Cara O'Neil

A supplemental portfolio/Tumblr of work & inspiration. I’m a communications and marketing professional with a passion for writing, books, comics, games and more. Other/related topics I post or write about are likely to include cats, history, nature. * If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.

[shevyvision]

“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.” Mark Twain

this librairie ancienne and this is paris!

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Also: how I felt watching Game of Thrones whenever there was a scene showing the library at the Citadel. 

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Digital Summit Portland

A whole bunch of digital marketing nerds were herded together for two days in Portland, and somehow, the wifi survived.

Arriving at the Portland Convention Center, somewhat groggy despite the coffee in hand, I entered the building among a group of silver-haired folk. Several of them were carrying potted plans, and I was tempted to follow along with them to whichever show they were attending. But it was definitely not the one I was supposed to be going to.

I made my way around the concourse, following a trail of signs pointing to Digital Summit Portland. 

These printed signs were some of the last paper materials I would see for the next two days. Conference check-in and presentations were all handled digitally, of course. I saw maybe a handful of people all conference long with actual paper and pens for notes. Most had laptops; others, like me, had small tablets and, of course, smartphones.

I had a pre-conference pass, so I could attend one of three in-depth sessions on different topics (content marketing, SEO, email marketing). Because I planned to attend a number of content marketing-focused sessions later in the conference, I opted for the email marketing session by Michael Barber (Barber+Hewitt - http://www.barberandhewitt.com). The session title was also a factor in my decision: Make Email Great Again (With an Actual Plan for How to Do That). A few tidbits that I found especially relevant to my current organization or pieces of info that I know will help my colleagues: - Clients who open emails from your organization are more likely to respond to your social ads.

- Consumers’ favorite sources of branded content, in order: email, Facebook, TV, Twitter, Snapchat, etc.

- Mobile continues to rise. Most commonly used mobile email clients, in order: mail app in iPhone, Gmail, iPad email app, Apple mail, Outlook, Android mail, Outlook Web, Samsung, Yahoo mail, Windows mail. (so yes, sadly, we do still have to design for the horror that is Outlook)

- Let your customers subscribe to specific lists. Don’t auto-opt people into everything. You will lose subscribers who don’t want all that mail.

- Make it easy to manage email preferences. Don’t hide the link or make it a multi-step process (YES, I’m SURE I want to unsubscribe!!!!!). The harder it is to find or do this, the more frustrated people get, and then they will unsubscribe or opt out of EVERYTHING your organization wants to send.

- Right-justified buttons (clickable links) are better for right-handed people. Remember, more than half of readers are on their phones or tablets.

- Use a real email address, not “donotreply@,” as the sender. And put in a person’s name in the “from” name. 

The things that annoy us the most, even as people who presumably have something to do with email marketing at our organizations:

- I already give monthly to your organization, but I still get repeated emails to donate. 

- Overuse of URGENT. Not everything is urgent. The more this is used, the more it’s ignored. 

- Don’t pretend you are a personal friend or connection when you are not.

What are the most-engaged-with types of campaigns? Welcome series emails! Even long welcome series, made up of numerous emails over an extended period of time, as long as the content is useful and interesting.

Birthday emails generate the most user actions, even without a specific offer. 

TO BE CONTINUED. 

After three and a half hours of this, I needed a break, as I need one now. But hashtag DSPDX was pretty solid overall. More to come on how I think Steve Wozniak is adorable, for example, and HYPERCARD omg.

[dndwizards]

MLP/D&D Dice Tin at HASCON

Get your tickets for HASCON now and don’t miss your chance to pick up this special My LIttle Pony D&D dice tin at the show!

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Oh my goodness.

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Sometimes, you need to take a break from everything and go outside. This time, we picked Cougar Ridge, in the Zigzag Ranger District near Wildwood Recreation Site & the Mount Hood National Forest.

It did take about an hour of steady hiking before the sounds of Highway 26 fully receded, but we had the trail mostly to ourselves. Casual day hikers and families stay back at Wildwood (the recreation site, not the Colin Meloy book-place, though now I’ll have to bring a copy next time I go there…).

Hiked all the way out to the peak of the ridge and had a little ridgetop picnic with wine and cheese, because we are classy hikers.

I may have waxed eloquent about Critical Role on the hike back down, which I recently started watching again. It seemed apt to talk about D&D while hiking through the wilderness (especially with a bit of wine and hot sun influencing things).

We weathered the traffic of the great festival in Sandy and returned home to leftover cheeseburgers from the previous night’s cookout, which the cat tried to steal–but that is a story for another time.

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Things found hidden inside books.

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IT IS

[wizardsmagic]

Our first Pride Parade was so much fun!

Thanks to the LGBTQ Employee group here at Wizards of the Coast, our first time participating in the Seattle Pride Parade was a big success. We had beautiful signs, fun shirts, a few magical costumed characters, and treats like rainbow candy and pins to giveaway. The best part was having the opportunity to meet with fans, and share our love for our amazing community.

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This just makes me happy. Thank you for sharing your Pride celebrations!

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It is by refrigerator alone I set this snack in motion. It is by the condensed milk in these non-cookies, that tastebuds desire more, that hands acquire stickiness, that stickiness becomes a warning. It is by refrigerator alone I set this snack in motion.

Wherein Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen the tuxedo cat attempts to thwart my creation of these no-bake spice cookies from the Dune Coloring & Activity Book, but he does not prevail over my Mentat mantra. 

Note: The cookies don’t hold a shape, but they taste good. (Captions with each photo.)

“Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.”

[thetinhouse-deactivated20180604]

STILL HERE I been scarred and battered. My hopes the wind done scattered. Snow has friz me, Sun has baked me, Looks like between ‘em they done Tried to make me Stop laughin’, stop lovin’, stop livin’– But I don’t care! I’m still here! —Langston Hughes

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Yes.

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Broke my thumb a few weeks ago, so typing has become a challenge. Here's a preview of my Dune coloring book/recipe post that's still to come. Yes, one of our cats is a Harkonnen. Really.

[royaldeci-blog]

I think like this a lot.

[whencyclopedia]

RECOMMENDED BLOGS: HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY 

THERE’S so many great ancient history blogs out there, that sometimes it’s hard to know where to begin! We’ve put together some of the best ancient history and archaeology blogs to get you started.

Read More 

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Excellent resource list.

[bookriot]

Have you ever been shelving books, or browsing a crowded bookshelf, when all of a sudden a song pops into your head because you just saw a book with a song lyric in the title?  If not, congratulations, because you’ve managed to avoid one of the most randomly annoying side effects of working with books.

After spending a week with a medley of songs bouncing around in my head, it suddenly hit me how many books use song lyrics for their titles.  Is it to capitalize on the reader’s instant recognition?  A shortcut to convey theme and tone?  A way for the universe to show librarians and booksellers how much it wants to irritate them?

I’m not sure, but I’m about to start an ear worm epidemic here.  You’ve been warned.

http://bookriot.com/2017/01/25/20-book-titles-that-will-get-stuck-in-your-head/

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It doesn’t even have to be an actual song lyric - it just has to be CLOSE and I’ll get a song in my head.

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Going to get psychological tonight with Michael Lewis, in conversation with NPR’s Hanna Rosin, about his new book The Undoing Project. I’m volunteering with Literary Arts to help with this book talk at the Schnitz in downtown Portland. 

The Undoing Project looks at the work of two Israeli-American psychologists, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, who pioneered research into cognitive bias. Humans overestimate their ability to predict trends, and in hindsight, we’re biased to think that we predicted things more accurately than we actually did. This human fallibility; this tendency toward believing the world is more predictable than it is so that we feel more comfortable--this interests me as an anthropologist, marketer, and even as a sports fan (so much for those “hot streaks” in sports!). 

Literary Arts event info & tickets: https://literary-arts.org/event/michael-lewis-in-conversation-with-hanna-rosin/ 

The WSJ write-up about The Undoing Project: http://www.wsj.com/articles/michael-lewiss-brilliant-new-book-about-cognitive-bias-1480982097 

[bobbycaputo]

Rare Snowfall On The Acropolis In Athens, Greece

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As rare as the snowfall in Portland. But a bit more beautiful and hopefully less chaos-inducing.

[powells]

Coyote America by Dan Flores        

This is a surprisingly pleasant biography of our native “prairie wolf” and the disturbingly brutal and quite foolish attempts we have made over the past 100 years to eradicate the coyote from the face of North America. — Rick

See our favorite books of the year.

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Good books. 

[whencyclopedia]

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It’s a fine line between wise woman and witch, eh?