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DelMio In Person

The producer of this exploration is Dave Wilson, freelance writer and multimedia creator. He was an editor for 10 years at the Akron Beacon Journal and eight years at the (Myrtle Beach, S.C.) Sun News. He holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from The Ohio State University.

He lives in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, with his wife, DeAnne, and son Matthew, 12, and daughter Lindsey, 8.

Dave’s blog:

The Exploration begins

Hi, I’m Dave, and I’ll be your blogger today.
So I read the book, did the exercises at the end of each chapter, and got a pretty good feel for the book and Stephen Post’s research and concepts. And just FYI, I do buy into it completely. The research is there, and the anecdotes cited in the book and my own personal experiences reinforce it. Everyone can cite examples of nice guys getting slaughtered, and it’s absolutely true. But the tendency, the trend, has been scientifically proven that being a decent human being pays off. I don’t know that it would hold true if anarchy replaced some semblance of law and order. But that’s a book for another day. Or you could just reread The Lord of the Flies.
Why Good Things Happen to Good People, as you probably know, is very readable. It doesn’t have that dry, academic read of a scholarly paper, although it’s based on solid scientific work. This is mentioned elsewhere on the site, but if you happen to like dry, scholarly writing, check out the companion book Altruism & Health: Perspectives from Empirical Research. Stephen Post edited it. I confess I haven’t read it all yet. The authors are the people who conducted the research that Why Good Things Happen to Good People is based upon. And don’t tell me you can’t end a sentence with a preposition. That’s not a real rule. The American Heritage Dictionary says so. And it’s the sort of thing up with which I will not put!
Anyway, after a series of meetings with Diane, Mike and the gang at MindGrab Media, the ideas for the exploration were beginning to take shape.
We met with Stephen Post at one of those corporate coffee shops that seem to serve as de facto offices for a lot of folks. He promptly handed over a pile of material for us to use as needed for the Exploration. He struck me as very open and friendly. Pretty much the guy you see in the Q&A videos, which were shot about a week after our first meeting.
We shot the video at his IRUL office at Case Western Reserve University. I asked if he wanted to see my list of questions, and after glancing briefly at them, decided he’d be better off not. His answers in the videos were completely spontaneous. Though I imagine that he knows the subject so well and has spoken about it so often, that the answers come readily.
It’s funny. Stephen was looking at me through most of the shooting, but because of the camera angle and editing it’s as if I didn’t exist. I think that was by design. I think my feeling are hurt.
Now, armed with about 40 minutes of raw video and tons of other material, we were ready for the first swing at our exploration of Why Good Things Happen to Good People.
This truly has been a work in progress. DelMio is a very young company, and this sort of thing hasn’t been done before, as far as I know (and the librarians we’ve talked to are ecstatic about what we’re doing).
To that end, we certainly welcome your feedback – what you like, what you don’t like. I don’t know that we’re soliciting book selections yet, but that could change. When we get Oprah’s attention, we’ll know we have arrived.
Until then, Na-Nu, Na-Nu.

Liftoff

Today (June 8, 2007) was the DelMio retreat, the official unofficial launch. People showed up at the MindGrab office area, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 8:30 a.m. It was another reunion with former Beacon Journalistas, full of hugs and handshakes and all that jazz.

People were so busy gabbing outside of the conference room that someone finally had to herd us in.

The A/C was noisy, and the skylight made it hard to see the images projected on the wall. Other than that, as I believe Marcus May quipped, the room was perfect.

The usual suspects were there: Marcus and David Walker of MindGrab, Diane and Mike, business adviser Stephen Brand and Your Favorite Producer (he said ever so humbly). Then there were the unusual suspects: Thom Fladung, Jane Snow, Mary Ethridge and Candace Goforth, all formerly of the Beacon, and a couple of business advisers and other supporters.

Also, there was Vadim Eelen, who has an Internet conferencing company that, once we get that up and running, will blow people away. It will allow, say, an author to videoconference with hundreds of fans, or conduct a virtual classroom. From anywhere to anywhere. All you need is a Flash Player, a microphone and video camera (optional) hooked up to your computer. Click a button to raise your virtual hand.

That definitely had some Wow factor.

All in all, it was an energetic and positive meeting.

An area of concern among some journalistas was preserving journalistic integrity and resisting pressure from “sponsors” of the site to Explore a certain book that we might not otherwise do, or that we’d be pressured to brush over flaws in a book.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s a nonissue. We reserve the right to refuse to explore something. We just tell ‘em no. Sure, some unsophisticated advertisers try to pressure newspaper newsrooms and any newspaper worth its weight in, well, paper, will slap ‘em down. Beatdown!

Speaking of beatdowns, the Cavs didn’t look too good Thursday night against the Spurs in Game One of the NBA Championship. Oh well. Have no fear, dear readers, this will not turn into a sports rant. Just had to work in the “beatdown” segue. So sue me.

The Beginning

About a month ago, I got a call from Mike Needs. He asked if I was interested in some work.

Well, duh!

After getting laid off nine months ago, not knowing where I was going the next day had gotten old. I’ll spare you the bitter recriminations of the layoff. I still have friends there. I’d been pretty busy this spring, picking up freelance work around town. But interviews for full-time gigs were few and far between. And some of the ones I did interview for really weren’t very appealing. The Northeast Ohio economy is struggling now. There’s just not a whole lot of hiring going on. So yeah, it’s been frustrating.

What I really wanted was something that gets deeply involved in multimedia function — Web, video, interactive stuff, with freedom to write and edit and do some research.

Well, when Mike started talking about DelMio, it sounded too good to be true. It sounded perfect, in fact.

Mike knew I had some experience in online news production. After all, we both worked at the Akron Beacon Journal for years.

A few days later I met with Mike and Diane Evans — DelMio is really her baby. We talked about DelMio and what their plans were and asked if I was interested in producing an exploration. I had to curb my enthusiasm, because if I had jumped and shouted, “ARE YOU KIDDING?!?” I might have frightened them.

For me the criteria for the perfect job are it must engage you; it must challenge you on some level; it must involve some creativity; and it must be fun.

This is fun.

We’ll deal with money later.

Blog without a name

Celebrate

Just to give convention a little slap upside the head, we’re starting this blog in the middle.

Last night (Friday, June 1, 2007) was the reception to celebrate Stephen Post’s publication of Why Good Things Happen to Good People, held at the swanky Shaker Heights Country Club. Waiters delivered wine and fancy hors d’oeuvres, the kind you nibble at with one pinky in the air. A pianist tickled the ivories. There was an excited hum in the room and lots of laughter. And entirely too much blue cheese at a table in the center of the room. But that’s just me.

That you are here reading this means chances are good you’ve already read the book. Good for you! This ought to give you an idea of the behind-the-scenes goings-on of this exploration. In future installations we’ll flash back in time to earlier stages of the exploration. Then forward, then back again. Because we can.

It truly was a celebration, borrowing a chapter right out of the book. Many people mentioned in the book were there, which afforded us an opportunity not only to meet them in person, but to interview them on camera, thus providing more material for the Exploration of the book. See what I mean about starting in the middle?

So with Noall behind the camera, me stumbling and bumbling (truly) and Diane Evans in the wings, we flitted from star to star. And I do mean star — each person we talked to was a wonderful storyteller. Dr. Joe Foley, 91 years old and still plenty sharp. Dr. Richard Fratianne, Dr. Frat, who ran the Comprehensive Burn Care Unit at Metrohealth Medical Center in Cleveland, is an amazing storyteller. Well, go to the video section and see for yourself. I’d ask a clumsy question and they’d just take off. Dr. Bob was another great one.

There is something fascinating about meeting somebody you’ve read about and have a degree of familiarity with. It’s like getting reacquainted with an old friend. Only they don’t know who the heck you are. I hope folks who view the videos will get a little of that too.

My only disappointment was not getting a chance to meet the Rev. Otis Moss, who wrote the foreword in the book. There’ll be other times. Check back in a few weeks for what I expect will be a dynamic video conversation between Stephen Post and Rev. Moss.

Stephen gave a lively speech, punctuated by abruptly dragging a (sort of) mortified colleague up in front of the spotlight until she slinked off to the side.

Returning to Akron, about a 40-minute trip from Shaker Heights, Diane and I excitedly chatted at length about plans for DelMio, the reception, etc. I’ve already forgotten half of what we talked about. But it was a good day, to be sure.