Quality Videography

by Dan Granger Posted on February 10, 2012

Part of the Expert Answer Series we’re building for D.D. Williamson is getting outside experts to talk about different subjects in the food industry. Our latest expert is David Schmidt the President and CEO of The International Food Information Council Foundation based in Washington, DC.  We contracted with a videography company to record the interview. The quality and clarity of the video is amazing. The interviews where shot in 1080p and I kept the same resolution for editing. As you can see in the teaser video below it turned out well. For more information about The International Food Information Council Foundation visit www.foodinsight.org.

To see other Expert Answers Videos visit. http://ddwilliamson.com/expertanswers/

Posted in Random Thoughts, Videos | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

DDW’s Expert Answers Named Finalist in Foodbev.com Award

by Dan Granger Posted on February 10, 2012

It’s really cool to have all the hard work be recognized as best in class.

From DD Williamson’s Website:

FoodBev.com, a unit of FoodBev Media, has named D.D. Williamson as Finalist for “Best Social Media Campaign” in 2011. DDW’s “Expert Answers Series” was launched in December and features video interviews with experts in consumer visual insight, naturally derived food coloring, and regulatory challenges. Experts are selected both inside and outside the company. The marketing campaign to promote the video series cut across a variety of social media and web portals to further brand DDW’s expertise.

(Regulatory expert Jennifer Guild discusses challenges of natural food and beverage colouring in the above Expert Answers video.)

The campaign’s summer and fall previews included a contest, a spoof movie trailer, a YouTube preview video, and QR codes. Each of the Expert Answers video interviews, presentations and articles are brief and focused to allow busy industry professionals to watch, learn and share at their own convenience. Profile pages are available for each expert so that site visitors can easily connect, network and ask questions. Visitors can select by topic, expert or region to quickly browse to the content they seek. Region-specific interviews conducted thus far capture over a dozen experts across five continents in three languages – with more coming soon. Social media employed includes Twitter, Facebook, Google+and more. Since launching, the YouTube channel has exceeded 1,000 views.

(The original spoof movie trailer for the Expert Answers video series.)

“Initial results have exceeded our expectations,” said Brittany Thompson, Web & Social Media Coordinator for DDW. “We’re delighted the Expert Answers page is now among the Top 10 most visited pages on our websites, and visitors are spending two to three minutes on the page.”

To view the Expert Answer series visit http://www.ddwilliamson.com/expertanswers orhttp://www.youtube.com/expertanswerstv.

For FoodBev’s award details, click here.

Posted in Random Thoughts, Videos | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Moving from Sony Vegas to Final Cut Pro X

by Dan Granger Posted on January 27, 2012

Our ability to produce and edit videos hit a limit late in 2011. While my laptop does a nice job running Sony Vegas Pro for short videos it took a long time to render. Sometime 20-30 minutes was required to render even a short 1 minute video for 720p on YouTube. After looking at many option and configuration I decided that moving to a Macintosh and jumping from Sony Vegas Pro to Final Cut Pro X would provide the best results. I ordered a 27in. iMac with 16gb of RAM and it finally arrived early this week. Unfortunately, this week I was swamped with onsite and offsite meetings. I was able to get a few videos edited for publication this week. (see video below) In my brief experience the performance of the computer and software is spectacular. I can render out a video in under 3 minutes now and I have the ability to render in 1080p. I will post updates as I have more time to work with the computer and the software.

Posted in Videos | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Adele Live At The Royal Albert Hall (DVD/CD)

by Dan Granger Posted on January 13, 2012

Adele - Live at Royal Albert Hall - Cover Artwork

The latest release from Adele was recorded on September 22, 2011 at the Royal Albert Hall in London. It is a 2 disc combination package with both DVD and CD versions of the show included. She performs the best of both the 19 and 21 albums. She does a cover of The Steeldrivers “If It Hadn’t Been For Love”  which is an awesome rendition. I’m a huge fan of live albums since it seems a more pure gauge of a performers talents. I highly recommend this album to Adele fans or anyone that likes the blues/jazz sound she records.

Track Listing

  1. Hometown Glory
  2. I’ll Be Waiting
  3. Don’t You Remember
  4. Turning Tables
  5. Set Fire To The Rain
  6. If It Hadn’t Been For Love
  7. My Same
  8. Take It All
  9. Rumour Has It
  10. Right As Rain
  11. One & Only
  12. Lovesong
  13. Chasing Pavements
  14. I Can’t Make You Love Me
  15. Make You Feel My Love
  16. Someone Like You
  17. Rolling In The Deep
Posted in Music | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

DDW Launches Expert Answers Series

by Dan Granger Posted on December 30, 2011

A few weeks ago we officially launched the Expert Answers Series at D.D. Williamson. The Expert Answers Series is both a video and a blog series dedicated to providing useful industry news and trends in a short easy to share format.

This is an exciting project because it was the brain child of a Brittany Thompson and myself. We spent hundreds of hours putting together the content, brain storming the layout and recording and editing the videos. We believe that the Expert Answer Series is an engaging way to help answer questions that help our customer grow their business.

Seeing the food ingredient industry report on the new series is an incredible feeling. We are committed to providing the information our customers need to grow.

FoodBev.com

PetfoodIndustry .com

Food &  Drink International

Natural Food Network

Nutrition Industry Executive Magazine

Vitamin Retailer Magazine, Inc.

Here is a sample video from an outside expert Kantha Shelke:

Posted in Videos | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Recap: Louisville User Group – 12/13/2011

by Dan Granger Posted on December 17, 2011

The Louisville Salesforce.com User Group met on Tuesday December 13, 2011 at the Creative Workshop. The meeting was sponsored by Silverpop who also provided lunch. We had a total of 3 presenters for the meeting.

It was kicked off by David Sparks of Zirmed who presented on integrating Salesforce with other systems. It was a high level overview of why you might want to integrate and things to think about when integrating. If you are interested in viewing slides from David’s presentation they are available on Google docs.

 

David was followed by Nick Hamm from Appirio. Nick presented on the Winter ’12 release of Salesforce.com. His presentation was a study in crowd-sourcing using Twitter to get suggestions and ideas from the Salesforce community. You can visit Nick’s blog and see his presentation.

 

 

The last presenter of the meeting was Forest Yule from Silverpop. Forest did a great job of presenting on Marketing Automation without it sounding like a Silverpop sales pitch. After the last meeting I sent out a poll asking for feedback on the future meeting topics and marketing automation was one of the topics. I learned a lot from the presentation and was really impressed with the level of marketing information systems like Silverpop can capture and analyse. If you are interested in a marketing automation system I would highly suggest contacting Silverpop.

Posted in Salesforce.com | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Tweetbot from Tapbots

by Dan Granger Posted on December 15, 2011

If you’re looking for a new Twitter client for the iPhone I would recommend Tweetbot from Tapbots. It has a great interface that really make reading through Twitter easier.

The ability to tap a tweet and get the action menu instead of being taken to the single tweet is a time saver. Swiping to the left shows the conversation thread if someone replies to a message.

Posted in Random Thoughts | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment