Halloween adventures

If you want to follow what is happening with our family for this weekend, follow the adventures of

WHISKEY AND SMOKES

at WhiskeyAndSmokes.com

Planning-ness

So, we were supposed to have the major Planning Conference in SF this summer and on my agenda was always, "What can we do at the Academy and with the students to create some awareness of Art of Planning"  Then the planning conference got canceled.  Which surprised no one.  Many consider it a lackluster event with too many planners saying the same thing about how great we are ... while our industry continues to prove us wrong by doing very little in regards to changing the world.  Way too much talking and listening.

So, time to move on....

But not so fast.  Mark Lewis at DDB San Francisco wasn't about to let it die, and he would ditch the talking and listening and concentrate on DOING.  He started speaking with people about doing something different, the movement happened on Facebook, blogs and through Mark's relentless pursuit of getting people interested excited! I knew there were two things the Academy had plenty of to offer - space for hosting and passionate students for volunteering - so I offered those up to Mark.  Well, Mark wrestled with the many logistics regarding organizing a conference, but it finally started to come together - and he was going to need both our space and volunteers.

You can see more about what happened on the Planning-ness site or twitter buzz: including bios, decks and videos of the amazing workshop technicians.

But, I thought I'd give my path.

First, this thing sprung on me like a startled water moccasin. I'd been pretty distracted by Mary's health and trying to keep 6 classes + the AP department in order when I suddenly realized that really cool people were going to be hanging in our house pretty soon.  The night before the event, we couldn't start setting up until about 9:30 because of classes in 60Fed - furthermore once it was down to just 3 of us around midnight (we had sent the student volunteers home), Mark decided we needed to shift the rooms because of increased participation.  This made for about 4 hours of sleep (both nights, but the 2nd was due to partying).  However, despite the hurried putting together and the exhaustion, the event was remarkable.  The students who attended were professional, smart, enthusiastic and participatory.  The speakers were enthralling and thought-provoking.  The attendees were fun and interested in doing things differently.  Again, you can find many people out there chatting about it.

Let me try ten personal things worth a remark:
1) Standing in 21st Amendment + our ADV office talking with Grant McCracken about the direction of education and learning was as exhilarating as his amazingly insightful talk about creating a CCO (which I think is right on.)
2) Max Schorr co-founder of GOOD magazine getting me to think about coding the Awesomeness Manifesto for Wall Street.
3) Rob White and Adrain Ho got us to think with a Beginner's Mind, rather than best practices. (thanks Evgenia, I owe you)
4) Having a little student mini-session with Ken Ecklund, thinking about applied play/gaming. He is the brilliant creator behind The World Without Oil game.
5) Gareth Kay and Jason Oke calling out Connections Planning.
6) Clay Parker Jones making me think more about the small things that can create big things, and the ease to experiment ... so why not try?
7) Ed Cotton giving great advice and engaging with Apo.
8) Meeting and reconnecting with so many lovely people.
9) Wish I could somehow split in two and made Frank's presentation; glad the deck is available... hopefully video too.
10) Andrew O'Dell smelling my beard ... twice. Something special about that.

Anyway, I got planning-saturated.  It had immediate impact on my lectures and will have lasting impact on the program and me as a thinker.  Thanks to all who made it such a fabulous experience, and there are many of you!

Picture: My Account Planning 2 students made a game for an assignment 2 years ago ... little did I know games and making would trend pretty heavy in that space in just a couple years!

OutsideIn

So one of the strange things about my "path" is that when I got my Master's in Advertising at UT, I happened to write my professional report on Advertising Education. Apparently, I knew where I was headed one day. One of the things I mentioned was how critical it was to get exposure to the many styles and voices in the professional world.

At the Academy, we have people who are coming straight off the job and into the classroom, which I love ... in fact, Ad Research actually happens inside the walls of Goodby right now! But, I still wanted to build a speaker series, given the remarkable talent in this city. Speakers had a huge impact on who I became in this business. First was the amazing Keith Reinhard whose passion was infectious and stories were enlightening. Second was meeting and lunching and fix-a-flating with Owen Hanney who would eventually give me my first advertising job.

Working with the AAU Federalists (the student club named after our street address not any strong affinity to a strong nationalistic government), we got our OutsideIn speaker series kicked off this past month. Here is the schedule:



OutsideIn has a speaker brief where we keep it casual, passionate, interesting, and fun. We don't record it, so people aren't worried about "what shows up on the web" - just real conversations with students about what they are jumping into soon.

#1 Unfortunately, I missed the inaugural speaker, my fabulous friend Malia, due to being in the hospital with Mary. However, I heard it was outstanding. She set a brilliant tone by actually talking about something that Razorfish didn't quite nail. Rather than coming in and browbeating about the greatness of the agency, Malia passed learning on to the students.

Interestingly, two weeks later at Planning-ness, during a Zeus Jones workshop, Jason Oke would be standing in the same room with plannerly peeps discussing the need for us to focus more on failure and learning from it. Thanks to Malia for starting this trend.

#2 I was fortunate to make the second OutsideIn. We had the Goodby Account Management team for Häagen-Dazs come in: AAU alumnus (and student of my first ever Intro to Planning class) Emily Meyer, Martha Jurzynski & Erin Fromherz. They managed to fit three topics in: the amazing HD ♥'s HB project, where Account Management is heading, especially within the halls of Goodby and a good strong Q&A session. It was a great time. Also, when I came home exhausted, I was seriously craving some HD ... luckily Mary had planned ahead and this was waiting in the freezer that night:



#3 When we first started talking about hosting these things, the students gave me one name they were most interested in hearing from: Gareth Kay. Gareth had recently moved to San Francisco to become Head of Digital Strategy at Goodby and the students were excited to meet our new brilliant denizen (not to mention the "Most Respected Planning Director in the U.S." as selected by his peers, see slide 13). I asked Gareth if he would come by and in his typical lovely, humble self (despite being remarkably busy, new to the area and still trying to meet the peeps at Goodby) he did not hesitate to come talk with us.

Gareth is among that lovely handful of people in this industry who is disappointed in this industry, and has a clear vision of what has to happen in order for it to survive. There are about 15 people who again and again have gotten me to see how different everything is going/has to be. Who are these 15? Hmmm ... let's see. In random order:

1. Russell Davies
2. Paul Isakson
3. Charlie (Kouns)
4. Max Schorr
5. Steven Berlin Johnson
6. Adrain Ho
7. Daniel Pink
8. Clay Shirky
9. Grant McCracken
10. Faris Yakob
11. Kevin Slavin
12. Kathy Sierra
13. Gareth Kay
14. Seth Godin
15. Hugh MacLeod

(Shit, that was hard ... really there are about 100 of you! I just had to stop at the first 15 to pop into my head, before my "handful" become a tubful...) Anyway, Gareth came in and discussed something in his heart that many of the students feel ... this idea that Hugh MacLeod has so brilliantly depicted. "If you talked to people the way advertising talked to people, they'd punch you in the face." At first this seems funny, until you think about it and realize it is very true. An annoying, interrupting, repetitive, loud, mostly irrelevant, attention-seeking, self-absorbed mouth of a person who occasionally is entertaining and helpful ... but really could find a better way. I don't like advertising

I sort of fell into advertising.
1. Failed 10th grade
2. Started improving my academic-self
3. Become blindly addicted to academics, almost ended up a physician
4. Woke-up a bit scattered - tasted many majors
5. Didn't want to spend extra time in college after so much time in high school
6. Ended up an English Literature major
7. Was handed an article 0n "You have an English degree, now what?"
8. Thought advertising sounded more interesting than libraries...
9. Learned about Account Planning while exploring copywriting programs and found that more interesting.
10. Worked in advertising, but thought, "Meh." Liked the digital stuff. Found it fascinating that Cracker Barrel people loved writing in the digital diaries we gave them for sharing stories ... and thinking about a Jack Daniel's global website.
11. Left Advertising. Worked @ Wrigley Field ... thankfully.
12. Tried to do different things in advertising, but still didn't like it much. Employment had potential (see Slide 39 and 40 from Zeus Jones), but mostly they were just trying to build a better mousetrap/Help Wanted sign. Education and Government work were fascinating (but mainly because they sent me to the UK and Mexico for research where I really learned about connecting with different cultures). Direct was cool and I had the most remarkable supervisor you could ever wish for ... but again ... I didn't like it.
13. Started working in education so I can help people be more responsible about this industry, for their sake, the industry's sake and the sake of those of us participating in the market economy.

Anyway ... this post is getting away from me. Gareth came in and explained how you can do amazing things in this business. He summed it up in his lovely "Back-of-the-venue" tag:



I wish someone had told me that while I was a student. He also mentioned "Follow People" - which is right on - too many people try to jump into sexy agency names, but people are who build you.

#4) Remember when this post was about OutsideIn? Next week, we have the fabulous Ashley J George and Krystha Barrera coming in to talk about standing out from the crowd, which they did ... mostly because of their unique walking styles...



They are wonderful and I am looking forward to their energy in Rm 501!

Now, what does November hold? Geesh ... it's going to be tough. I'd better start inviting people! Let me know if you are interested (cameron at this url).

too much

We like to keep busy enough that our blog is able to be an interesting blog and no more, no less.

As you've well noted ... we've been above or below that level.

Well, it's above, which is unfortunate when you are an introvert who likes to devour books like myself. The past weekends have looked like this:

This weekend - AAU Open House/Sam's sick
Last Weekend - Hosting the Planning-ness conference
2 Weekends ago - Post-surgery hospital stay
3 Weekends ago - Pre-surgery in-law stay w/ a side of 49er's
4 Weekends ago - End of first hospital stay/My brother visited
5 Weekends ago - Mary's brother visited

And before that, we had Outside Lands, new semester for me, Mary sick/losing her job, Sam starting 7th grade and our camping trip.

This is not the pace of life at which we excel. We are feeling the empathetic clutter of our lives recently. However, we'll slowly but surely start sharing it on the blog to just "get it out" and move on. But sorry this blog has sucked lately ... and since this blog is mostly for future self and the curiosity of progeny ... I'm really sorry that I haven't clued in to this immensely complex time in our lives. But we'll get there.

OH - The picture, right ... This is Granny and Gramps taking Zombie Sam out to dinner at Sol Food. Sorry it is blurry but the light was low and there were a lot of people pouring out of the restaurant after Sam's fit of smelling the mixture of brains and plantains (he loves combining rhyming foods these days!)

OK, not true. This is just a) a representation of the hectic pace of life recently and b) a reminder of Sam's fascination with zombies lately. He has read Zombie Survival Guide and listened to World War Z on audio (he is very glad Anne Bancroft and Mel Brooks found each other) and is about to start listening to Breathers. This is his halloween shirt; we may do a Blade thing - where he is a part-zombie zombie-killer.

Time to Celebrate!!

"Mary Maddux no longer has a life-threatening vulnerability. She now has superfluous infection-fighting cells. The hematologist said, "Go home and eat dirt." He said to celebrate. What they were trying to get up... is up. I get to stop giving myself a shot... and get to eliminate the steriod this week. We go back on Friday for next steps." - Mary's Facebook status!

800 Neutrophils!

Mary officially moved from severe to moderate neutropenia today.

Again, not celebrating ... but I may go buy the Champagne today.

Love,
Cam

Quick update

We aren't celebrating yet, but we are definitely smiling today.

Mary had her third consecutive day of her WBC count going up. Her neutrophils are at 400, which I think is higher than they've been since before the first hospital visit?

Again, this has been quite the roller coaster, so don't pop open the champagne, but we'll sleep better tonight.

Love,
Cam

still not up

Yesterday, Mary was at 2.2, but her neutrophils were low. Today she is @ 1.7. Ugh.

We just talked with the hematologist and he is recommending she get steroids to try and boost the bone marrow and kick out the antibodies that are wrecking havoc.

If we don't see any immediate results, he would want to do some sort of dialysis type procedure.  As a physician, he wants Mary to stay in the hospital, but as a parent and human, he is understanding of her wanting to leave.

We are making a push to get home today. She has tons of energy and no fevers.  I think we'll make it happen. As the hematologist said, Mary has been living with this all summer ... so why not head home?

There is little literature out there for them to refernece, so whatever Mary has going on is rare. My lady has never been ordinary!

I've got a full work week ahead with classes and activities every day/evening through Saturday. So, thanks to Bill & Marilyn for helping out.

Love,
Cam

Mary's WBC count

Unfortunately, Mary's white blood cell count was low again this morning.  Basically, a 4.0 K/UL is low but they aren't scared. Mary today is @ 1.4.  Here are her numbers for the curious and medically-motivated.

9/28 - the first reading after the first trip to the hospital - 3.7
9/30 - 3.5
10/5 - 2.0
10/6 - Day of surgery - 2.7
10/6 - After surgery - 1.5
10/7 - 2.2
10/8 - 1.2
10/9 - 2.1
10/10 - 1.4

They are concerned about the trend, not the daily fluctuations, but the current trend shows us nothing.  Unfortunately, it is Saturday, so our surgeon and surgeon are both unavailable for questions. However, as the son of a physician, I am totally cool with that - I'm living quite family first these days!

One encouraging thing we noticed is that her neutrophil % is higher. The neutrophils are the work horses of the WBC and mary's low levels are what most frightened people. She had around 7% of her WBC were N; they were as low as 1-2% around the day of the surgery - today and yesterday they were at 11% and 10% respectively.  So, we'll hold onto that positive news for now.

Mary's recovery has been difficult. She did have her chest and sternum opened up! However, she has been doing excellent. It would be a great boost to the recovery process if we just got some signs that this was a needed surgery and not just something done to rule out a possibility.

love to all
Cam, Mary and Sam

A good morning

Mary and I both got some good sleep. She didn't have any fever or chills though the night (one of the factors that needs to stop before she is allowed to leave.) This morning, her WBC count was up! She is still dangerously low, but it is higher ... and there are other signs that she is making WBC including neutrophils again. We are still in the hospital while she takes some antibiotics and gets her WBC count up, but this was the first step in a positive trend ... if it continues in this direction, we should be good!

Thanks again for everything from so many of you!

Love,
Cam

Blood transfusion

Quick update. Mary's blood levels are lower than they've been yet. The doctor has decided she needs a transfusion. While I donated for her, my blood may not be ready and there is a pregnancy scare if she takes my blood. We aren't planning, but never want to shut a door. So, she is getting blood from a stranger.

So, reminder - if you are a healthy adult - donate. Real people need stranger's blood every day.

I am trying to stay positive. However, this isn't great news. They didn't expect her counts to go up anytime soon, but they certainly didn't want them headed down. 

More as I know.

Love and peace,
Cam

Post Op

Hey everyone,
I am trying to update as much as possible with Facebook, calls and emails, but the ole blog is still best for personal broadcasting.

Mary did have a thymectomy onTuesday from 11:30-2:30. The surgery was successful and standard. She has been healing for the past couple of days. The first night was rough. She had a couple of tough emotional and painful moments, but she had the strength (and drugs) to pull through it. We both didn't sleep much. 

Yesterday she began respiratory and physical therapies. She was hooked up to so many things and had her breastbone opened, so her breathing and moving are laborious. 

This morning we got her to the bathroom and back with no help from the nurse. She changed out of the gown and into PJs so she can maybe walk the floor some. She still has the no fresh fruit, flowers or veggies rule.  Our big hope for this morning is to get the chest tube removed. She hasn't had much drainage lately, so that should be real.

Thank you to Mary's parents, especially for help with Sam. Thank you to Wiley and family for watching him a night. Thank you to all the subs for taking my classes, to Dana for helping make things happen, and especially to all my current students for putting up with my absence (I promise you won't miss a single insight!).

Two big thank you - 1) the amazing care providers we have had through this whole experience; it has been remarkable. 2) everyone for their love, support, energy prayers, concern, smiles, etc - much much appreciated.

Love,
Mary, Sam and Cam

Niner Game with the Pa-In-Law

Bill and I had a great time at the Niners game today. I may be able to get into the team this season... (although I watched my phone and scoreboard for the Saints pretty darn closely throughout the game! Nice job, SAINTS!)

THIS sack as we saw it.



And THIS Morgan TD as we saw it.



Good times. Check out our photos here. Including omnipresent cheerleaders and and NFL photog snapping a shot of us.