SAN FRANCISCO, CA — [PRNewsire] In its first month, Schmooru’s ‘Art as Life’ video project propelled the Schmooru Network to the #4 of YouTube partner channels by unique viewers according to Comscore.

While retaining the project’s purpose of bringing art to the masses, the ‘Art as Life’ videos have been viewed over 30 million times on Schmooru’s online video platform partners.

“Our purpose was to spread experimental art far and wide, and disrupt everyday people in everyday circumstances” said Dan Beckmann co-founder IB5k. “We aim to use the preeminent distribution platform of our era – the whole internet – to bring some humanity to the constant stream of ads that the world has to sit through on a daily basis.”

Schmooru has received several dozen submissions to the project from its closed network of professional film-makers, graphic designers, painters and artists – a community of creatives that counts in the thousands and hails from around the globe.

“Our community was just tired of having every creative idea ruined by committee,” said Beckmann, “so we let them have free reign of our network and pushed out whatever their minds could come up with.”

The ‘Art as Life’ project is ongoing, with new releases set to occur several times a week on a rolling basis through early 2012.

If you are interested in submitting to the ‘Art as Life’ project, please check out: http://schmooru.com/art-as-life
To see all of our contributions go here: http://schmooru.com/shows/art-as-life

Schmooru.com is an independent video destination backed by a community of creatives spanning the globe. Schmooru is wholly-owned by IB5k, a civically-minded, creative development firm born out of Obama’s 2008 New Media campaign.

For Press Inquires please contact:
Dan Beckmann, Co-Founder IB5k
415-480-IB5k

There have been many copies, derivatives, inspirations over the years, but Andy Rooney they also say is a true Original.

YET, even the name ROONEY, was taken and used for another grump in Ferris Buehler’s day off.

Ferris Buehler’s day off was fak’d ‘By the Bell

Three men and a baby was faked by Full House.

Good Morning America thought they’d fool you into thinking these two JOLLY weather guys were the SAME. They were not!

And the list goes on and on. At least these things were considered ‘derivative’ not complete copies.

Which brings us back to a few words with Andy Rooney.  Its hard to believe Andy is not going to be on television regularly anymore. You know, I remember as a little kid, even when I couldn’t understand any of the other stories on 60 Minutes and Mike Wallace just made sounds and funny faces, I knew what Andy Rooney was talking about with that extra cotton in the Tums container.

Oh and by the way, there’s a new “I like, I Don’t like” out this week. F. Nick Michaels Likes Facial hair and I must tell you its his best effort yet.

As I spend about half my time in New York City–I often think of our dear Mayor, Michael “Mike” Bloomberg and how he would react to whatever I’m looking at in the various corners and crevices of this massive city under his rule.  Has he been to the rooms full of garbage in Greenpoint?   Did he grease palms in the Target parking lot in Maspeth?  How about the Pee on the Franklin Avenue shuttle–did he smell it?     Has he ever been to Staten Island– he’s the mayor of that place too–right?

With the recent hurricane and the evacuations–I imagine that “Mike” was reminded about a place called the Far Far away called the Far Rockaways.  This beach front property, takes at least an hour to get there by the A train from the tip of manhattan– and that’s if you don’t take the Lefferts line by mistake.   This island that costs about $3.50 just to get over the bridge and about $2.25 to leave by train is filled with projects–GOODTIMES STYLE.

Why would anyone put projects on the beach?  Well lets just say–its REALLY HARD to be there in the winter time.   It doesn’t smell all that good in the summer time– and the places to make money are in a land you can sometimes see on a clear day, but in reality is far far away.

That’s where our newest series 36 Degrees takes place.   Filmmaker and Santa Cruz native Annie Woods, has been embedded in the quiet surf scene that actually exists in New York City.  Although in recent years it has gained more attention (I’m told they did just have the Quicksilver Pro Tour out in Long Beach) the east coast surf scene still remains a vague mystery to most.   36 Degrees goes where Bloomberg doesn’t–to the end of the A train to find out what it means to live in the biggest cosmopolitan city and be a surfer.

Did I ever mention, in 2006 I was threatened on an hourly basis based on my ability to write hit getting headlines?   This is a REAL, honest to gosh, truth from inside the Obama Campaign!   Its also the story behind Schmooru‘s most popular series The Narrow Show which launches our ALL NEW FALL SEASON!

2008 was an inspirational time to pretty much anyone.  Down at Obama’s New Media heaquarters in Chicago, it was an epicenter of CHANGE & HOPE.   We worked so hard there, we really didn’t have much time for anything else.   So, when I used to sneak out every week for an hour or three to go down to Chicago’s NPR station WBEZ and hijack an empty studio with my friend “Mike” to record a few conversations, I was really just trying to get a break from it all and do something…anything.. NON HOPEFUL.

Its true that IRA GLASS once spit on one of those mics we used, but he unfortunately had little to do with this extremely precious story about two college educated white boys who met at a university.  Despite Obama’s direct and divine influence on their creation, almost none of the recordings from these ‘campaign sessions’ have ever been released under “The Narrow Show” nomer.   In fact, Mike & I continued to record real conversations together despite very long distances and we’ve found that to work out much better.   It was over a year after the campaign was over, when we needed to start building a library for Schmooru, that we decided to take things to the ‘next level’ (please wait 30 years for the Narrow Show Anthology for these precious audio wonders to be released & they are good).

I sent Mike this show above as a method of putting still images to illustrate our words.  Its from this PBS show called Gather ‘Round(the guy in it was hip, before sters were born)– it was something they played for us during “Plan B” during elementary school growing up in Ohio.   “Plan B” meant that somehow the weather was too bad for even us rusted Northern Ohioans to go out and play–that we had to stay inside.   Accordingly, they still had to torture us while INSIDE, by playing VHS copies of alternating episodes of these BORING stories and the Freaky Friday with Jodie Foster, in 20 minute intervals.   While to this day, I’ve never seen any of these things all the way through — in the end, I guess it inspired this form that has brought joy, or maybe fascination is a better word, to 10s of thousands of schmoo viewers.

Despite many amazing things I’ve been a part of with great teams of people– The Narrow Show is the most cultural relevant things I’ve ever worked on that truly reflects the closest thing to my own personal vision.   We do not script– and it all just comes out.   From the personality that has driven away throngs of women(and many men too), is now the most successful thing we’ve got going right now.

Without further delay–the new as a brand spankin’ new baby’s forehead–> episode 110, The Cranials.

I still like the CRAZY days
I always will
thats why SF is home )
Liz: why is SF home?
me: I can have the crazy days without judgment my whole life through

I need the crazy days

Liz: ha
me: not so much at once
as HARRISON and etx did in the day
but I need crazy to be possible
there’s an unwink to people on the streets there, (she’s one who gets it and wants them too)

In NYC they seemingly want to write something or be told something about crazy days
then act them out. That’s all they have time & space for.

In DC they do this too, but they despise the crazy days


In SF, we’re just a bunch of little kids out there.
Liz: is there a heroin scene in brooklyn?
Liz: I got that distinct impression last time I visited
me: it wouldnt surprise me
thats not what Im looking for
Liz: I really tried to change the subject
no way man
awful

me: crazy is the freedom to not ‘make CENTS’

california-as a direct democracy doesnt make CENTS
they have laws that disagree
the place is ungovernable

like trying to make sense to a little kid
Liz: ha
me: I love that shit
theres so much opportunity in that

me: sometimes that leads to a BUMMER
but there’s more a chance to allow for STOKED
in california you only have those two choices.

Welcome to Schmooru.com. For those of you waiting since May 2009 — you no longer have to get your schmoo on alone! Every video you see here was made by a member of our community. While thoroughly checked before admitted — each was given the creative freedom and a modest budget to complete their work. They were not conceived in a conference table by a committee of people related to each other, NOR was any focus group or ratings paper consulted — each one of our creators had a vision and was able to go with it.

In the coming months, we will be seeking more programming and will be opening up applications for consideration to the world at large. In the meantime, we hope you’ll tell us what you think and enjoy — unfiltered creative televisions on the internet.

Here are some featured shows of Schmooru’s Inaugural season:

The Narrow Show

by Mike & Dan

Some have called it the last radio show, others worry federal wire taping laws have been broken as these are real telephone conversations recorded between Mike & Dan. Whatever the case — their focus in life is very narrow and their exchanges, friggin’ hilarious.

Food With Sam

by Sam Reiff-Pasarew

So long as man has walked the earth and looked to thrive in its harsh environs, he has yearned to eat three meals a day. That’s upwards of 100,000 meals in a lifetime. Some see this as a chore, or a necessary evil. But to others, it is an opportunity … it is the greatest opportunity the world has to offer.

Mike Nugent’s Montana

by Mike Nugent, Kier Atherton & Rob Levy

Mike Nugent, his friend Rob and his companion Deter show you unfiltered Montana, the way its really lived, by those who call Big Sky Country their home.

Ask Dr. Esther

by Dr. Esther Beckmann

Dr. Esther has been in private practice in the midwestern United States for over 30 years. She’s heard it all and now she brings her wisdom to Schmooru.

I Like, I Don’t Like

by F. Nick Michaels

F. Nick Michaels’ series on the things HE LIKES and the things HE DOESN’T LIKE!

Make It Happen

by Teamjaded Productions: Jeremey Lavoi & Abbey Berendt

A documentary series dedicated to covering people succeeding at what they love, and doing so independently.

Immigrantz

by Megan Malone, Writer; Nolan Tredway, animation; Joe Scholz and Javid Dabestani, sound

PILOT SERIES: Hijinks ensue on the US-Mexico border as one man resorts to increasingly elaborate measures in his fight to ebb the tide of immigration.

Coming This Spring:
Schmooru’s First Documentary Series
Two Animated Series: One Comedic, another Political

For more questions, comments or concerns, please add them below or go to our contact page!

To give you all a clear understanding that Schmoonews is about the Creative Process and holds nothing back–I’m about to peel away the curtin into some of the questions you all have been asking me about how we’ve gotten this thing together and what’s the deal with BECKMANN and his seemingly illustrious life of travel and mystery. More than anything this post documents our PRE HISTORY in creating SCHMOO.

Exactly one year ago today, Barack Obama was elected president–and that’s a critical moment in the history not just for the world, but for us. You see, I started my self-imposed exile from my place in San Francisco at the end of July 2008 to move to Chicago and join the New Media part of that campaign. When we won–and then a week later, Current TV laid off the division I had been working for, I decided in those cold dark days of November, to start something SCHMOO–although not even the name had surfaced yet.

All I knew was that so many of you who had done work for us and so many of the talented people I’d worked with were now all of sudden out in the cold–whilst I felt like I had won the lottery. Finding myself in the midst of a historic and winning presidential campaign.

Fast forwarding to now–we will get to the parts in between at another point–I never went back home. I continued to go about the country and put together the pieces that at first became our parent company, IB5k and then later our subset for the creative types, Schmooru.com.

How did I do this? As you can recall–after Obama got elected, the sky was literally falling. The economy was in shambles and people thought the banks were going to fail. Schmooru, I’m proud to say has received no investment in these early stages which means there are no strings attached while firmly developing our foundation. We control our own house and from there we can dream unbeholden.

It did cost money–and I’m happy to report, my savings are mostly intact. The first thing that’s been mysterious to me and I hope no one from the MGM Mirage corporation is reading this–but every time I’ve needed the money for something, I’ve gotten it in a casino. In a sense MGM and a few other names are investors in this company. Same way FEDEX started.

I don’t believe in gambling–but I’ve only lost one time this year. I’ve never gotten more than I needed to get me past the next post. Before Obama called in July of 2008, I had won a HUGE take in Detroit which made me feel comfortable taking the drastic pay cut to sign up–because it was so mysteriously large, I thought it meant something larger than me.

There are your curators who worked on a HOPE and a DREAM who basically did this stuff for future pay, but beyond that they deeply care in what we’re all trying to do there. Primarily, to have a lawyer, a webmaster, a business builder, a powerful DC power broker, an impeccably capable renaissance video man–but also, the girl I called one week after the election and said “I don’t know what it is, but we’re going to go out there and do something’–the most networked girl in video production–cause this thing always was conceived and lives within community–without these people–there would be no SCHMOO.

But that’s not all. It took a village. A global one–in order to build this thing. And primarily–its not having paid rent for an entire year that has really gotten this thing off the ground. By my count I’ve stayed in over 47 different spots this year, and never slept in the street unless it was on purpose(There was the one night in Chicago when I wanted to go home and my hosts were partying all night but that was good for me;). I would say a word to the wisest is you have to keep on moving every three days in order to not overstay a welcome–but below, I’ve chronicled every place I’ve stayed in the last year–and many of them were repeats.

These people all contributed to the possibility, that creative people like all of you could band together–do projects bigger than oneself–and in doing so, help to preserve a creative lifestyle and profession that’s necessary to ensure our happy futures.

CHI
Caitlin Dorsey
Mike Debonis
The New Media Mansion people

STL
The Rev. Ben Schartman

NYC
Katie Beckmann

LA
Lauren Cerre & Tyler Manson-

SF
John Reed & Sarah McKinney

Omaha
Paul Tulipana & Megan Malone

Louisville
Tom Green

Birmingham
Mark Nugent & Jessica Kerley

Miami
Mark Steiner

St. Louis
Harrahs;)

Toledo
David & Esther Beckmann

Washington, DC Inauguration
Allison Archaubault

NYC
Holly Ecker and Christopher Smith

Washington DC/Manassas, VA
Mathew Taylor
David Bychkov & Nadia Madjid

SF
Richie Zevin

Bozeman, MT
Michael J. “mini” Noogent
Michael and Naomi Nugent

LA
Sarah Evershed & Julian Robinson
Dylan Ris

SF
Danny Debonis

Chicago,
Zac Witte & Goeff Domeracki

SF
Tori Taylor & Dave McMillan

LA
Saskia Wilson Brown

Wyoming
The Eversheds

NYC
John F. Brunner
Jory Cunningham
Sam Reiff-Pasarew

DC
Max Harper

Amsterdam
Dennis DeLange
Mike Glennon

NYC
Clare Sullivan & Thomas Hallaran

Great Barrington, MA
Nathanial Kerksick

CHI
Caitlin Dorsey
Mike Debonis
The New Media Mansion people

STL
The Rev. Ben Schartman

NYC
Katie Beckmann

LA
Lauren Cerre & Tyler Manson-

SF
John Reed & Sarah McKinney

Omaha
Paul Tulipana & Megan Malone

Louisville
Tom Green

Birmingham
Mark Nugent & Jessica Kerley

Miami
Mark Steiner

St. Louis
Harrahs;)

Toledo
David & Esther Beckmann

Washington, DC Inauguration
Allison Archaubault

NYC
Holly Ecker and Christopher Smith

Washington DC/Manassas, VA
Mathew Taylor
David Bychkov & Nadia Madjid

SF
Richie Zevin

Bozeman, MT
Michael J. “mini” Noogent
Michael and Naomi Nugent

LA
Sarah Evershed & Julian Robinson
Dylan Ris

SF
Danny Debonis

Chicago,
Zac Witte & Goeff Domeracki

SF
Tori Taylor & Dave McMillan

LA
Saskia Wilson Brown

Wyoming
The Eversheds

NYC
John F. Brunner
Jory Cunningham
Sam Reiff-Pasarew

DC
Max Harper

Amsterdam
Dennis DeLange
Mike Glennon

NYC
Clare Sullivan & Thomas Hallaran

Great Barrington, MA
Nathanial Kerksick

Many in the “chattering circles” have been wondering, what’s the COMING SOON about? Why not just fling open the doors — What in THE HELL is going on in there?

Well hold your horses! There’s a heck of a lot going on inside schmooru right now. Building a solid creative community is like a nicely stacked woodshed(as more eloquently pointed out by Lee on her 2or3things) — you have to build it piece by piece. Sometimes you have to adjust a few things to the natural flow of the wood. This helps so your structure doesn’t fall over in a storm — and prevents water and varments from damaging too much of your wood!

We like to call this the Evershed Plan® — building a community that lasts the test of our creative times! Our person in charge of this initiative is also conveniently named Sarah Evershed and here’s a picture with her father Gary Evershed, one of the original Eversheders — in a long line of folks who’ve been building things right since man decided to put things together:

So to get more specific — we’re in the process of bringing in the right foundation of creative muscle and matching them up with the right group of creative consumers to make sure things match up right. We’re going through community building exercises so our Schmoos can Schmoo. We’re not in any hurries. We also don’t have to be known by every Tom, Dick, and Harriet out there. We just need to keep doing our thing well and stacking the wood just so — so that we’ll have this property to hand down to the next generation of Schmoos. That’s what we’re in this for.

If you have any questions or are interested in getting in on this early BONUS Round — please contact us. If anything, we’re friendly.

— D. P. B., Amsterdam 08.07.09

Something that’s been bothering me about this whole Laura Ling Thing, is she’s been my liberator several times since we first met-the most recent occasion was one year ago today when she paroled me from the idea there was no place better than working with her so I could run off and join the Obama’s new media team. When I met Laura I was a corporate loyalist — now three years later I even find myself liberated from paying rent for one full year now and in many respects its all her fault. Five months into this whole fucked up thing-one in which I think we all sort of felt in March would just end quickly and then REALLY didn’t-I’ve been unable to come close to returning the favor even once.

Prisons of the Mind

I’m not going to suggest that my “prisons” were anywhere near the severity of the ones that Laura Ling is dealing with right now — but Laura took them very seriously. In fact, I feel comfortable speaking on behalf of anyone that’s ever worked for her — she took our problems home with her and gave us the courtesy of never telling us she was doing it — we all probably can share some responsibility for that ulcer of hers. Reprieves would quietly just appear with no thank you necessary or a funny awkward giggle would arrive when you know she’d tried all that she could do. She was always so much more concerned about how we were feeling than about how any of it effected her and quite a few of us are worried that she’s probably doing that right now where ever the hell she still is.

I will say that the prisons in one’s mind are often one of the hardest ones to break out of. Its walls are sometimes hard to define if you even know you’re there-no sovereign nations (should;) exist in one’s mind. So in that all too familiar Vanguard fashion when dealing with a problem on the frontier of media, lets call a big meeting, sit down — all the brightest young minds and most beautiful people we know will be there and we’ll go through the big Laura Ling break outs, one by one.

JAIL BREAK ONE — Get the fuck out of Gotham.

I first met Laura for a face to face interview in San Francisco in June of 2006 — I found her to be well-organized with a clip board, rigid and frankly a little snooty when compared to the train of others I saw that day. I didn’t think working in her department was right for me. I was wrong.

I didn’t get that job, whatever it was and proceeded to keep open a discussion with her and to an almost daily extent, her Executive Producer Mitch Koss, as well. 2006 was a big year for me — after being brought over from Good Morning America as a Reporter/Producer, I ran the politics page page during the mid-term elections at ABCNews.com. This was the year when the Dems took over the House, and one of our stories about Mark Foley — got our team a Peabody for innovations in on-line reporting. ABCNews.com was breaking hit records every single month and it seemed like the place to be.

Unfortunately by the time 2007, with the election over I found myself making poll after poll after poll about whether this or that famous person had gone “too far”. They stopped vacuuming at ABCNews.com(or maybe never started?), there was a shelf of DUST that ran the length of the newsroom and I was allergic to the place, yet spending 12 hours a day there. Their ranch dressing coffee cups they gave us didn’t seem to have any caffeine in them and our office was located too far away from Starbucks to catch an easy break without getting yelled at for leaving your post.

I had been living in New York for 4 years — Long Island City, Queens to be exact — I was tired of all of it and felt like I was going nowhere every New York minute. I wanted to get the rock out of there three years in, but then had another year to suffer there. I wanted to out but there’s this thing about leaving “the network” — its not easy to do it.

Laura took a chance on “old media” me — and offered me a job to work on her citizen journalism project and their election year initiatives at Current TV in San Francisco. She gave me SEVEN WEEKS in between jobs to polish off my ties at ABC NEWS and move across the country — I hadn’t had a vacation like that since college. She also gave me 4 GRAND for the move — I did it in 2.

JAIL BREAK TWO — Becoming Human Again

After working in the MSM for about four years in New York, working about 20 hours a day at times and living in Queens, I had long forgotten what it meant to be a regular person — a human BEING — because I wasn’t.

For the first few months after I arrived at Current, I tended to apologize for just about everything I said before I said it. I wasn’t used to trusting people after working at a competitive network in a cut throat town-and most of the time when I had ideas about something, it was strategically best to build a coalition of the “not saying noing” before breathing it out loud. In Laura’s world, people were going home after work and not checking their blackberries — or were they? On the weekends, they made plans — or were they? When they went to lunch with each other, they seemed to enjoy each others’ company — or did they actually hate each other? Current was a growing company in those days and Laura’s unit was expanding like crazy — a rare thing in this business and it truly was.

It took me a few times to realize that when Laura kept telling that she wanted me there and to share my ideas, whatever they were — that she probably actually did. The best I could ever do at ABC was take a “no reply” or a “maybe” and turn it into a yes. There were still occasions when I worried about my brake lines being severed in the middle of the night for starting that “beat unit” at ABC after some threats I’d received — I mean you just really never knew.

I think it was a whole four months after starting when I realized — not only could I feel comfortable being myself around these people — I could actually say whatever the hell I wanted and they seemed to LIKE THAT more! SO, I began to do just that. I started telling Laura whatever I could come up with. If I thought something sucked I would tell her. She gave every single one of my crazy ideas consideration and never seemed to tire of them. Sometimes I got tired of me — Laura never seemed to. She was like a Jack in the Box — no matter what she would come back up for more. And every single time, if I was willing to do the work and prove something to her — she was pretty willing and ready to go along for the ride.

I wasn’t the only one. We had a community of hundreds of burgeoning journalist/filmakers and she liked to talk to them all. There wasn’t a single one who wanted to meet with her in LA that she didn’t make time for. At a certain point it was almost absurd — why was she doing all of this? She could have gone home much earlier if she didn’t take in all of our crap — but the truth is — she loves people, she loved helping them be the best they could be, she saw the VALUE in that — and more than anything — Laura Ling is the most open minded Californian that I’ve ever met, she’s always waiting for new people and what they might bring.

As a result of this freedom, the seeds for Schmooru were not only planted — but we were able to pilot several other things under Laura’s reign, some of which haven’t come out yet — others which have and when ever people actually get to know about them, they attract obsessive crowds. Just look at Current Vanguard in Italy. And stay tuned for Current Vanguard here. She lets people do what they do best as long as they can prove to her they can get the work done, by just doing it.

More than becoming human again, it may seem sappy, but Laura brought me out to California and created a whole new world for me — I hope sometime soon she can be returned to hers.

JAIL BREAK THREE — A half tank of gas @ 5$ a gallon, no cigarettes and 1500 miles to Chicago…

The time I spent at Current TV working under Laura Ling, Andrew Fitzgerald and the rest of the gang that somehow assembled there for that special wrinkle in creative history was the most expansive period for personal growth I’d experienced in adult life up to that point. It still continues to provide for me in all the amazing people that somehow gathered there and have now largely proliferated to all places where you find cool, beautiful and talented people.

I was getting paid to do work that I always wanted to do, was putting away money and in many respects the bonds that I felt like I was building within our journalistic community were just beginning to gel in anticipation of a big election documentary project which had a mainstream buy in if we got it finished. I could not only count on these people, most of whom I’d never met in person to tell the truth, talking to them all on the phone everyday where ever they were — I really enjoyed my life. I was working with friends I cared about — not colleagues — I was living in a town that I loved and I just got a ZOJIRUSHI water heater and filled up the fridge with a year long supply of KIMCHI from COSTCO. Life was good.

When the Obama campaign called and asked me to join their New Media Team about a year ago this week — and told me I had to be there in one week…I wasn’t going to take it. Why would I leave for something that would have me out in the cold streets of Chicago in the middle of November? I didn’t want to work in government. Further — would I give up my objectivity as a journalist — something that had been very important to me(and probably only me it seems right now)?

First my mom told me to do it. Then this guy Kaj Larsen happened to be in the office that day — he was a navy seal and he ordered me to do it for my country. I truly wasn’t convinced until I had a phone call with Laura Ling. I didn’t really know what to expect from her — it was August 1, 2008 — I was asking if I could leave her in one week — and she had hired me to work on the election.

Her first reaction was to ask if I was still happy working at Current and if she had done anything wrong. I was like — I think the reason I’m considering this is for the first time in my life I feel strongly about a candidate and, I’ve never worked on a presidential campaign before in the headquarters. Those two things are something that may never come happen again — I would have always wondered what would have been. But I was still comfortable in my spot in life and I didn’t want to let anyone down.

And what came next is classic Laura. She told me to go for it. That we all had to do what made us excited in our lives. She supported me in every way possible — and didn’t expect anything from me in a return. The last day I was at Current, she took us all out for lunch at a really expensive place and paid for it. I felt like I was leaving them on the train 3 months short of the station. I don’t burn bridges and I would not have left Current if Laura had said I was letting her down — she let me off the hook Scot free.

The Last Time I Heard From Laura

As was common with all things Current, we video journaled every damn thing. Laura implied that doing a video journal might be FUN!. Andrew tried to convince me of the therapeutic nature of talking to a camera every night. I didn’t have to do one, and I sort of didn’t. But I did start one — and here it is

When I got back to San Francisco from the war, my roommate said she liked the subletter better than me and so I unveiled my “video journal” as part of the invitation to my moving out party. Laura was on assignment in Northern China and here’s what she wrote:

Between You and Laura Ling

Laura Ling

March 14 at 7:01pm

beckmann!
it’s 7am in northern china. i’m about to head out on a shoot. but i finally had a chance to watch your video. it’s great! what a cool memory to have. you’re a man after my own heart — kimchee and salami are 2 of my favorite things. if only i were single again. hope all is well.

I was in her office hanging out about 2 days later and we didn’t know what happened next. In almost every way, I still don’t and won’t until she returns.

Schmooru is a creative economy. There would be no schmooru without Laura Ling.

In the almost 5 months since Laura’s been gone — considering how actively she sought expansion, we don’t know as a community and as a profession what economies and worlds were not created. Those who don’t know Laura will probably think I’m just saying nice things about her because she’s in a bad spot right now and that’s what people do — but those who know Laura know thats not true. The idea that we can find things to create and channel it through this thing is predicated on the notion that people should do things that are exciting to them. Not that she holds exclusive rights to that idea, but I certainly wouldn’t have met most of you if Laura had not encouraged me to put this thing together and allowed me the space to do so. That’s not only what good managers do, enablers in positions of power are especially rare in this industry.

I think its important, especially since so many of your know her so well and what a tremendous force she is, that when it gets quiet, you make some noise every now and then about who she is and what she stood for — its not the same as having her back here — but it adds more character to who she is as a person for those who only know her by those strange pictures floating around.

There are three things Schmooru and anyone else reading this can do right now:

One is sign the petition (which I’m sure most Schmoos have done).

Second — is send her postcards.

PO Box 2174
Toluca Lake, CA 91610
USA

Third is to join the mailing list of supporters at Lauraandeuna.com

— Beckmann, Toledo, OH 8/1/09

A lot of places have so-called “blogs” these days. Here’s a smattering of corporatey ones THEY thought you might find necessarily interesting:

DELTA
For the times you’re not delayed, sitting at home, but wish you were: http://blog.delta.com

GM
Coming to you from that guy at the conference table from the “how to avoid bankruptcy” meeting who was like “we could start a blog?” — I like to describe those types of ideas, lets call them “Shirleys” after the drink “Shirley Temple”, as akin to holding up a cocktail umbrella during a shit storm: http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/

WALMART
Don’t forget to “check out this blog”;) where all the “lanes are open”;) — and while you’re there checking out “gadgets, green gaming and MORE!”;) cause that’s what ALL blogs are about;) remember those HAPPY employees at the REAL checkouts “who wish they could afford computers of their own & Health care”;) http://www.checkoutblog.com/

MCDONALDS
And then while you’re at Wal-BLOG, why not wash down your day of corporate readings by driving-thru this one on your way home, although we doubt several thousand, let alone billions and billions have been served here: http://www.crmcdonalds.com/publish/csr/home/_blog.html

@Schmooru
if we have anything, we’ve got aspirations. And while these corporate blogs above are to be applauded for their attempts to start some sort of dialogue with corporate stalkers, WE HERE have at Schmooru have a deeper mandate — Together {RE} We Build Media ! And how does one actually go about {RE} Building Media? That’s what the SchmooNEWS is for — a blog dedicated to telling the story of our collective journey — intended to inspire us NEW MEDIA DOOZERS to DOOZE what we DO.

SchmooNEWS is the New {Shirley Temple} Black!

It doesn’t end there — you’re curators and in fact, many of you will soon be contributing to this feed on a regular basis — intelligently and WITH purpose. So while the “other guys” sit around and phlem about Heidi Klum — we’re gonna go BACK in TIME and use some of the things that worked that have since been thrown away — dust it off and re-use some of the oldest tricks in the book. In this case, it’s old school, origination generation — in the form of BEATS (yes for those who know Beckmann well — I love BEETS)

The following Curators follow and write about the following ideas:

Dan Beckmann — Creative Process: Where Ideas Originate From/Creative Industry
Sarah Evershed — Schmooru Community/Creative Folks and how they do what they do
Tori Taylor — Schmooru Client Community/Acts of Creative Implementation
Jared Tankel — Legal Schmeegals for Creative Types/How to be COOL and CREATE
John Reed — Online standards in creation

{more coming soon}