you would, a voice actor meet and greet. Do you have the image in your mind?

Are you thinking of a convention center?

Are you seeing fans lined up to meet voice-over artists? They stand around for an hour or two awaiting the opportunity to shake a hand or take a selfie or get a headshot signed by one of their heroes.

Now imagine Cyrus Goodman being one of those fans. Waiting for a chance to meet the voice actor for his favorite character on one of his favorite shows: The Lion Guard.

He gets to the front of the line and sees the actor. Maybe they shake hands. Maybe Cyrus says something nice about his acting ability. Cyrus notes their similarities in his mind. Wow! We look so oddly alike! he thinks. There’s a German word for this exact situation. I’ll have to look it up later. But not in Robert Cawdrey’s A Table Alphabeticall, because I guess it’s not in there or whatever.

Perhaps, he also thinks, this could be an interesting little anecdote I might one day share with a friend while he teaches me to skateboard.

He departs shortly thereafter and leaves the convention center. The two never cross paths again, but Cyrus always remembers.

It’s plausible.

It’s definitely plausible.

But it’s not certain.

And unfortunately, plausible but not certain is where this story ends. Speculation is as good as we can do. I doubt we’ll ever get confirmation about this.

As best I can tell in my research, Actor Joshua Rush is one of those reclusive celebrity types like J.D. Salinger or Daniel Day-Lewis or Joffrey from Game of Thrones. Very quiet, reserved. Probably lives on farm somewhere. No social media accounts or anything like that. Definitely not the type to troll an entire fandom on tumblr with incomprehensible emoji clues. Make you spend several hours trying to figure out what 🌭 means like I’m some stupid modern day hieroglyphologist. Sausage? Relish? What does a burger have that a taco doesn’t?! It’s two in the morning and I’m fifteen paragraphs deep into the Wikipedia article for sandwiches, poring over the words like I’m on the precipice of discovery, like learning that “Oreos and Custard Creams are described as sandwich biscuits (UK/Commonwealth) or sandwich cookies (US) because they consist of a soft filling between the baked layers” is going to be the key to something, that it’s going to be meaningful to me in some way. Well guess what? Not even close! It’s fine. I’m not still mad about this. It’s fine.

I’m fine.

Dan Castellaneta, the voice actor for Homer Simpson, once told Buzzfeed he improvised the “Yes, once” response intending it to mean that Homer had previously seen someone say goodbye to a shoe. But, he admitted, the other interpretation was funnier.

And so that was that.

Years of debate settled with a whimper. The official version? The better version? There was zero forethought put into it. The joke was whatever you wanted it to be.

One thing is for certain, hearing from the actor didn’t help anything. In fact, it probably just made things worse. So I’ll tell you this much, the last thing any of us needs is for Actor Joshua Rush to ruin the mystery by weighing in on this. I never want to hear from him on it.

Never.

Never.

Because maybe it’s for the best we never get a concrete answer. The joke is whatever you want it to be. We are the makers of our own reality.

Me personally? I spent half a year working on this and I’ve learned to live in the mystery. To me, Cyrus’s doppelgänger exists and it doesn’t. It’s answered and it’s still a mystery. It’s Iris, it’s Actor Joshua Rush, it’s you and it’s me.

It is everything. And it is nothing.

And I accept that.

Or perhaps... perhaps I just tell myself I’m okay with that answer so I can try to sleep again at night.

[wolfliving]

On the subject of Making

From: Garnet Hertz

I made a Google Form to collect ideas in regards to an organization to fill the gap left after Make threw in the towel and closed their doors. The full responses are included below. At this point, it looks like something will be organized for sure... or at least I'll be starting up something. Thanks to Mitch Altman, Karen Marcelo and members of Nettime for sharing. There are piles of good ideas here: which of these do you think are the most important?

Here are the raw, unedited responses to the question "If you were running an open source maker-oriented organization that filled the gap left by Maker Media ceasing operations, how would you run it and what would you focus on?"

76 responses:

• Model it after dorkbot but instead of having meetings it can be geared around smaller regional Faires

• I would run it as a non profit and make sure that there are people from all over the world representing. Not only so US focused.

• Focus on low tech and tech critism...as much as possible far from western culture...let say the gambiara creative movement in LATAM (brazil) or Cuban style repair culture guerilla, community envisioned and run publications/workshops/happenings without the 'red tape' so often discussed as part of the Maker Media legacy. so, no forced branding, no forced commonalities (other than perhaps a shared manifesto), no minimum number of participants or fundraising requirement for it to be a 'real' event of the community, and much less of a focus on attracting, and then satisfying, corporate sponsors.

• Should be about critical making, open source, skill sharing, critical thinking and more...

• I think the most important thing is to help local people meet up with each other in person. This should go far beyond people who already go to a hackerspace - this is something that Make did well by bringing together all sorts of people from children, university students, hackers, artists, etc. I don't think this has to be large scale.

• Member-run co-operative; leadership positions only for women; women-only days; focus on understanding biases built into technologies and imagining ways around this (critical technical practice)

• Money. Without money you can’t go far

• Projects how tos. Wait. That's Instructables. Never mind.

• cats, and i'd not run it... i would do unconferences, get space, and allow people, provide limited scheduling facilities.

• Support groups with least access to money, education, and resources to setup, lead, and run such an entity.

• I would focus on local groups with local, f2f contacts and a (funding-)mechanism to facilitate the exchange of primarily people as visiting makers instead data-platforming and global marketing.

• A mostly decentralised movement that prioritises shared ideas over branding, focusing on providing easy-access models for small, local communities to start shared spaces and hold events.

• I'd make an organisation of organisations, and invite contributions from different organisations. If I was making a publication, I think I'd go with an interview format and I'd interview two or more organisations at once - inviting them to discuss their operations, their experiences and their hopes, together.

• Ideally, a new organization would be a resource, and not an organization. I think open-source maker communities are singular to the their local communities and their local interests. A global community that allowed the specificity of local/regional interests to shine is more important to me than an 'engineered' (imposed?) idea of maker-dom. I enjoyed the broad definition of making that Maker Media cast, but I think the organization was actually dominated by specific technologies and approaches to technology. I'd like to see an organization that could get past that.

• I would focus on positive technology that attempts to help us instead of just consumer goods

• Community building by featuring projects by makers through events and publications.

• I'm not sure if it needs a replacement, aren't the maker faires run independently? Also a printed magazine isn't something that many technology interested people buy in 2019. A website that collects nice projects and tutorials would be enough.

• Education of kids. the best energy seemed to be in helping people learn

• On content by the community (electronic media) and events

• I would run it as a collective that will use their power to make an impact in society. Use the power of us, humans to make our home planet better. I would focus on philosophy and ideas, since ideas are bulletproof and no one can’t take them away.

• n my market no matter the name of a brand, people do not come because the brand comes to create community

• Non-profit, volunteer-based, brutally and radically self-sustaining.

• a bit like hackaday but with a broader focus

• Celebrating and sharing builds.

• I currently part of a maker oriented NGO in Mexico, and our experience is that there are a lot of oportunities to fund and create open content. We get funds from bigger organizations like USAID, Save theCHildren and others to fund open programs like meteorito.io or robolution,mx, that anyone who speak spanish can use.

• Sustainability is challenge. What happened to Maker Media will happen again if you are a single entity trying to make ends meet. I would rather take a different approach. More about it below.

• I would still run it as a media and marketing company. Similar to how many makerspaces stay funded by offering production, design and development services utilizing their existing resources to for-profit companies. By providing some form of value-added business in a tangential indistry separate from the niche maker media was filling, (I know, you had the magazine, but magazines aren't big money makers these days. I'm thinking of something like a peer-to-peer lending platform that allows makerspaces and small businesses to fund expansion or a marketing and development support agency and platform that sells a specific set of services or products. ) that then turns around and uses it's profits to fund the sort of programs Maker Media was running. Does it suck to end up spending 80% of your time designing a UX system for a loan platform instead of planning maker faires? Yep. But a separate business organization that just has a charter to provide funding for a maker-centric organization out of it's profits can survive a bad turn a lot easier than the two being the same organization.

• Reach out to schools and do lots of mini fairies and training to get kids ready for the faire...

• Youth and education. If you inspire the next generation you guarantee longevity.

• I would not take VC. I would make an education and technology outreach non profit. I would make it just an events company, focussing on a few big, profitable events in a year in less expensive locations plus smaller community events. It doesn't have to make a killing, just enough to make ends meet.

• I am always more interested in seeing what strange things individuals make instead of groups.

• alternative energy

• I'd focus on reaching kids who don't have a ton of money, and teaching them how to get started on a shoestring in the world of making. Stop with satellite design and get into how to use openscad, how to tune a budget printer, things like that. Maybe teach people how to bring this stuff into schools and get started there. Maybe showcase some kids programming stuff each issue.

• Exclusive: Magazine, limited pre-release hardware, baubles. Growth: YouTube

• As a non profit.

• Focus on education to the widest audience. Not sure of the best model for running.

• A shared interest organization like Foundation or Cooperation on regional based clusters. Focus should be on life long learning and sharing resources and knowledge.

• Not For Profit - Focus on inclusion and education of the core making skills that are developed through designing, building and coding.

• coop, not too pricy, but not free

• Accessible workshops and showcases of diverse creators.

• Event organization to have people meeting all together

• A web/editorial site, with a modest branching off to video. I would not do the maker fairies and events because I am not good at event planning. But I would TOTALLY love to go to some more maker faires as both an attendee, and a presenter

• Building projects together as a group.

• I would run it with the goal of educating and providing tools to communities regarding electronics and maker skills

• Non-profit. Non-exclusive. Encouraging. Run by a team who think deeply about the impacts of their actions and go to great lengths to learn both in their areas of personal interest and in areas that are for the good of the global community.

• Non-profit with a benevolent dictator. Org holds the brand, collects grants, and gives out money city by city to recognize what people are already doing. The org would also certify maker educational content and products as a revenue stream through an open access review process, similar to academic journal reviewing. That said, primary focus would be on building awareness.

• Online daily content(curating from sources worldwide), long term brand partnership, spotlight on the makers themselves, low on staff- use local partners for all events

• how to run an organization is a question for an online poll?, I don't know even how to cook

• i would focus on keeping on supporting the community

• Creativity, diversity, inclusivity

• I run a Bangalore based social business by the name of "Makespace and Open Source Creativity" (www.bangaloremakepsace.org) and we are fully sustainable and have been operating successfully for the last 5 years. We gain revenues by hosting and conducting workshops for the local maker community as well as organize multiple events where the maker community can come together, collaborate in real time, and create connections to start their own "maker ventures". We focus on the "social business" model so it avoids incurring massive debts and costs. Everything is volunteer driven.

• The way it was run isn't a problem. It wasn't a leadership issue,it was a lack of sponsorship.The big tech companies didn't care anymore. Perhaps big events should be nixed in exchange for small local maker faire events.

• Let the healthy events operate themselves. Create a minimalist amount of requirements.

• Forming a non-profit board would be the first step. I personally like consensus-based models like the Circle Way with traditional models like Parlimentary procedure used as needed. I think major focus should be placed on education (NOT just for kids!), supporting novel technologies and models especially when it comes to sustainability, and providing access to the tools, skills and mindsets behind making to diverse communities.

• I subscribed to their magazine once and while I found it interesting, everything seemed a bit advanced and over my head. It would help if they had some material for beginners.

• Make it a playground open for all

• I imagine that organization embedded inside individual educational institutions and organisation. That way it becomes financially sustainable and viable.

• It'd continue to run and focus on education.

• Too tough to answe succinctly , maker faire

• Community is the critical component, and events like Maker Faire have been amazing places to visit that help keep the community active and contributing even when remote.

• Critical social maker issues.... improving urban environments, developing countries, citizen infrastructure solutions

• I would operate with advocacy and accessibility in mind. I would focus on how the maker movement can provide opportunity and equity to people underserved by institutionally-oriented models of production, research and business. I would look for opportunities not only to generate and platform content to this end, but also to find synergy with peers and indies. I would seek to publish quality instructional material, and also journalism on the maker community. I think a guiding principle should be elevating the maker movement's reach and relevancy in local economies.

• If i were? I think, I am

• I believe that Maker Faire actually had difficulty in getting makers to register over time because of bad feelings due to the fact that the business model was for-profit but MF gave no equity to the makers, who are literally the reason for the event. I would hope that such a future organization would be not-for-profit. In the long term, maybe it could even sponsor makers with projects of enormous scope.

• An open source franchise model with a common virtual platform to share "how-to", technical help forums, show and tell, etc. This should be supported with low member fee. Also needed are blueprints on how to have a brick and morter makerspace connecting into the franchise model.

• Would change the name, like Tech or DIY meetups.

• Membership based, maybe with organizational members (like hackerspaces) • 501c3, The community

• My favorite part of Maker Media was the Maker Faires.

• Considering the raise of streaming platforms as YouTube, I would focus on keep doing content and publish or online, keeping the already big community around Maker media.

• Kids first, then hobbyists

• Stop trying to claim the word "Make" as IP and focus on enabling and building the community through faires, meetups, clubs, forums, talks, etc. Give makers a place to go to meet each other, and an audience for their works. Don't promote "maker tax" businesses, but show how DIY can be cheap enough for everybody. Less STEM, less kids, more technical.

• I would run it as a distributed co-op, focussing on sustainability and radical change.

• I'd focus on highlighting the work of underrepresented folks from the start. Without conscious effort, it's easy to show a fairly homogeneous subset of the community.

These are the raw/unedited responses for the question "If you had to pick only one thing for an open source maker-oriented organization to focus on, what would it be?"

• Community

• Smaller annual festivals (east bay maker Faire is a good size) organizing small gatherings so makers can meet makers

• check out OPEN BIDOUILLE CAMP

• maximising the good maker/craft engagements already happening on the grassroots level, rather than taking credit for them.

• Curating

• Small local events for people to show their projects and meet each other.

• Feminism

• Anything and Everything - once the money part of the game is taken care of. Without money, there is no chance to make

• Project how tos. Ugh.

• cats

• For making to focus on local need.

• I would focus on facilitating small-to-medium group ownership of open source projects as common-pool resources.

• Increasing diversity of the maker community by lowering the barrier to entry (financially, geographically, socially).

• Sustainability & Engagement. Yes, I know it looks like two things, but it's not. By this I don't just mean environmental sustainability, I also mean economic and social sustainability: Who's engaged? How is that broadened over time? And how does the organisation sustain itself? In many cases, the answer to "How does the organisation sustain itself?" will lead, by implication, to answering the question "Who is engaged?". (eg: A fablab that's in the orbit of a university will tend only to engage students! eg2: A glossy magazine about the "maker lifestyle" will tend only to engage middle class makers.)

• empowerment

• Teaching self sufficiency

• Ensuring at least one big event was happening annually to get makers together showing their projects.

• Accumulate interesting and useful projects, ideas etc.

• Helping kids create

• Events

• The idea that we can hack the planet for good

• in the community and not in the brands

• Facilitating cooperation, since this is the main thing that individual/independent makers lack in comparison to larger (corporate) structures.

• tutorials

• Celebrating and sharing builds

• Content creation

• Education and Outreach, I think the Make magazine and books were a great enablers.

• By far, I would pair down to just operating a online news site and the maker faires. I'd look at how Cracked brought itself back from the dead as an example.

• Tools to train kids to put on makerfaires

• Support the demonstrating makers

• Outreach focussed events - big ones and community ones. • These events have *enormous* impact on human beings and can make money.

• alternative energy

• Education and levelling the playground socially. This stuff doesn't have to be stupid expensive.

• YouTube

• Events

• Continue the magazine at all costs. It is the source of inspiration for many of all ages.

• Free physical and virtual spaces for learning and creation for all.

• STEAM focused. Especially for school aged children

• micro circuts

• accessible workshops and online materials

• free as in beer

• Community. I don't know how to foster that and not make it all about the money. It's hard because people make cool things and they want to get paid but "community" and "ceaseless self promotion " do not go well together

• Picking some project, and building it as a group with looking at the different elements of engineering, social science and acceptance, and presenting it to a different audience.

• Electrical engineering

• Diversity, equity, and inclusion of varied experience, culture, ideas, and methods.

• Right to repair to build more awareness around making

• Daily online content, but I think going diverse is safer

• I think I would like to focus in providing opportunities for makers that want to teach to teach, for example, I would love to teach programming for free, but havent found the space to do so

• community

• Community. Hands-down. There are many ways to address "Community" but it's the one thing I would pick over other characteristics like "Profit", "Longevity" or "Infrastructure" with respect to an open source maker-oriented organization

• Keep it small, nimble. Cater to the creativity of children, and keep it family friendly.

• Being not for profit.

• Providing access to the tools, skills and mindsets behind making to diverse communities.

• Wow, is that possible? :). I guess Arduino since you can do so many things with it.

• Let neither startup hype/pitch competition people nor social justice/identity politics people grab control over the space.

• Education and accessible technology for all

• Education

• Maker faire

• Community-organized events like Maker Faire I think are the one thing that allowed Maker Media to stand out

• critical approaches to design

• It is hard to pick one answer. I think there are several compelling opportunities for maker organizations focused on specific domains. One would be presenting maker skills in the context of a path to the trades. Another focus would be modernizing (and miniaturizing) common manufacturing processes outside the usual footprint of CNC technologies. I also believe there are a lot of opportunities for makers in agriculture and primary productivity - this is my own personal focus right now.

• Decentralization

• Whimsy. Maker businesses are fine, but there's nothing like the exhibits that elicit pure joy, which are made just because they can be made.

• Access to affordable maker spaces.

• Electronics DIY

• Regional events! Maker Faire Detroit has been so important for connecting makers in the midwest to each other and the rest of the country.

• Community building

• Events -- getting Makers together to talk, teach/share skills, show off their stuff.

• Creaste short videos that detect an issue in a community that could be somehow solved making some artifact, explain the creation process and show the impact it made.

• Physical computing

• Creating user controlled and built technological devices.

• Sustainability!! Many people are already afraid of the future, without knowing what they can do to improve matters. Be a beacon of hope. But also, as things move forward, there will be a lot of demand for this type of solutions. Renewable energy, repurposing/upcycling, interesting ways to produce food, and more. • social capacity building

Lastly, here are responses to the question "Any other thoughts or ideas?" (I've edited out some people's private contact information here, other than that these are the raw responses). Which ones resonate with you?

• the main ideas should realy come from the third world....they are way much more advance

• happy to get involved in helping build this - just let me know :) @c------- / k--.b---------@gmail.com

• b-- here. I think the zine, + on demand + downloadable format would be great. Riso !!!

• Thanks Garnet!

• Maybe a how to magazine of critical and speculative design projects?

• well... another metaphor for cats is academia, or herding cats. other • For the organisation to be a meeting space for other locally focused groups not necessarily attached to making to encourage cross fertilisation of ideas.

• "Makers" are people, and community is people -- and we should eschew the platforming tendencies by single individuals, be it TechShop, Fab Lab, Maker Media, P2P, ecology ...

• And as I said earlier, together with m------:

"Shared Machine Shops are not new

Fab Labs are not about technology.

Sharing is not happening. Hackerspaces are not open. Technology is not neutral. Hackerspaces are not solving problems. Fab Labs are not the seeds of a revolution." (http://peerproduction.net/iss…/issue-5-shared-machine-shops/) P---- T------, p.-------@--.nl

• Great thoughts and ideas on Nettime. Keep up the good work! Hope to see you again IRL some time. J----

• No DARPA grants

• Open source is a strange thing to focus on. There are many maker companies that eschew open source, and many that require retention of copyright, etc. I wonder why you chose this phrasing.

• Be political neutral, don't force political opinions on people like the left wing Make magazine did.

• I am not sure I am right. This is just my gut reaction.

• Being a “maker” is a way of living based that we can hack everything for better :) we can be better, we have to.

• The maker movement is more alive and latent than ever.

• A post Maker Media organization should imho be membership-based, with membership revenue being the basis of what is possible financially. It would be a kind of global trade organization for makers of all kinds.

• HACK OTHER EVENTS: Attend events that attract makers who don't identify as makers: comicon (almost everyone is a maker there), wood and metalworking trade shows, custom car and bike shows, etc. We grow our community by joining other communities and infecting them with our enthusiasm for blending the disciplines into one big community of makers.

• I think building an alliance or consortium that brings together various organizations and individual is much better idea. The group could consist of organizations who's business is cater to maker community (open hardware companies, open source companies).

• I think the problem you're always going to run into is an issue of that the maker community has always struggled a bit with the idea of business as a part of the movement. At its core, the movement is a hobby to most people, so the vast majority of maker organizations have to or prefer to rely on outside sources of support because if you try to fund a makerspace internally and make business an integral part of it, it just becomes another factory workshop. I don't think it works if the organization funding it is the same one as the organization trying to coordinate the non-profit programs.

• Kinda like a national science faire but more maker oriented.

• S----- H--- is severely underrated and print is dead.

• MF, by it's very nature sort of made it hard for individuals to show stuff because it was just too exhausting. I would like to see a better way to do show and tell among individuals.

• this really sucks!!!!

• We don't need so much focus on Bay Area-type artists. We need to teach people, and especially kids, how to get started for themselves, and then help them develop skills.

• Support the independent makers. They are the "talent".

• For years heard many smaller maker companies lamenting that it was too expensive to participate in a maker Faire. It was a of once a maker made the leap from maker to a maker business Make Media wanted large sums of money to have a booth/representation at an event. This amount was unproportionally large compared to the revenue the business generated. And it all makes sense why the prices were so high when there were venture capitalists that needed to see returns. Treat it the new "Make" as a company of one, then it'll succeed long term. https://ofone.co/ (no, not affiliated with the book in any way)

• Makers are strongly connected to the UN SDG's - find ways to mutual development.

• Co-create strong independent networks, portals, platforms to survive autonomy in times of crises: Signal, Protonmail, etc

• Developing of the next generation of Makers should be something that should span more than just print and digital media. Deeper integration into schools, K12 and Collegiate, to help develop the skills needed to live and work in an Internet connected, coded world.

• do not try to be too big

• I've taken the time to carve out more space in my life to make things now that Make is gone. It felt like they had a handle on the whole making things deal. And that level of fit and finish isn't really my style. I feel like I have more space to just be me and do what I want. I know this is all in my head. I really want the books to continue under a similar imprint. It'd be a shame if they were all discontinued or sold to some soulless corporation.

• More drones!

• Women are makers, and “women’s crafts” are forms of making. People living in poverty are makers, and survival invention in developing nations is a form of making. Learn from Bauhaus’s eff-ups a century ago. Learn from innovation in literal ghettos and tenements.

• "making" is too broad to go mainstream. Folks that grok makerfaire dig it hard, yet folks that don't have no clue what the hell it is. We have a big awareness problem still. Rally around right to repair and teaching folks how to fix stuff so they start taking more stuff apart and questioning how it works.

• If I had the means to start I'd do it myself

• I am sorry to waste your time

• usually monetery and community focussed efforts conflict. it would be great if this was not the case

• Occasional events are better for outreach whereas regular meetups are better for cultivating a specialism

• Consider expanding the Maker Media empire, or whatever is left of it, to the Eastern Hemisphere/East -- India and China are the future, and if Make: had some of its outposts in these economies, radical change could be seen with respect to the global maker movement

• Nothing good lasts forever. Design the business accordingly.

• I attended probably 75% of the NYC MFs, including 2010. I believe the year things changed for the worse was when Barnes&Noble got involved, makers started complaining about the cost to exhibit, and weird unrelated large sponsors showed up (some kind of new soda). The reprap festivals might be a better way to go?

• I think it makes sense at this point to look at how we can form a network of small groups in many places working together towards a common mission with the support of a board providing guidance.

• How, and with whom, can I accomplish this in Reutlingen, Willi Betz Gelände?

• I know people are super sad about MAKE. Me too. It's very nostalgic considering all the friends and community we have made all around the world. But I feel, this is just the passing of an industry from the early stage to a mature stage. This is very similar to all the open source hardware grassroots clubs we had such as the famous Homebrew Club, but today people hardly build computers by hand anymore. We have "matured" into another level of technology.

• It's a cycle. What starts young, will one day become matured and even die off to give birth to something else totally new, while the remnants of the old will get embedded as part of bigger and more financially stable organisations.

• connect up all loal hackerspaces in a city and have them run an event in a conglomeration.

• One thing I feel is lacking in the usual maker pedagogy is fundamental business literacy. People can develop amazing skills through self-study, but business law is arcane by design. 

• I think most makers stand to benefit greatly from some content demystifying business licensing, home accounting and independent consultancy work. There are already many organizations promoting independent business, but there seems to be little overlap between these and the maker community.

• The maker faire is a decentralized thing. Most of regional and mini maker faires are on. Perhaps instead of maker Media licenses we could just use a respected and recognized chapter, a document stating what is a maker faire and what is not. If the maker faire trademark will not be available for us, then we will have to think up and to agree on a new name.

• We can do better than Maker Faire.

• If there is a open source franchise model then each location could have a contributed fee that would assist with purchasing of new equipment, insurance, repairs, staffing etc. • It is a lower-cost way of sharing resources instead of having to rely solely on local volunteers or individual sites.

• Half focus on newcomers and other half in veterans. A lot of us started with Arduino, and some made custom PCB, wich is kinda normal.

• Not for profit please :D

• Get youtubers involved, like Simone Giertz, Laura Kampf, Mark Rober,

• Be an actual maker movement, about DIY and tech learning and FUN!, and not a profit-focused startup company. Be genuinely excited about making, not fake excited about selling us marked up crap. Get into the deep dive details. 

• Be more like the 8/16 bit computer user group days, the Radio and Electronics days, the glee of building and fixing and modding shit. Be photocopied zine days and not glossy magazine days. More crazy tinkerers, less TED talk. Don't be a fucking TED talk. Never be that again.

• Scrappy and inclusive, not hipster and exclusive. Geezers and kids and adults and teens all treated with respect. 

• For god's sake, the project is the star! Fuck "influencers". Nobody is a fucking star of makerdom. 

• Engineering is modest, good hacks get kudos. No hate for n00bs. Everybody can come. You can do the thing!

• Make did an amazing job of combining different disciplines into one community. I'd love to see that again.

• stress anti-capitalist and regenerative capitalist models

If you'd like to input ideas, here's the form - 

https://forms.gle/SB7FxpJVAyhVwnLp7 

- and in reference to Nettime, I'm particularly interested in hearing people (by email) that might be interested in hosting some sort of events that have to do with DIY/art/tech/culture, sort of in the spirit of a revived Dorkbot - please give me a shout.

Thanks! Garnet

See More from Molly Hankwitz

-- Dr. Garnet Hertz Canada Research Chair in Design and Media Arts Emily Carr University of Art and Design 520 East 1st Avenue, Vancouver, BC, Canada  V5T 0H2

#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission #  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, #  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets #  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l #  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org #  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:

[thefeministherald]

It feels a little weird to conduct my day to day affairs, lately. I feel like political news is the only thing to talk and think about, the only important thing happening. I’m need to find a work/life/resistance balance, I think, because right now I feel like all I do is work/resistance, interrupted by the occasional dinner break. My boss wants to have career planning conversations at work and I’m filled with utter apathy. And a tiny voice in the back of my head going, okay, you need to put forth an effort here; you’re going to regret it if you don’t.

Is anyone else feeling this? How are you dealing?

Lady Scientists

+ From Nylon: 10 Black Women in Academia That You Need To Know About.

+ NASA Cassini Project Scientist Linda Spilker and mission planner Molly Bittner took questions on Facebook Live about the latest science orbit of the Juno mission: a close flyby with the craft plunging in close to graze Jupiter’s rings. Easily the best piece of news I took in this past week.

Via NASA.

+ Mathematician Adriana Salerno is starting a blog called inclusion/exclusion with a solid group of editors that includes women, people of color, immigrants, and members of the LGBTQ community. The first post is up and I’m adding it to my RSS feed, maybe you want to too.

+ There were a lot of women tweeting under the hashtag #actuallivingscientist (a visibility thing) over the past several days! Showing us how they dress like women (a ridiculous thing Trump said). Let us bask in their glory.

View image on Twitter

Hi, I'm Becka. I do science in Utah's #wetlands, they're neat. I like plants, climbing, & marsh yoga #actuallivingscientist#DressLikeAWoman

I'm an #ActualLivingScientist who works on cancer therapeutics. And who sometimes wears mismatched gloves #DressLikeAWoman #womeninSTEM

I'm an #ActualLivingScientist working towards my PhD in biochemistry so I can study the effects of space travel on the human body

Hi, I'm Janet & I study how endangered hawks live in an environment with lots of human development. I like coffee! #actuallivingscientist

#actuallivingscientist doing drug development research and growing a baby at the same time #DressLikeAWoman

+ Here’s an interview with Ashley Spindler, a bisexual, trans woman astrophysicist who loves Stargate SG-1 and studies Galaxy Evolution. Check out the rest of the LGBT STEM blog for more; it’s an ongoing series.

Meltdown

+ On Sunday, the House Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology published a press release alleging, based on questionable evidence, that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) “manipulated climate records.” It didn’t.

+ Trump’s EPA pick appears to have made a false statement under oath in Senate hearing. He denies it.

+ Washington D.C. police subpoenaed Facebook to hand over data on protestors. I feel a creeping sense of unease about organizing on Facebook, which is why I set up my 10/100 huddle group on Slack. I don’t know if that’s necessary or the best thing to do, but just be careful with your data, okay?

+ Here’s a list of all the US elected officials who deny climate change.

+ Did you read Ali’s coverage on net neutrality yet?

It’s got nothing to do with “free data” or healing the divide. It’s got to do with corporations and their now-unimpeded plans to profit off both consumers and content creators, streaming service providers and whoever else they can make a buck off of. The reason we regulate the internet to assure neutrality is so we don’t wind up with a dystopia where a company can buy incentivized speed or priority, thus incentivizing consumers to use one service over another. Should this truly be an indication of the FCC’s direction over the next four years, it will impact independent websites and services as the dystopia expands.

+ The Sunlight Foundation is now tracking US government data going offline.

+ Trump continues to wage war on truth and push his lies. We’re not buying it, and I’m actually not going to spend time rehashing the latest offenses at this particular juncture. But I’ll be in the comments if there’s anything you want to chat about!

Can’t Hold Us Down

+ Seattle librarians are teaching kids how to spot fake news.

+ Yesterday, Science Europe released a practical guide to improving gender equality in research organizations.

+ Researchers analyzed more than 33,000 FOIA requests to see what successful requests had in common. (Spoiler: not actually all that much?)

+ Thought this was an interesting perspective from Lucy Kellaway: “I am difficult at work and proud of it.”

+ Brianna Wu Is Here, Queer and Running for Congress in Massachusetts. Continues to be a badass and a heartthrob.

+ The March for Science now has a date: April 22, 2017. They have a rad vision and specifically strive for intersectionality. I feel good about it.

Geekery Grab Bag

+ The Andromeda Galaxy is colliding with the Milky Way, and Ariel Waldman would like to tell you about it.

+ The fivethirtyeight R package package was released, with data sets from dozens of data journalism stories, including stories about police killings in the US, references to presidential candidates in hip-hop lyrics, and a complete worked analysis of movies satisfying the Bechdel Test. Seems neat!

+ Those were drones in the Gaga halftime show.

+ Here’s a relaxing video of someone making tiny succulents out of clay:

My guess is aloe vera, fenestraria rhopalophylla, sansevieria, gollum jade, echeveria.

[lopezdorothy70-blog]

The Use of EMF Filters for Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity

By Dr. Mercola

In this interview, Magda Havas, Ph.D., discusses the benefits of electromagnetic field (EMF) filters. These devices are particularly important for those who are electrosensitive.

Most people just don't want to believe EMFs are problematic because electricity and electric, wireless devices are so incredibly convenient and provide us with many logistical benefits. Most public health authorities also insist EMFs are safe. I was initially a skeptic myself, as was Havas.

I intellectually acknowledged there might be cause for concern, but I thought I could simply sidestep any danger by living a healthy lifestyle. Then, about a year and a half ago, I attended a presentation by Havas and Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt, which served as a powerful catalyst for changing my views - to the point I started taking aggressive steps to remediate and lower my exposure to EMFs.

Delving Into the Research

Havas is an associate professor at Trent University in Canada. Initially, her research focus was acid rain and metal pollution. In 1990, while teaching a course called "Pollution Ecology," she decided to include electrosmog as well.

"I had heard that children who live near power lines have an increased risk of developing leukemia," Havas says. "I thought this would be a different type of pollutant that I could introduce into the class. I update my lectures every year because the world of chemical toxicology changes so dramatically.

I began to look at the literature and found that it was really confusing. There were a lot of studies showing that, yes, children who live near power lines have a greater risk of developing various types of cancers … I felt it wasn't time for me yet to enter this field because that wasn't my area of expertise. My area of expertise was chemical toxicology.

One day, my husband was visiting his brother in Wales. They were walking the dog late at night near a nuclear power plant. They went under some high-voltage transmission lines. My brother-in-law was a chemical mechanical engineer. He whipped out a fluorescent tube from under his coat and held it up under the power line. It lit up.

My husband came back and told me about this, because he knew I was interested but had put it on hold. That evening I unscrewed one of the tubes from our kitchen, under the cabinets. I did the same thing near a high-voltage transmission line, and it lit up. That sort of intrigued me. I didn't understand the physics of it. I do now, but it took me a while.

I asked a friend of mine, a physics professor at my university, 'Do you think this could cause childhood leukemia?' It was his response that really turned me onto this research. His response was, 'Definitely not.' I think when you ask someone for their opinion about something, it's really important to find out what that opinion is based on, so I just asked him.

He said, 'There's not enough energy. It's not ionizing radiation. There's not enough energy to cause cancer, so you have nothing to worry about.' That wasn't a satisfactory answer. At that point, I decided that I was going to demolish the literature. I was going to go through absolutely everything very, very carefully, and figure out for myself whether I thought this was a real factor …"

Tracking Down EMFs Effect on Cancer Cells

It took her three years to conclude the EMF childhood leukemia link was real, albeit the effect is small. She then scoured the occupational literature, looking at people who work in high electromagnetic occupations. Again, the literature showed there was an increased risk of leukemia, but also brain tumors and breast cancer.

From there, she began to look at natural EMFs to find out how the human body reacts to them. "I went from childhood leukemia, some residential exposure, to occupational exposure, to natural electromagnetic fields," she says. "And then a friend of mine suggested I look at the healing effects of electromagnetic therapies."

At this point, there didn't appear to be a predictable pattern to the effects she was finding. This finally changed once she delved into the research on pulsed electromagnetic fields (PEMF) to heal bone fractures. This is a well-established therapy that has been used since the 1960s. One of the documents stated PEMF should not be used on cancer patients, although it didn't specify why.

"What PEMF therapy does among other things is it increases cell division. When you have increased cell division in bone, that's good, because it's going to promote healing. But if you have increased cell division of cancerous cells, then that's not good. I sort of had an aha moment.

At that point, I realized that low-frequency EMFs can cause cancer and can definitely promote the growth of cancer. Since then, the research is just basically supporting all of that information. I went from studying extremely low frequency EMFs to doing research, and introducing it into my courses."

Dirty Electricity Can Have Marked Effect on Behavior

Around 2003, Havas was approached by a mother whose daughter was electrically hypersensitive. She asked Havas to conduct a study at the daughter's school, to evaluate the effects of EMF filters such as the Stetzer filter, which reduce dirty electricity.

I've previously interviewed Dr. Sam Milham on this topic, so to learn more about the technical aspects of dirty electricity, see "Dirty Electricity - Stealth Trigger of Disease Epidemics." At the time, Havas was unfamiliar with dirty electricity, but reluctantly agreed to conduct the experiment.1,2

"I was very skeptical that you can put something in an electrical outlet and that would clean the electricity and everyone would be happy and healthy after that," she says, noting that she really did not expect to find any effects of these filters.

"When I finally got to analyzing the data, I was absolutely shocked by what I found … At that time, electrical hypersensitivity was attributed to less than 1 percent of the population. We didn't have a large enough sample size in the school. Even if one teacher was electrically hypersensitive, it wouldn't show up, because we didn't have a large enough sample size.

But we found that about 44 percent of the teachers improved while the filters were plugged in. We did a before and after, and because they didn't know what was going on, it wasn't a placebo effect. It was totally blinded. They thought we were evaluating their teaching ability. They had no idea what we were doing.

We told them we couldn't tell them because it would affect the results. But at the end of the study, we'd reveal all the information. We had a custodian who plugged filters in on the weekend. These are just little boxes that you don't really notice.

We did that study and found that teacher health improved, and student behavior improved. Many of the symptoms that improved in the school were those we associate with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. This was quite intriguing to me."

EMFs and Diabetes

After completing that experiment, Havas met Dave Stetzer, co-creator of the Graham-Stetzer filter (along with the late Dr. Martin Graham), and was able to learn more about his research first-hand. He told her he was prediabetic, and whenever he was in an environment with a lot of dirty power, his blood sugar increased.

Since blood sugar is an objective assessment, and something you cannot consciously control, Havas decided to study3 EMFs effects on diabetics. What she discovered was that if you're Type 1 or Type 2 diabetic, and are electrically hypersensitive, then your blood sugar will increase if you're exposed to dirty electricity.

"There's something called 'brittle diabetes,' which is a form of diabetes where people can't control their blood sugar. It suddenly goes up or it suddenly goes down, and it's not related to their activity, their food or medication. I really think that brittle diabetes is environmentally triggered.

I think one of the triggers is electromagnetic pollution, whether it's dirty power or higher radio frequencies. One of the people we worked with was a woman in New York, who was a Type 2 diabetic. She didn't take any medication … If she measured her blood sugar and it was high, she would take a 20-minute walk, and it would come down to a normal, acceptable level.

On days when it rained or she didn't feel like walking outside, she would walk on an electric treadmill. Whenever she walked on the treadmill, her blood sugar actually skyrocketed, went way up, which is not what you would expect.

One of the things doctors recommend is exercise for their patients. They don't distinguish between walking outside or walking on a treadmill, but treadmills give off dirty power. They also have a high magnetic field.

So, if you're a diabetic and you're electrically hypersensitive, you might actually do more damage to your body because of the stress the electrosmog generates in the body. Hence, your blood sugar goes up."

EMFs Worsen Multiple Sclerosis

Another school experienced a dramatic reduction in asthma attacks, and the principal, who had multiple sclerosis (MS), improved almost immediately once Stetzer filters were installed. Intrigued, Havas started working with people diagnosed with MS. In the video, she shares a number of stories from her case files, some of which are rather dramatic. Here's one example:

"A woman told me, 'Tell me when you're coming for the interview and the measurements. I'll leave the door open. Just knock and come in because it'll take me too long to walk to the door to open it for you.' That particular woman, within six weeks, was not only able to walk without any assistance and open the door. She told me she actually went on a vacation with her husband and was dancing.

I kept thinking, 'No one's going to believe me, because I could barely believe my own eyes' … I began to videotape these individuals. The videotape was my proof … Many different types of MS benefited. Not everyone we tested benefited, but the vast majority had some improvement, not only in their physical ability, but also their cognitive abilities. It was really quite obvious."

MRI scans further showed that MS patients who had used EMF filters for several years had a decrease in the sclerosis in the brain. Not only did filtering EMFs improve the symptoms, but it actually allowed the body to heal itself. Results of this investigation into the effects of EMF on MS were published in 2006.4

Conditions That Increase Your Risk of Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity

Havas became very interested in finding out how to diagnose electromagnetic hypersensitivity5 (EHS), which is recognized by the World Health Organization.6 (EHS is also sometimes referred to as idiopathic environmental intolerance, meaning the cause is unknown.) According to Havas, a number of conditions can increase your risk of EHS, including:

Spinal cord damage; whiplash

Brain damage; concussion

Chemical toxicity, such as high levels of mercury, lead, PCBs or other neurotoxins

Bacterial and/or parasitic infections such as Lyme

Impaired immune function; lupus

The very young and the very old

Tinnitus Shares Pathophysiology With EHS

Researchers have also found a significant association between tinnitus and EMF hypersensitivity, hinting at a shared pathophysiology between the two conditions.7 In this study, 89 EMF hypersensitive patients were compared to 107 controls, matched for age, gender, living surroundings and workplace environment.

Nearly 51 percent of EMF hypersensitive patients had tinnitus, compared to just 17.5 percent of controls. While prevalence was significantly higher among those sensitive to EMFs, tinnitus duration and severity did not differ between the two groups. According to the authors:

"Our data indicate that tinnitus is associated with subjective electromagnetic hypersensitivity. An individual vulnerability probably due to an overactivated cortical distress network seems to be responsible for both electromagnetic hypersensitivity and tinnitus. Hence, therapeutic efforts should focus on treatment strategies (e.g., cognitive behavioral therapy) aiming at normalizing this dysfunctional distress network."

EMFs Effect on Heart Rate

One organ that is particularly sensitive to EMFs is your heart. To investigate, Havas conducted an experiment8 with people who claimed EMFs caused heart palpitations, very frequently when entering certain stores, or the mall.

"They felt as soon as they walked in, their heart rate would rise. They would have kind of an anxiety attack and have to leave the store as quickly as possible," Havas says.

"Often, they said they would make a list, go in and do the shopping as quickly as possible and leave, because the longer they stayed in the store, the worse they felt. They would develop brain fog, become dizzy and nauseous."

Using heart rate variability technology, Havas and Jeffrey Marrongelle, a chiropractor who does energy medicine, assessed 25 people, some of which claimed to have EHS and others who had never even heard the term.

The participants were exposed to microwave radiation from the bay station of a cordless phone, which emits nonstop radiation. Interestingly, while no real relationship could be found between those who claimed to have EHS and the exposure, people who were fit and in good health had the greatest response.

"Basically, what they experienced was a stress response. There was an increase in their sympathetic and a decrease in their parasympathetic response, with an increase in either heart rate or a change in the heart rate, in terms of arrhythmia …

This was a double-blind study that was really very powerful, showing this is not something that people can actually regulate themselves.

Just one example, we had a person who had a heartrate of about 65. They were lying down on a mat. The cordless phone was behind their heads, so they couldn't see it and didn't know when it was turned on or off. Their heart rate zoomed up to 120 beats per minute while they were lying down.

Most people would have to go up at least a flight of stairs in order to get that kind of response from their heart. As soon as the phone was disconnected, their heart rate returned to normal. While this was a more extreme case, there were several people who had that kind of response."

EMFs Effects on Blood

Havas has also conducted many tests on her own blood over the years. She noticed that after working on the computer, her blood was coagulated and viscous.

After spending eight minutes on a PEMF mat, her blood was free-flowing again. Continuing her tests, she realized that whenever her body had been exposed to microwave radiation, whether from a Wi-Fi router, a cordless phone or cellphone, it went into rouleau formation (aggregates of red blood cells). She explains:

"There are virtually no cells that are single cells. Everything is just clumping together. We know that the effect of that is really quite damaging. It could cause a stroke. It could cause a heart attack. It certainly reduces your circulation in your fingers and toes, for example, leading to cold extremities and a tingling sensation.

All these tests we were doing was to try to alert medical doctors to what they can do in office to diagnose someone with EHS. Things like blood sugar, heart rate and blood coagulation are some of the things that can actually be done, so that doctors can do the diagnostics …

There are some people who respond only to microwave radiation. They don't respond to anything else. Others respond primarily to dirty power. Dirty power and microwaves are virtually ubiquitous. They're everywhere … I think dirty electricity is really a missing link.

There are very few people in the world studying the biological effects of dirty electricity. There has been a huge amount of research looking at electromagnetic interference, which is another thing that dirty electricity does.

Engineers are very familiar with this. They very often will shield against that to protect sensitive electronic equipment. They don't realize that by protecting the equipment, you're also protecting human health. That's really important."

Remediation Tools

Before you begin remediation, you need a couple of tools to actually measure the EMFs in your home or office. Here, it's important to realize that not all devices accurately measure all three types of EMFs - the electric fields, magnetic fields and radiofrequency fields. Havas recommends three different types of meters:

The Acousticom 2

The TriField meter (while it measures electric, magnetic and radio frequencies, it's really only good for measuring magnetic fields. It's not an accurate tool for measuring electric fields or radio frequencies)

A Microsurge (Stetzer) meter, which measures dirty electricity, and at least one Stetzer filter, to allow you to determine how much you can reduce the dirty power at any given location

"I think if you have these three different devices, and you know what the levels are, what you're looking for … then you can go around your house and find out what you're exposed to. It's really quite simple," she says.

"There are ways of going around doing the measurements. The more you play around with it, the more comfortable you become with it. You'll find some real surprises when you have the meters, because things that you think might be turned off or aren't radiating may be and increasing your exposure. Doing your own testing is something I highly recommend."

As for the Stetzer filter, most homes will probably need at least 20. A large home may need anywhere from 40 to 80 filters in larger homes. At about $40 apiece, the investment can be significant. You can, however, get a discounted bulk rate if you call Stetzer Electric. You won't find the discount online; you'll need to make a phone call and you can get the price down to around $25 per unit.

It will be important to also purchase a meter, otherwise you will have no idea how serious your problem is and where to place the filters. Typically, two to three need to be installed in your bedroom (the most important), rooms that have computers, and the room close to your circuit breakers.

Ideally, readings should be below 50 and even better below 35. If installing a filter doesn't lower the reading by at least 20 percent, it is probably best to find a different location for the filter.

It also would be best to have a knowledgeable electrician evaluate your home for any wiring errors as that cannot be fixed by the filters. What's more, anything you plug into an improperly wired (code violation) circuit will increase harmful magnetic fields. A surprisingly large number of homes have wiring errors and can be as high as 30 percent or more in some areas.

Beware of Smart Lights

I've previously written about the dangers of LEDs and fluorescent light bulbs, but Havas brings up yet another, even worse, type of bulb - so-called smart lights that you can turn on and off with your smartphone.

"They radiate microwaves as high as your Wi-Fi router or your wireless phone," she says. I went to a lighting conference in Germany two years ago. I was giving a talk on different types of lighting and looking at the spectrum, looking at all the different frequencies they emit, including ultraviolet and the relative ratio of blue to red, all that kind of stuff.

The lighting industry was sponsoring this conference, so I said, 'Can you send me a good-quality lightbulb?' They said, 'No problem.' They sent me one and it was probably the worst bulb I've ever tested. It was one of these smart bulbs that as soon as you turn it on, it's emitting microwave radiation.

I remember talking to the president of the company when I went to Germany. I showed the results … I said, 'Your lightbulb was one of the worst because of this microwave radiation. You know, it's making people sick.' He said, 'I had no idea. But the entire industry is going that way, and we don't want to be left out.'"

On Ground Current

The EMF problem has gotten so significant that you cannot even safety ground anymore in North America (a practice also known as Earthing, or walking barefoot on the ground). All electricity needs to be grounded, so the ground has become one giant sink for EMFs, and I've altered my stance on Earthing for this very reason. Havas explains:

"It turns out you can have electricity flowing through the ground. This is happening more and more often. In part because of the way we use electricity in North America; with the way that we distribute it and transmit it.

We have so many multiple grounds that the electricity from an area of high electrical conductivity can move to an area where there's less electrons, so they just move through the ground. When you have moving electrons, you can create a current.

There are farms mostly in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa that have a really serious ground current problem with their dairy cows. These cows are just constantly lifting their feet because they're being exposed to ground current. But it's not the 60-cycle that's most damaging. It's the dirty power [100 kHz] flowing through the ground that is causing it …

There are people who claim that the best thing you can ever do is get grounded. I would agree with that, provided you're in an area where you don't have a ground current problem. It's like you can drink clean water, you can drink dirty water. They have very different effects.

If you have dirty electricity flowing through the ground, getting grounded means it's now entering your body, because it comes right in through one leg and down the other basically.

These devices that you plug into your electrical outlet that you then put on your bed so that you're grounded at night, people who use them are beginning to tell me that after a couple of days or a couple of weeks, they're actually beginning to feel quite ill.

My guess is that they've got dirty electricity coming through the ground, into their sleeping area, and hence, making them sick. You have to be very, very careful where you're grounded …"

More Information

The EMF topic is a big one, and we've not covered every angle here. For more information about the mechanisms of harm, see "New Study Links Cellphone Radiation to Heart and Brain Tumors," in which I review mechanisms of action proposed by Martin Pall, Ph.D., Alasdair Philips and Paul Héroux, Ph.D.

For more about the health effects of EMFs and the importance of EMF remediation when treating chronic illness, see my interview with Dr. Klinghardt. You can also peruse Havas' website, MagdaHavas.com, where you'll find a number of video presentations, historical references and general information about EMFs.

Links to her studies can be found in the reference section below. Five case studies9 were also published for the World Health Organization Workshop on Electrical Hypersensitivity in 2004, which you can read in full, and one of her most recent papers,10 "When Theory and Observation Collide: Can Non-Ionizing Radiation Cause Cancer?" can be found in the journal Environmental Pollution.

[jakehglover]

The Use of EMF Filters for Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity

By Dr. Mercola

In this interview, Magda Havas, Ph.D., discusses the benefits of electromagnetic field (EMF) filters. These devices are particularly important for those who are electrosensitive.

Most people just don't want to believe EMFs are problematic because electricity and electric, wireless devices are so incredibly convenient and provide us with many logistical benefits. Most public health authorities also insist EMFs are safe. I was initially a skeptic myself, as was Havas.

I intellectually acknowledged there might be cause for concern, but I thought I could simply sidestep any danger by living a healthy lifestyle. Then, about a year and a half ago, I attended a presentation by Havas and Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt, which served as a powerful catalyst for changing my views — to the point I started taking aggressive steps to remediate and lower my exposure to EMFs.

Delving Into the Research

Havas is an associate professor at Trent University in Canada. Initially, her research focus was acid rain and metal pollution. In 1990, while teaching a course called "Pollution Ecology," she decided to include electrosmog as well.

"I had heard that children who live near power lines have an increased risk of developing leukemia," Havas says. "I thought this would be a different type of pollutant that I could introduce into the class. I update my lectures every year because the world of chemical toxicology changes so dramatically.

I began to look at the literature and found that it was really confusing. There were a lot of studies showing that, yes, children who live near power lines have a greater risk of developing various types of cancers … I felt it wasn't time for me yet to enter this field because that wasn't my area of expertise. My area of expertise was chemical toxicology.

One day, my husband was visiting his brother in Wales. They were walking the dog late at night near a nuclear power plant. They went under some high-voltage transmission lines. My brother-in-law was a chemical mechanical engineer. He whipped out a fluorescent tube from under his coat and held it up under the power line. It lit up.

My husband came back and told me about this, because he knew I was interested but had put it on hold. That evening I unscrewed one of the tubes from our kitchen, under the cabinets. I did the same thing near a high-voltage transmission line, and it lit up. That sort of intrigued me. I didn't understand the physics of it. I do now, but it took me a while.

I asked a friend of mine, a physics professor at my university, 'Do you think this could cause childhood leukemia?' It was his response that really turned me onto this research. His response was, 'Definitely not.' I think when you ask someone for their opinion about something, it's really important to find out what that opinion is based on, so I just asked him.

He said, 'There's not enough energy. It's not ionizing radiation. There's not enough energy to cause cancer, so you have nothing to worry about.' That wasn't a satisfactory answer. At that point, I decided that I was going to demolish the literature. I was going to go through absolutely everything very, very carefully, and figure out for myself whether I thought this was a real factor …"

Tracking Down EMFs Effect on Cancer Cells

It took her three years to conclude the EMF childhood leukemia link was real, albeit the effect is small. She then scoured the occupational literature, looking at people who work in high electromagnetic occupations. Again, the literature showed there was an increased risk of leukemia, but also brain tumors and breast cancer.

From there, she began to look at natural EMFs to find out how the human body reacts to them. "I went from childhood leukemia, some residential exposure, to occupational exposure, to natural electromagnetic fields," she says. "And then a friend of mine suggested I look at the healing effects of electromagnetic therapies."

At this point, there didn't appear to be a predictable pattern to the effects she was finding. This finally changed once she delved into the research on pulsed electromagnetic fields (PEMF) to heal bone fractures. This is a well-established therapy that has been used since the 1960s. One of the documents stated PEMF should not be used on cancer patients, although it didn't specify why.

"What PEMF therapy does among other things is it increases cell division. When you have increased cell division in bone, that's good, because it's going to promote healing. But if you have increased cell division of cancerous cells, then that's not good. I sort of had an aha moment.

At that point, I realized that low-frequency EMFs can cause cancer and can definitely promote the growth of cancer. Since then, the research is just basically supporting all of that information. I went from studying extremely low frequency EMFs to doing research, and introducing it into my courses."

Dirty Electricity Can Have Marked Effect on Behavior

Around 2003, Havas was approached by a mother whose daughter was electrically hypersensitive. She asked Havas to conduct a study at the daughter's school, to evaluate the effects of EMF filters such as the Stetzer filter, which reduce dirty electricity.

I've previously interviewed Dr. Sam Milham on this topic, so to learn more about the technical aspects of dirty electricity, see "Dirty Electricity — Stealth Trigger of Disease Epidemics." At the time, Havas was unfamiliar with dirty electricity, but reluctantly agreed to conduct the experiment.1,2

"I was very skeptical that you can put something in an electrical outlet and that would clean the electricity and everyone would be happy and healthy after that," she says, noting that she really did not expect to find any effects of these filters.

"When I finally got to analyzing the data, I was absolutely shocked by what I found … At that time, electrical hypersensitivity was attributed to less than 1 percent of the population. We didn't have a large enough sample size in the school. Even if one teacher was electrically hypersensitive, it wouldn't show up, because we didn't have a large enough sample size.

But we found that about 44 percent of the teachers improved while the filters were plugged in. We did a before and after, and because they didn't know what was going on, it wasn't a placebo effect. It was totally blinded. They thought we were evaluating their teaching ability. They had no idea what we were doing.

We told them we couldn't tell them because it would affect the results. But at the end of the study, we'd reveal all the information. We had a custodian who plugged filters in on the weekend. These are just little boxes that you don't really notice.

We did that study and found that teacher health improved, and student behavior improved. Many of the symptoms that improved in the school were those we associate with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. This was quite intriguing to me."

EMFs and Diabetes

After completing that experiment, Havas met Dave Stetzer, co-creator of the Graham-Stetzer filter (along with the late Dr. Martin Graham), and was able to learn more about his research first-hand. He told her he was prediabetic, and whenever he was in an environment with a lot of dirty power, his blood sugar increased.

Since blood sugar is an objective assessment, and something you cannot consciously control, Havas decided to study3 EMFs effects on diabetics. What she discovered was that if you're Type 1 or Type 2 diabetic, and are electrically hypersensitive, then your blood sugar will increase if you're exposed to dirty electricity.

"There's something called 'brittle diabetes,' which is a form of diabetes where people can't control their blood sugar. It suddenly goes up or it suddenly goes down, and it's not related to their activity, their food or medication. I really think that brittle diabetes is environmentally triggered.

I think one of the triggers is electromagnetic pollution, whether it's dirty power or higher radio frequencies. One of the people we worked with was a woman in New York, who was a Type 2 diabetic. She didn't take any medication … If she measured her blood sugar and it was high, she would take a 20-minute walk, and it would come down to a normal, acceptable level.

On days when it rained or she didn't feel like walking outside, she would walk on an electric treadmill. Whenever she walked on the treadmill, her blood sugar actually skyrocketed, went way up, which is not what you would expect.

One of the things doctors recommend is exercise for their patients. They don't distinguish between walking outside or walking on a treadmill, but treadmills give off dirty power. They also have a high magnetic field.

So, if you're a diabetic and you're electrically hypersensitive, you might actually do more damage to your body because of the stress the electrosmog generates in the body. Hence, your blood sugar goes up."

EMFs Worsen Multiple Sclerosis

Another school experienced a dramatic reduction in asthma attacks, and the principal, who had multiple sclerosis (MS), improved almost immediately once Stetzer filters were installed. Intrigued, Havas started working with people diagnosed with MS. In the video, she shares a number of stories from her case files, some of which are rather dramatic. Here's one example:

"A woman told me, 'Tell me when you're coming for the interview and the measurements. I'll leave the door open. Just knock and come in because it'll take me too long to walk to the door to open it for you.' That particular woman, within six weeks, was not only able to walk without any assistance and open the door. She told me she actually went on a vacation with her husband and was dancing.

I kept thinking, 'No one's going to believe me, because I could barely believe my own eyes' … I began to videotape these individuals. The videotape was my proof … Many different types of MS benefited. Not everyone we tested benefited, but the vast majority had some improvement, not only in their physical ability, but also their cognitive abilities. It was really quite obvious."

MRI scans further showed that MS patients who had used EMF filters for several years had a decrease in the sclerosis in the brain. Not only did filtering EMFs improve the symptoms, but it actually allowed the body to heal itself. Results of this investigation into the effects of EMF on MS were published in 2006.4

Conditions That Increase Your Risk of Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity

Havas became very interested in finding out how to diagnose electromagnetic hypersensitivity5 (EHS), which is recognized by the World Health Organization.6 (EHS is also sometimes referred to as idiopathic environmental intolerance, meaning the cause is unknown.) According to Havas, a number of conditions can increase your risk of EHS, including:

Spinal cord damage; whiplash

Brain damage; concussion

Chemical toxicity, such as high levels of mercury, lead, PCBs or other neurotoxins

Bacterial and/or parasitic infections such as Lyme

Impaired immune function; lupus

The very young and the very old

Tinnitus Shares Pathophysiology With EHS

Researchers have also found a significant association between tinnitus and EMF hypersensitivity, hinting at a shared pathophysiology between the two conditions.7 In this study, 89 EMF hypersensitive patients were compared to 107 controls, matched for age, gender, living surroundings and workplace environment.

Nearly 51 percent of EMF hypersensitive patients had tinnitus, compared to just 17.5 percent of controls. While prevalence was significantly higher among those sensitive to EMFs, tinnitus duration and severity did not differ between the two groups. According to the authors:

"Our data indicate that tinnitus is associated with subjective electromagnetic hypersensitivity. An individual vulnerability probably due to an overactivated cortical distress network seems to be responsible for both electromagnetic hypersensitivity and tinnitus. Hence, therapeutic efforts should focus on treatment strategies (e.g., cognitive behavioral therapy) aiming at normalizing this dysfunctional distress network."

EMFs Effect on Heart Rate

One organ that is particularly sensitive to EMFs is your heart. To investigate, Havas conducted an experiment8 with people who claimed EMFs caused heart palpitations, very frequently when entering certain stores, or the mall.

"They felt as soon as they walked in, their heart rate would rise. They would have kind of an anxiety attack and have to leave the store as quickly as possible," Havas says.

"Often, they said they would make a list, go in and do the shopping as quickly as possible and leave, because the longer they stayed in the store, the worse they felt. They would develop brain fog, become dizzy and nauseous."

Using heart rate variability technology, Havas and Jeffrey Marrongelle, a chiropractor who does energy medicine, assessed 25 people, some of which claimed to have EHS and others who had never even heard the term.

The participants were exposed to microwave radiation from the bay station of a cordless phone, which emits nonstop radiation. Interestingly, while no real relationship could be found between those who claimed to have EHS and the exposure, people who were fit and in good health had the greatest response.

"Basically, what they experienced was a stress response. There was an increase in their sympathetic and a decrease in their parasympathetic response, with an increase in either heart rate or a change in the heart rate, in terms of arrhythmia …

This was a double-blind study that was really very powerful, showing this is not something that people can actually regulate themselves.

Just one example, we had a person who had a heartrate of about 65. They were lying down on a mat. The cordless phone was behind their heads, so they couldn't see it and didn't know when it was turned on or off. Their heart rate zoomed up to 120 beats per minute while they were lying down.

Most people would have to go up at least a flight of stairs in order to get that kind of response from their heart. As soon as the phone was disconnected, their heart rate returned to normal. While this was a more extreme case, there were several people who had that kind of response."

EMFs Effects on Blood

Havas has also conducted many tests on her own blood over the years. She noticed that after working on the computer, her blood was coagulated and viscous.

After spending eight minutes on a PEMF mat, her blood was free-flowing again. Continuing her tests, she realized that whenever her body had been exposed to microwave radiation, whether from a Wi-Fi router, a cordless phone or cellphone, it went into rouleau formation (aggregates of red blood cells). She explains:

"There are virtually no cells that are single cells. Everything is just clumping together. We know that the effect of that is really quite damaging. It could cause a stroke. It could cause a heart attack. It certainly reduces your circulation in your fingers and toes, for example, leading to cold extremities and a tingling sensation.

All these tests we were doing was to try to alert medical doctors to what they can do in office to diagnose someone with EHS. Things like blood sugar, heart rate and blood coagulation are some of the things that can actually be done, so that doctors can do the diagnostics …

There are some people who respond only to microwave radiation. They don't respond to anything else. Others respond primarily to dirty power. Dirty power and microwaves are virtually ubiquitous. They're everywhere … I think dirty electricity is really a missing link.

There are very few people in the world studying the biological effects of dirty electricity. There has been a huge amount of research looking at electromagnetic interference, which is another thing that dirty electricity does.

Engineers are very familiar with this. They very often will shield against that to protect sensitive electronic equipment. They don't realize that by protecting the equipment, you're also protecting human health. That's really important."

Remediation Tools

Before you begin remediation, you need a couple of tools to actually measure the EMFs in your home or office. Here, it's important to realize that not all devices accurately measure all three types of EMFs — the electric fields, magnetic fields and radiofrequency fields. Havas recommends three different types of meters:

The Acousticom 2

The TriField meter (while it measures electric, magnetic and radio frequencies, it's really only good for measuring magnetic fields. It's not an accurate tool for measuring electric fields or radio frequencies)

A Microsurge (Stetzer) meter, which measures dirty electricity, and at least one Stetzer filter, to allow you to determine how much you can reduce the dirty power at any given location

"I think if you have these three different devices, and you know what the levels are, what you're looking for … then you can go around your house and find out what you're exposed to. It's really quite simple," she says.

"There are ways of going around doing the measurements. The more you play around with it, the more comfortable you become with it. You'll find some real surprises when you have the meters, because things that you think might be turned off or aren't radiating may be and increasing your exposure. Doing your own testing is something I highly recommend."

As for the Stetzer filter, most homes will probably need at least 20. A large home may need anywhere from 40 to 80 filters in larger homes. At about $40 apiece, the investment can be significant. You can, however, get a discounted bulk rate if you call Stetzer Electric. You won't find the discount online; you'll need to make a phone call and you can get the price down to around $25 per unit.

It will be important to also purchase a meter, otherwise you will have no idea how serious your problem is and where to place the filters. Typically, two to three need to be installed in your bedroom (the most important), rooms that have computers, and the room close to your circuit breakers.

Ideally, readings should be below 50 and even better below 35. If installing a filter doesn't lower the reading by at least 20 percent, it is probably best to find a different location for the filter.

It also would be best to have a knowledgeable electrician evaluate your home for any wiring errors as that cannot be fixed by the filters. What's more, anything you plug into an improperly wired (code violation) circuit will increase harmful magnetic fields. A surprisingly large number of homes have wiring errors and can be as high as 30 percent or more in some areas.

Beware of Smart Lights

I've previously written about the dangers of LEDs and fluorescent light bulbs, but Havas brings up yet another, even worse, type of bulb — so-called smart lights that you can turn on and off with your smartphone.

"They radiate microwaves as high as your Wi-Fi router or your wireless phone," she says. I went to a lighting conference in Germany two years ago. I was giving a talk on different types of lighting and looking at the spectrum, looking at all the different frequencies they emit, including ultraviolet and the relative ratio of blue to red, all that kind of stuff.

The lighting industry was sponsoring this conference, so I said, 'Can you send me a good-quality lightbulb?' They said, 'No problem.' They sent me one and it was probably the worst bulb I've ever tested. It was one of these smart bulbs that as soon as you turn it on, it's emitting microwave radiation.

I remember talking to the president of the company when I went to Germany. I showed the results … I said, 'Your lightbulb was one of the worst because of this microwave radiation. You know, it's making people sick.' He said, 'I had no idea. But the entire industry is going that way, and we don't want to be left out.'"

On Ground Current

The EMF problem has gotten so significant that you cannot even safety ground anymore in North America (a practice also known as Earthing, or walking barefoot on the ground). All electricity needs to be grounded, so the ground has become one giant sink for EMFs, and I've altered my stance on Earthing for this very reason. Havas explains:

"It turns out you can have electricity flowing through the ground. This is happening more and more often. In part because of the way we use electricity in North America; with the way that we distribute it and transmit it.

We have so many multiple grounds that the electricity from an area of high electrical conductivity can move to an area where there's less electrons, so they just move through the ground. When you have moving electrons, you can create a current.

There are farms mostly in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa that have a really serious ground current problem with their dairy cows. These cows are just constantly lifting their feet because they're being exposed to ground current. But it's not the 60-cycle that's most damaging. It's the dirty power [100 kHz] flowing through the ground that is causing it …

There are people who claim that the best thing you can ever do is get grounded. I would agree with that, provided you're in an area where you don't have a ground current problem. It's like you can drink clean water, you can drink dirty water. They have very different effects.

If you have dirty electricity flowing through the ground, getting grounded means it's now entering your body, because it comes right in through one leg and down the other basically.

These devices that you plug into your electrical outlet that you then put on your bed so that you're grounded at night, people who use them are beginning to tell me that after a couple of days or a couple of weeks, they're actually beginning to feel quite ill.

My guess is that they've got dirty electricity coming through the ground, into their sleeping area, and hence, making them sick. You have to be very, very careful where you're grounded …"

More Information

The EMF topic is a big one, and we've not covered every angle here. For more information about the mechanisms of harm, see "New Study Links Cellphone Radiation to Heart and Brain Tumors," in which I review mechanisms of action proposed by Martin Pall, Ph.D., Alasdair Philips and Paul Héroux, Ph.D.

For more about the health effects of EMFs and the importance of EMF remediation when treating chronic illness, see my interview with Dr. Klinghardt. You can also peruse Havas' website, MagdaHavas.com, where you'll find a number of video presentations, historical references and general information about EMFs.

Links to her studies can be found in the reference section below. Five case studies9 were also published for the World Health Organization Workshop on Electrical Hypersensitivity in 2004, which you can read in full, and one of her most recent papers,10 "When Theory and Observation Collide: Can Non-Ionizing Radiation Cause Cancer?" can be found in the journal Environmental Pollution.

from HealthyLife via Jake Glover on Inoreader http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2018/09/09/emf-filters-for-electromagnetic-hypersensitivity.aspx

[sherristockman]

The Use of EMF Filters for Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity Dr. Mercola By Dr. Mercola In this interview, Magda Havas, Ph.D., discusses the benefits of electromagnetic field (EMF) filters. These devices are particularly important for those who are electrosensitive. Most people just don't want to believe EMFs are problematic because electricity and electric, wireless devices are so incredibly convenient and provide us with many logistical benefits. Most public health authorities also insist EMFs are safe. I was initially a skeptic myself, as was Havas. I intellectually acknowledged there might be cause for concern, but I thought I could simply sidestep any danger by living a healthy lifestyle. Then, about a year and a half ago, I attended a presentation by Havas and Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt, which served as a powerful catalyst for changing my views — to the point I started taking aggressive steps to remediate and lower my exposure to EMFs. Delving Into the Research Havas is an associate professor at Trent University in Canada. Initially, her research focus was acid rain and metal pollution. In 1990, while teaching a course called "Pollution Ecology," she decided to include electrosmog as well. "I had heard that children who live near power lines have an increased risk of developing leukemia," Havas says. "I thought this would be a different type of pollutant that I could introduce into the class. I update my lectures every year because the world of chemical toxicology changes so dramatically. I began to look at the literature and found that it was really confusing. There were a lot of studies showing that, yes, children who live near power lines have a greater risk of developing various types of cancers … I felt it wasn't time for me yet to enter this field because that wasn't my area of expertise. My area of expertise was chemical toxicology. One day, my husband was visiting his brother in Wales. They were walking the dog late at night near a nuclear power plant. They went under some high-voltage transmission lines. My brother-in-law was a chemical mechanical engineer. He whipped out a fluorescent tube from under his coat and held it up under the power line. It lit up. My husband came back and told me about this, because he knew I was interested but had put it on hold. That evening I unscrewed one of the tubes from our kitchen, under the cabinets. I did the same thing near a high-voltage transmission line, and it lit up. That sort of intrigued me. I didn't understand the physics of it. I do now, but it took me a while. I asked a friend of mine, a physics professor at my university, 'Do you think this could cause childhood leukemia?' It was his response that really turned me onto this research. His response was, 'Definitely not.' I think when you ask someone for their opinion about something, it's really important to find out what that opinion is based on, so I just asked him. He said, 'There's not enough energy. It's not ionizing radiation. There's not enough energy to cause cancer, so you have nothing to worry about.' That wasn't a satisfactory answer. At that point, I decided that I was going to demolish the literature. I was going to go through absolutely everything very, very carefully, and figure out for myself whether I thought this was a real factor …" Tracking Down EMFs Effect on Cancer Cells It took her three years to conclude the EMF childhood leukemia link was real, albeit the effect is small. She then scoured the occupational literature, looking at people who work in high electromagnetic occupations. Again, the literature showed there was an increased risk of leukemia, but also brain tumors and breast cancer. From there, she began to look at natural EMFs to find out how the human body reacts to them. "I went from childhood leukemia, some residential exposure, to occupational exposure, to natural electromagnetic fields," she says. "And then a friend of mine suggested I look at the healing effects of electromagnetic therapies." At this point, there didn't appear to be a predictable pattern to the effects she was finding. This finally changed once she delved into the research on pulsed electromagnetic fields (PEMF) to heal bone fractures. This is a well-established therapy that has been used since the 1960s. One of the documents stated PEMF should not be used on cancer patients, although it didn't specify why. "What PEMF therapy does among other things is it increases cell division. When you have increased cell division in bone, that's good, because it's going to promote healing. But if you have increased cell division of cancerous cells, then that's not good. I sort of had an aha moment. At that point, I realized that low-frequency EMFs can cause cancer and can definitely promote the growth of cancer. Since then, the research is just basically supporting all of that information. I went from studying extremely low frequency EMFs to doing research, and introducing it into my courses." Dirty Electricity Can Have Marked Effect on Behavior Around 2003, Havas was approached by a mother whose daughter was electrically hypersensitive. She asked Havas to conduct a study at the daughter's school, to evaluate the effects of EMF filters such as the Stetzer filter, which reduce dirty electricity. I've previously interviewed Dr. Sam Milham on this topic, so to learn more about the technical aspects of dirty electricity, see "Dirty Electricity — Stealth Trigger of Disease Epidemics." At the time, Havas was unfamiliar with dirty electricity, but reluctantly agreed to conduct the experiment.1,2 "I was very skeptical that you can put something in an electrical outlet and that would clean the electricity and everyone would be happy and healthy after that," she says, noting that she really did not expect to find any effects of these filters. "When I finally got to analyzing the data, I was absolutely shocked by what I found … At that time, electrical hypersensitivity was attributed to less than 1 percent of the population. We didn't have a large enough sample size in the school. Even if one teacher was electrically hypersensitive, it wouldn't show up, because we didn't have a large enough sample size. But we found that about 44 percent of the teachers improved while the filters were plugged in. We did a before and after, and because they didn't know what was going on, it wasn't a placebo effect. It was totally blinded. They thought we were evaluating their teaching ability. They had no idea what we were doing. We told them we couldn't tell them because it would affect the results. But at the end of the study, we'd reveal all the information. We had a custodian who plugged filters in on the weekend. These are just little boxes that you don't really notice. We did that study and found that teacher health improved, and student behavior improved. Many of the symptoms that improved in the school were those we associate with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. This was quite intriguing to me." EMFs and Diabetes After completing that experiment, Havas met Dave Stetzer, co-creator of the Graham-Stetzer filter (along with the late Dr. Martin Graham), and was able to learn more about his research first-hand. He told her he was prediabetic, and whenever he was in an environment with a lot of dirty power, his blood sugar increased. Since blood sugar is an objective assessment, and something you cannot consciously control, Havas decided to study3 EMFs effects on diabetics. What she discovered was that if you're Type 1 or Type 2 diabetic, and are electrically hypersensitive, then your blood sugar will increase if you're exposed to dirty electricity. "There's something called 'brittle diabetes,' which is a form of diabetes where people can't control their blood sugar. It suddenly goes up or it suddenly goes down, and it's not related to their activity, their food or medication. I really think that brittle diabetes is environmentally triggered. I think one of the triggers is electromagnetic pollution, whether it's dirty power or higher radio frequencies. One of the people we worked with was a woman in New York, who was a Type 2 diabetic. She didn't take any medication … If she measured her blood sugar and it was high, she would take a 20-minute walk, and it would come down to a normal, acceptable level. On days when it rained or she didn't feel like walking outside, she would walk on an electric treadmill. Whenever she walked on the treadmill, her blood sugar actually skyrocketed, went way up, which is not what you would expect. One of the things doctors recommend is exercise for their patients. They don't distinguish between walking outside or walking on a treadmill, but treadmills give off dirty power. They also have a high magnetic field. So, if you're a diabetic and you're electrically hypersensitive, you might actually do more damage to your body because of the stress the electrosmog generates in the body. Hence, your blood sugar goes up." EMFs Worsen Multiple Sclerosis Another school experienced a dramatic reduction in asthma attacks, and the principal, who had multiple sclerosis (MS), improved almost immediately once Stetzer filters were installed. Intrigued, Havas started working with people diagnosed with MS. In the video, she shares a number of stories from her case files, some of which are rather dramatic. Here's one example: "A woman told me, 'Tell me when you're coming for the interview and the measurements. I'll leave the door open. Just knock and come in because it'll take me too long to walk to the door to open it for you.' That particular woman, within six weeks, was not only able to walk without any assistance and open the door. She told me she actually went on a vacation with her husband and was dancing. I kept thinking, 'No one's going to believe me, because I could barely believe my own eyes' … I began to videotape these individuals. The videotape was my proof … Many different types of MS benefited. Not everyone we tested benefited, but the vast majority had some improvement, not only in their physical ability, but also their cognitive abilities. It was really quite obvious." MRI scans further showed that MS patients who had used EMF filters for several years had a decrease in the sclerosis in the brain. Not only did filtering EMFs improve the symptoms, but it actually allowed the body to heal itself. Results of this investigation into the effects of EMF on MS were published in 2006.4 Conditions That Increase Your Risk of Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity Havas became very interested in finding out how to diagnose electromagnetic hypersensitivity5 (EHS), which is recognized by the World Health Organization.6 (EHS is also sometimes referred to as idiopathic environmental intolerance, meaning the cause is unknown.) According to Havas, a number of conditions can increase your risk of EHS, including: Spinal cord damage; whiplash Brain damage; concussion Chemical toxicity, such as high levels of mercury, lead, PCBs or other neurotoxins Bacterial and/or parasitic infections such as Lyme Impaired immune function; lupus The very young and the very old Tinnitus Shares Pathophysiology With EHS Researchers have also found a significant association between tinnitus and EMF hypersensitivity, hinting at a shared pathophysiology between the two conditions.7 In this study, 89 EMF hypersensitive patients were compared to 107 controls, matched for age, gender, living surroundings and workplace environment. Nearly 51 percent of EMF hypersensitive patients had tinnitus, compared to just 17.5 percent of controls. While prevalence was significantly higher among those sensitive to EMFs, tinnitus duration and severity did not differ between the two groups. According to the authors: "Our data indicate that tinnitus is associated with subjective electromagnetic hypersensitivity. An individual vulnerability probably due to an overactivated cortical distress network seems to be responsible for both electromagnetic hypersensitivity and tinnitus. Hence, therapeutic efforts should focus on treatment strategies (e.g., cognitive behavioral therapy) aiming at normalizing this dysfunctional distress network." EMFs Effect on Heart Rate One organ that is particularly sensitive to EMFs is your heart. To investigate, Havas conducted an experiment8 with people who claimed EMFs caused heart palpitations, very frequently when entering certain stores, or the mall. "They felt as soon as they walked in, their heart rate would rise. They would have kind of an anxiety attack and have to leave the store as quickly as possible," Havas says. "Often, they said they would make a list, go in and do the shopping as quickly as possible and leave, because the longer they stayed in the store, the worse they felt. They would develop brain fog, become dizzy and nauseous." Using heart rate variability technology, Havas and Jeffrey Marrongelle, a chiropractor who does energy medicine, assessed 25 people, some of which claimed to have EHS and others who had never even heard the term. The participants were exposed to microwave radiation from the bay station of a cordless phone, which emits nonstop radiation. Interestingly, while no real relationship could be found between those who claimed to have EHS and the exposure, people who were fit and in good health had the greatest response. "Basically, what they experienced was a stress response. There was an increase in their sympathetic and a decrease in their parasympathetic response, with an increase in either heart rate or a change in the heart rate, in terms of arrhythmia … This was a double-blind study that was really very powerful, showing this is not something that people can actually regulate themselves. Just one example, we had a person who had a heartrate of about 65. They were lying down on a mat. The cordless phone was behind their heads, so they couldn't see it and didn't know when it was turned on or off. Their heart rate zoomed up to 120 beats per minute while they were lying down. Most people would have to go up at least a flight of stairs in order to get that kind of response from their heart. As soon as the phone was disconnected, their heart rate returned to normal. While this was a more extreme case, there were several people who had that kind of response." EMFs Effects on Blood Havas has also conducted many tests on her own blood over the years. She noticed that after working on the computer, her blood was coagulated and viscous. After spending eight minutes on a PEMF mat, her blood was free-flowing again. Continuing her tests, she realized that whenever her body had been exposed to microwave radiation, whether from a Wi-Fi router, a cordless phone or cellphone, it went into rouleau formation (aggregates of red blood cells). She explains: "There are virtually no cells that are single cells. Everything is just clumping together. We know that the effect of that is really quite damaging. It could cause a stroke. It could cause a heart attack. It certainly reduces your circulation in your fingers and toes, for example, leading to cold extremities and a tingling sensation. All these tests we were doing was to try to alert medical doctors to what they can do in office to diagnose someone with EHS. Things like blood sugar, heart rate and blood coagulation are some of the things that can actually be done, so that doctors can do the diagnostics … There are some people who respond only to microwave radiation. They don't respond to anything else. Others respond primarily to dirty power. Dirty power and microwaves are virtually ubiquitous. They're everywhere … I think dirty electricity is really a missing link. There are very few people in the world studying the biological effects of dirty electricity. There has been a huge amount of research looking at electromagnetic interference, which is another thing that dirty electricity does. Engineers are very familiar with this. They very often will shield against that to protect sensitive electronic equipment. They don't realize that by protecting the equipment, you're also protecting human health. That's really important." Remediation Tools Before you begin remediation, you need a couple of tools to actually measure the EMFs in your home or office. Here, it's important to realize that not all devices accurately measure all three types of EMFs — the electric fields, magnetic fields and radiofrequency fields. Havas recommends three different types of meters: The Acousticom 2 The TriField meter (while it measures electric, magnetic and radio frequencies, it's really only good for measuring magnetic fields. It's not an accurate tool for measuring electric fields or radio frequencies) A Microsurge (Stetzer) meter, which measures dirty electricity, and at least one Stetzer filter, to allow you to determine how much you can reduce the dirty power at any given location "I think if you have these three different devices, and you know what the levels are, what you're looking for … then you can go around your house and find out what you're exposed to. It's really quite simple," she says. "There are ways of going around doing the measurements. The more you play around with it, the more comfortable you become with it. You'll find some real surprises when you have the meters, because things that you think might be turned off or aren't radiating may be and increasing your exposure. Doing your own testing is something I highly recommend." As for the Stetzer filter, most homes will probably need at least 20. A large home may need anywhere from 40 to 80 filters in larger homes. At about $40 apiece, the investment can be significant. You can, however, get a discounted bulk rate if you call Stetzer Electric. You won't find the discount online; you'll need to make a phone call and you can get the price down to around $25 per unit. It will be important to also purchase a meter, otherwise you will have no idea how serious your problem is and where to place the filters. Typically, two to three need to be installed in your bedroom (the most important), rooms that have computers, and the room close to your circuit breakers. Ideally, readings should be below 50 and even better below 35. If installing a filter doesn't lower the reading by at least 20 percent, it is probably best to find a different location for the filter. It also would be best to have a knowledgeable electrician evaluate your home for any wiring errors as that cannot be fixed by the filters. What's more, anything you plug into an improperly wired (code violation) circuit will increase harmful magnetic fields. A surprisingly large number of homes have wiring errors and can be as high as 30 percent or more in some areas. Beware of Smart Lights I've previously written about the dangers of LEDs and fluorescent light bulbs, but Havas brings up yet another, even worse, type of bulb — so-called smart lights that you can turn on and off with your smartphone. "They radiate microwaves as high as your Wi-Fi router or your wireless phone," she says. I went to a lighting conference in Germany two years ago. I was giving a talk on different types of lighting and looking at the spectrum, looking at all the different frequencies they emit, including ultraviolet and the relative ratio of blue to red, all that kind of stuff. The lighting industry was sponsoring this conference, so I said, 'Can you send me a good-quality lightbulb?' They said, 'No problem.' They sent me one and it was probably the worst bulb I've ever tested. It was one of these smart bulbs that as soon as you turn it on, it's emitting microwave radiation. I remember talking to the president of the company when I went to Germany. I showed the results … I said, 'Your lightbulb was one of the worst because of this microwave radiation. You know, it's making people sick.' He said, 'I had no idea. But the entire industry is going that way, and we don't want to be left out.'" On Ground Current The EMF problem has gotten so significant that you cannot even safety ground anymore in North America (a practice also known as Earthing, or walking barefoot on the ground). All electricity needs to be grounded, so the ground has become one giant sink for EMFs, and I've altered my stance on Earthing for this very reason. Havas explains: "It turns out you can have electricity flowing through the ground. This is happening more and more often. In part because of the way we use electricity in North America; with the way that we distribute it and transmit it. We have so many multiple grounds that the electricity from an area of high electrical conductivity can move to an area where there's less electrons, so they just move through the ground. When you have moving electrons, you can create a current. There are farms mostly in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa that have a really serious ground current problem with their dairy cows. These cows are just constantly lifting their feet because they're being exposed to ground current. But it's not the 60-cycle that's most damaging. It's the dirty power [100 kHz] flowing through the ground that is causing it … There are people who claim that the best thing you can ever do is get grounded. I would agree with that, provided you're in an area where you don't have a ground current problem. It's like you can drink clean water, you can drink dirty water. They have very different effects. If you have dirty electricity flowing through the ground, getting grounded means it's now entering your body, because it comes right in through one leg and down the other basically. These devices that you plug into your electrical outlet that you then put on your bed so that you're grounded at night, people who use them are beginning to tell me that after a couple of days or a couple of weeks, they're actually beginning to feel quite ill. My guess is that they've got dirty electricity coming through the ground, into their sleeping area, and hence, making them sick. You have to be very, very careful where you're grounded …" More Information The EMF topic is a big one, and we've not covered every angle here. For more information about the mechanisms of harm, see "New Study Links Cellphone Radiation to Heart and Brain Tumors," in which I review mechanisms of action proposed by Martin Pall, Ph.D., Alasdair Philips and Paul Héroux, Ph.D. For more about the health effects of EMFs and the importance of EMF remediation when treating chronic illness, see my interview with Dr. Klinghardt. You can also peruse Havas' website, MagdaHavas.com, where you'll find a number of video presentations, historical references and general information about EMFs. Links to her studies can be found in the reference section below. Five case studies9 were also published for the World Health Organization Workshop on Electrical Hypersensitivity in 2004, which you can read in full, and one of her most recent papers,10 "When Theory and Observation Collide: Can Non-Ionizing Radiation Cause Cancer?" can be found in the journal Environmental Pollution.

[lucyariablog]

Increase in Your Content Marketing Budget? 61+ Fresh Ideas From Experts

What would you do if your boss unexpectedly increased your annual content marketing budget? What could you do with an additional $1,000? $50,000? $100,000?

We asked the presenters at Content Marketing World 2018 to share what they would do.

Anna Hrach, strategist at Convince and Convert, offers an insightful grounding thought. “No matter what the budget would be, I would start with a list of everything we wanted to accomplish, then plot them on a grid that ranks efforts from low to high effort and low to high impact.

“It doesn’t really matter how much extra budget you have if you’re not going to spend it effectively.”

Strategist John Bucher advocates keeping a running wish list of what you would do if extra funds become available. “It can help you avoid making impulse decisions,” he says. (Often, this happens as the budget year nears its end and your team needs to spend the designated dollars or lose them.)

What should be on your grid or wish list? From meals and research to customer advisory boards and in-person event studios, these presenters have a lot of good ideas.

Invest in success

First, I hug my boss.

$1,000: Boost a digital campaign already driving business-centric results.

$50,000: Engage with an industry-specific freelance writer or visual content creator to enhance the content around a strategic business message.

$100,000: Invest in a research project with the goal of uncovering meaningful data that can be presented in a white paper, featured on our website, and distributed in snackable bites across all our communications channels.

Amanda Changuris, associate director of corporate communications, BNY Mellon   

Boost a digital campaign already driving business-centric results, says @AmandaChanguris. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Rev up recommendation engines

With $100,000, I’d test dynamic content recommendation engines for email. Based on what our subscribers read online, what else should we be sharing via email?

Jessica Best, director of data-driven marketing, Barkley          

Test dynamic #content recommendation engines to populate your emails, says @bestofjess. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Sponsor an event and buy a plane ticket

$1,000: Spend $750 on video equipment and the rest to buy Jeff Julian a plane ticket so he could teach me how to use it.

$50,000 or $100,000: Sponsor events. I’ve wanted to double down on them in the past few years, but as a small consulting shop we haven’t been able to make the math work out yet.

Andrea Fryrear, president and lead trainer, AgileSherpas

I’d buy @JeffJulian a plane ticket so he could show me how to do video. @AndreaFryrear #CMWorld Click To Tweet

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Improve sound and visuals

BOOM! With an extra $1,000 I’d buy a better microphone and camera for my video productions. With an extra $50,000, I’d hire an editor to ensure my video content isn’t backlogged.

With that sweet, sweet $100,000, I’d buy some ads to market my marketing content. (Yes, I said buy some ads.)

Andrew Davis, CEO, Monumental Shift

With $1,000, I’d buy a better microphone & camera for my video production, says @drewdavishere. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Lights, camera, action

Video, video, video. I would hire a small camera crew to republish my best written content in video format. Mobile is for media. More video, more images, more voice, more mobile.

Veronica Romney, president/co-founder, LoSoMo Inc.

Hire a camera crew to republish your best content in #video, says @vromney. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

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Get face to face

$1,000: Experiment with advertising on some of the lesser-known sites, like Quora. Or I might try a bit of native advertising for our top converting content.

$50,000: Launch an audience research and partial website redesign project. The goal would be to improve conversion rates without hurting rankings. Some of that money would go toward video.

$100,000: Build a studio and start doing a series of weekly events. They’d be a hybrid of live in-person and webinar. I’d fly in top speakers to present on top topics. Then I’d hire an editor to adapt them into a series of paid classes. This program would pay for itself!”

Andy Crestodina, co-founder, CMO, Orbit Media

Do a hybrid of live in-person & webinar events to present on top topics, says @crestodina. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

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Host 10 high-value customers

$1,000: Take the marketing team to dinner.

$50,000: Take the team to dinner and invest in user-generated content efforts to have our customers tell our story better than we can.

$100,000: Go to dinner, invest in user-generated content, and host a three-day customer advisory board experience for our 10 most ideal and highest lifetime value customers, and produce more customer story content with them.

Tim Hayden, president and co-managing partner, Brain + Trust Partners

Invest in UGC because our customers tell our story better than we can. @thetimhayden #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Really talk to customers

Conduct interviews with actual buyers to understand the questions they’re asking at each step in their journey. Then develop content that addresses those questions and shows why our answer is better than any of our competitors.

Adele Revella, CEO and founder, Buyer Persona Institute

Conduct interviews w/ buyers to understand their questions at each step in journey. @buyerpersona #CMWorld Click To Tweet

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Support external content creation

I would create a few campaigns focused on creating user-generated content that we could repurpose. I also would use a portion of the budget to get into influencer marketing, primarily finding those with big followings who align with our brand and creating a campaign that we can bring them in on to help create a win-win situation for both of us.

Jason Schemmel, social media manager, Harper Collins Christian Publishing  

Do campaigns focused on creating user-generated content that could be repurposed, says @JasonSchemmel. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Create quarterly e-books

$1,000: Take the extra content budget to create an explainer video.

$50,000: Create quarterly e-book offers.

$100,000: Split between new content tests and paid content promotion like targeted sponsored updates on LinkedIn.

Michael Brenner, CEO, Marketing Insider Group

$1,000? Take the extra content budget to create an explainer video, says @BrennerMichael. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Develop a new product or offering

$1,000: Take my best clients to the meal of a lifetime.

$50,000: Invest in researching buyer/customer expectations.

$100,000: Develop a prototype and test a new product/service offering based on what the $50,000 research revealed.

Jonathan Kranz, principal, Kranz Communications       

With an extra $1,000? Take my best clients to the meal of a lifetime, says @jonkranz. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Go native

Buy native advertising to drive traffic to articles and then quickly grow my email list. Use the rest to set up a good nurture email campaign for ongoing engagement. This could include hiring another role to run this area.

Christoph Trappe, director of content, Stamats Business Media

Grow your #email list by buying #nativeadvertising for your articles, says @ctrappe. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

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Follow these three words (maybe?)

Direct mail marketing. Kidding. Sort of.

Derek Flanzraich, CEO and founder, Greatist   

Invest unexpected dollars in direct mail marketing (maybe?), asks @derekflanz. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Do the SEO that most companies don’t

$1,000: Invest in keyword research tools like SEMrush. These are relatively inexpensive but give great insight into content gaps in your competitive set.

$50,000: Invest in long-tail keyword paid search campaigns. These campaigns have low competition because most companies spend their advertising dollars on conversion-based content. That leaves a gap for low cost-per-click advertising on thought-leadership content.

$100,000: Integrating some personalization technology into our content marketing strategy. Surfacing the most relevant content tailored to that particular user on our website, email, and social media advertising would go a long way to improving engagement.

Courtney Cox Wakefield, manager, digital marketing, Children’s Health

Do long-tail keyword paid search campaigns to find low CPC thought-leadership content. @courtewakefield Click To Tweet

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Amortize the investment

Good evergreen content can be amortized over three to five years. Additional budget in one year can pay off for many years to come. If there is an international fit, translating valuable content into another language could have a huge upside.

Eli Schwartz, director of organic product, SurveyMonkey

Invest in evergreen content, which amortizes over 3-5 years, says @5le. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

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Hire full-time writers, not freelancers

$1,000: Get access to pro versions of graphic and interactive content creation tools to help augment our written content with more design-rich and aesthetically pleasing graphical derivatives.

$50,000: Hire another content writer, and with $100,000 I’d hire two. Dedicated writers and content analysts not only create more content for your organization, but they can also create better content because they can take the time to really understand the industry/market/customer and write to their pain points. I’d rather have two dedicated writers than 50 freelancers or even 50 internal people who write content on the side.

J.P. Medved, content director, Capterra           

I’d rather have two full-time writers than 50 freelancers, says @RizzleJPizzle. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

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Visit a printer

Thanks for the windfall. Let’s start small and build.

$1,000: Invest in learning in terms of subscription sites to share with others, i.e., Marketing Week, The Economist.

$50,000: Invest in print, in terms of taking blog articles and producing a quarterly magazine.

$100,000: Invest in a documentary-type film. Pick a topic I dearly believe in, showcasing people and businesses who have built their audience at a grassroots level, not the typical heavy hitters, i.e., Red Bull and Lego.

Mark Masters, owner, The ID Group

Take blog articles and produce a quarterly print magazine, advises @markiemasters. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

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Create shows, raid for content

Marketers used to be in the business of acquiring attention. Today, the very best need to hold it. Test several pilots of both video and audio series, then use the remaining budget to produce the winners.

Lastly, allocate remaining money towards distribution. For instance, hire a writer to pull out excerpts, write about tangential ideas, distill episodes into lessons and takeaways, and so forth. In summary: Create shows, then raid them for endless content for all channels.

Jay Acunzo, founder, Unthinkable Media         

Create #video or audio shows to raid for endless content for all channels, says @jayacunzo. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

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Hire for the details

I’d hire a video marketing team to create behind-the-scenes videos for my law practice and/or I’d hire a personal assistant to take care of all the tasks that get in the way of me creating more content.

Ruth Carter, attorney, Carter Law Firm

Hire a personal assistant to take care of tasks that get in way of me creating more content. @rbcarter #CMWorld Click To Tweet

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Where to begin?

$1,000: Book a retreat for my team, where we’d focus on creating some great new content without the interruption of being in the office.

$50,000: Give my communications agency some runway to experiment with new PR, marketing, and content programs.

$50,000 and $100,000: Upgrade the production value of all my content and focus on custom design and integrations. Hire someone to manage the team, allowing them more time to do what they do best. Look to promote into strategic roles and pay them well for work that moves the business forward. Invest in audio marketing and launch the podcast I’ve been keeping in my “someday” plan.

Karl Sakas, agency advisor, Sakas & Company

Promote successful team members into strategic roles & pay them well, says @KarlSakas #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Geek out

$1,000: Lunch with all our editorial team members – internal subject-matter experts. Content marketing is a team sport and small gestures like this one go a long way towards creating great team spirit.

$50,000: Start producing audio content, first by making all our existing long-form stories available in audio. The next step would be audio as a regular new format in our editorial calendar and optimization of our best performing content for voice search.

$100,000: Hire a data geek, someone who lives and breathes analytics and data visualization to join our team.

Alenka Bester, head of digital content marketing, Zavarovalnica Triglav

$100,000? Hire a data geek who lives & breathes analytics and dataviz, says @alenkabester. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

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Create and atomize a white paper

$1,000: Provide a spot bonus to my top producer.

$50,000: Spend it on a comprehensive white paper that can then be atomized and repurposed all year.

$100,000: Hire a journalist to write amazing content and a junior multimedia producer to extend it and squeeze the juice out of great ideas.

Jeff Leo Herrmann, president, Madison, Michigan and Market

$50,000 increase? Spend it on a white paper that can be atomized & repurposed. @JeffLHerrmann #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Get quality research done

Invest it in research (will need to outsource the work to India if the budget is only $1,000). This may include surveys, industry trends studies, sales data summaries, or examples of working strategies. Research requires resources. However, it pays off in all digital marketing fields – brand awareness, link generation, content marketing, lead gen, etc.

Leslie Carruthers, president and owner, The Search Guru Inc.

Research pays off in digital marketing fields, awareness, link gen, lead gen, etc. @thesearchguru #CMWorld Click To Tweet

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Seek answers

$1,000: Conduct a poll on some issue that is newsworthy yet aligned with the business.

$50,000: Undertake a substantial research project that includes:

Strategy – how your research will support your overall content marketing strategy

Data science – designing and executing the survey and/or using other data to provide insights

Findings

Outreach plan for both media and influencers

Comprehensive amplification plan (webinars, articles, a video series, data graphics, and more)

$100,000: Fund multiple studies throughout the year to make research part of your brand’s DNA.

Michele Linn, head of strategy, Mantis Research         

With only $1,000, conduct a poll on a newsworthy issue aligned with your business, says @MicheleLinn. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

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Optimize for search

Any big investment in content marketing should focus on (or at least consider) SEO. After all, what’s the point in having a website full of amazing, useful content if it doesn’t show up in Google?

One important area of SEO ignored by a lot of people is link building. Creating content that attracts high-quality links back to your site can improve your rankings and result in more sustainable traffic increases over the long term.

With $1,000, you could partner with a starving artist influencer to create some truly remarkable, link-worthy content that could have a huge impact on your link profile and thus your rankings across all your keywords, not just the ones related to the content marketing campaign.

Stephan Spencer, co-author, The Art of SEO

Partner w/ a starving artist influencer to create remarkable, link-worthy content to help #SEO. @sspencer Click To Tweet

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Forgo stock film and audio

With $50,000 to $100,000, I would create an in-house film and sound studio. As marketers, we rely heavily on mass-produced stock music, video clips, and photography. Yet, we could create this content ourselves for far less than we realize. One thousand dollars is enough to contract a sound engineer to integrate the 432-hertz solfeggio sound healing frequency into our existing music. Why sound healing? Because sound healing harmonizes and the gift of harmony is one of the ways I like to surprise and delight customers.

Nichole Kelly, chief consciousness officer, The Conscious Marketing Institute

Marketers rely too heavily on stock music, video clips, and photography, says @Nichole_Kelly. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Use it and ask for more

$1,000: Seriously? I asked for $20 grand. Well, let’s boost some updates.

$50,000: Marketing automation software comes in all flavors and sizes. Let me have a low-end product and spend the rest on content creation and distribution.

$100,000: I could really use an experienced editor, as well as budget for freelancers and content distribution.

In marketing, there is one universal truth about budget: There’s never enough of it.

Joakim Ditlev, founder, Content Marketing DK

Only $1,000? Boost some #socialmedia updates, says @jditlev. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Enjoy the small budget

With $1,000, I would invest this money in building derivative assets from what we have. Sometimes the most effective and impactful work originates out of the need to keep spending in check. A limited budget forces you to make the right choices because there is no room for error.

Peg Miller, head of content strategy, Xactly

A limited budget forces you to make the right choices because there’s no room for error. @PegMiller #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Want Content That’s More Usable & Reusable? Chunk It

Do what you know

Take what’s working now and expand it. Repeat it. Automate it. More money isn’t going to automatically help you find some new silver bullet. Take what you already know is driving impact and amplify it.

Matt Heinz, president, Heinz Marketing           

More money isn’t going to find a new silver bullet. Amplify what’s working well, says @heinzmarketing. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Generate new thinking

$1,000: Do more paid promotions (likely on FB or Instagram).

$50,000: Invest in additional production and promotion of an audio/video podcast.

$100,000: Hire someone to help generate new thinking, ideas, and content.

Tamsen Webster, founder and chief idea whisperer, Find the Red Thread    

Hire someone to help generate new thinking, ideas, and content, says @tamadear. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Building Your Content Marketing Team? 14 Skills for New, Growing, and Mature Programs

Conclusion

What would you do with a surprise annual budget boost of $1,000, $5,000, or $100,000? Share in the comments. Not sure yet? Start your priority-impact matrix or at least a running wish list.

Join these and other insightful presenters at Content Marketing World Sept. 4-7 in Cleveland, Ohio. Register today and use code BLOG100 to save $100.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post Increase in Your Content Marketing Budget? 61+ Fresh Ideas From Experts appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

from https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2018/07/content-marketing-budget/

[hotspreadpage]

Increase in Your Content Marketing Budget? 61+ Fresh Ideas From Experts

What would you do if your boss unexpectedly increased your annual content marketing budget? What could you do with an additional $1,000? $50,000? $100,000?

We asked the presenters at Content Marketing World 2018 to share what they would do.

Anna Hrach, strategist at Convince and Convert, offers an insightful grounding thought. “No matter what the budget would be, I would start with a list of everything we wanted to accomplish, then plot them on a grid that ranks efforts from low to high effort and low to high impact.

“It doesn’t really matter how much extra budget you have if you’re not going to spend it effectively.”

Strategist John Bucher advocates keeping a running wish list of what you would do if extra funds become available. “It can help you avoid making impulse decisions,” he says. (Often, this happens as the budget year nears its end and your team needs to spend the designated dollars or lose them.)

What should be on your grid or wish list? From meals and research to customer advisory boards and in-person event studios, these presenters have a lot of good ideas.

Invest in success

First, I hug my boss.

$1,000: Boost a digital campaign already driving business-centric results.

$50,000: Engage with an industry-specific freelance writer or visual content creator to enhance the content around a strategic business message.

$100,000: Invest in a research project with the goal of uncovering meaningful data that can be presented in a white paper, featured on our website, and distributed in snackable bites across all our communications channels.

Amanda Changuris, associate director of corporate communications, BNY Mellon   

Boost a digital campaign already driving business-centric results, says @AmandaChanguris. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Rev up recommendation engines

With $100,000, I’d test dynamic content recommendation engines for email. Based on what our subscribers read online, what else should we be sharing via email?

Jessica Best, director of data-driven marketing, Barkley          

Test dynamic #content recommendation engines to populate your emails, says @bestofjess. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Sponsor an event and buy a plane ticket

$1,000: Spend $750 on video equipment and the rest to buy Jeff Julian a plane ticket so he could teach me how to use it.

$50,000 or $100,000: Sponsor events. I’ve wanted to double down on them in the past few years, but as a small consulting shop we haven’t been able to make the math work out yet.

Andrea Fryrear, president and lead trainer, AgileSherpas

I’d buy @JeffJulian a plane ticket so he could show me how to do video. @AndreaFryrear #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Video-Phobic Marketers: It’s Time to Get Over Your Fear of Producing Video

Improve sound and visuals

BOOM! With an extra $1,000 I’d buy a better microphone and camera for my video productions. With an extra $50,000, I’d hire an editor to ensure my video content isn’t backlogged.

With that sweet, sweet $100,000, I’d buy some ads to market my marketing content. (Yes, I said buy some ads.)

Andrew Davis, CEO, Monumental Shift

With $1,000, I’d buy a better microphone & camera for my video production, says @drewdavishere. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Lights, camera, action

Video, video, video. I would hire a small camera crew to republish my best written content in video format. Mobile is for media. More video, more images, more voice, more mobile.

Veronica Romney, president/co-founder, LoSoMo Inc.

Hire a camera crew to republish your best content in #video, says @vromney. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How to Set Your Content Free for a Mobile, Voice, Ready-for-Anything Future

Get face to face

$1,000: Experiment with advertising on some of the lesser-known sites, like Quora. Or I might try a bit of native advertising for our top converting content.

$50,000: Launch an audience research and partial website redesign project. The goal would be to improve conversion rates without hurting rankings. Some of that money would go toward video.

$100,000: Build a studio and start doing a series of weekly events. They’d be a hybrid of live in-person and webinar. I’d fly in top speakers to present on top topics. Then I’d hire an editor to adapt them into a series of paid classes. This program would pay for itself!”

Andy Crestodina, co-founder, CMO, Orbit Media

Do a hybrid of live in-person & webinar events to present on top topics, says @crestodina. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How Brands Use Pop-Up Experiences to Make a Lasting Impression

Host 10 high-value customers

$1,000: Take the marketing team to dinner.

$50,000: Take the team to dinner and invest in user-generated content efforts to have our customers tell our story better than we can.

$100,000: Go to dinner, invest in user-generated content, and host a three-day customer advisory board experience for our 10 most ideal and highest lifetime value customers, and produce more customer story content with them.

Tim Hayden, president and co-managing partner, Brain + Trust Partners

Invest in UGC because our customers tell our story better than we can. @thetimhayden #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Really talk to customers

Conduct interviews with actual buyers to understand the questions they’re asking at each step in their journey. Then develop content that addresses those questions and shows why our answer is better than any of our competitors.

Adele Revella, CEO and founder, Buyer Persona Institute

Conduct interviews w/ buyers to understand their questions at each step in journey. @buyerpersona #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: An Alternative Approach to Developing Content Marketing Personas

Support external content creation

I would create a few campaigns focused on creating user-generated content that we could repurpose. I also would use a portion of the budget to get into influencer marketing, primarily finding those with big followings who align with our brand and creating a campaign that we can bring them in on to help create a win-win situation for both of us.

Jason Schemmel, social media manager, Harper Collins Christian Publishing  

Do campaigns focused on creating user-generated content that could be repurposed, says @JasonSchemmel. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Create quarterly e-books

$1,000: Take the extra content budget to create an explainer video.

$50,000: Create quarterly e-book offers.

$100,000: Split between new content tests and paid content promotion like targeted sponsored updates on LinkedIn.

Michael Brenner, CEO, Marketing Insider Group

$1,000? Take the extra content budget to create an explainer video, says @BrennerMichael. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Develop a new product or offering

$1,000: Take my best clients to the meal of a lifetime.

$50,000: Invest in researching buyer/customer expectations.

$100,000: Develop a prototype and test a new product/service offering based on what the $50,000 research revealed.

Jonathan Kranz, principal, Kranz Communications       

With an extra $1,000? Take my best clients to the meal of a lifetime, says @jonkranz. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Go native

Buy native advertising to drive traffic to articles and then quickly grow my email list. Use the rest to set up a good nurture email campaign for ongoing engagement. This could include hiring another role to run this area.

Christoph Trappe, director of content, Stamats Business Media

Grow your #email list by buying #nativeadvertising for your articles, says @ctrappe. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Prepare to Be Ignored If You Don’t Have Subscription Goals

Follow these three words (maybe?)

Direct mail marketing. Kidding. Sort of.

Derek Flanzraich, CEO and founder, Greatist   

Invest unexpected dollars in direct mail marketing (maybe?), asks @derekflanz. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Do the SEO that most companies don’t

$1,000: Invest in keyword research tools like SEMrush. These are relatively inexpensive but give great insight into content gaps in your competitive set.

$50,000: Invest in long-tail keyword paid search campaigns. These campaigns have low competition because most companies spend their advertising dollars on conversion-based content. That leaves a gap for low cost-per-click advertising on thought-leadership content.

$100,000: Integrating some personalization technology into our content marketing strategy. Surfacing the most relevant content tailored to that particular user on our website, email, and social media advertising would go a long way to improving engagement.

Courtney Cox Wakefield, manager, digital marketing, Children’s Health

Do long-tail keyword paid search campaigns to find low CPC thought-leadership content. @courtewakefield Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: 3 Keyword Research Trends to Reshape Your Content Optimization

Amortize the investment

Good evergreen content can be amortized over three to five years. Additional budget in one year can pay off for many years to come. If there is an international fit, translating valuable content into another language could have a huge upside.

Eli Schwartz, director of organic product, SurveyMonkey

Invest in evergreen content, which amortizes over 3-5 years, says @5le. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: 9 Evergreen Content Formats for Long-Term Success [Examples]

Hire full-time writers, not freelancers

$1,000: Get access to pro versions of graphic and interactive content creation tools to help augment our written content with more design-rich and aesthetically pleasing graphical derivatives.

$50,000: Hire another content writer, and with $100,000 I’d hire two. Dedicated writers and content analysts not only create more content for your organization, but they can also create better content because they can take the time to really understand the industry/market/customer and write to their pain points. I’d rather have two dedicated writers than 50 freelancers or even 50 internal people who write content on the side.

J.P. Medved, content director, Capterra           

I’d rather have two full-time writers than 50 freelancers, says @RizzleJPizzle. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How to Find a Writer Who Won’t Kill Your Content

Visit a printer

Thanks for the windfall. Let’s start small and build.

$1,000: Invest in learning in terms of subscription sites to share with others, i.e., Marketing Week, The Economist.

$50,000: Invest in print, in terms of taking blog articles and producing a quarterly magazine.

$100,000: Invest in a documentary-type film. Pick a topic I dearly believe in, showcasing people and businesses who have built their audience at a grassroots level, not the typical heavy hitters, i.e., Red Bull and Lego.

Mark Masters, owner, The ID Group

Take blog articles and produce a quarterly print magazine, advises @markiemasters. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How to Use Documentary Filmmaking Techniques to Craft Memorable Content 

Create shows, raid for content

Marketers used to be in the business of acquiring attention. Today, the very best need to hold it. Test several pilots of both video and audio series, then use the remaining budget to produce the winners.

Lastly, allocate remaining money towards distribution. For instance, hire a writer to pull out excerpts, write about tangential ideas, distill episodes into lessons and takeaways, and so forth. In summary: Create shows, then raid them for endless content for all channels.

Jay Acunzo, founder, Unthinkable Media         

Create #video or audio shows to raid for endless content for all channels, says @jayacunzo. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How to Get Listeners to Push Play on Your Podcast [Examples From Boss Brands]

Hire for the details

I’d hire a video marketing team to create behind-the-scenes videos for my law practice and/or I’d hire a personal assistant to take care of all the tasks that get in the way of me creating more content.

Ruth Carter, attorney, Carter Law Firm

Hire a personal assistant to take care of tasks that get in way of me creating more content. @rbcarter #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Video Marketing Strategy: What Marketers Need to Know

Where to begin?

$1,000: Book a retreat for my team, where we’d focus on creating some great new content without the interruption of being in the office.

$50,000: Give my communications agency some runway to experiment with new PR, marketing, and content programs.

$50,000 and $100,000: Upgrade the production value of all my content and focus on custom design and integrations. Hire someone to manage the team, allowing them more time to do what they do best. Look to promote into strategic roles and pay them well for work that moves the business forward. Invest in audio marketing and launch the podcast I’ve been keeping in my “someday” plan.

Karl Sakas, agency advisor, Sakas & Company

Promote successful team members into strategic roles & pay them well, says @KarlSakas #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Geek out

$1,000: Lunch with all our editorial team members – internal subject-matter experts. Content marketing is a team sport and small gestures like this one go a long way towards creating great team spirit.

$50,000: Start producing audio content, first by making all our existing long-form stories available in audio. The next step would be audio as a regular new format in our editorial calendar and optimization of our best performing content for voice search.

$100,000: Hire a data geek, someone who lives and breathes analytics and data visualization to join our team.

Alenka Bester, head of digital content marketing, Zavarovalnica Triglav

$100,000? Hire a data geek who lives & breathes analytics and dataviz, says @alenkabester. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Dataviz: A Critical Skill for Modern Marketers

Create and atomize a white paper

$1,000: Provide a spot bonus to my top producer.

$50,000: Spend it on a comprehensive white paper that can then be atomized and repurposed all year.

$100,000: Hire a journalist to write amazing content and a junior multimedia producer to extend it and squeeze the juice out of great ideas.

Jeff Leo Herrmann, president, Madison, Michigan and Market

$50,000 increase? Spend it on a white paper that can be atomized & repurposed. @JeffLHerrmann #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Get quality research done

Invest it in research (will need to outsource the work to India if the budget is only $1,000). This may include surveys, industry trends studies, sales data summaries, or examples of working strategies. Research requires resources. However, it pays off in all digital marketing fields – brand awareness, link generation, content marketing, lead gen, etc.

Leslie Carruthers, president and owner, The Search Guru Inc.

Research pays off in digital marketing fields, awareness, link gen, lead gen, etc. @thesearchguru #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How Content Influences the Purchasing Process: Tips for Content Marketers [Research]

Seek answers

$1,000: Conduct a poll on some issue that is newsworthy yet aligned with the business.

$50,000: Undertake a substantial research project that includes:

Strategy – how your research will support your overall content marketing strategy

Data science – designing and executing the survey and/or using other data to provide insights

Findings

Outreach plan for both media and influencers

Comprehensive amplification plan (webinars, articles, a video series, data graphics, and more)

$100,000: Fund multiple studies throughout the year to make research part of your brand’s DNA.

Michele Linn, head of strategy, Mantis Research         

With only $1,000, conduct a poll on a newsworthy issue aligned with your business, says @MicheleLinn. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: 10 (Mostly) Quick Wins to Steal for Your Original Research Project

Optimize for search

Any big investment in content marketing should focus on (or at least consider) SEO. After all, what’s the point in having a website full of amazing, useful content if it doesn’t show up in Google?

One important area of SEO ignored by a lot of people is link building. Creating content that attracts high-quality links back to your site can improve your rankings and result in more sustainable traffic increases over the long term.

With $1,000, you could partner with a starving artist influencer to create some truly remarkable, link-worthy content that could have a huge impact on your link profile and thus your rankings across all your keywords, not just the ones related to the content marketing campaign.

Stephan Spencer, co-author, The Art of SEO

Partner w/ a starving artist influencer to create remarkable, link-worthy content to help #SEO. @sspencer Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: SEO Marketing Strategy: Tips for Success in 2018

Forgo stock film and audio

With $50,000 to $100,000, I would create an in-house film and sound studio. As marketers, we rely heavily on mass-produced stock music, video clips, and photography. Yet, we could create this content ourselves for far less than we realize. One thousand dollars is enough to contract a sound engineer to integrate the 432-hertz solfeggio sound healing frequency into our existing music. Why sound healing? Because sound healing harmonizes and the gift of harmony is one of the ways I like to surprise and delight customers.

Nichole Kelly, chief consciousness officer, The Conscious Marketing Institute

Marketers rely too heavily on stock music, video clips, and photography, says @Nichole_Kelly. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Use it and ask for more

$1,000: Seriously? I asked for $20 grand. Well, let’s boost some updates.

$50,000: Marketing automation software comes in all flavors and sizes. Let me have a low-end product and spend the rest on content creation and distribution.

$100,000: I could really use an experienced editor, as well as budget for freelancers and content distribution.

In marketing, there is one universal truth about budget: There’s never enough of it.

Joakim Ditlev, founder, Content Marketing DK

Only $1,000? Boost some #socialmedia updates, says @jditlev. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Enjoy the small budget

With $1,000, I would invest this money in building derivative assets from what we have. Sometimes the most effective and impactful work originates out of the need to keep spending in check. A limited budget forces you to make the right choices because there is no room for error.

Peg Miller, head of content strategy, Xactly

A limited budget forces you to make the right choices because there’s no room for error. @PegMiller #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Want Content That’s More Usable & Reusable? Chunk It

Do what you know

Take what’s working now and expand it. Repeat it. Automate it. More money isn’t going to automatically help you find some new silver bullet. Take what you already know is driving impact and amplify it.

Matt Heinz, president, Heinz Marketing           

More money isn’t going to find a new silver bullet. Amplify what’s working well, says @heinzmarketing. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Generate new thinking

$1,000: Do more paid promotions (likely on FB or Instagram).

$50,000: Invest in additional production and promotion of an audio/video podcast.

$100,000: Hire someone to help generate new thinking, ideas, and content.

Tamsen Webster, founder and chief idea whisperer, Find the Red Thread    

Hire someone to help generate new thinking, ideas, and content, says @tamadear. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Building Your Content Marketing Team? 14 Skills for New, Growing, and Mature Programs

Conclusion

What would you do with a surprise annual budget boost of $1,000, $5,000, or $100,000? Share in the comments. Not sure yet? Start your priority-impact matrix or at least a running wish list.

Join these and other insightful presenters at Content Marketing World Sept. 4-7 in Cleveland, Ohio. Register today and use code BLOG100 to save $100.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post Increase in Your Content Marketing Budget? 61+ Fresh Ideas From Experts appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

Increase in Your Content Marketing Budget? 61+ Fresh Ideas From Experts syndicated from https://hotspread.wordpress.com

[a-breton]

Increase in Your Content Marketing Budget? 61+ Fresh Ideas From Experts

What would you do if your boss unexpectedly increased your annual content marketing budget? What could you do with an additional $1,000? $50,000? $100,000?

We asked the presenters at Content Marketing World 2018 to share what they would do.

Anna Hrach, strategist at Convince and Convert, offers an insightful grounding thought. “No matter what the budget would be, I would start with a list of everything we wanted to accomplish, then plot them on a grid that ranks efforts from low to high effort and low to high impact.

“It doesn’t really matter how much extra budget you have if you’re not going to spend it effectively.”

Strategist John Bucher advocates keeping a running wish list of what you would do if extra funds become available. “It can help you avoid making impulse decisions,” he says. (Often, this happens as the budget year nears its end and your team needs to spend the designated dollars or lose them.)

What should be on your grid or wish list? From meals and research to customer advisory boards and in-person event studios, these presenters have a lot of good ideas.

Invest in success

First, I hug my boss.

$1,000: Boost a digital campaign already driving business-centric results.

$50,000: Engage with an industry-specific freelance writer or visual content creator to enhance the content around a strategic business message.

$100,000: Invest in a research project with the goal of uncovering meaningful data that can be presented in a white paper, featured on our website, and distributed in snackable bites across all our communications channels.

Amanda Changuris, associate director of corporate communications, BNY Mellon   

Boost a digital campaign already driving business-centric results, says @AmandaChanguris. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Rev up recommendation engines

With $100,000, I’d test dynamic content recommendation engines for email. Based on what our subscribers read online, what else should we be sharing via email?

Jessica Best, director of data-driven marketing, Barkley          

Test dynamic #content recommendation engines to populate your emails, says @bestofjess. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Sponsor an event and buy a plane ticket

$1,000: Spend $750 on video equipment and the rest to buy Jeff Julian a plane ticket so he could teach me how to use it.

$50,000 or $100,000: Sponsor events. I’ve wanted to double down on them in the past few years, but as a small consulting shop we haven’t been able to make the math work out yet.

Andrea Fryrear, president and lead trainer, AgileSherpas

I’d buy @JeffJulian a plane ticket so he could show me how to do video. @AndreaFryrear #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Video-Phobic Marketers: It’s Time to Get Over Your Fear of Producing Video

Improve sound and visuals

BOOM! With an extra $1,000 I’d buy a better microphone and camera for my video productions. With an extra $50,000, I’d hire an editor to ensure my video content isn’t backlogged.

With that sweet, sweet $100,000, I’d buy some ads to market my marketing content. (Yes, I said buy some ads.)

Andrew Davis, CEO, Monumental Shift

With $1,000, I’d buy a better microphone & camera for my video production, says @drewdavishere. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Lights, camera, action

Video, video, video. I would hire a small camera crew to republish my best written content in video format. Mobile is for media. More video, more images, more voice, more mobile.

Veronica Romney, president/co-founder, LoSoMo Inc.

Hire a camera crew to republish your best content in #video, says @vromney. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How to Set Your Content Free for a Mobile, Voice, Ready-for-Anything Future

Get face to face

$1,000: Experiment with advertising on some of the lesser-known sites, like Quora. Or I might try a bit of native advertising for our top converting content.

$50,000: Launch an audience research and partial website redesign project. The goal would be to improve conversion rates without hurting rankings. Some of that money would go toward video.

$100,000: Build a studio and start doing a series of weekly events. They’d be a hybrid of live in-person and webinar. I’d fly in top speakers to present on top topics. Then I’d hire an editor to adapt them into a series of paid classes. This program would pay for itself!”

Andy Crestodina, co-founder, CMO, Orbit Media

Do a hybrid of live in-person & webinar events to present on top topics, says @crestodina. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How Brands Use Pop-Up Experiences to Make a Lasting Impression

Host 10 high-value customers

$1,000: Take the marketing team to dinner.

$50,000: Take the team to dinner and invest in user-generated content efforts to have our customers tell our story better than we can.

$100,000: Go to dinner, invest in user-generated content, and host a three-day customer advisory board experience for our 10 most ideal and highest lifetime value customers, and produce more customer story content with them.

Tim Hayden, president and co-managing partner, Brain + Trust Partners

Invest in UGC because our customers tell our story better than we can. @thetimhayden #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Really talk to customers

Conduct interviews with actual buyers to understand the questions they’re asking at each step in their journey. Then develop content that addresses those questions and shows why our answer is better than any of our competitors.

Adele Revella, CEO and founder, Buyer Persona Institute

Conduct interviews w/ buyers to understand their questions at each step in journey. @buyerpersona #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: An Alternative Approach to Developing Content Marketing Personas

Support external content creation

I would create a few campaigns focused on creating user-generated content that we could repurpose. I also would use a portion of the budget to get into influencer marketing, primarily finding those with big followings who align with our brand and creating a campaign that we can bring them in on to help create a win-win situation for both of us.

Jason Schemmel, social media manager, Harper Collins Christian Publishing  

Do campaigns focused on creating user-generated content that could be repurposed, says @JasonSchemmel. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Create quarterly e-books

$1,000: Take the extra content budget to create an explainer video.

$50,000: Create quarterly e-book offers.

$100,000: Split between new content tests and paid content promotion like targeted sponsored updates on LinkedIn.

Michael Brenner, CEO, Marketing Insider Group

$1,000? Take the extra content budget to create an explainer video, says @BrennerMichael. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Develop a new product or offering

$1,000: Take my best clients to the meal of a lifetime.

$50,000: Invest in researching buyer/customer expectations.

$100,000: Develop a prototype and test a new product/service offering based on what the $50,000 research revealed.

Jonathan Kranz, principal, Kranz Communications       

With an extra $1,000? Take my best clients to the meal of a lifetime, says @jonkranz. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Go native

Buy native advertising to drive traffic to articles and then quickly grow my email list. Use the rest to set up a good nurture email campaign for ongoing engagement. This could include hiring another role to run this area.

Christoph Trappe, director of content, Stamats Business Media

Grow your #email list by buying #nativeadvertising for your articles, says @ctrappe. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Prepare to Be Ignored If You Don’t Have Subscription Goals

Follow these three words (maybe?)

Direct mail marketing. Kidding. Sort of.

Derek Flanzraich, CEO and founder, Greatist   

Invest unexpected dollars in direct mail marketing (maybe?), asks @derekflanz. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Do the SEO that most companies don’t

$1,000: Invest in keyword research tools like SEMrush. These are relatively inexpensive but give great insight into content gaps in your competitive set.

$50,000: Invest in long-tail keyword paid search campaigns. These campaigns have low competition because most companies spend their advertising dollars on conversion-based content. That leaves a gap for low cost-per-click advertising on thought-leadership content.

$100,000: Integrating some personalization technology into our content marketing strategy. Surfacing the most relevant content tailored to that particular user on our website, email, and social media advertising would go a long way to improving engagement.

Courtney Cox Wakefield, manager, digital marketing, Children’s Health

Do long-tail keyword paid search campaigns to find low CPC thought-leadership content. @courtewakefield Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: 3 Keyword Research Trends to Reshape Your Content Optimization

Amortize the investment

Good evergreen content can be amortized over three to five years. Additional budget in one year can pay off for many years to come. If there is an international fit, translating valuable content into another language could have a huge upside.

Eli Schwartz, director of organic product, SurveyMonkey

Invest in evergreen content, which amortizes over 3-5 years, says @5le. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: 9 Evergreen Content Formats for Long-Term Success [Examples]

Hire full-time writers, not freelancers

$1,000: Get access to pro versions of graphic and interactive content creation tools to help augment our written content with more design-rich and aesthetically pleasing graphical derivatives.

$50,000: Hire another content writer, and with $100,000 I’d hire two. Dedicated writers and content analysts not only create more content for your organization, but they can also create better content because they can take the time to really understand the industry/market/customer and write to their pain points. I’d rather have two dedicated writers than 50 freelancers or even 50 internal people who write content on the side.

J.P. Medved, content director, Capterra           

I’d rather have two full-time writers than 50 freelancers, says @RizzleJPizzle. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How to Find a Writer Who Won’t Kill Your Content

Visit a printer

Thanks for the windfall. Let’s start small and build.

$1,000: Invest in learning in terms of subscription sites to share with others, i.e., Marketing Week, The Economist.

$50,000: Invest in print, in terms of taking blog articles and producing a quarterly magazine.

$100,000: Invest in a documentary-type film. Pick a topic I dearly believe in, showcasing people and businesses who have built their audience at a grassroots level, not the typical heavy hitters, i.e., Red Bull and Lego.

Mark Masters, owner, The ID Group

Take blog articles and produce a quarterly print magazine, advises @markiemasters. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How to Use Documentary Filmmaking Techniques to Craft Memorable Content 

Create shows, raid for content

Marketers used to be in the business of acquiring attention. Today, the very best need to hold it. Test several pilots of both video and audio series, then use the remaining budget to produce the winners.

Lastly, allocate remaining money towards distribution. For instance, hire a writer to pull out excerpts, write about tangential ideas, distill episodes into lessons and takeaways, and so forth. In summary: Create shows, then raid them for endless content for all channels.

Jay Acunzo, founder, Unthinkable Media         

Create #video or audio shows to raid for endless content for all channels, says @jayacunzo. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How to Get Listeners to Push Play on Your Podcast [Examples From Boss Brands]

Hire for the details

I’d hire a video marketing team to create behind-the-scenes videos for my law practice and/or I’d hire a personal assistant to take care of all the tasks that get in the way of me creating more content.

Ruth Carter, attorney, Carter Law Firm

Hire a personal assistant to take care of tasks that get in way of me creating more content. @rbcarter #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Video Marketing Strategy: What Marketers Need to Know

Where to begin?

$1,000: Book a retreat for my team, where we’d focus on creating some great new content without the interruption of being in the office.

$50,000: Give my communications agency some runway to experiment with new PR, marketing, and content programs.

$50,000 and $100,000: Upgrade the production value of all my content and focus on custom design and integrations. Hire someone to manage the team, allowing them more time to do what they do best. Look to promote into strategic roles and pay them well for work that moves the business forward. Invest in audio marketing and launch the podcast I’ve been keeping in my “someday” plan.

Karl Sakas, agency advisor, Sakas & Company

Promote successful team members into strategic roles & pay them well, says @KarlSakas #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Geek out

$1,000: Lunch with all our editorial team members – internal subject-matter experts. Content marketing is a team sport and small gestures like this one go a long way towards creating great team spirit.

$50,000: Start producing audio content, first by making all our existing long-form stories available in audio. The next step would be audio as a regular new format in our editorial calendar and optimization of our best performing content for voice search.

$100,000: Hire a data geek, someone who lives and breathes analytics and data visualization to join our team.

Alenka Bester, head of digital content marketing, Zavarovalnica Triglav

$100,000? Hire a data geek who lives & breathes analytics and dataviz, says @alenkabester. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Dataviz: A Critical Skill for Modern Marketers

Create and atomize a white paper

$1,000: Provide a spot bonus to my top producer.

$50,000: Spend it on a comprehensive white paper that can then be atomized and repurposed all year.

$100,000: Hire a journalist to write amazing content and a junior multimedia producer to extend it and squeeze the juice out of great ideas.

Jeff Leo Herrmann, president, Madison, Michigan and Market

$50,000 increase? Spend it on a white paper that can be atomized & repurposed. @JeffLHerrmann #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Get quality research done

Invest it in research (will need to outsource the work to India if the budget is only $1,000). This may include surveys, industry trends studies, sales data summaries, or examples of working strategies. Research requires resources. However, it pays off in all digital marketing fields – brand awareness, link generation, content marketing, lead gen, etc.

Leslie Carruthers, president and owner, The Search Guru Inc.

Research pays off in digital marketing fields, awareness, link gen, lead gen, etc. @thesearchguru #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How Content Influences the Purchasing Process: Tips for Content Marketers [Research]

Seek answers

$1,000: Conduct a poll on some issue that is newsworthy yet aligned with the business.

$50,000: Undertake a substantial research project that includes:

Strategy – how your research will support your overall content marketing strategy

Data science – designing and executing the survey and/or using other data to provide insights

Findings

Outreach plan for both media and influencers

Comprehensive amplification plan (webinars, articles, a video series, data graphics, and more)

$100,000: Fund multiple studies throughout the year to make research part of your brand’s DNA.

Michele Linn, head of strategy, Mantis Research         

With only $1,000, conduct a poll on a newsworthy issue aligned with your business, says @MicheleLinn. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: 10 (Mostly) Quick Wins to Steal for Your Original Research Project

Optimize for search

Any big investment in content marketing should focus on (or at least consider) SEO. After all, what’s the point in having a website full of amazing, useful content if it doesn’t show up in Google?

One important area of SEO ignored by a lot of people is link building. Creating content that attracts high-quality links back to your site can improve your rankings and result in more sustainable traffic increases over the long term.

With $1,000, you could partner with a starving artist influencer to create some truly remarkable, link-worthy content that could have a huge impact on your link profile and thus your rankings across all your keywords, not just the ones related to the content marketing campaign.

Stephan Spencer, co-author, The Art of SEO

Partner w/ a starving artist influencer to create remarkable, link-worthy content to help #SEO. @sspencer Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: SEO Marketing Strategy: Tips for Success in 2018

Forgo stock film and audio

With $50,000 to $100,000, I would create an in-house film and sound studio. As marketers, we rely heavily on mass-produced stock music, video clips, and photography. Yet, we could create this content ourselves for far less than we realize. One thousand dollars is enough to contract a sound engineer to integrate the 432-hertz solfeggio sound healing frequency into our existing music. Why sound healing? Because sound healing harmonizes and the gift of harmony is one of the ways I like to surprise and delight customers.

Nichole Kelly, chief consciousness officer, The Conscious Marketing Institute

Marketers rely too heavily on stock music, video clips, and photography, says @Nichole_Kelly. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Use it and ask for more

$1,000: Seriously? I asked for $20 grand. Well, let’s boost some updates.

$50,000: Marketing automation software comes in all flavors and sizes. Let me have a low-end product and spend the rest on content creation and distribution.

$100,000: I could really use an experienced editor, as well as budget for freelancers and content distribution.

In marketing, there is one universal truth about budget: There’s never enough of it.

Joakim Ditlev, founder, Content Marketing DK

Only $1,000? Boost some #socialmedia updates, says @jditlev. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Enjoy the small budget

With $1,000, I would invest this money in building derivative assets from what we have. Sometimes the most effective and impactful work originates out of the need to keep spending in check. A limited budget forces you to make the right choices because there is no room for error.

Peg Miller, head of content strategy, Xactly

A limited budget forces you to make the right choices because there’s no room for error. @PegMiller #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Want Content That’s More Usable & Reusable? Chunk It

Do what you know

Take what’s working now and expand it. Repeat it. Automate it. More money isn’t going to automatically help you find some new silver bullet. Take what you already know is driving impact and amplify it.

Matt Heinz, president, Heinz Marketing           

More money isn’t going to find a new silver bullet. Amplify what’s working well, says @heinzmarketing. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

Generate new thinking

$1,000: Do more paid promotions (likely on FB or Instagram).

$50,000: Invest in additional production and promotion of an audio/video podcast.

$100,000: Hire someone to help generate new thinking, ideas, and content.

Tamsen Webster, founder and chief idea whisperer, Find the Red Thread    

Hire someone to help generate new thinking, ideas, and content, says @tamadear. #CMWorld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Building Your Content Marketing Team? 14 Skills for New, Growing, and Mature Programs

Conclusion

What would you do with a surprise annual budget boost of $1,000, $5,000, or $100,000? Share in the comments. Not sure yet? Start your priority-impact matrix or at least a running wish list.

Join these and other insightful presenters at Content Marketing World Sept. 4-7 in Cleveland, Ohio. Register today and use code BLOG100 to save $100.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

from http://bit.ly/2LKoytD

[amannahmad-blog]

Podcast Transcript: Detailing a trip to the Train Show

Hey y’all, Amann here. This week on “How to be a Woke Teacher”, I’ll be talking about a not only educational, but also super cool field trip you can take your students on around anytime between November 22nd and January 15th of every year. I was originally going to discuss the ins and outs of a field trip to the entire Botanical Gardens that covers a whopping 250 acres, but I just visited this seasonal exhibit there and I gotta share it with you! So, let’s focus on the Holiday Train Show the NYBG puts on inside of its historic glass conservatory. Interwoven between the tropical landscape of ferns, waterfalls and a 10-foot palm, visitors watch toy trains move between historical NY landmarks like the Brooklyn Bridge and Penn Station. But, that’s not even the coolest part! Created by this dope artist named Paul Busse, the buildings are all made of natural materials found at the NYBG. He uses things like pine bark as the stone facade of buildings and cocoa nuts, mahogany, pine oak acorn caps and black lichen to make cherubs (you know those uh weird baby angels Europeans love to put in their drawings and make into statues?). Students can see the intersection between engineering, things found in Nature and New York’s history at the train show. How cool!

So now that we know a little bit about what the Holiday Train Show is, we can get into the nitty gritty you are all wondering about. That’s right! Logistics!

Cost: This is, of course, is the most important aspect for some since I know our budget’s are basically non-existent. Each visitor between the ages of 2 and 12 costs $10 each. We can come back to this but there are some great fundraising ideas to get around this, so that the students don’t have to pay this fee out of pocket. I hope you agree that all our students should be able to come, regardless of if they can front the 10 bucks or not.

Group size: For grades 1 through 8 there’s a 30 students maximum and 1 adult per 7 students ratio including the teacher. The Gardens allow a max of 3 additional chaperones at a fee of $12 per chaperone.

Registration: It is NECESSARY for all school-group visits. To register your class, and yes we have to do this even if we aren’t taking a guided tour and are doing a self-guided tour through the train show, you must either call 718-817-8181 between 8 a.m.-4 p.m., Monday-Friday OR email childed@nybg.org.

Payment needs to be received two weeks after registration and this can be done either online or by mailing a check in (who does that anymore). Of course, all this information is detailed at NYBG.org. Click on “Learn”, then “Schools and Teachers” and then “Class trips”.  Oh actually, while you’re on this page, you’ll see links for “Trip and Class Resources” and also “Pre and Post activity guides” and this is great BUT they won’t apply to our train show field trip. Later on in the podcast, I’ll mention some resources and pre and post activities that do pertain to the train show.

Okay back to logistics...and I know, I know it’s not as interesting to go over but it’s still important. When registering your class, include any information on disability-related accommodations needed by your students. The NYBG will make sure to include these accommodations in your visit. And while we’re on the topic of accessibility, the buildings of the NYBG are all wheelchair accessible. But the placards that label all the buildings in the train show are only written in English, not also in braille. There is a super cool video for people to watch before walking into the exhibit though and it has Spanish subtitles which is pretty cool. I gave the Gardens points for this, but am still confused as to why they aren’t also English closed captions for folks who are hard of hearing. Anyway, after the first scheduling change, you will be charged a  $15 processing fee for each additional change. To receive a full refund, cancellations must be made at least 4 weeks before the scheduled visit. Cancellations made 2 to 4 weeks in advance will only be refunded 50% of their payment. There are no refunds for cancellations made two weeks or less before the scheduled visit.

Lunch! There is no indoor eating facility for school groups. But, they can eat the lunch they bring with them, there’s also no cafeteria for kids to buy food, at the Clay Family Picnic Pavilion, which is located near the School Group Entrance. It’ll probably be cold to eat outside between November and January but you know what they say! There is no bad weather, just bad clothing. So, make sure to send home directions for winter jackets, gloves, hats etc to parents before the field trip. Speaking of weather, the holiday train show is open rain or shine since its inside. I would recommend allotting two and a half hours for the field trip with an hour and a half to walk through the train show, half an hour to eat and the rest of the time to round the group up and take a bathroom break before leaving.

Final piece of logistics: School group check-in is at the Everett Garden Gate, located on 2900 Southern Boulevard, across from Fordham University. All school groups must be picked up at the Everett Garden Gate at the end of their visit. Since there is no bus parking available in the Gardens, the bus must find street parking. Chaperones can park in the Gardens parking lot if they come separately but they’ll have to pay the $15 parking fee (yikes). I don’t mention the option of getting to the botanical gardens by subway because the B, D, or 4 train stop at Bedford Park Blvd. is pretty far from the entrance to NYBG so you’d have to take the Bx26 bus east to the Garden’s Mosholu Entrance or walk eight blocks down the hill on Bedford Park Blvd which takes about 20 minutes. That doesn’t seem very doable with a large group of elementary school children... Oh darn, one last logistical thing, garden hours are Tuesday to Sunday, 10am-6pm. I visited later in the day around 3pm and the exhibit was still really beautiful, but I’d recommend going in the morning when the light filtering through the glass ceiling of the conservatory helps students see all the details of the train show. It will probably be a little warmer during the early afternoon anyway.

A cool interactive activity students can do while walking through the exhibit is writing down short phrases to describe their reactions to what they see, hear and smell. They can also sketch what they see. [But honestly, there is so much to take in, it might be nice to just let students explore all the stimulation without having to also draw and write.]

I’ve chosen three primary resources we, as teachers, can introduce to our students before and after heading to the glam and glory of the botanical gardens. The first is two pictures from the early 1900s of the NYBG conservatory which now hosts the train show. These original photographs will show students what the site looked like a century ago. You can find these black and white photos in the transcript for this week’s podcast along with the link to the NYBG’s archive (Oh my Gaia, I said ahr-CHive!) with many more photos to choose from.

Primary Resource #1: Historical Photos of the NYBG

October 27, 1938

Photo Credit: http://mertzdigital.nybg.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p9016coll20/id/27

March 13, 1919

http://mertzdigital.nybg.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p9016coll20/id/803

The second resource is a set of design plans for N.Y. bridges including

The Williamsburg Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge and Queensboro Bridge. These sketches made by engineers were found on the Weinstock Brothers website, the company that supplied the structural bolts and equipment for these bridges along with other structures like the Twin Towers. As a class, you can compare and contrast these blueprints and try to spot the differences between the bridges before seeing them at the train show. I’ll include some pictures I took of these amazing mini-bridges at the end of the transcript or on the tumblr page.

Primary Resource #2: Design plans for NY bridges

Photo Credit: http://www.weinstockbros.com

The third primary resource I thought would be neat to use with students after the field trip was an interview NYC monthly did with Paul Busse who created all of the buildings in the Holiday Train Show (not only for NY but all cities like Washington D.C. and Chicago). This interview would hopefully answer some questions the students had about his process or designing and building. Because the interview is a little wordy, you could re-type a few particularly interesting questions the interviewer asked like “Share with us a story of one of the New York landmarks that you most enjoyed working on and why.”

Primary Resource #3: An interview with the creator of the Holiday Train Show, Paul Busse

Link: https://nycmonthly.com/article/holiday-train-show-interview-w-paul-busse/

Some other post-field trip activities you could use are writing letters to Paul Busse asking any questions the interview didn’t answer. Hopefully Paul, or someone else from his company, Applied Imagination, will respond (maybe not individually but to the class). Another post-trip activity is taking a walk outside around the school, in the park down the street, in the community garden close by to collect things like leaves, twigs and acorns to make a class structure. This structure will involve planning, sketching of blueprints, and Gaia knows a whole lot of cooperation. But, it’ll give the students an opportunity to try creating famous landmarks with things found in Nature the way our man Paul did. Lastly, using a jigsaw activity in which you break up the students into groups and have them becomes “experts” on something together before breaking up into new groups and teaching their new group all about what they are an expert on. Before or after the field trip, you can have students from each initial group conduct research on the computer on one NYC landmark including the Brooklyn Bridge, the Empire State Building, Grand Central Terminal and Central Park. Then, after those groups have mastered the key facts of landmark along with a couple of “fun facts”, they will be placed in a new group comprised of students who each mastered a different landmark. They will then teach each other about their landmark. This gives the students an opportunity to practice researching skills, teach each other instead of listening to us blabber on and learn more deeply about the buildings and places we might see every day.

Let’s talk standards. How does running around the Holiday Train Show adhere to NYSS? For one, comparing the historical relevance of city landmarks to how they fit into popular culture and society today, is delving into the theme of “Time, continuity and change”. We are also “studying places” and asking, “Why were these structures originally built? What do these places mean to us today?”. Lastly, the Holiday Train Show is playing with the connection and “relationship between science, technology and society”. We’re interacting with the engineering of the buildings and can think about how their construction was beneficial or detrimental to NYC society. Since we gotta stay woke, push your students to ask, “Who built these structures? Who reaped the benefit of using them? Who was not allowed to participate in the more ‘important’ roles of building?” Make sure to send a SHOUTOUT to Emily Warren as a woman who helped complete the Brooklyn Bridge. She was one of the first female field engineer’s in the U.S. (and also got her law degree at NYU, as if she wasn’t cool enough). Check out roeblingmuseum.org and look for info on our female comrade, Emily. If you still don’t feel strong in your pitch to your administration as to how this field trip links to Standards, check out www.socialstudies.org/standards/strands for yourself!

So we’re questioning the master narrative, as New Yorkers we’re super proud (even boastful) about our skyline, our progress, our superiority as a city. But, we built all these buildings in the late 1800s at what cost? At whose cost? Who held the power in the planning and building of our city? And who did the physical building? Emily Warren Roebling is dope, but why did her father-in-law (the chief engineer for the Brooklyn Bridge) have to die and then her husband who took his father’s role have to become bed ridden in order for Emily to get her shot? And yes, women are now encouraged to enter the STEM field and more women are engineers, but have we totally moved passed sexism, racism and all the other “isms” in city planning. Why is it still “weird” if a woman is a construction worker? Hopefully students will not only be engaging in the history of NYC, but also on how identity has changed over time and how the socioeconomic impact of racism and discrimination affected how our city was literally built.

Well, that’s it for this podcast! I hope this was helpful for y’all out there trying to be woke teachers. Here’s a quote for us to end on- “They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds”. Salaam.