Colts Game Video Blog

We made this video last week as we traveled to Indianapolis to watch the Colts play the Seahawks. Check it out!

AoIR Conference Wrap Up, Or what we learned in Milwaukee

If you were following us on Twitter or Facebook, you learned that we spent the past few days at the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) Conference in Milwaukee. Theo will post his own reflection on the conference, as well as some of the great pics we took during our time in Milwaukee, but I thought I would start with my own conference wrap up.

The AoIR group is an interesting mix of people; there were people at the conference representing technology companies and government research groups, but most were academics in a variety of fields, including sociology, anthropology, communications, media studies, library and information science, etc., etc., etc. The thing that drew us all together was our interest in the ways people use the Internet. Theo and I were excited by the fact that most of the conference sessions focused on Web 2.0 technologies, which was helpful both for our own research and also for our involvement with the UTE contest. If you're interested in getting a taste of the different conference topics, check out this blog.

As a whole, most of the discussions at the conference focused on one large cultural shift, which is also the reason everyone attending the conference was there in the first place: Social media technologies have changed the ways that people relate to each other and to the world around them. Many sessions at the conference asked, what happens when we're always on? When we're always connected? How do our lives, our relationships, and our sense of self change? For Theo and I, this has meant spending a great deal of time and attention crafting a message and a story about ourselves that people are interested in and to spread that message to the most number of sites in order to gain the widest audience. When you're always on, you have to know how to craft a persona and how to be sincere at the same time.

We heard many stories this past week about how the world is changing. We heard about people spreading breaking news on blogs, children making their own videos to share on YouTube, and teenagers talking to celebrities on Twitter. We think the Ultimate Thailand Explorers competition pioneers travel through social media in much the same way. Instead of telling all of us why we should go to Thailand, the Tourism Authority of Thailand is allowing people like us to create our own experience to share with the world.

Theo and I plan to harness the power of social media to share our experiences in Chiang Mai. Because we're used to always being connected, we know how to represent our experiences in a way that will be true to our impressions and to the beauty and richness of the city. But we'll never forget the other important part of the social media equation: interactivity. We'll always let our readers and viewers take part in the experience with us, whether it is to help us decide which attractions to visit, to answer questions, or to spread the word about Thailand. We can't wait to go to Chiang Mai, and we're taking you with us.

Forget durian, Dorian loves dragon fruit!

After all of the time we spent cooking our Green Thai Curry for our latest Ultimate Thailand Explorers video, Dorian wanted to join in the fun. Dragon fruit, which is very popular in Thailand, is one of Dorian's favorite fruits. We thought he would enjoy some for dessert.

Make Thai food with Amber and Theo

We're really excited about the Ultimate Thailand Explorers contest and the possibility of going to Chiang Mai. We can't wait to meet the people, see the sights, and of course, eat the food. We decided to do the next best thing this weekend and made some Thai food for ourselves. We wanted to share the experience with all of you. Watch our video and make some great Green Thai Curry at home.



Note: For our friends who use the metric system, our recipe is based on English measurements. But you can find some great conversions here.

Reason #21 we should go to Thailand: We're in awe of nature

Theo and I grew up in the Midwestern United States, where we both currently live. Northern and Central Illinois are both rather homogeneous as far as natural wonders go, consisting of flat farm lands and prairie punctuated by the occasional rolling hill. Our UTE application video is a pretty good example of the scenery found both in Urbana and in DeKalb.

Land in the Midwest is characterized primarily by its flatness, but Theo and I both grew up close to some of its most beautiful scenery: the Great Lakes. It was a short drive from my parents' home in Saginaw, Michigan to my grandmother's cottage on Lake Huron, and I spent almost every weekend of the summer running on the beach and swimming in the always cold water of the lake. I remember all of these trips fondly, and I believe that these summers, and the scenery of the Great Lakes, have helped define who I am.

For this reason, I find my natural surroundings to be incredibly important, and it's something I always pay attention to when I travel. On my trips through Europe, I waxed poetic in my travel journal about the countryside of Tuscany and the rocky cliffs of Ireland. The places I found to be the most awe-inspiring were those most unlike the places I grew up. In Costa Rica, we hiked through forests different from any I had seen at home, visited hot springs, and even swam at the base of a waterfall. But the volcanoes were the most awe-inspiring. We visited both Arenal and Poás, very active and incredibly amazing volcanoes. Poás has a crater with an incredibly acidic lake at the center, which gives it an otherworldly appearance. And of course one of the most amazing natural wonders I've visited, Mt. Fuji, is a volcano as well.

One of the reasons we chose Chiang Mai as our destination was for natural wonders like these. Theo and I can't wait to climb to the top of Doi Inthanon, take in the Mae Sa Waterfall, and raft down the Mae Taeng River. In our application video, we showcased the place that we come from. In our videos and pictures from Chiang Mai, we will give the natural wonders of Thailand a starring role.

Reason #20 we should go to Thailand: We are like Spider-Man

I'm pretty sure this blog post title will catch some eyes. Maybe it's because I'm a huge comic book nerd and have actually managed to get Ambi hooked on the graphic novels of Y: The Last Man. (If you haven't read it, what are you waiting for?)

Or maybe it's because Peter Parker's IQ-Score is higher than Glenn Beck's (and thank God for that). But I have found a great deal of life lessons in comic books that have led me to this blog. And while I wish Amber and I had the proportional strength and abilities of a spider, I can only suggest that we do follow the wall-crawler's golden rule, spoken to him by his dear Uncle Ben before his life was tragically ended by a wayward mugger, "With great power comes great responsibility."

Now of course, I didn't write this with the same gravitas Cliff Robertson spoke with in Spider-Man really, but the message remains clear. Amber and I want to be the Ultimate Thailand Explorers, but we understand better than anyone that we don't just represent ourselves in this competition.

If fortunate enough to be selected for the semi-finals and curry enough favor with the voting public to be sent to Chiang Mai, we understand that we have several responsibilities to fill, and not just the ones the Tourism Authority of Thailand tells us to. We are representing ourselves, the people who voted for us, our home country, and Thailand.

Whew! That's a load of responsibility! Good news is, I have a broad back and am willing to shoulder that load. As a world traveler, I know that I am sometimes the first or only Westerner many of our new friends will have met.

Take, for instance, the picture to the left where I visited some school children as part of a cultural exchange program in Tokyo. Most of these 4th grade students had never met a gaijin much less talked to one. And although I was only there a matter of hours, it meant a great deal to me that I was the first and only impression of a gaijin they may have. Every Westerner they meet from that point on in their lives will be measured against the interaction they had with me, brief as it may be. You'll always remember your first flight, and although you may earn a frequent flier card at some point, you'll always remember that first jaunt into the blue sky.

Amber and I look forward to this pressure. It'll keep us honest. We'll have fun and we'll give everyone following us a taste of Thailand as well. But we will represent Thailand in the best way possible, because we understand the responsibility better than anyone.

Reason #19 we should go to Thailand: We know social networks

So Theo and I have been making plans today to attend the Association of Internet Researchers Conference in Milwaukee next week. We're excited about the conference not only because of our own research interests, but also because we think we'll learn about some upcoming technologies we can use to promote Chiang Mai. We'll be tweeting and blogging about the conference too, so you'll definitely be hearing more from us about our trip to Milwaukee.

I also spent the day working on my research proposal for my dissertation, so I've been thinking a lot about social networking sites. One of the reasons we're the most qualified group to be the Ultimate Thailand Explorers is our knowledge of social networking sites. We each have accounts on at least a dozen, including everything from the popular and general sites like Facebook, to more professional and academic sites like LinkedIn and Academia.edu, sites that are about collections like Delicious and Citeulike, to niche sites like MyColts.net and Reptile Channel. The things we've gained from being a part of so many different Web 2.0 sites is an understanding of how they work and how they can work together. One of the great things about Web 2.0, of course, is convergence, and it is so easy to link our different accounts together and to syndicate content between them. Add a phone with a good data plan, and we can send updates to all of our networks from almost anywhere!

Because of our involvement in a variety of social networks, we have a large number of people we can draw from to publicize the UTE contest. While the people we know through Facebook and through Reptile Channel don't overlap much, overall we're able to reach a large number of people relatively easily. This becomes incredibly important when it comes time to share our amazing adventures in Chiang Mai.

We've talked before about our technical expertise in creating and editing images and video and designing webpages. But most importantly, we understand the societal impact of technologies like social networking sites and their growing importance in any number of countries around the world. We know which Web 2.0 sites are popular in Brazil and the UK. We know why the Americans who popularized Friendster left the network; we understand the MySpace to Facebook migration; and why Twitter exploded and with which demographics. But more importantly, we know how best to craft a message on each site and to utilize it to its potential. Syndication is indeed important, but even more critical is knowing when to use Twitter, and when YouTube or Facebook might be needed instead. For example, we knew when creating a page on Facebook for our friends to follow, a fan page was a much better idea than a group page. Fan page status updates telling everyone what we've been up to automatically appear on our fans' newsfeeds, a feature a group page simply does not have.

We've already been busy promoting the UTE contest through this blog, Twitter, and our Facebook fan page. And we know that we can put our knowledge of social networking sites to use in sharing our traveling experiences in Chiang Mai with the world better than anyone.