Happiness at the end of the world/ Happy smiley and friends

“The Happy Smiley Writers Group got together after National Novel Writing Month 2008 and created this book because… We want some happy endings, darn it!”
www.Singapore-novelists.com

Code: Voyance, by Joelyn Yep
Inside Out, by Viki Chua
Izanami, by Yuen Xiang Hao
The End of a Date, by Lina Salleh
The Journal of Azarus (Extract), by Clarence Tan
Dirty, by Maisarah Binte Abu Samah
Hope in the Ruins, by Chen Ziyang
Happiness at the End of the World, by Rosemary Lim

This bodes well for Fiction writing in Singapore. That was my first thought.

Eight stories, all with an end-of-world/ post-apocalyptic theme. And with a positive ending, or an ending with an inferred sort of happiness. Hence the title.

Easy-to-read short stories.

These eight stories show promise, and some of them were quite enjoyable to read. This is not merely a polite statement.

I managed to read ALL stories from start to finish, which is more than what I can say about Harry Potter (not that it isn’t good but it just wasn’t my thing). The “Happy Smiley and Friends” group have created neat little short stories. It’s easy to read, if you give it a chance.

Some stories have become more enjoyable the second time i read them (yes, i even managed to read them a second time, and not because they weren’t clear in the first instance). The writings were largely crisp and pretty much flowed along.

I would even venture that if the book was published in a pulp magazine format, much like the early days of Astounding, there might even be a different flavour to the whole reading experience.

Perhaps it’s the inevitable that some stories just didn’t quite capture my imagination. It wasn’t so much the plot or any particular aspect. Maybe I was in a different mood.

These eight authors are promising writers, whose story ideas and characters that could be delved further. The basics of good story writing is there, in my amateur opinion. Technically (in terms of grammar and spelling etc.) there are no cause for complaints.

P134. Author’s biographies
P137. A preview of the novel, “Bubble G.U.M”

Jack Doe: Anonymous/ Shawn Yap, Gabriel Chua, Xander Lee

9789812769343
Brought to you by a group of young people, Singaporeans, it seems (at the time of publication, most of them seem to be below 25 or at most 30 years old). The work was published under the MDA First Time Writers and Illustrators Publishing Initiative.

About half of them were co-writers and the other half colourists: Shawn Yap (creator & artist), Gabriel Chua, Nathan Peng, Daniel Barrett Lee, Xander Lee, Regina Lee, Amanda Yap, Beryl Kwok.

According to the blurb, this collection collects all six chapters published in M.U.G.E.N. and includes extra pages and revamped artwork.

The graphic novel takes place in a fictional city called Central City. The protagonist is a detective who belongs to mysterious anti-crime family/ clan, whose leadership was a hereditary title passed from fathers to sons. Upon taking the role, the leader loses all personal identity and assumes the anonymous name of Jack Doe. The role is to “protect the city from the shadows” by solving cases that “no one else can”. Jack Doe has no powers, other than possessing a pack of tarot cards as part of his crime-solving arsenal.

The novel starts with a murder of Jack’s friend, the police commissioner. The mystery deepens when Jack is being pursued by people intent on killing him. There’s a sub-plot that attempts to delve into Jack’s psyche, his past, and a recurring dream where he sees himself killed.
Interesting premise. The storyline though, raises several questions that became a distraction to the flow.

For instance, being a detective with an office, isn’t quite anonymous. And with no apparent powers or abilities, he seems to be pitched against super-powered beings (though in the story, he never quite fight with all of them, save one).

The flow of the story was, for want of a better description, not as smooth and coherent as it could be. I sense that there’s an attempt to weave a plup-mystery, hardboiled detective mystery story.
The saving grace were two things: the artwork (one of the more polished styles I’ve seen, and not just from Singaporean works) and the twist at the end.

It would be a crime to give away the plot-twist. I’ll just say it takes a somewhat familiar concept of “a world within worlds” and setting up for a clash between the creator and those who were created.

I thought the end-part should have been made a recurrent idea throughout the story, with a few more hints along the way rather than leave it to the last part. The ‘Reveal’ was too abrupt in this case.

Overall, the art and graphic flow was good but the script was the weak link.
Still, as a first time work, I’ll give them a thumbs up. And honestly, I would be keen to read more of what they have to produce.

Social media metrics/ Jim Sterne

My takeaway:
- must know what we are trying to achieve, before deciding what to measure.
- online measurement is not an exact science. But doesn’t mean results are invalid. Need a balance between how much we are willing to accept as hard truths or merely indicators or estimates.
- Numbers don’t mean anything by themselves. Need context, e.g. Compared against something (see notes on comments) or your end in mind (e.g. Action, sales)
- target audience of the data must also accept/ understand the measurement method (See Intuit case study)

No point starting social media if you don’t have an objective in mind, and if you can’t measure that objective (see Katie Delahaye Paine, “7 steps to measurable social media success”).

There are many possible metrics (see David Berkowitz, “100 ways to measure social media”)

Understanding Analysis: “The most important part of all analysis is whether and how the resulting metrics will be used”.

E.g. of an ambiguous question: “are fat people lazy?” How fat is fat? How lazy is lazy? Measured against what? Equally vague is the question, “is our marketing effective?” (a way to clarify is to define effectiveness, e.g. Increase sales)

Author highly recommends “the thinker’s guide to analytical thinker” by Dr Linda Elder and Dr Richard Paul (www.criticalthinking.org), on practical advice on approaching an analysis project.

Flow of customer/ company relationship:
- get people to know you (attention, reach)
- get people to like you (emotions, sentiments, value)
- get people to interact with you (trigger action)
- convince them to buy (trigger action)

Reach: the % of people you want to touch and can actually get hold of (but not necessarily action from them).

“measuring by alarm”, where mentions dip or rise above the usual volume of chatter

Twitter retweets as a measure. Tweetbeep.

Twitter case study; salesforce.com. More of an experiment for them in tracking reach via twitter. They instantly forward any mention of their CEO to their PR dpt to monitor reputation risk. .
Google Alerts
Hitwise
Comscore
Buzzlogic*
Blogscope*
* help track photos & videos

Mentions a Web Analytics Association in the US. Published a draft Social Media Standards.
Measuring Facebook widgets: hosted,viewed, grabbed, installed, used, uninstalled, active, time on page, mouseover, event.

Jodi McDermott, www.clearsprings.com. How data/ measurements may not precise (book has a very good anecdote of what not to do; reasons why measurement is not consistent — though that may be changing). “numbers don’t have tone precise, just compelling”. Suggests ranges and estimates.

Study- “firm-created word-of-mouth communication: evidence from a field test”, marketing science, vol 28, no. 4, david godes & dina mayzlin, 2009. Suggests that wom between less loyal fans (not highly loyal) and looser acquaintances (not friends) maximized incremental sales.[I noted the word incremental.] And that opinion leaders and fans were already “preaching to the converted” so it would not result in additional sales. Must have conversations “where none would have naturally occurred otherwise”. See www.webanalyticsassociation.org/en/art/712

Chpt 4, measuring sentiment. Cites a study about measuring tweets on michael jackson’s death. “detecting sadness in 140 characters: sentiment analysis and mourning Michael Jackson on twitter”.
twittersentiment.appspot.com
www.socialmention.com
www.scoutlabs.com

Author defines engagement as “when somebody cares and interacts”. Suggests people can care about the weather and interact via online platforms but not really concerned about the brand. Or care/ interested about a brand but not willing or able to interact, so little engagement.

On bookmarking services; Idea of noteworthiness: e.g. how many people share/ fwd your content, how many link to your content, how many people click through in a given period. Cited from web analytics association.

“engagement food chain”: see, save, rate, repeated, comment, click, interact, purchase, recommend.

Comments – suggests reviewing the types of posts that get comments, and what sort of comments.

Chapt 6
“bad reviews are your friend”

a case on using Net Promoter Score; Tektronik, www.btobonline.com, 9 Jun 2008

Suggests using Google Alerts and track “I would recommend (pdt/ company)” or “I would not recommend…”

“ask them to participate”: you can’t control social media conversations but you can bring them closer.

Case study on Dell’s www.ideastorm.com.

Mentions Motorola’s wiki where people can post their self written user manuals.

Chapt 7, getting results.
Recommends Eric T. Peterson’s Big Book of Key Performance Indicators, on measuring web performance.

http://www.webanalyticsdemystified.com/about_kpi_book.asp

“all good KPIs drive action”, and if a KPI that change drastically or unexpectedly don’t compel some action or reaction, then probably not an important one or even redundant.

Chris Lake’s 35 social media KPIs to measure engagement:

http://econsultancy.com/blog/4887-35-social-media-kpis-to-help-measure-engagement

E.g. Comments, fans, downloads, posts, reviews, time spent, uploads, forwards, favourites.

Talks about “Key Listening Indicators” and “key community indicators” (latter includes active members, page views, new members, retention, improvements in marketing efficiency, sales)
See “a social media marketing campaign deconstructed” http://econsultancy.com/blog/2363-a-social-media-marketing-campaign-deconstructed

Shared a case study of a company, Intuit, which adopted a traditional research approach (control & study group) to measuring the impact of a web campaign. Management accepted the results, as they accepted the research methods. But they also acknowledged that being able to measure hindered them “in how far they want to strive for”. That when they understand how to measure, they started to put limitations on the creative side. There was value in first innovating new things, then finding a way to measure later.

An issue is that employees may feel that asking them to justify their results, on top offering to get something going, is a potential straw that will break the camel’s back.

Lists further readings.

Stranded vol 1/ Mike Carey & Siddharth Kotian

I learned that The Stranded are a group of aliens seeking refuge in earth, after their home world has been destroyed. But some one, or somethings, continue to pursue them. One by one, they are killed.

Plot-wise, it reminded me a little of John Hancock, where the super beings have suppressed memories but are inexplicable drawn to one another.

Aliens: Female war/ Mark Verheiden

An extension of Ripley’s relationship with the face hugging, chest exploding alien hive. Or to be precise, the ultimate showdown between Ripley and the mother of all aliens (just occurred to me the alien species never has a name).

Ripley conceives of a plan to capture the mother of all aliens, and eventually destroy all aliens.
But the real kicker comes at the last pages of the story, when the real truth to the whole alien saga is revealed by the young girl that Ripley sworn to save.

Blue Beetle: Black and blue/ Matthew Sturges & Mike Norton

Very clean artwork.

Teenage boy possesses alien technology. Able to transform into a super-powered morphing amoured fighting machine.

Starting story: demons are invoked and have to be put down. Interesting plot, albeit a bit predictable.

The other stories that follow get a bit deeper into the Blue Beetle character, which was nice. Has a side plot of a love-hate teenage romance among two of his pals.

The plot deepens as more is revealed of the origins and purpose of the Blue Beetle technology (it’s not benign, as it turns out).

This graphic novel gave me the impression it’s almost like a Ben Ten series. There’s a storyline that is interlinked and develops quite nicely. But characters are more at the surface level.
I get the impression the series has been discontinued.

Kato vol 1: Not my father’s daughter/ Ande Parks

A Green Hornet spinoff. And not about Kato but Kato’s successor, his daughter. Reads like a coming-of-age story.

Hirohito Juuma, son of a dead Japanese Yakuza clan boss, has sworn to revenge this father’s death by killing Kato. He almost succeeds, but not quite. Instead, he murders Kato’s wife. In usual plot follows, where the daughter trains under the tough mentorship of her father, to seek revenge.

Overall, this is an OK piece of work. Enjoyable enough to pass the time. But not for those looking for a complex plot or character development piece.