1AU Global Media, LLC, Olney, MD (2025)

08/04/2025

Physical media: it’s quaint, right? Don’t worry, this won’t be another essay about the charming tactility of books and celluloid. (Well, I might riff for a moment or two.) In my latest blog, I consider a portion of a singular publication that’s easily overlooked as an antiquated curio. As someone who makes his living making media, I’m shining a spotlight on this weekly physical insert because I believe it’s a crystalline lattice containing insights into contemporary culture. May I commend to you a few thoughts about a publication where people have taken the time to think deeply? Click the link, take five minutes, and share your own thoughts below.

Most of my daily reading material is online these days, but not all. Six days a week my newspapers are online. They are, more accurately, news-apps and websites. Magazines, essays, blogs, newsletters: like you, I’m reading stuff on screens. But once a week I have appointment reading with a particu...

07/07/2025

Memes last a picosecond. Do you remember the coolest hotness in your feeds last summer? I’m guessing no. Remember anything from your feed last week? (See what I’m saying?) I’m guessing you probably DO remember a book or two that moved you when you were young, or a famous painting, or even a movie. They matter because they inform your present, even if you don’t have them in front of mind all day every day. But what happens when we can no longer recall any aspect of our collective culture beyond a collision of easily forgotten memes? My latest blog (hardly disposable!) is now live.

Memes last a picosecond. But tell the truth: do you even remember any of them from week to week? I’m guessing you probably DO remember a book or two that moved you when you were young, or a famous painting, or even a movie. They matter because they inform your present. But what happens when we can

06/02/2025

Hold it! Hold it! I see you scrolling right past this blurb. Back up, back up, back up! In fact, that’s the whole point of this month’s blog entry. The daily flood of information is now so deep that we hardly allow ourselves even a moment to consider much of anything beyond a few seconds of snarky text coupled with a heavily filtered, often disposable image. The flood fills the valley, but this month I’m writing about building a raft. You’re invited. Click the link and check out the view from above the deluge.

When a constant stream of information becomes more important that the ideas that stream might contain, culture risks losing its ability to think critically. What happens to a society when complex ideas or shared cultural reference points are overshadowed by fleeting moments of relative irrelevance?

04/07/2025

Perhaps you’re a specialist. You focus on one narrow field, expert in every way. Are you good at what you do? If so, you’ve inevitably come to that expertise after years of work and determination to refine your skills. But where do IDEAS come from? Where do leaps in insight, in understanding, in surprising innovations or solutions to problems that have until their moment of revelation did not exist? In my blog this month, I present the idea that thinking, just like doing, cannot be reduced to linear pursuits. Good work comes from focus and effort. Great work comes from allowing the rest of the world to invest itself in unexpected ways. Take five minutes and give yourself something new to consider.

Innovation requires expertise that has the wisdom to draw lessons from other disciplines. That requires not only an openness to otherness, but a curiosity and respect for otherness—infinite diversity in infinite combinations, in other words. This is, ironically, something that’s been happening a...

03/03/2025

It’s rare that a creative person finds ideal time to do creative work. There’s always something tugging at attention, bills to pay, dishes to wash, laundry to be folded. One of the best ways to get going when the going needs a jump start is to pay special attention ordinary things. What about that laundry? What about that stack of bills? Is there something compelling about filtered sunlight illuminating a mound of unfolded bedsheets? Are there narratively compelling implication of unseen forces lurking behind those invoices? When we see ordinary things with fresh eyes, we unlock parts of ourselves that were trying to get out in the first place. Suddenly, we’re back where we want to be: making stuff that matters. Need a moment of inspiration? Check out my latest blog, live now.

When the creative get-up-and-go needs a jump start, pay special attention ordinary things. Laundry in a basket becomes sculptural when sunlight adds shadows and flares to the pile, but only if you notice. When we see ordinary things with fresh eyes, we unlock the part of ourselves that was trying t

02/03/2025

Victory chocolate? Victory coffee? Victory….stock photography? With a massive merger in the works between two of the three biggest stock photography companies on Earth, the shape of the global creative conversation is about to change. It’s an old lament: when fewer people are in charge in the flow of information, the quality of discourse, invention, and critical analysis declines. This is true in creative spaces as much as it’s true in social and political spaces. It’s not that you won’t be able to find a photo of a balloon bouquet or a sleeping dog when you need one. It’s just that you’ll be doing business with one fewer option in the marketplace. Considering how few there were to begin with, the implications are neither good for the buyer nor the photographer who makes a living selling to the ultimate vendor victor. Commerce meets creative work: culture faces consequences. Start your considerations of this conundrum in my monthly blog, now live.

Fewer outlets for creatives to do business reduces their leverage in the marketplace. It may be good for the corporate winners, but it's not so good for those making the stuff that keeps the markets open. My blog this month examines a proposed merger between two photographic giants, and considers th

01/06/2025

Happy New Year! We’re one quarter through the century, and if there’s anything we should know by now, change is the only constant. As much as I’m interested to see how new voices and new styles will meet the endless churn of our short-attention-span days, I cannot help but try, try, try to hold on to aspects of cultural life that move at a more thoughtful pace. That’s why I’m starting the year with a Trojan Horse of a blog. Framed around the challenges of museums that have lately adopted QR codes in place of location specific presentations, I’m also calling out a larger challenge. When we live our lives in the thrall of our devices, we miss being present with the real world. For 2025, make a point to get to a museum of your choice and fully immerse yourself in the exhibition on display there. Need a push? Start here with my first blog of the year. (You can put your phone down after you read it, ok?)

Why go to a museum if you're just going to look at your phone? With the growing trend for museums to use QR codes as means for visitor interaction, one has to wonder if the many people are simply missing the whole point. Museums may not have deep resources these days (sad), but hand-held augmentatio

10/07/2024

Culturally speaking, who do you respect? That’s not the same thing as asking “who do you like?” The second question might be answered with something as ephemeral as an emoji thumb, or a little red heart, or perhaps even a click on a digital button that says “follow”. The first question means something entirely more profound. Let me put it another way. When was the last time you experienced widespread conversations about a movie or a book beyond a momentary splash of social media attention? In my blog this month, I unpack the strange transformation of culture where we largely abandoned our ability to consider new ideas and replaced it with an endless pursuit of distracting ourselves from anything more than a brief glance. And look: I’ve made it easy for you. Click the link and it will only cost you six or seven minutes of reading time!

Monoculture is no way to build an inclusive society. There are many voices and many viewpoints, and everyone should have a chance to contribute. But what happens when good ideas struggle to pe*****te collective consciousness? It used to be that big ideas has big influence on society. Does that even

09/02/2024

For Labor Day, it feels appropriate to consider how creative leaders interact with the crews they need to accomplish a job. Only by capturing other people can anyone ever expect to accomplish anything substantial. The means of capture range across wide ethical terrain. History shows solutions that include promises for payment, charismatic force of will, or cruel and involuntary servitude. Collective self-interest may motivate people to fill sand bags at the edge of town when flooding threatens, but that’s not the same thing as getting a team to build a skyscraper. If you’re someone in charge of an industrial enterprise, an opera company, or an original idea in need of extra hands, you have to solve the question of getting other people to do work that you cannot do by yourself. That’s the backdrop for this month’s blog. Hey: it’s a holiday! Take ten minutes, give it a read, and whether you agree, disagree, or simply see alternative points of view, share your comments.

if you aspire to make something beyond the ordinary, don’t fool yourself that mere adequacy will make your efforts eternal. The things history remembers are rare and precious and worthy of note precisely because someone cared to make them matter. High standards, however, do not confer license to i...

08/05/2024

The 2024 Paris Olympics opened with a creatively daring ceremony that challenged expectations and traditions. In reimagining how the whole event might look and feel, organizers reminded us that it's always good to re-consider old habits. It’s rare to mount big creative works aimed at global audiences, but every four years the Olympics presents new opportunities. There are perils in even trying this, of course, and costs, and challenges aplenty, but—mon dieu!— this year the French crew dreamed big, which is also why it seemed totally apropo to make the opening ceremonies the focus of this month’s blog. Enjoy!

The 2024 Paris Olympics opened with a creatively daring ceremony that challenged expectations and tradition. In reimagining how the whole event might look and feel, organizers reminded us that it's always good to shake ourselves out of old habits. In so doing, we face the potential to see the world-

07/01/2024

Most of our days concern attempts to get ordinary things done: the laundry, the bills, the dishes in the sink. If we dream of creative enterprise, large or small, our engines of creation usually spin flywheels of relative irrelevance. That’s why a scrap of paper discovered inadvertently provokes imagination as much as it instills solidarity with the person who doodled on that page. Taken as evidence of someone whose internal engine continued to spin even as tasks at hand may have been mundane reminds me that the machinery remains the same no matter what. Intrigued? You’ll never look at your own old notebooks the same way again, presuming you take five minutes and check out my latest blog post, live now.

Most of our days concern attempts to get ordinary things done: the laundry, the bills, the dishes in the sink. If we dream of creative enterprise, large or small, our engines of creation usually spin flywheels of relative irrelevance. That’s why a scrap of paper discovered inadvertently provokes i...

06/03/2024

Do you think having more options makes you more or less free? Depends if you're the kind of person who struggles to make a decision! Creative works are all about making choices, but sometimes we do our best work when confronted with hard limitations. Rather than "swiping left", take five minutes and read about the real freedom that comes when we make clear decisions amid endless choices.

Do you think having more options makes you more or less free? Depends if you're the kind of person who struggles to make a decision! Creative works are all about making choices, but sometimes we do our best work when confronted with hard limitations. Rather than "swiping left", take five m

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