Amidst a flurry of updates on the blog this weekend, I wanted to point toward a variety of interesting posts from around the Consortium, in addition to the podcasts and other events mentioned in Henry and my posts earlier today. First off, I will be finishing up my notes from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference in Philadelphia earlier this month and beginning to post some of my notes from the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association National Conference I attended last weekend in San Francisco. I look forward to any thoughts readers might have who were at either of those events or who weren't able to make it but are interested in the presentations I refer to here.
We've covered a variety of SCMS presentations from the Consortium's consulting researchers. I was the only Consortium-affiliated presenter at the PCA/ACA, as Ted Hovet was unable to attend, but I'll have a rundown of the soap opera area I participated in, as well as some other interesting people and projects I learned about while I was in San Francisco.
In the meantime, here are a variety of interesting posts from folks affiliated with the Consortium:
- Ilya Vedrashko writes about a new Dr. Pepper initiative in which it promises to give everyone in America a free can of their soda if Guns'N'Roses releases its new album in 2008, over at his Advertising Lab blog. He concludes: "Anyway, nice stunt with some press coverage. Almost free if the album doesn't come out, and, what, $25M if it does? (300M people in the States / $.25 per can of soda)."
- Since I've been following Aliens in America this season and since I have had a few conversations with him about it, I was intrigued by Aswin Punathambekar's recent post about the show over on BollySpace 2.0. It's well worth a read. I do believe that the most intriguing episodes have been about the Tolchuk family rather than the static main character, but I don't think that can be used to explain away shortcomings in the show's use of a Muslim character. Be sure to check out Aswin's post for more.
- Over at the blog of our partners at GSD&M Idea City, Chris Seaberg writes about a recent Wall Street Journal article looking at how people have a love-hate relationship with the plenitude of the information age, to borrow a word from C3 Consulting Researcher Grant McCracken.
- Speaking of Grant McCracken, see his recent presentation at the PSFK conference.
- Finally, thanks to new C3 Consulting Researcher Nancy Baym for her post on Thursday about joining the Consortium.
