Hi, my name is Joungkong (JK) Yang the new Design Intern for Fision. My first week of Fision has been an awesome experience. I got to wear multiple hats from creating photoshop mockups to researching responsive designs for wordpress and working with the passionate creative/marketing team. The highlight of working at Fision definitely has to be the great music selection using Spotify, and of course the friendly people.

I am expecting to work on new and exciting projects for the next 2 months but most importantly I want to learn new and innovative ideas to help me improve my skills as a designer for future opportunities.

Thank you, Fision for giving me the opportunity to work as your Design Intern I am very excited to see what kinds of projects will be given to me!

JK Yang
Design Intern

Michael here. Today I’m posting a pseudo-farewell blog.

Not because I’m leaving Fision or anything, we just hired a new design intern so he’ll be taking over the reigns.

This has been valuable experience and I’m happy to be in a nine to five routine. You may read this and think to yourself that a nine to five routine sucks, but at some point in life one must take the plunge.

I love having the access to our social platforms and dedicating time to our marketing efforts. I don’t mind putting in the time to research either. The job has been a crash course in communications and will be invaluable as I move my career along.

It really is a wonderful thing here. I just keep showing up, someone keeps paying me.

I’m happy to say I truly like everyone in the office. Sure there are some days where I just want to be left alone and listen to a few podcasts, but overall the people make me laugh and I can count on one hand how many times I’ve actually rolled out of bed in the morning not wanting to go in.

Random things I have liked about working at Fision?

• The downtown location, paid parking
• Cowboy Jack’s next door and its wait staff
• Nerf gun wars
• Laurie and Judy’s random inside jokes
• Having all the pop and Red Bull you could ever want (sometimes)
• The term “Buy Fision”
• Middle-aged Jessie the developer’s random thug hoodie
• Birthday bars
• Spotify
• Leering in the skyway
• Daydreaming of the worst 4-on-4 basketball team ever
• Having a view of CNN on the TV
• Spending weeks (months?) trying to figure out if Cheyl is a salesperson or a marketer
• Kokapelli
• The Dornbach
• Pizza Luce
• The company’s growing Twitter page
• Conservative commentary

Before finishing this post I have to share my favorite story (so far) while working here.

I took a business law course this fall and was unable to sell it back to Amazon because it is “out of date”—by the way, if it’s out of date how come it still cost me $65?—anyways, I jokingly tried to pawn it off on people knowing nobody in their right mind would want a 700-page text book on this stuff.

However, our company CFO Garry was mesmerized.

Garry’s been dubbed “literally most interesting man in the world” for his unusual stories that he’s shared about his life.

These stories include his investment in hundreds of various teddy bears to flip for profit online, being a part-time magici—sorry—”illusionist”,working in the world trade center and a phase as a skydiver.

As I sat down in his phone booth sized office that day, Garry thumbed through the text and lands on a page about racketeering. I know what racketeering is, but this didn’t deter him from going into this story of how back in the 90’s he got into a lawsuit with a frivolous company and SEGA.

The lawsuit had something to do with Garry selling Sonic the Hedgehog (?!) merchandise throughout the country in stores such as Wal-Mart. In the end he says he won over a quarter of a million dollars in the lawsuit.

Garry was represented by a friend who was a federal attorney based in the northeast. Basically the guy made a living off busting mob guys. Not a bad gig.

Years later this friend would go on to be a part of the council who advised Bernie Madoff (?!) to turn himself in to authorities over his multi-billion dollar ponzi scheme.

My chat with Garry somehow ended with him meeting Mark Zuckerberg’s sister (?!) on a couple of occasions, and now they are friends on facebook.

Asked why he befriended her on the social media site?

“Just to see if I could get an in with Mark. I haven’t had the time yet.”

And you wonder why I just keep showing up.

Some how, some way I found time to finish reading “Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live” and it was a great ride. Hundreds of pages of stories from the people, both behind the scenes and in front of the camera, who made SNL the institution it is today.

Veteran authors Tom Schales and James Andrew Miller clearly did an exhaustive amount of research and hundreds of interviews, and paint a balanced portrait of the shows highs and lows. Interviews including series creator/executive producer Lorne Michaels, producer Marcy Klein (Calvin’s daughter), network executives like Don Ohlmeyer and Dick Ebersol all provide great behind the scenes insights, but of course the best stuff comes from the performers and stars that were in the cast, wrote or hosted and it’s a venerable laundry list of comedy legends. Quotes and stories from personalities like:

Bill Murray
Dan Aykroyd
Chevy Chase
Steve Martin
Al Franken
Jane Curtin
Joe Piscapo
Billy Crystal
Martin Short
Harry Shearer
Larry David
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Dana Carvey
Jon Lovitz
Kevin Nealon
Mike Myers
Tom Hanks
Dennis Miller
Damon Wayans
Conan O’Brien
Adam Sandler
David Spade
Chris Rock
Jerry Seinfeld
Janeane Garofalo
Alec Baldwin
Norm MacDonald
John Goodman
Molly Shannon
Will Ferrell
Chris Kattan
Cheri Oteri
Robert Smigel
Horatio Sanz
Jimmy Fallon
Tina Fey
Maya Rudolph
Amy Poehler
Seth Meyers

They all give candid tales from politics backstage, on-air controversies, great anecdotes and stories on how characters came about. The only shame is talents like Gilda Radner, Phil Hartman and Chris Farley aren’t available to

At roughly 700 pages, there’s just so much information to get out of the book and I look forward to reading it again because it’s certainly something you can find out something new on every time you pick it up.

In all the only two things I didn’t like about the book was one, Eddie Murphy refused to do an interview which is too bad because there’s basically a whole chapter devoted to his meteoric rise on the show in the early-80’s and two, the book only goes up to 2002. It would’ve been great to have tales about Kristen Wiig, Justin Timberlake, Digital Shorts and the 2008 election.

All-in-all this is a must read for any fan of the show and comedy in general.

Stray observations:

• The tales of Belushi and Farley are incredible.

• Nealon might be the most underrated comedian of the last 25 years. Every time he pops up in the book he’s gold. Story in the book notes that a fan sent a death threat to Nealon via the mail and called him a “big-headed idiot” so naturally Nealon walked around the office for two weeks asking people “Do I really have a big head?”

• One person was quoted as saying Lorne “likes Irish Catholics a lot”. Judging by the list of names above this is true. But who doesn’t love Irish Catholics, right? RIGHT?

• It’s a three-way race for who comes off as the biggest jerk in the book between Chase, Shearer and Franken (spare me your political opinions and read the book) who all come off as angry and unfunny.

• It’s funny, possibly ironic, to hear Oteri say that no one uses drugs on the show anymore, when it’s since came out that her once cast mateDarrell Hammond was abusing opiates while on the show.

• Dozens of pages devoted to Michaels, and it’s a fascinating character study, although it’s too long.

• Kattan mentioning that he constantly has to tell people that he’s not gay was a highlight.

• Interesting to read Fallon wasn’t sure if Lorne liked him or not and here we are all these years later and Michaels hand picked Fallon to replace O’Brien for the Late Night show.

• Yes, most movies about SNL characters are bad.

• You really get the feeling nobody saw the success of Tina Fey coming, not that people didn’t have sterling things to say about her, but people didn’t speak of her like she would become the star she has.

• Michaels likes to name drop. A lot.

• Not too much is mentioned of Hartman’s murder, which is understandable, but it’s very noticeable how they just skate past the issue.

• Ferrell’s audition story is hysterical.

Read a wonderful article on effective moves to break out of the dreaded “work rut” this afternoon.

To be honest, one of the first points made is incredibly true: Summer breaks our routines. We’re more apt to vacation, there is less traffic, a lot less classes and students, and since football is out of season both sexes leave the house on the weekends.

As a young professional I’ve read that it can take a full year for those to adjust to full-time work schedules. That makes sense as well, and we all have days/weeks where anyone can kind of be in a funk. I’d like to tackle some of the points I found compelling.

Set a bedtime and wake-up time: This is probably my worst problem since I’m a devoted night owl. The lack of air conditioning in my apartment, and the constant scoffing I have received from retail employees-“Where were you when we had them in April?”-said one teenage employee at an unnamed store) when trying to buy a window air condition during our heatwave(s) this summer haven’t helped.

Alternate chairs/stand up for your life: I want one of those weird standing desks. After having this bizarre ergonomic chair salesman come to my eighth grade business class I have always had a weird thing about my chair.

Don’t give lunch short shrift/get out of the office: I always try to go out to lunch twice a week, mostly for the exercise. It really does break up time, even if it’s the ~5 minute walk to Jimmy John’s.

The whole article is worth the read, if only to break the monotony of your day for seven minutes.

The world is abuzz over the Olympics. It has came with the usual water cooler topics over the new heroes and the reminding of forgotten sports likes water polo, handball, and synchronized diving.

But the explosion of social media in the last four years has also taken center stage. Sure four years ago we could tend to our facebook posts congratulating Michael Phelps, Shawn Johnson, and LeBron James, but with twitter only in its infancy, there wasn’t the same first-hand interaction from our stars.

And so the Olympic twitter controversy has taken center stage.

First there was Greek pole vaulter Voula Papachristou (yes I did copy and paste that) and her racist tweet aimed towards African athletes.

Then during the first weekend there was the bizarre Hope Solo tweets aimed at color commentator, and women’s soccer hero, Brandi Chastain for her on-air commentating.

Now Swiss soccer player Michel Morganella (command+c, command+v) was sent home after racist tweets towards South Koreans.

Uff-da.

We here at Fision have blogged about blogging and social media practices and while not completely linear cases, I infer that we, not just these athletes, can follow some easy, defined practices.

• Have interesting content. Ask yourself if someone else wrote this, would I care?
• Be credible. Have you built up trusting relationships through integrity?
• Don’t seem desperate. If it’s it, they will follow.

 At the very least hopefully these embarrassing remarks will be a good lesson for all. Now, if my twitter followers would stop spoiling the results!

Hello! My name is Caitlin Brown, yes bossman Mike Brown’s daughter. I am just working with Michael as an intern here at Fision for the rest of the summer before I head back to school in the fall at Iowa State.

Why?

Basically because I was bored sitting around at home and didn’t have enough time at home to get a job. Not that I am suddenly having so much fun here at work… All morning I have been uploading codes and names and numbers, yada yada yada, into the computer.

At least it’s pretty mindless and something to do. I also kept looking up the results of the Olympics. I had to keep posted on women’s gymnastics team finals! (I won’t spoil it, but we did well for those of you who care).

I am a gymnast at Iowa State which is why I spend so much time at school and don’t usually have enough time for a job. I’m not sure what I expected this job to be exactly. I think I was just excited to 1) say I have a job and 2) dress up for work. Seeing as I’m an apparel merchandising major, I had plenty of outfits planned out before I even started. Today I wore a new pair of floral heels that I LOVE.

And I was glad too, because today my dad introduced me to someone in the fashion industry. That was pretty cool for a 19 year old still in school to gain that connection. I also learned that Jt went to Iowa State and happened to live just down the street from where I lived this summer.

Other than that, things here have just been learning about the company and entering information from long lists of stuff that doesn’t mean a whole lot to me. I did sit in on a few tutorials of the product last week. I can say I finally know what my dad does for a living. And I must say, it’s actually pretty neat. Now when people ask I can give them the right answer instead of just saying “He owns a marketing company or something”.

I’m no expert on it though, still just learning the ropes.

Caitlin 

I could not love this infographic more.

I especially love one of the opening tidbits that in 1960 the average person had 5 hours of media exposure a day. I assume it was the kind of media exposure that Jack Arnold from “The Wonder Years” had. Just kind of staring blankly at the TV, trying to forget about another crappy day while working at Norcom, his hippy daughter, and commies.

But in 2010 the media exposure per day jumped to 12 hours.

Half of our day is exposed to mass media?

So does this mean that every generation post-baby boomers is going to end up with mush for brains? While I certainly hope my brain and body don’t end up like one of Rachel Leigh Cook’s eggs, you can’t help but wonder what all this exposure will do beyond attention deficit issues.

Take for example me right as I’m writing this.

I’m listening to Mayer Hawthorne on Spotify.

I’m writing on this Tumblr blog.

In my right eye periferal CNN is on at all times on the TV.

On my left computer monitor, having one isn’t enough, my email is open and my company Twitter page is constantly streaming.

Once I get home and am done with dinner I’ll pop on my MLB Extra Innings package and flip between a few games from 6-7 out East, add the Twins game to the mix at 7, then check out what’s going on out West when the 9pm games start. Ohh and I’ll be toggling through my three, yes three, I’m not proud, fantasy baseball team pages and my own Twitter page.

My head is spinning right now, maybe from the two Diet Mountain Dews, probably from the fact the above paragraph explains why I’m single and it depresses me.

After writing all this down I think I’m going to try to initiate less internet use at night.

Kind of makes me yearn for the days Jack Arnold could just zone out Walter Kronkite.

-Michael