Web People Media » bay area

Training for Your Sonoma County Video, Web, and Business Projects

admin — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 20:16:26 +0000

Web People Media offers tutoring to help Wine Country small businesses and creatives with a full range of digital media projects, including graphics, video, web, SEO, writing, business software, and creative software.

We offer project-based training services for Sonoma County (or North Bay, including Marin and Napa County) individuals and businesses in web, graphics, video, and related digital media business skills.

What is project-based training? It is a process of teaching in which we use the projects you are actually trying to complete as the basis of your training. The goal is to teach you the skills you will need to maintain your project, or to work on future projects, while helping you plan and build the project from start to finish. We can help you launch a blog, a website, a series of videos, an ad campaign, search engine optimization (SEO), a brand, etc.

We can help with little pieces of projects, where you might get stuck, as well. What if you just need some help writing a piece for the web, or for your business marketing plan? Or maybe you need to learn how to process your photos for your ecommerce application. No project is too big or too small to get some help when you need it.

Are you a designer, artist, videographer, or budding photographer? We can also help you hone your skills in high-demand applications like Adobe After Effects, Premiere Pro, Illustrator, and Photoshop, so you learn the tools the pros use—the ones that get you noticed.

Need help with writing for your website? Web People Media can show you how to write with both SEO and click-through in mind. If you’re not writing in this manner already, you are missing the opportunity to help your customers find you and visit your website. Search engine optimization and search engine marketing become more important each day, as more websites compete for Sonoma County’s business. You have to get your site into the first page of search results if you want to see results. And then you have to make sure that listing contains the information that will convince your audience to click through to you.

Web People Media is looking forward to helping you to make your website, graphics, videos, and digital media projects number one on the web and in the world, and training you to use the most cutting-edge tools is an important part of how we can help you to succeed in your business. If you need services or an estimate, please feel free to send an email to leha@webpeoplemedia.com.

Ignorance Is Not a Value System

admin — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:49:57 +0000

My partner asked me today if the concepts of “350″ and non-GMO could be made a little simpler for the average person (he used the example of his parents, and a couple we are friends with), so that they could participate in the movement for change without becoming too uncomfortable, as, for example, they already do when they recycle their trash each day. I thought about it and suggested that maybe those people could walk, or ride bicycles some of the time, and could add a “meatless Monday” plan to their lifestyles, but he did not think they would want to go that far, nor that they would be able to understand the reasons for those changes. I tried to explain the reasons in a simple way: when we avoid driving, we reduce our carbon emissions; and when we avoid eating meat, we make more food available to starving people, because less is being used to feed the meat animals. He said he still didn’t think they would get it.

I began to feel that the real topic under consideration was not how hard these concepts are to understand, but how willing people are to understand them. I suggested to my partner that the real issue might be getting people to care, and admitted that I’d not come up with a way to do that. He said he thought that he, himself, might care more if someone could just explain it to him better. I asked whose responsibility that was, and he replied that he didn’t know, but he had to get busy with his day.

The point of this story is not to point a finger at my partner, nor at his parents or our friends, who after all, believe in their hearts that they are caring people. I, too, have trouble getting myself to wake up another day and care, focus on the problems that humanity should be solving, and try to muster up both the wisdom and the time to do something positive for the present and future beings of the planet. In my heart, I care tremendously, but in my daily life, I struggle with the same mundane and habitual battles that face everyone else I know.

Why do we go on like this? Why do we care so little, when we mean to care so much? This is a simple question, made complex by our vast ability to use rationality to support whatever we want to do. The fact is that there are many things to care about, but there is only so much caring to go around, and we all know, deep within our bones, that our time here, in this life, is short–perhaps *very* short. Of course we want harmony in the world, but when it gets right down to it, we also want a lolipop. We service this more direct desire for the symbolic and tangible “sweet stuff” in life by being incredibly broad and vague when it comes to our definition of “doing good,” or “doing our part,” in the world.

Gestalt psychologists have pointed out that “responsibility” is not an elective, but something each of us owns a chunk of, whether we like it or not, and, more importantly, whether we acknowledge it or not. But what does this mean? It means, most basically, that whatever I think, do, say, or feel, as well as whatever I choose to ignore, has an impact on the collective. So if I say a care about my health, but, for whatever reason I might come up with, I choose to go ahead and grab a burger at MacDonalds for lunch, then, whether I consciously know it or not, I am giving my body something unhealthy to work with, and actually working against my own health that I claim to care about.

By the same logic, the ownership of responsibility means that I can talk all day about how much I love wildlife and forests, but the moment I eat that burger, I have pledged my allegiance to Monsanto and a handful of other large corporations that feed the burger mill at the expense of multiple thousands of football fields worth of rainforests all over the world. My little piece of the shared collective responsibility in the world can and does make a difference–not because my avoiding McDonalds could ever hope to single-handedly stop the destruction of rainforests, but because it simply is what it is: a piece of the total responsibility shared by all living beings.

Contrast this to a tree. According to the Gestalt principle of inherent responsibility, a tree is also responsible. What does the tree do with its responsibility? Well, it starts, as a seed, by reaching into the earth and depleting the soil of some water and certain nutrients that it needs to survive. Okay, so far me and the tree are even–we are both depleting our environment. But then it puts out a couple of leaves and immediately starts accepting the shower of photons the sun casts upon it, and turning their energy into nutrients, which it later sheds to ground in the form of leaves, thus giving back effectively more than it took in the first place by the time it reaches the end of its long life.

Trees use their share of the responsibility to do “good” for life, in the life-centric view of the world. And I believe that they got this way by being around for a really, really long time. In other words, trees evolved to be smart, in their bodies and in their actions, because this supports their future existence.

Perhaps we humans have not yet earned the power to make energy from sunlight using nothing but our own bodies and a little starting energy because we simply have not been evolving long enough–we lack physical smarts. But we have other tools that the tree does not have–a brain, and the capacity to bond emotionally to our surrounds. These tools could work in our favor if we were able to acknowledge our responsibility in the context of the greater collective, and that the only winning solution for our own future is to, like the tree, give back more than we take.

Just as the tree converts the sun’s energy to nutrients in the soil and oxygen in the air, we must learn to convert our abilities to think and to bond emotionally into tangible gifts we give back to the earth. If I am going to make a difference, I have to apply my mind to understanding and my heart to caring every day, just as the tree turns its leaves to the sun every day. And then I have to act continuously, habitually, in ways that reflect my informed understanding of my own piece of the collective responsibility. There is no shortcut to caring. There is no little bit that’s okay to give back. If we want to go on as a species and a biosphere, we have to give back more than we took. We have to act at least as responsible as every tree on Earth.

Sonoma County Technical Writing

admin — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 01:02:11 +0000

You’ve got the technology, now all you need to do is explain how it works—with solid technical writing that your qualified buyer will understand and relate to. Web People Media understands techno-speak. We can turn your amazing product loose on the world with not only the right website, but the words that make the whole world capiche.

Web People Media has over 20 years of industry experience in technical writing and editing, including copy writing, software documentation, hardware documentation, networking, telecommunications, and marketing, as well as textbook and non-fiction editing, articles, and more.

We also specialize in writing for the web and mobile, including social networking (Facebook, Twitter) and search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing, the most critical aspects of web content in the world today. Every word you use in the fast-paced world of web and mobile has to deliver a return on your investment for the whole site or application. Don’t leave this keystone component of your project to chance. Get the expert help that will bring you measurable results in all of your website, social networking, and mobile projects.

Certified Organic Does Matter

admin — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:33:21 +0000

Okay, this is not about the web, not about media, and not about technology. But it is about community–yours, mine, and all of ours; and about health and sustainability.

I wrote a letter to Michael Pollan today. I want to share it with you all, because the food movement is so important, and because, as usual, agribusiness would like to redefine it. But we can’t let them. So it’s up to all of us–not just Michael Pollan–to retain the values of health, sustainability, and kindness to all species. Let us all be conscious eaters and conscious buyers.

Here’s the letter:

Hello, Michael:

I know you are very busy, but I’m writing to you because I feel you are at the nexus of the extremely important food movement that’s taking place, and I’m concerned about a trend I’ve seen recently that the food movement might inadvertently be contributing to (or at least that its leaders, such as you, might be able to help prevent the expansion of).

Here is the issue: Certified organic foods are becoming less important to people than hollow promises, and large buyers (like Whole Foods) are capable of squashing certified organic producers by buying “GMO and antibiotic free” (also known as “Natural”), but uncertified products exclusively. Granted, there is a plus side to allowing some flexibility for growers and ranchers who can’t afford to make the transition to certified, but there is a potential for certified organic to become *completely* impossible to maintain if no one is demanding it anymore, and the net result for the end buyer is that our ability to buy truly antibiotic and GMO free foods goes from small to non-existent, while the retailers, processors, etc. ream us for close-to-organic prices on non-organic foods.

I’ve read Omnivore’s Dilemma, and I agree with you that certified organic is far from perfect, but I also know that you agree with me that it’s still worthwhile; and it would be a terrible state of affairs if the large corporations that co-opted organic in the first round were now able to eliminate it by manipulation of the tenets of the current food movement, claiming that “natural” is more important than organic, doing away with the “local” part of the argument, and pulling the rug out from under organic producers.

This is not a paranoid scenario: Whole Foods (at least the one in my neighborhood, and I’m guessing they are all marching to the same drum) has eliminated organic meats (pork, lamb, beef) in favor of the claim that ALL of their meats are antibiotic and GMO free. Well, it’s not true. I have an extreme hypersensitivity to macrolides (of which Tylosin is a member), and got a major reaction after eating some Whole Foods “antibiotic-free” pork. Since I had otherwise eaten nothing that wasn’t either from my own garden, from a known-good local farmer, or certified, the pork was definitely the source of the antibiotic. While I realize the hypersensitivity is my own personal cross to bear, it does make me a sort of walking litmus test for truth in advertising when it comes to antibiotics. And the larger issue is what could happen to the very important organic certification and the producers who go to the trouble and expense of getting it.

Whole Foods did not lower their prices, either, so this is a racket. They can now charge organic prices for business-as-usual, polluted foods, grown by the same unsustainable, unhealthy, and cruel means that they have been for decades, because public perception–even among the members of the food movement itself, is that maybe organic isn’t so important, and the complexities of that statement are lost on most people.

I’m not sure what should be done about it, but I wanted to alert you, because I think this is a serious issue, not just for me personally, but for everyone. Our food should not be “antibiotic free” in the same way that a Rosie or Rocky chicken is “free range.” (I obviously won’t be buying from Whole Foods again at all, but so many people do–and again, the organic producers could be crushed out of business by this trend.)

Thank you so much for any time and consideration you can give to this issue, and that you have given to the letter at all! I honestly think you are at the center of the most important movement of our time–not just for humankind, but for all the earth. If people can follow the logic of the food movement, they will be forced to realize how intricately all on Earth are connected, and that would be a very good thing indeed.

Thanks again, and with the kindest regards,

Leha Carpenter

Sonoma County Web Design

admin — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:23:35 +0000

Web People Media provides web design & development, digital video production & post-production, graphics, branding, photo work, and content writing and editing for Sonoma County, the North Bay, and the San Francisco Bay area. We also design applications for mobile. Learn how to integrate your North Bay website with users from Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites all over the web. Get your Sonoma County, Napa, or Marin business on the local mobile map with apps for iPhone and more.

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