A popular feature of the videoconferencing platform Zoom is virtual backgrounds. This allows you to show a picture or video behind you, transforming whatever bland background you have into a scenic vista. If you have a newer Webcam, either built-in to your computer or standalone, it will easily isolate you from whatever is behind you. However not all Webcams can do this. But with Zoom there is another way to achieve this, by using a green screen.

A green screen, or chroma key screen, is a solid green background behind you that, in simple terms, will isolate you in the picture and put an image or video behind you. This technology is common on TV and in movies, as this is how weather reporters present the map behind them and in movies it is used instead of building robust set backdrops. As my own Webcam didn’t work with virtual backgrounds, I sought out a green screen. What I found, however, was more expensive than I wanted to pay; I am simply trying to leverage this feature while I am in this current work situation. Then is dawned on me, there could be another option – green poster board.

A visit to a local dollar store found options for poster board – light and dark green, and only 69 cents per sheet. As I wasn’t sure which shade would work, I picked 4 sheets of each, all for under 6 dollars. With some masking tape, I was able to hang them on the wall, as shown in the opening photo. Where the sight of this in itself doesn’t look professional, in its use it’s quite the contrary.

Below, without turning on the virtual backgrounds in Zoom, the camera image looks like this.

When I turn on virtual backgrounds, there is a sunrise over Cocoa Beach, Florida behind me.

You may have noticed I used both shades of green, as I tried this when I realized I needed a larger area, and they both worked together. A bonus of this solution is the poster board is made by a local company here in Appleton Wisconsin, Pacon Corporation.

Deconstructing a Low-Budget Green Screen

When a situation changes, it is easy to pivot to another solution and spend to accommodate it without thinking of the short-term vs. long-term cost implications. When I put thought into it, ingenuity found an alternative solution that completely solved the need.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Business • Technology • Thrive • (3) Comments • Permalink

It’s not only Friday, but Good Friday. For those who believe, have a blessed Easter. For those who do not, have a nice weekend!

• If you have videos displayed (or embedded) on your Web site, you may see at the end related videos shown. In many cases, those videos don’t necessarily compliment the video, and you have no control over them. However, I did find this code on the blog of Maximillian Laumeister that can hide YouTube related videos.
• Speaking of videos, for some reason actor George Takei, who played Sulu in the Star Trek franchise, made a commercial for Milwaukee County, Wisconsin’s public transit system years ago. Where I couldn’t find a connection of him to the city, I do know several large ad agencies are based in the Cream City and that could have been the catalyst for his appearance. I have embedded it in the post below, using the code above.
• A product that has been very helpful while spending more time at home. The Dash Mini Maker Electric Round Griddle allows you to cook with minimal mess an egg or pancake with ease. And did I mention minimal mess?
• Another helpful product is the JOOLA Table Tennis Set allows you to easily convert your dining room table to a ping pong table.
• I often remind myself of a quote from the late, great sales guru Zig Ziglar, “Anything worth doing, is worth doing poorly... until you can do it well.” This past week I had the opportunity to pass along this advice to someone who had never heard of it. The quote came up in the context of setting up a personal portfolio site and their concern it wouldn’t be perfect right away.
• I know someone who changed their name from a name that someone else I know changed their name too. If that makes any sense! Out of privacy to both I won’t share the name.
• The blog post I published last week, A Personal Business Dilemma, was actually written over 2 and a half years ago! I found it in a notebook among others that I had written and published. I don’t recall why I never typed up and published it. Perhaps because it was over 7 written pages? I made some heavy edits, but the gist of it remained.
• As shown above, there are some interesting street names in Appleton, Wisconsin.

Hopefully next week’s list will not include anything about snow that forecasted for this weekend.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Thrive • What I Learned • (2) Comments • Permalink

What the hell have I gotten myself into? I was just looking for a place to stay!

These were just some of the thoughts racing through my head as I was white-knuckling the drive to our hotel outside of Bozeman, Montana as part of our family cross-country road trip. We were booking hotels along the way and The Lodge at Big Sky was the closest hotel available to Bozeman, where we planned to anchor our trip to Yellowstone National Park. We didn’t get to Bozeman until sunset, and by the time we went thru the city and towards our hotel it was pitch black – too dark for my liking with trailer trucks coming and going around us. The fact we had no sense of where we were truly heading added no comfort either.

What was in actuality under an hour drive seemed like an eternity, and upon arrival I was drained. Soon after we checked in and arrived at our room, a corner suite with high ceilings and big windows. About all we could see outside at this hour was a firepit on the patio below us. Closing the curtains, I thought about warming by the fire with adult beverages the following night.

In the morning we slowly rose and I made my way to the lobby for coffee. Back at the room we were slowly rustling the children for our day trip to Yellowstone, and I decided to shed a little light on the situation. Fumbling with the curtains until I found the pull rods, in unison I pulled them apart, opening them not only to a bright sunny day but one of the most beautiful natural sights I’ve ever seen.

In awe, I grabbed my phone and snapped the picture at the opening of this post. It is Lone Peak, part of the Big Sky ski resort. Of course, I say this with great knowledge now, but I had no idea where we were heading or what we would encounter once the new day arrived. We bookmarked these views and prepared for our trip to see Old Faithful, and ended up spending another day and night longer to explore the beauty of this area. What was pure chance became a highlight of the journey.

Recounting this story – and this is my deconstruction as well – I am reminded that you never know what will arrive in the morning. Over the last few weeks there has been a lot of stress, but some bright spots as well, as we adjust to events we have no control over. In telling this tale from last summer I am offering hope – to you my fair reader, and to myself especially.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Diversions • Thrive • (0) Comments • Permalink

Around the house and with minimal trips off the property to gather nourishment and supplies, my notes app was open and ready to gather those a-ha moments of the past week.

• First a correction to last week’s account that there’s not enough ground beef or turkey in my area. There is plenty of ground beef at Jacob’s Meat Market in Appleton, Wisconsin. But honestly, you’ll want to go there for their own house-cured bacon.
• CO2 containers are considered a hazardous product. Fortunately the people at Soda Sense, a relatively-new company about a half-hour north of me in Green Bay, know all about this. They offer a refill/exchange service by FedEx for the CO2 canisters for SodaStream machines. Not only do I get local spring water for my homemade seltzer, but the bubbles are locally sourced too.
• To help pass time, or perhaps simply to mix up the time more, I am finding many offerings of activity sheets. Two of my favorites are from Adam J. Kurtz and Riot Fest.
• I haven’t been listening to as many podcasts lately, and I get reminded of it every time I get an alert for a new podcast, or see online someone I know starting their own podcast.
• About 2 months ago I joined a co-working space, World HeadQuarters, as a way to get out of the house and work from their unique space. It’s closed these days, however they are offering members resources including a weekly Webinar. In the first one 2 weeks ago I suggested having a virtual “brown bag lunch” where someone gives a short presentation followed by discussion. So it was only fitting I did the first one this past week on the topic of Web Accessibility. I’ll write more about this soon, but it was a great opportunity to do a presentation and sharpen that skill.
• The popular Webinar service Zoom has a status page, which you can subscribe to by email or RSS feed, the latter I am doing as, well, I am all about RSS feeds.
• Recently when I get in my car, rather that the Bluetooth picking up the latest podcast I was listening to (or as I said before, not listening to), it will play a random song from my phone. Yesterday it started playing Gypsy from 8th Route Army, an alternative rock band from Springfield, MA back in the 80’s. They were huge locally there and started touring with major label bands, but then broke up. In addition to wearing out their albums on my college radio show I worked at the same place as the lead singer and got to know him. I found Gypsy on YouTube, and you can listen to this instrumental song from over 30 years ago as I did – or watch the embedded video below.

Until next week...

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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What I Learned • (2) Comments • Permalink

There is a saying that goes, “it’s not personal, it’s business.” Where events occur to the benefit of the business, often times they are done or decisions are made because of the people involved. This following is a true story of a case of the latter.

When I had my Web consulting business, I often partnered with an awesome graphic design firm to develop a Web site. The principal of that firm is someone I met shortly after I started my business. I grew to greatly trust her design and business judgment and enjoyed working with her and her growing firm. Through this we also became friends.

Projects we partnered on usually came as a lead from one of us, and the other would support it. Once such lead was a firm she had worked with for years, providing design services to them and their clients. As she had a very good relationship with this firm, I knew that in partnering with her on this proposal, I surely didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize that relationship. Little did I know I would be put to the test on this.

So far, so good

We had a pre-proposal meeting with the firm and I felt it went well. There were 2 people from the firm, myself and my design partner over the phone. As we started the manager from the firm mentioned he was originally from Boston, as I was as well as my colleague from the design firm, and as a result I brought up the resurgent New England Patriots football team. That personalizing, I felt, went well. Though the other person from the firm in the meeting scowled – perhaps she was a Chicago Bears fan? In any case, it was never my intention to or did I feel I overplayed the connection.

As the meeting progressed we learned more about the current Web site, a portal for their clients, and what they were looking for from the next generation of this technology. During the discussion I asked them for a test user login so that I could go back to my office and go through the site in more detail. When they obliged and gave me one, they also offered for me to have a login for their FTP server; if you don’t know what this means, it’s a rather big deal! They basically have me the keys to their kingdom – FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and with this login I could access all of the code for their site and even create a local copy of the site to further analyze it. An offer for this level of access rarely happens at this early stage of the proposal process, especially with nothing formal in writing with them.

After the meeting we debriefed and expressed disbelief that we got the FTP server login, then focused on the structure of the proposal and hopeful project. We decided I would take the lead and the proposal would be from my firm. Next we put in the time, created the proposal, reviewed and reviewed it and when we were ready I sent it to the firm by email. And as we did with any such proposal, we would wait. As best said by the late, great Tom Petty, the waiting is the hardest part.

The Unexpected Phone Call

One day the phone rang and it was a friend of mine. I met him through the tech community and we became friends. We never worked on a project together, though we often discussed business, technology and life and were sounding boards to each other. As the call began and we exchanged peasantries I asked him, “what’s up?” There was silence on the other end of the line and I got a sense he was hesitating at what to say. Then he came out and said what I will paraphrase here but this was very close to it. He said, “Mike, I don’t another way to say this, but I just saw a copy of the proposal you sent to that firm.”

Uh, what?

He was prepared for my shock and the crack in my voice, and I could tell he wasn’t happy being the bearer of bad news. However it was something he had to tell me. In short, a friend of his, whom I met previously, showed him a copy of the proposal we had sent to the firm, asking my friend, “hey, don’t you know him (referring to me)?” Apparently the firm had given it to other firms and Web freelancers, asking them to bid on the project based on our detailed proposal.

Uh, what?

Well, that’s not exactly what I said, for my brain felt like it got slammed with a tidal wave. A tidal wave of thoughts, emotions, words, random sounds… I wasn’t prepared for this, but in hindsight it was the best way to hear about it – from a friendly, sympathetic source, when I was in my home office where nobody would see what I could only imagine was also a tidal wave of facial expressions. My friend couldn’t see the tidal wave over the phone but he knew it hit me, as he was just as shocked by this as he created detailed proposals himself, and would have felt the same had our roles been in reverse.

We talked for a bit more, and I am sure he wanted to make sure I wasn’t climbing out on any ledges. After the call I decided to take a long walk as I could use the exercise and mental cleansing that it offered to clear my head before I had to tell my friend the designer what happened.

But before I called her I realized I had a decision to make. How would I react to this? Would I react? Do I just pretend it didn’t happen? Do I confront them? Do I drop it and not contact them? Or do I pursue the project anyway? Or was there some middle ground? The more I thought about it, I decided I would simply drop it. And I could sum it up in one word – relationship.

I was fortunate, as I stated earlier, to have a great working relationship and friendship with her. She had a great relationship with this firm. I clearly had zero relationship with this firm. For myself, there would be truly nothing to gain from this, even if I called them and told them to fuck off! On the other hand, any action I took could have a negative impact on the relationship between her and I, and could have made a bad situation even worse. This of course was my stance, and I was eager to now talk with her as I had come to peace with this unwanted decision.

Another Unwanted But Important Call

When I called her she was actually expecting me to have good news about the proposal, as it had been a while. I don’t recall the exact words I said, but I was pretty much recalled the story as it was told to me. On the other end of the phone was the sound of a similar tidal wave hitting her, with similar shock and disbelief as we both commiserated about this.

Discussing it further, she was leaning towards confronting them about this awkward situation – not in a combative manner, but being matter of fact about it. When I told her about my decision, she was surprised. Not say anything at all? As I explained why jeopardize her established business with this firm as well, it of course resonated with her, but she still felt really bad about what happened. She never thought this firm would act this way as this was never her experience with them. In the end we both agreed to not say anything, and move on.

It’s all good

Eventually we both got over this and went back to work, later collaborating on several great projects. Years later I recalled this event to a friend who is a lawyer who has his own practice and many small business clients. He had a similar reaction as I did to what happened, but concurred with the conclusion. Could I have sued? Sure. Would I have collected enough in damages to make it worth my while? Doubtful. Would the lawyer representing me made any money? Sure, but I digress.

In the end I had a good story and lesson to tell, and a relationship worth keeping, and fortunately no further contact for me with that firm.

Deconstructing Business vs. Personal

Every day we are all confronted with decisions to make – most minor and a few major. Where some don’t require a lot of thought, for those that do, keeping in mind the big picture of where you are and where you are going is paramount. In this case, I stepped back and used that big picture perspective, and I was pleased with the results.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Business • Strategize • (0) Comments • Permalink