Boston Latin School, my alma mater, is the oldest (and longest existing) public school in the country. 141 years older than the country, in fact. Ben Franklin went there before he moved to Philly. Alumni include Sam Adams, John Hancock, Joseph Kennedy, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Bullfinch, you get the idea. There’s an admission test, but it’s free to attend for Boston resident teens. All students at are still required to study Latin for three or four years, and many study Greek as well. It’s a school that consistently ranks among the top in the country, bringing a Classics education into the 21st century.

Last night I saw the video below, made by current BLS students, making the rounds on Facebook through fellow alumni, and it’s just so totally epic I had to post it here. Never mind the sense of nostalgia seeing the old hallways in the background, these kids have done a better job of branding the iconography of my alma mater than my class ever considered. Watch out, marketers, the next generation will soon be doing a better job at our jobs than we are.

Sumus Primi!

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If you’re just joining us, here’s the top 5 things that happened here this year:

1. Why Iron Man Is The First 21st Century Superhero
For the past 70 years we have been living with a 20th century version of the superhero. Until now. Though the Iron Man character was originally created in the early 60s, his most recent incarnation is really the first Millennial superhero. (Then Jon Favreau, the director of Iron Man, retweeted it!! Craziness!)

2. The First 21st Century Vampires
Just as the new Iron Man has broken the mould constricting the superhero archetype, True Blood’s vampires offer a compelling commentary on our rapidly changing present through their own, archly extrahuman relationship to it. (MetaFilter gave it love, too.)

3. How The Internet Killed The Rock Star (…Not The Way You Think)
At this point, to say the Internet’s done away with anything else when it comes to music is, admittedly, a cliché, but, nevertheless, there’s one more, less-publicized casualty: the rock star. Zoe Keating agreed.

4. Your Life Is A Transmedia Experience
“Transmedia” has become the new buzzword for multi-platform narratives, but in the digital age, transmedia isn’t just how we consume entertainment narratives, it’s how we experience the narrative of our lives. This post later became the basis for a panel with me, Marta Kagan, and Jan Libby, at the FutureM conference in Boston.

5. How To Stand In the Face of Powerlessness For A New Generation
As a generation, mine has not known powerlessness. We’ve had so little practice at facing situations where we couldn’t just do something; at fighting them, at living through them. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is my generation’s unfortunate turn to figure out how to stand in the face of powerlessness.

Honorable mention:

The Glitch Mob Drops The New-Tron Bomb
This happened so late in the year that it didn’t quite have time to catch up, but my idea for a Tron:Legacy remix video scored to The Glitch Mob’s music and edited by Khameleon808 is still the 7th most popular thing that happened on Social-Creature in 2010. (It even got into Wired.com.)

Ps. Thanks to Boston Innovation for naming me one of “Five Fresh Faces Leading Boston’s Creative Revolution.” Though I seem to be splitting my time between Boston and LA the past couple of years, (I wish Facebook would let you put “It’s complicated” under “Current city”), it is, of course, an honor to play even a little part in any Boston-based revolution.

See you next year!!

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October 7th, I’ll be on a panel at the FutureM Conference in Boston, entitled, “Your Life Will Be A Transmedia Experience (It Already Is).” Sound familiar? Yup, it’s a different take on the theme for a panel of a similar name I’ve got submitted to SXSW, and featuring many of the same cast-members! I’ll be speaking with Marta Kagan, Managing Director, US, for Espresso, and Jan Libby, Experience Designer Consultant at Wieden + Kennedy.

Come and hear about what is, indeed, the future of marketing from the pottymouths who produce the “What the F**k is Social Media?” slideshow franchise, and the smartypants responsible for transmedia campaigns for brands like Levi’s and Scion ! Also, it’s FREE!! Plus! We’ll have an interactive game for all (21+) attendees to play, which is 100% guaranteed to be fun since it will include free alcohol provided by Magner’s Irish Cider! — despite ostensibly leaving my music festival producing past behind me, I still cannot seem to escape being involved with ANY kind of event that doesn’t come with wristbands, even a marketing industry panel! Then again, while much will change in the future of marketing, free alcohol will always be a constant. But space is limited, so

Register to attend now! CLICK HERE

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Remember the whole hoopla going on when the characters from Mad Men up and started Tweeting? It was Fall of 2008, the  show was in its second season, and the controversy erupted when AMC started DMCAing Twitter into shutting down these “infringing” accounts. After a huge backlash, the profiles were un-suspended and the rest is history now, but as I was in the process of writing about this whole thing, I happened upon @don_draper‘s Favorites.

I feel like most Twitter users don’t even know that the Favorites function is there, let alone use it, and especially now that the ReTweet feature has been added it seems it gets used even less. But I like Favorites. It’s a nice way to acknowledge Tweets that are personally appealing or meaningful without necessarily having to rebroadcast it out to everyone else. And I’m always curious about the Favorites of other people characters whom I find interesting as well. When I checked out @don_draper’s Favorites, this is what I saw:

Which is, indisputably, hilarious, and, at the time, was the lone Favorite @don_draper had (now a year and a half or so later, there’s 2). When I checked out this clever @mzkagan person’s profile, it turned out to belong to a super funny, smart, and savvy chick named Marta Kagan, the mind behind What the F*ck Is Social Media, and the US Managing Director at an agency called Espresso. The location indicated on her Twitter profile just so happened to be Boston, my home town, so I added her, and she added me back.

To make a long story short, I have just recently accepted a Strategist position with Espresso, becoming the second hire of the American branch of this progressive Canadian agency. After 6 years in Los Angeles, I’m returning to one of my favorite cities to work with folks who not only make @don_draper’s shortlist, they hate the word “viral” as much as I do (this is an actual image used in a “viral marketing” RFP response we just submitted –

– Seriously!), appreciate the expressive value of a few strategically placed four-letter words, and are not just walking the new digital, social, experiential, integrated walk, they’re running it like the Boston Marathon.

We will be officially opening the doors to our new US HQ at 580 Harrison Avenue in Boston’s historic South End district on March 1st. Don Draper — and everyone else — mark your calendars!

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