Gary Sheynkman dot com

Hello all. This one is a bit late. But I was very busy in Cannes the past week, so :p

Found this little jam while relaxing at my favorite local spot on a lovely saturday afternoon.

PASH is groving up with is records since 2002 when he bought is first EP. he is still trippin around lots of genres, basing his djsets on disco, deep and house basis,and in the meanwhile working with Slow Motion party in Pescara.

Enjoy!!!

This week on Mix it up Friday is Korablove. This Muscovite DJ has a seriously trippy MySpace page you should check out.

This mix caught my eye errr ear so I figured you would dig it as well! Its proggy and sexy at the same time. Do not listen w/o something that thumps (good advice for anything you listen to here)

So this week was a bit dry (or lacking in posts completely!).

I’ve been in Defcon 1 mode preparing for MIPTV 2009. What does this mean for you?

1. I will have a ton of “I f-ed this up, but here is what you should do” ideas about conferences.
2. I will be on a long plane ride where I can write for YOU!
3. I will be twittering up a storm, so follow me!
4. Yes there will still be a Mix it up Friday post.

I will surely post picture, summaries, finds, and overall shenanigans.

Tune in!!!

Happy Friday all! This week’s remix comes from a day walker. He is a doctor who mends eyes during the day and melts ears at night. He also prefers wax to 1s and 0s. Boris The Blade is an NYC DJ that calls Chicago his home. He is a member of the venerable KGBeats Records (MySpace) and will be ripping up the Winter Music Festival this year in Miami. Don’t miss it, fool.

For your listening pleasure is a hot of the press mix welcoming the warm weather (well, at least for those who don’t have it everyday like I do ). As the man himself says it:

Straight up House Music Mix for the summer…Upbeat and Funky!

I would like point out some interesting personal encounters of direct value of using 2 way communication channels for brand building. Remember, “social media” is just a buzzword. All media is inherently social (we want to share it!), and the tools that are labeled as “social media” tools are just the current methods of enabling 2 way communications between users and brands.

Lets get a few things out of the way first: this is not snake oil; it is an additional channel for brands to connect with consumers. It is unique because it allows personal connections. It is NOT, however, a replacement for your entire marketing strategy… sorry folks, that’s not how it works.

Here are some great examples that have resulted in spending money on services or a creation of brand evangelism:

1. I was looking for an agency to do web development for our firm in Dubai. I was new in town and was on the lookout of a local team I could work closely with to finish a project in a tight deadline. I facebooked, tweeted, and googled. I contacted many agencies but found Baher from Cloud Appers to be really helpful in the process. He was also really helpful when I asked the Dubai twitter community about the local living situation before I moved. Result? 5 figure USD contract + continuing service.
2. I needed to print roll-up stands for a conference. This was a rush jobs and I did not have the time to shop around all the local printers (Google wasn’t helpful in this region for easily locating a vendor).  I got a reference from twitter and based on that evangelism for the brand on behalf of other users, it resulted in a 4 figure USD order.
3. MIPTV, a content conference in Cannes in April, is an important part of our company’s lead generation. I needed to quickly book apartments for our team. Based on previous successes with using Twitter and Facebook, I updated my statuses on both services. The response was overwhelming. I was contacted by email, facebook, and twitter messages. The vendor that took the extra step to go on my personal site, look up my email, and get in touch got a 4 figure USD booking.
4. I am in charge of our global sales pipeline and the analytics that go with it. I create the reports that our President and CMO use to determine the performance of our sales team. When I was researching the best system to use, Pipeline Deals contacted me directly to set up a product demo and a phone call to address my needs.  Unfortunately we came to the conclusion that their system, at this stage of their development, was not the best fit. However, I am now very familiar with their offering and recommend the service wholeheartedly to those who need an easy to use web-based sales tracking system. I am sure that I will be a customer at some point in time. I love their team’s dedication to personalized service, the only kind that matters.
5. I was reading Lenovo’s Design Matters blog. The post was about a design study device that was of particular interest to me. Unfortunately the team used Flickr to host the pictures. Flickr is blocked in the UAE. I commented on the blog voicing my frustration. A representative went on my personal site from my comment link, found my Twitter ID, and replied to me on Twitter asking me if he could send me the pictures by email. I was pleasantly surprised! Next time I need a rugged windows based computer to take to conferences with me, which brand has caught my attention and made themselves worthy of my 2-3K USD? (hint: rhetorical question).

I will not mention the countless advice I got for venues, directions, and general pointers on a multitude of subjects.

So…. Is social media worth the investment? You tell me… engaging me directly has netted companies who utilized social media over 50K USD and a loyal fan and evangelist for their products and services.
If you would like some “pay it forward” advice on how you can engage your customers using this new communication channel, drop me a note. I would love to talk to you about it.

This post is long time coming and is written from the perspective of someone who is tasked by his superiors to make a website happen. This person is given a budget and a timeline and is sent into the fray. I’ve done a few of these now and wanted to share some (learned the hard way) tips. FYI this is just the build, marketing the thing is a whole ‘nother deal

The 2 project managers

Realize that there are really 2 project managers. The first one is the client side manager, the one who commissions the job. The second is the face of the executing team. As such, the client manager will always put pressure on the “executing manager” to allocate team resources in a way that will get the project finished better/faster/cheaper. The job of the executing manager though is to properly allocate all resources between multiple projects while providing the greatest average satisfaction. This means that if the client manager changes expectations or requirements mid project, the executing manager will need to reallocate resources. In some cases, no harm done, in others delivery times are affected.

The relationship between these two managers is a tough one. On one hand the client manager is the good cop that is the dictionary between the tech side and the money. On the other hand the client manager has to be a bad cop when something needs to be rushed. Being on the same page and over communication is KEY to making the relationship work.

The goal of the client manager is to build in certain “headache savers” from the get go. Here are ones that I now have in my arsenal… learned the hard way, of course.

Click “Read More” for the list!

[Read more]

This week on Mix it up Friday (my weekly injection of awesome music into your otherwise musically stale existence) is a Hungarian DJ by the name of Fine Cut Bodies. Awesome name? I think so. You can find out more about him on his MySpace. A bit about this mix:

“Kvark Depó” (Quark Depot) is Fine Cut Bodies’ weekly radioshow on hungarian national radio station called MR2 Pet?fi. The show covers contemporary electronic music including dancefloor genres, like house, breaks, electro, techno, minimal, disco and more leftfield mixes like experimental electronics, dub, downtempo, etc…

OMFG I’m running late. My heart is pounding. I am pale. I do not know what to do.

I’ve never missed a flight in my entire life because of forgetting something or just not leaving early enough. Half a year ago I joined that club on both accounts.

The flight was to Cannes. The conference was MIPCOM. I am now planning MIPTV, so I need to heed some lessons:
What was the result of my panic?

• 4 speeding tickets (really)
• 1 bewildered coworker (I was Maverick, he was Goose) who I drove (quickly)
• 1 missed flight

The right thing to do was to drop off my coworker (which I ended up doing anyway, just much quicker). Calmly return to my apartment and rebook my ticket. I ended up doing that anyway… only I aged 7 years and lost more money in the process. In case you haven’t figured it out, I left my passport.

Here is the deal: IT IS OK IF YOU MISS YOUR FLIGHT. Sure, it is not a good thing to miss flights, but realize that there are always other planes and that at the end of the day your safety and nervous system are worth more.

Finds like these usually reside in my Tumblr, the RSS feed for which is to the right of this post. This, however, is too good not to give some additional light to.

Just about everything about this video is amazing. From the quality of video itself to the fact that this brand gets the value of producing videos that make me want the product. As with my BMW Films post, I applaud Asics for coming out with a creative way to make consumers sit down and learn more about the brand and its values.

Origami In the Pursuit of Perfection from MABONA ORIGAMI on Vimeo.

This week’s Mix it up Friday is by Michelle Owen

Michelle Owen has been a DJ since 1998. Half Italian and originally from Sydney, Australia she moved overseas to pursue her dreams and follow the music which led her to live in Ibiza in 2007 and now, Berlin the electronic music capital of the world. She has had the pleasure of playing in Germany,Italy, Spain, Australia, China, and England.

This mix is about 8 months old, but sounds fresh as ever: