We've Moved

I have moved the blog to a standalone website and it can be found at http://www.brushwithextinction.com/.

See you there.

Week 6 –Learning how to blog - Choosing a Domain Name

Almost as soon as I had decided to go with Blogger.com, I started to question my decision. A post from ProBlogger.net on choosing a name for your blog certainly got me thinking about changing from a free hosted blog. The main reason for this is that I believe that professionalism and credibility are crucial to this project and having a website address of brushwithextinction.blogspot.com seemed to muddy the waters. Even though the project is starting with humble beginnings, I don’t want to appear amateurish. I want to create a kind of brand around the title of the project and having a domain of the same name would help to do that. Having my own domain would also enable me to have email addresses with the same domain name, which would add to the perception of professionalism and branding. I also know that I want to create a website that accompanies the blog that will have downloadable information about the Brush with Extinction. So, I have decided to set up my own website for the blog with the address of brushwithextinction.com and an accompanying website for the project under the pending name of the production company behind the project, wildeaselproductions.com. Now I just have to find a host for the website and a designer to put the website together.

Week 5 –Learning how to blog – Post Length and Frequency

While researching the world of blogging and how to put one together, I quickly discovered the importance of post length and frequency as part of writing good content. In his post about post length, Darren Rowse at ProBlogger.net councils to keep the readers attention span in mind, as well as ensuring comprehensive coverage of the topic. Another excellent source of information about blogging at johnchow.com talked about how nothing turns off a blog reader more than blogs updated on an inconsistent schedule. The key appears to be the frequency of the posts, not their length. That said, the consensus seems to be that I should try and keep the post to between 200 to 250 words. To date, I have averaged just over 300 words per post, but given that I have only a couple of posts under my belt and the introduction to the project were more lengthy to cover the topic, I seems to be on track.

In order to keep to those guides, I am going to try to write at least one longer post per week to give a summary of the progress that I have made on the project in the proceeding seven days, as well as throwing in shorter posts throughout the week of news or other milestones as they happen.
One of my faults is that I try to completely sure of something before I get stuck in and I am starting to do it with this blogging project as well. The more that I research about how to blog, the more that I find that I don’t know. However, it is time to stop aiming the damn thing and actually fire. I have decided to just go for it and learn as I go. I am sure that there are many things that I will miss or make mistakes on, but I sure that the experience will help me be a better blogger.

Week 4 –Learning how to blog - Choosing a Platform

As a complete blogging neophyte, I set about learning how to put a blog together. The most helpful resource was Blogging for Beginners, an excellent series of articles put together by Darren Rowse at ProBlogger.net. From it, I was able to answer some basic questions such as which blog platform to use and basic formatting. Following the information that I gathered from ProBlogger.net and surveys of the features of different blogging software, my initial plan was to use one of the free hosted blogging platforms, such as Blogger.com or Wordpress.com. Given my limitation of a lack of programming ability and a budget of zero, I liked the fact that the hosted platforms took care of the hosting, were easy to set up, simple to use, and were free. To get the view from the trenches, I consulted with a family friend who is half of the dynamic duo behind the wickedly acerbic commentary of dubious celebrity fashion sense, Go Fug Yourself. It turns out that their site had started on Blogger and then switched to Typepad for its better archiving ability. An informal survey by ProBlogger.net indicated that the Blogger.com was the most common of the free hosted platforms, so following the precept of the wisdom of crowds, I went with Blogger.com.

Week 3 – Who We Are – Everyone Else

I view this project as the “perfect storm” of my educational background and interests in conservation, wildlife art and filmmaking. I have been involved in wildlife conservation since I read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring as a fourth grader and have raised money for Greenpeace, Rhino Rescue, the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, and the World Wildlife Fund. I am also an avid wildlife art collector and on my limited budget I have managed to collect pieces by John James Audubon, Herbert Dicksee, Randy Puckett, Andrea Rich, and Simon Turvey, as well as several work by my sister. I started my higher education by obtaining a degree in film production from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and even managed to make a short documentary about the Northern elephant seal of Año Nuevo Island while I was there. After graduation, my lack of contacts in the film industry and a desire to do more than menial labor had me entering the business world and a new career in financial management. After several years working in London, I returned to the States to obtain my Masters of International Business from Thunderbird School of Global Management. Since obtaining my masters degree I have been working in financial and operational management for several small businesses. With this project I am able to combine my passion for the environment with a technical understanding of documentary filmmaking and solid understanding of financial projections and budgeting.

Week 2 – Who we are – The Artist

I conceived of Brush with Extinction as a way of both highlighting the plight of endangered primates and showcasing my wildlife artist sister at the same time. Before I get much further, I thought that it would be worthwhile introducing the two players in this little adventure. The first person to talk about is the one who will be in front of the camera: my talented sister.

Lauren Dorman has been an artist her whole life and has studied at some of the most prestigious art schools in the world. She started with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration from the Parsons School of Design, Paris. She then returned to London to complete an Illustrative Arts degree with first class honors from City & Guilds London Art School. Lauren’s first-class education was then capped off with a Masters of Art in Natural History Illustration with an Ecology Emphasis at the Royal College of Art.

Lauren currently works as a freelance wildlife artist and illustrator, with several gallery shows (Space Gallery, Coningsby Gallery, London Zoo Gallery, and Lauderdale House) and book illustrations (Touching Wildlife, Tales of Indian Nights, and Spells for Cats) under her belt. She is also a great traveler, finding inspiration for her work in expeditions to Africa and South America. Lauren was certainly no tourist in her travels, working as a volunteer artist for the Worldwide Fund for Nature in the Okwango Rainforest in Nigeria and the expedition artist at the Environmental Learning Institute Rescue and Rehab Centre on the Napo River in Ecuador. Both trips entailed spending several months deep in the rainforest, working with the indigenous population on conservation projects and sketching the local wildlife.
The reason that I emphasis all of Lauren’s accomplishments up front is that I don’t want Brush with Extinction to appear as if it is a vanity project featuring some self-professed artiste who couldn’t draw her way out of a paper bag. As you can probably tell, I am a huge fan, but fraternal pride aside, I think it is important to point out that I like all of Lauren’s work enough that I would pay, and have paid for it.

Week 1 – What is this all about?

For my first effort in blogging, I thought it would be worthwhile to give some background on my endeavor and explain what this website is all about. In January 2000, Conservation International and the World Conservation Union’s Species Survival Commission released a report that highlighted twenty-five species of apes, monkeys, lemurs, and other primates at risk of disappearing forever. In an epiphany worthy of Archimedes, I hatched a plan that would combine my background in film production and finance and the work of my sister, a wildlife artist specialized in primates. My idea was to create a documentary series that would show a wildlife artist traveling to the locations of the extremely endangered primates in an attempt to locate and paint them.

Thus, Brush with Extinction was born.

The plan was to produce a short series of four, 60-minute documentaries about the most endangered primates in the world and an artist’s journey to paint these rare animals before they become extinct. I spent the next year creating a comprehensive documentary proposal for the project, which included a story synopsis, project overview, background research, artist biography, proposed production schedule and budget, market research, and income projections. Once the document was complete I shopped it to a couple of wildlife documentary companies in the United Kingdom, Tigress Productions and Green Umbrella Productions. After a couple of emails back and forth, I received the standard “we don’t accept unsolicited scripts” response and the wind was taken out of my sails. At that point, life intervened and the project was moved to the back burner.

To use a bit of film terminology, fade to the present day. While moving houses I unearthed my original proposal for Brush with Extinction and got all fired up to reinvigorate the project. I resolved that I would put all of my energy in 2007 making the project happen. Around the same time I was reading some personal finance blogs that talked about the utility of a blog to keep focused on a goal and I had another epiphany (naked Greek mathematicians have nothing on me!). I would set up a blog to track my progress in putting Brush with Extinction together and use the online journal to celebrate the successes and motivate me to keep going through the inevitable low points. Which brings us to this blog and this first of many entries. Enjoy!