This year, Slack Barshinger is taking a slightly different and more social approach to the holidays.
Twitter seemed to be everywhere in 2009, even becoming the “word of the year,” so we figured what better way to enjoy the holidays than in 140 characters!
For your holiday fun, we’ve Twitterized some familiar holiday classics (e.g., songs, movies), and we’ll be posting one a day to our Twitter account over the next few weeks for you to try to identify.
Now, as this is social media, we’d love to hear both your guesses and your Twitterizations of your own favorite holiday classics as well. Just send us your guesses and, if so inspired, your original compositions for everyone to guess at to @slackbarshinger and include the hashtag #holidaysin140 so everyone can follow along.
And as an added bonus, we’ve put together a fun little site called Seasons-Tweetings.com. Here you can see all the holiday’s best tweets in real time. Talking about Christmas in Connecticut, Hanukkah in Hawaii or Kwanzaa in Kansas? We’ll have them all right there.
The Economic Club of Chicago hosts a d-d-dynamite 3-D evening!
By Gary Slack Saturday December 19, 2009
Our 3-D bespectacled crew: Brian Lubluban, Michael Cole, Liz Peterman, Jeff Woelker, Gary Slack, Dawn Perry, Maritza Valle, Josh Schober, Karianne Wardell, Lauren Buchman, Chad Whitt
In 2007, thanks to Economic Club of Chicago board member and Ariel Investments President Mellody Hobson, the great George Lucas graced the Club’s annual December dinner, an event that traditionally features a leading entertainment industry figure and the one dinner a year to which members are encouraged to bring their adult children.
Dreamworks Animation SKG CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg
This past Tuesday, Dec. 15, thanks again to Mellody, Dreamworks Animation SKG CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg mesmerized the 1,500-person audience at the Chicago Hilton & Towers with a history of movie animation and clips of past, current and upcoming 3-D movies, including some hilarious and touching scenes, respectively, from “Shrek Forever After” and “How to Train Your Dragon,” both slated for release in 2010.
Because our adult children don’t live here, I’ve begun a tradition, starting with the George Lucas dinner, of taking a full table at the December dinner and inviting many of the very talented young adults who work in our firm. The impressive group shown above includes experts in graphic design, web development, search marketing, media, social media, accounting and account management.
The official dinner program and a pair of the RealD cinema eyeglasses
I’d heard the evening would have a large audio-visual component (and budget), so I knew we were in for a treat. Not only did we have a theatre-size screen and projection, but the Club had placed a pair of RealD cinema eyeglasses at each seat. Being new to 3-D movies, I was floored by the effect and suddenly realized why this innovation, which has been around since the 1950s but improved dramatically by Dreamworks, is proving to be such a hit at the box office. Now I can’t wait to see “Avatar” this weekend.
In his formal talk and during the Q&A session, masterfully led by Club Chairman and Ariel Investments CEO John Rogers, Katzenberg repeatedly turned to an umbrella theme of innovation, citing how shifting to computer design helped save Disney Studios and how 3-D technology is driving creativity, growth and profitability at Dreamworks.
“Change is good,” Katzenberg said, “if you’re going to choose the path of innovation,” noting that success can breed complacency and that even Dreamworks has been caught flat-footed from time to time. Of his very public and litigated firing from his role as head of Disney Studios by Disney’s Michael Eisner in 1994, Katzenberg, who also cited Eisner as a mentor, likened this forced career change to a blessing in disguise.
Club Chairman John Rogers, a master at Q&A
In the extended, nearly 45-minute Q&A session, John Rogers made every minute count, with some 15-20 probing business and lifestyle questions for Katzenberg, whose answers were often as riveting as the 3-D scenes he showed us during his talk. Quite aware of the many young people in the audience, Katzenberg directed many of his responses to them: “You have to believe in yourself in order to expect others to believe in you.” When asked what single thing he’s done to insure a great culture, he commented, only half-jokingly, “ping pong tables.” As might be imagined, I’ve been getting an earful every day since Tuesday.
Addendum: To read more about Katzenberg’s talk to the Economic Club, check out Brad Spirrison’s “Tech Matters” column from the Monday, Dec. 21, issue of the Chicago Sun-Times.