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The Memetastic Roni Weiss

February 12, 2012

Thanks, as always, to Sharon Burian for feeling that such things are worth her time.

Aaaand, a second, albeit derivative one for Steve Gast.

Spreading the Content

January 24, 2012

Mont Saint-Michel, France

I’ve been blogging for a couple of years now. Along with that, my various outside endeavors have grown. It’s to the point now where I share different content categories in assorted places. Now that I’m finally starting to take the bubble wrap off of New York Travel Festival, I thought I’d explain to you what goes where and why. Also, I want to let you know that while this blog isn’t the right venue for guest posts, there are other places that you can contribute.

The Official Roni Weiss Blog (AKA roniweiss.com): This is where you currently are. I don’t think it makes sense to see other authors on a so-audaciously named site. This is where I’ll continue to write my experiential stuff. Press trips to varied locales, movie reviews and strong opinion pieces that I wouldn’t necessarily want elsewhere. (@roniweiss)

Don’t Worry About The Government: This is the audio political podcast that I’ve been involved in for over 3 years. Relatively recently, I transferred the site over from Drupal to WordPress. Along with that transfer, we’ve had an opening up of content. If you have any interest in writing something politically-related, the floor is open for you over at DWATG. We also are always looking for podcast/vodcast guests. (Check out Ethan Gelber’s recent guest post: Can You Tell the Difference Between Food and Feces?) (@dwatg)

Been to Africa: It’s tough running an advocacy campaign by yourself. I’ve had different people come and go (as well as a lot of general interest in the idea behind BTA), but the project hasn’t hit its stride. BTA’s mission statement: To bridge the gap between the perception and reality of life and travel in Africa. This is done through stories and pictures of people who have been or would like to go to Africa (as well as the locals who spend every day of their life there). Know anyone who fits this? I’d love to highlight their experiences. (Most recently, Toni White of Reclaiming My Future did a guest post on her trip.) (@BeenToAfrica)

NY Travel Festival: I’m gunning to have a travel festival in 2013. There’s a lot that goes into such a thing, but part of what I’m hoping for is to share more interesting travel content. I’ll be increasingly using NYTravFest’s Twitter account, blog and Facebook page to share content. If you’re interested in writing something up that’s beyond the usual “Top 10 Places To Visit in _____”, I’d love to have you help out by writing something. If you don’t want to guest post, you can also feel free to tweet your links to deeper-level travel content and share them on the Facebook page. (@NYtravfest)

RW Social: My new social media consulting company. In general, this is where I’ve been writing social media related posts. I’ll still write the more strong opinion pieces here, though. If you’re interested in tech/business/social media news, I’d be interested in you doing guest posts or potentially a feature column. (@rwsocial)

Curious about any of the above? Ideas on how to improve it? E-mail me: roni@roniweiss.com

Navel-Gazing Back at 2011

December 31, 2011

This has been a transformative year for me. I’ve started a company and have begun to settle down (as much as I’m able to do such a thing).

Through the magic of Facebook Timeline, Flickr, Gmail and scouring through old posts, let’s look back…

Roni Gets Autotuned

December 25, 2011

roni weiss who's still standing bartender detroit

Ohhh, Steve Gast, you flatter me so…

Steve took my intro from Who’s Still Standing and Songified it. He called it My Name Is Roni.

Enjoy (?) it.

Roni on Who’s Still Standing

December 22, 2011

I was on Who’s Still Standing. It aired last night. It’s online now. You should watch it and let me know what you think.

Here’s the video. Below it are some times to see shots of me, if you want to show people specific moments.

Coming into the episode, you see me clapping on the left, in a yellow shirt.

1:03: Camera swoops in and I’m clearer on left.

1:15: More side swooping.

Note: There’s another guy in yellow. That’s not me. (I’m #2.)

2:11: High shot, I’m on left again.

2:36: First real shot of me. Not the worst of smiles.

(All right, now that you’ve seen me, not gonna keep telling you the little side shots.)

8:19: I look bewildered, but sweet.

12:51: Yikes. Can’t miss that.

Once she goes against the girl with the dreadlocky hair, you can hear me laughing in the background. That’s the late 19 min. mark.

24:22: Here we go. Enjoy.

Pictures from the show are here. I’m in 2,5 and 10.

My Upcoming Week

November 17, 2011

Busy me, doing busy things. Here’s what’s up.

Tonight

Going to help cover a fundraising event at The Players’ Club for Essakane Film.

My first though re: “The Players’ Club” was “upscale strip club”. Second was gambling. But it’s actually ‘players’ in the “all the world’s a stage” sense. Fascinating place, actually. It was founded in 1888 by Edwin Booth (yes, the brother of the other Booth), Mark Twain, General Sherman and others. The history of the place combined with the event itself should prove to be interesting.

Tomorrow

“Minions of Gozer” is a Rocky Horror-style live Ghostbusters thing at IFC Center. I ran across them at NY Comic Con. Apparently, they’re the only people in the country who are authorized to do this. I expect an excited crowd for the midnight show on Friday.

This weekend

Meet the Breeds is the event that brings a smile to my face the quickest. It’s dogs and cats and I get to play with them. Expect pix and vids galore.

Mon-Wed

Klout has once again found fit to bestow upon me something. This time, I have 3 days with a Chevy Sonic. I looked at a map, tried to figure out where to go, wasn’t sure, asked my dad. He recommended Newport, Rhode Island (and many others have agreed). I’ve never been to RI, so I might hit up some other places therein as well, but the Newport tourism people have been really cool and on top of it, so they might arrange enough to keep me in their tow.

Thanksgiving

I’ve got nothing. Going to look into volunteering at a shelter or some such.

What’s an ‘expert’?

October 26, 2011

My last post got quite a bit of varied responses. Cool. That’s what you want when you write something like that up. Other than the main content, I got one specific complaint on the fact that I called myself an ‘expert’. This is funny to me, because it’s a term I don’t use for myself very often.

I do social media consulting, but I never call myself a “social media expert”. When someone calls me that, I tell them that I don’t think of myself that way. I’ve travelled a lot. I don’t know that I’m a “travel expert”. But being an “Occupy Wall Street expert” to me is a very specific thing that is much easier to define.

Why am I am ‘expert’ on this?

I’ve spent hours and hours at multiple OWS events, reaching the same conclusions.
I’ve interviewed a variety of people at the event, as well as having many conversations with people outside of it, learning the perceptions of those involved and those viewing.
I study the news constantly. I’ve become familiar with news cycles and generally, what makes the big media.

I’m not the “leading expert” or the “foremost expert”, but as far as things go, I still consider myself an expert on Occupy Wall Street. I don’t see my perspective on that changing until the movement does. And if/when it does, I’ll be back down there learning about it so I can regain my self-proclaimed ‘expert’ status.

(I really don’t want to do the dictionary definition thing, but if you’re curious, Wiktionary defines expert as “A person with extensive knowledge or ability in a given subject.”)

Do you think it’s reasonable to call myself an Occupy Wall Street ‘expert’? Why/why not?

Captain Boring

July 26, 2011

Picture Stories from the Bible: The Old Testament in Full-Color Comic-Strip Form

A two-part post, “My history with comic books”, then, thoughts on Captain America.

The first comic book/graphic novel I ever had was Picture Stories from The Bible: The Old Testament in Full-Color Comic-Strip Form (seen above). My mother’s mother, who is very much a practicing Jew, gave it to me sometime in early childhood, with an inscription from “Safta Haya” (Safta = grandmother in Hebrew). The book is, as far as things go, a pretty good way to indoctrinate kids into religion, as it tells the stories with a flourish. I can still picture various frames from it: the anger of Cain with the rock that he’s about to bash Abel with, Lot’s wife turning into a pillar of salt and various kings of the Israelites doing their thang.

I never collected comic books growing up. I had The Death of Superman, The Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told and a plastic-wrapped set of various comics surrounding the death of Superman that they sold at Costco that I still haven’t opened, because I’m one of those collector types.

In college, there was a guy on the crew of a play I was in who loaned me some of his comics. He was mostly into Marvel. I remember reading The Infinity Gauntlet. At this point, I gained learned a little about the world of comics, but still had no familiarity outside of the superheroes that most people have at least a cursory familiarity with.

Then, I met Sean Meyer.

Sean was my best friend at the University of Washington. We hung out 8+ hours a day. Sean voraciously read and collected comic books. In the dorms, he had a small portion of what he owned. His college collection, whose long boxes took up a decent amount of his room, was the biggest amount of comics I had seen. Sean was mostly into DC and independent stuff and bought comics every Wednesday from a shop in the U-District. Through Sean, I read Preacher, Transmetropolitan, The Long Halloween, Watchmen and a variety of others. After Sean and I spent less time together, my comic book reading dropped off precipitously, as I wasn’t going to be buying them. I still do read them at libraries from time to time. The point being, I like comics.

The review

Captain America: The First Avenger is all right. Its central flaw is that Captain America is a boring character. He’s an aw-schucks, bring it to the bad-guy type of hero. He’s a proxy for any scrawny kid that wishes he could kick some ass. And that’s about it. That’s the problem with the movie.

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