Author Archives: Alan O’Hashi, Whole Brain Thinker

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About Alan O’Hashi, Whole Brain Thinker

I’ve been involved with community journalism since 1968 when I wrote for my junior school paper, the "Tumbleweed," through high school and college and then wrote for the "Wyoming State Journal." I put aside my newspaper pen and began Boulder Community Media in 2005. There wasn’t much community journalism opportunity, so I resurrected my writing career as a screenwriter. My first short screenplay, “Stardust”, won an award in the 2005 Denver Screenwriting Center contest. I've made a number of movies over the years. Filmmaking is time-consuming, labor and equipment intensive. I recently changed my workflow to first write a book and make a movie based on that content. - Electric Vehicle Anxiety and Advice - This is a memoir travelogue of three trips covering 2,600 EV miles around Wyoming (2022) - Beyond Heart Mountain - Winter Goose Publishers released my memoir in February (2022) - The Zen of Writing with Confidence and Imperfection - This is a book recounting how luck planed into my signing a book deal after a 15-minute pitch meeting. (2020) - True Stories of an Aging Baby Boomer - War stories about living in a cohousing and lessons others can learn when starting their communities (2021) - Beyond Sand Creek - About Arapaho tribal efforts to repatriate land in Colorado (PBS - TBA) - Beyond Heart Mountain - Based on my memoir about my childhood in Cheyenne facing overt and subtle racism toward the Japanese following World War II (PBS - 2021) - New Deal Artist Public Art Legacy - About artists who created work in Wyoming during the Great Depression (PBS - 2018) - Mahjong and the West - SAG indie feature which premiered at the semi-important Woodstock Film Festival (2014) Over the years, I’ve produced directed, filmed and/or edited several short movies, “Running Horses” (Runner Up – Wyoming Short Film Contest), “On the Trail: Jack Kerouac in Cheyenne” (Lowell Celebrates Kerouac Festival, Top 10 Wyoming Short Film Contest), “Gold Digger” (Boulder Asian Film Festival), “Adobo” (Boulder International Film Festival), “A Little Bit of Discipline” (Rosebud Film Series), and two feature length documentaries “Your Neighbor’s Child” (Wyoming PBS and Rocky Mountain PBS), and “Serotonin Rising” (American Film Market, Vail Film Festival). He also directed and produced the award winning stage play “Webster Street Blues” by my childhood friend Warren Kubota. Boulder Community Media is a non-profit production company dedicated to democratzing media in all their forms - large and small screens, printed page and stage by providing sustainable and community-based content. I mostly work with community-based media producers, organizations, and socially-responsible businesses to develop their content via – the written word, electronic and new media, the visual and performing arts in a culturally competent manner – I’m what’s commonly called a niche TV and movie producer. Along with all this is plying my forte’ – fund development through grant writing, sponsorship nurturing and event planning.

Jared Polis for Governor

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I’m voting for Jared Polis on Tuesday.

I’m one to wait until election day to vote and if you haven’t mailed in your ballot yet, you have until 7pm on Tuesday June 26th to do so.

Who is my choice for governor?

My vote goes to Jared Polis in the Democratic primary.

Why?

I’ve known Jared for many years, I think dating back to my days at Assets for Colorado Youth in the early 2000s. ACY was a positive youth development non-profit organization that taught teachers and youth serving organizations how to apply the development assets to the daily lives of kids.

Jared and his foundation were strong supporters of alternative approaches to students, other than the “containment” approach.

He also was chair of the Colorado State Board of Education where he was supportive of education and classrooms in all their forms in Colorado.

I remember when he first ran for the 2nd Congressional District. It’s a diverse district encompassing the very Republican south part of Weld, Broomfield, Adams, Jefferson, and Summit counties and blue Boulder County.

I’m not one much for political litmus tests. Any candidate who says they can pass all of them is telling you alternative facts. I don’t have a political score card for the gubernatorial candidates.

I think it comes down to style.

Jared knows how to govern toward the middle when it comes to inflammatory issues like the natural gas fracking. He can’t be a purist on the issue having to balance drilling interests in Weld County with the hard core no-fracking stance in Boulder.

The 2nd CD is a microcosm of the state of Colorado. Whoever gets elected will not be able to keep any purist campaign promises, be it to the teachers, the energy industry or the gun lobby.

Jared is a maverick and not afraid to buck the system. When he first ran in 2008, he dared to challenge long-time Denver politico Joan Fitz-Gerald. She admirably served in the state senate and was the heir-apparent to the open seat. He campaigned hard and won in an upset.

When elected in 2008, was the most liberal member of his congressional class and picked to be on a CNN reality cable show featuring himself and freshman Congresswoman Cynthia Lummis – one of my East High School classmates and longtime family friend – from Wyoming’s at large district 1 and the most conservative members of the class.

Jared could have staying in Congress forever, but he chose to stay home this time around. He and Marlon have two young kids and while I don’t know if that was a reason why he chose to run for governor rather than stay in Congress, I imagine it was a part of the decision making equation.

His hands-on experience with federalism coupled with knowledge and work at the state level makes Jared the most practical and best-suited candidate in my mind.

Besides his list of credentials, he’s a really nice guy.

Facebook Community Boost videos: At least, make them look good

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Facebook brought an event called the Community Boost to Denver

Facebook is putting on a full court press to get the gig economy to become an integral part of the macro-economy. How do we turn our hobbies and cottage businesses into real money using facebook groups, ads, photos and video?

I attended the free grassroots road show, Community Boost, that recently rolled into Denver. It was a classy event at the Cable Center near the University of Denver.

The Cable Center is a non-profit organization that educates the public about, I suppose, the great things that cable TV has done for the good of society.

My background is public access TV, which was a provision of the original Cable Communications Act of 1984 that set up community access channels as a ploy to avoid regulation as a public utility and dodge FCC oversight.

I had to check out the CATV museum with the history of cable and honors all the pioneers who made billions of dollars.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I digress.

The event’s goal was to provide basic information and some hands-on experience about how to use facebook to increase website traffic, get more buyers / customers and ultimately how to buy more facebook ads through micro-market targeting and subsequently make more money for your fledgling business and for facebook.

facebook booster creative

The facebook Community Boost exhibit area include the Mobile Studio that provides in-phone apps to edit pix and video.

I’m a filmmaker and facebook is trying to turn everyone into rough-around-the-edges filmmakers, which devalues the work that I and all of my colleagues do.

Nonetheless, if you’re going to make video, you might as well post stuff that at least looks halfway decent.

Here are a few tips to improve your videos:

  • Have a story in mind. Even on the spot, you can mentally compose a beginning, middle and end to your movie, even if it’s only 15 seconds long. If you use an in-phone app like Splice or iMovie, you can shoot clips, trim and reassemble them. If you don’t edit, lots of creativity can come about from the continuous shot – going from scene to scene while keeping the phone camera steady. The climax to your story is some sort of call to action – “Click here”, “Call us”, “Donate now.”
  • Hold your camera steady. Move smoothly hand-held. My preference is to shoot with the phone camera horizontally. TV screens and monitors are not vertical and horizontal video displays and looks better. If you’re webcasting facebook live, turn the camera horizontally until the image flips then start the recording.
  • Movies are 80% sound. Viewers can take video that’s a little shaky or out of focus but if the sound is bad, your potential customers will skip to the next video. The microphone is at the bottom of the phone. Get as close as you can to your action or subjects. Normal voices from across the room won’t be picked up. If you decide you want your voice in the recording, try to let your subject complete their statement and avoid “walking over” their audio with your excited utterances or laughing.
  • Fill out the meta-data fields. Facebook has figured out the meta-data thing and prompts you through the video upload with titles and key word fields. Fill them out and write the post narrative. Pick out a few key hashtags that are common-sensical. I see posts with six or more hashtags – many of which are nonsense which detract from the content.

If you’re interested in turning your volunteers or staff into better social media movie makers, I offer workshops about how to tell your organization or business story in a 140 character elevator speech. I also teach practical ways to light a scene, get good sound using inexpensive, everyday items.

facebook creative sources

The Community Boost mobile studio pushed 10 apps to edit images and movies.

What I learned from the Community Boost is that real filmmakers need to differentiate themselves from short-form shooters who know may how to point the camera and record, but make bad video look better with the bells and whistles graphic overlay apps.

At the same time, filmmakers can better promote their work using the short and rough cut formats.

Since attending the Community Boost, I’ve pushed out short videos a couple times for Boulder Community Media production projects that generated some pretty good organic engagement – a couple thousand views of one and nearing 1,000 views of another.

How that translates into more business is anyone’s guess but the phone keeps ringing and my friends keep making referrals.

The Community Boost was set up for lots of face-to-face networking, but during the breaks most everyone was sitting in the corners staring at their phones, computers and other screens.

The lunch was good, but nearly missed out since I ran into a filmmaker in the hallway after the facebook ads workshop.

Community Boost “Aha” Moment – Campaign 2016

facebook parscale stahl

The Trump presidential campaign successfully employed the same techniques as taught at the Community Boost. The Hillary campaign didn’t and the rest is history.

I had a big “Aha” moment during the facebook ads workshop.

It was about how to target the ads to particular markets and how different messages and their words, images, colors and other variables can be tweaked to maximize viewership and interaction.

Earlier, I watched a 60 Minute TV news magazine segment by Leslie Stahl. She interviewed the Donald Trump campaign 2016 social media guy Brad Parscale. Apparently, facebook offered to embed staff members into campaign organizations who advised about how to maximize use of facebook ads.

Parscale explained how they decided to focus on 3,000 voters in Wisconsin which ended up turning the course of the election. The Trump campaign tried out the facebook offer. The Hillary campaign didn’t and the rest is history.

Those of us in the Community Boost ad workshop learned in 30 minutes what was taught during the 2016 presidential election.

Facebook ads, with practice, can be a very effective way to micro-target market and maximize advertising budgets.

I get chided by friends about why I spend so much time on my facebook account and pages that I manage. I’d say three quarters of my business leads come as a result of my presence on facebook. “If I didn’t make money from facebook, I wouldn’t waste my time there,” I tell them.

I still don’t understand the psychology behind facebook and why people respond, but then again, it really doesn’t matter.

Deterring gun violence with anti-abortion tactics

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Mental health and how that relates to gun violence needs a new story.

One commonly held answer to gun violence is more mental health services and access to them. American culture has a long way to go before “mental health” is socially acceptable.

I look forward to the day when Americans throw as much money at mental health services as we do to, say, cancer cures. I’m one who believes my own observations. I find it interesting that if a person gets cancer, they get all jazzed up and create organizations, help raise millions of dollars through walks and pink shirt sales, not just once, not occasionally, but all the time. About all I see or hear about mental health issues are “pass it on” facebook posts about asking suicidal people to call a hotline.

As a fundraiser myself, I’m amazed at how successful the cancer industrial complex is at growing and maintaining its donor base.

I also was the development director for a domestic violence prevention organization. Being one of very few straight men in that field, was an eyeopener for me.

Over the years I’ve raised a lot of money for a vastly diverse number of causes. Violence prevention was by far the most difficult, yet the most rewarding for me.

My observation, the cultural barrier is a dominant society that values men more than women and children.

Cancer cells don’t talk back, they have no faces. Cancer cells kill everyone regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation or shoe size – one size fits all.

Gender based violence is 85 percent more likely to be committed by a male, regardless of whether a victim is a man or woman. Of the recent mass murderer events – I lose track of the numbers – 100 percent were committed by men.

It’s no wonder the mental health industry has a tough time gaining traction. “He was an orphan” the newscaster says of the shooter. “He was a problem child” the next talking head reports.

When was the last time you read, “Those ovarian cancer tumors, they had troubled lives” or “If only that breast cancer cell grew up in a better part of the body” – cancer has no face, it’s easy to say “We want to stomp out cancer in our lifetime.” There are no nonprofits out there advocating for more cancer.

When bad guys are turned into victims, it’s not so easy to say “We want to stomp out men who, for whatever reasons, kill people with guns,” and raise money and supporters around that. There happen to be many nonprofits that do advocate for men to buy guns and kill people (women and girls buy guns, but they don’t go shooting up schools).

Violence is a problem we men have to own. If you’re a second amendment zealot, it doesn’t matter. If your kid was murdered in Parkland, it doesn’t matter.

What matters is, while men are more likely to commit violent acts, the vast majority of us don’t. What men have in common, we want a safe community where we can live, work and play.

The conversations should be around how pro-gun advocates and anti-gun advocates can keep us all safe.

With 300 million firearms in American homes today, talk of banning gun and ammo is a nonstarter, at best.

What about a new market driven story that deters gun sales?

The “more good guys with guns” sales pitch is effective. After every mass shooting, gun sales spike.

My sales idea is to treat gun purchases like some states treat abortion procedure sales. Abortion surgery can’t be outlawed, but cultural impediments can be put in the way.

After a gun purchaser puts in for a background check and a thorough mental health screening, then a three day waiting period prospective buyers have to watch a video.

INT. SCHOOL CLASSROOM, DAY

ALARM BELLS clang, general chaos and disorder ensues. Distraught TEACHERS wielding hand guns step around student bodies strewn on the floor.

CLOSE UP: Bloody blobs of dead student protoplasm oozesout of multiple gunshot wounds onto school room floors.

CUT TO: sobbing little kids with blood stained shirts trembling in shock waiting in the cordoned off parking lot.

CUT TO: a montage of moms crying behind the wheels of their vans and SUVs rushing to the school.

CUT TO: a mom in a dimly lit morgue.

CLOSE UP: The medical examiner lifts the shroud covering the face of a lifeless body.

FADE TO BLACK