VerveCast

There was food, drink, music, and mingling… Another year and another Club z2 is in the can!

Thanks to our clients, vendor, family, and friends for helping us celebrate our eighth year. It’s been a wild ride, and we look forward to the next eight years, at which point Z2 will be 16, and old enough to drive, and then we’ll really be in trouble!

Here’s our very own Cory performing with his band ZyFy. If you didn’t know, besides being a creative director, photographer, cinematographer, and one of the owners of Z2, he’s also a musician, and performs at Club Z2 each year, as well as various gigs around to in support of the This Time Tomorrow Foundation he helped start. (He’s a busy guy!)

We were also privileged to have Willy Porter join us, and he played a great set for the crowd. Thanks for coming out Willy!

And yes, there was wine. Lots of wine… And wings, and cupcakes, and a photo booth, and some QR code madness, and… well, if you missed it, you’ll just have to join us next year.

In the meantime, check out some of the Club Z2 photos or the Photo Booth photos, over on our Facebook page.

(And while you’re there, don’t be afraid to ‘Like’ us!)

Every so often, we like to bring you news from our clients… so, here’s a fun promotion that started this week at InterContinental Milwaukee. The hotel is celebrating Jersey Boys coming to town with a special music series and themed food and drinks from now until Aug 14, 2011.

Doo-Wop Music Series
Each Thursday night for the duration the Jersey Boys is playing, InterContinental Milwaukee will host a Doo-Wop-style band from 9:30-11pm. Guests leaving the Marcus Center show can pop over to the hotel to extend their evening with great music, a late-night bite and delicious drinks. Following is the schedule of performances.

July 28 Jerry Stephani
Aug 4 Milwaukee Rat Pack
Aug 11 Four Guyz in Dinner Jackets

Jersey Boys-Inspired Food & Beverage Menu
CLEAR Bar and Lounge, located on the lobby level of InterContinental Milwaukee, will be serving up a special Jersey Boys menu featuring specialties from the East Coast like Disco Fries, Jersey “Bean Crock” and Sausage Hoagies.

InterContinental’s Jersey Boys-inspired drinks include The Four Seasons, made with Pomegranate White Ginger Tea and Veev Acai Berry liquor; Sherry, made with Van Gogh Acai-Blueberry Vodka and rosemary syrup and December, 1963, made with Van Gogh Pineapple Vodka, basil syrup and homemade litchi puree. Additionally, the bar has just expanded its selection of craft beers, adding 11 new choices.

If you’re a Jersey Boys fan—or just a fan of good music, food and drinks—swing by InterContinental and check it out!

Back in 2009 I was working in my office at home when my wife’s cat Cleo started head-butting my leg. This is her way of saying “Hey!” so I picked her up and put her on my desk. My wife then came into the office, saw my headphones on the desk, put them on her cat, and suggested I take a photo, so I did.

Since I like sharing the photos I take I uploaded it to Flickr and titled it Headphones Cat.

So last week Mashable did a story on 5 New Sites for Deep Discounts on Music and there was my photo!

So how did this happen?

When I published my photo on Flickr, I choose a Creative Commons license that allows others to use my work. The specific license I chose was “Attribution, Noncommercial, Share Alike” which means that if someone uses the photo, they have to give me credit, they can’t use it for commercial purposes, and if they make changes, the new image they create has to have the same license.

Flickr has a nice feature that allows you to search for Creative Commons licensed work. I’ve used it plenty of times. Typically, if I need photos for a presentation, I’ll use photos from Flickr with a Creative Commons license. (And I always provide credit and a link.)

If we get deep into the licensing issues of Creative Commons, there’s great debate over what constitutes “commercial” use. For instance, Mashable is free to access, you are not paying to read their site, but there are advertisements, and they make money from those advertisements. The story could exist fully without my specific photo. It was not a story about the photo itself, though the photo does help support it in a minimal way. These are the sort of issues that are tough to sort out, but for most cases, they don’t come into play.

We told Cleo she was on Mashable, but she wasn’t really impressed and appeared to instead wonder when she’d get her next treat.

Over here at Z2, we’re all buzzing about an upcoming benefit concert. Jazz for Japan is coming up on Sunday, May 1 from 3-6 p.m. at the Summerfield United Methodist Church in downtown Milwaukee. For a suggested $10 donation, you’ll be able to hear talented Midwesterners like Greg Marcus, the President and CEO of our client Marcus Corporation.

To find out more about the event, go to http://jazzforjapan.eventbrite.com

Please use #jazzforjapanMKE when tweeting about this event. Thanks!

Our efforts with Lymphoma Society (LLS) have been recognized by another great national organization! It was just announced that we won a Communitas Award for our “This Time Tomorrow” music video in the 2010 Communitas Awards contest. The video, to benefit The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS), features a collaboration of Milwaukee-area musicians.

Communitas Awards recognizes exceptional businesses, organizations and individuals that are unselfishly giving of themselves and their resources, and those that are changing how they do business to benefit their communities.

This Time Tomorrow won the award in category 3.1 Pro Bono. The winning video can be viewed at ThisTimeTomorrow.org and the song is available for $.99 download at iTunes with all proceeds going to LLS.