Authors and longtime readers have changed their reading patterns, and like many scholars in this increasingly digitized age, Buzz Spector, an internationally renowned book artist and four-time National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Award recipient, spends a lot of time thinking about the fate of print culture. Unlike most of us, however, Spector transforms his thoughts about the future of the book into works of art.

In the feature documentary film, “The Rise and Fall of Books,” we follow Spector during one month in the winter of 2007 as he teaches a class of Cornell University art students and shares commentary with New York writer Reagan Upshaw, on using books as art-making material and, more important, to think about the values that reading and collecting books contribute to society.

The documentary, conceived by filmmaker Jake Gorst (“Leisurama,” “Farmboy,” “Modern Tide: Midcentury Architecture on Long Island”) is scored by legendary power pop musicians, The dB’s, Peter Holsapple, and Chris Stamey. Our giveways are tied to these projects and musicians in preparation for completing this “The Rise and Fall of Books.”

Mainspring Pictures Ltd. has posted a GoFundMe campaign to take what’s been shot, edited and test-screened, with very positive response, to raise the funds needed to complete post production, including mixing and mastering of the audio track, submission and DVD production at: http://www.gofundme.com/booksfilm.

Please lend your support, retweet us and thank Social Media Club-Los Angeles for the opportunity to sponsor their event! We will be raffling off dvd copies of our film, posts, and t-shirts at the May 21 event.

Follow Mainspring:
Twitter: @MainspringPic
Facebook
GoFundme: “The Rise and Fall of Books”

It’s critical.

But that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily easy or intuitive. Historically, you either needed to be a designer with interactive experience to build a professional website or you had to spend some money to hire one. Until Wix.com.

Creative Director Portfolio: www.jennyhansen.com

Designer eyewear shop: www.sireseyewear.com

Each of the websites above was created using Wix’s proprietary HTML5 website-building platform, which is more like arts and crafts for the Internet than a confusing stream of code.

Oh, and it’s free to make a site with Wix! Come and learn more at Wix’s class on Wednesday, May 8, from 6:30 – 9 p.m., at ROC in Santa Monica. And get creating today!

Social media has transformed the way books are marketed and sold. Now, social media is even transforming the way books are made, with crowdsourced teams and publishing platforms that are as easy to use as WordPress is for blogging.

At our next SMCLA panel, on Tuesday, May 21, at 6:30 p.m., at Cross Campus in Santa Monica, we’ll discuss how these changes affect publishers, bloggers, social media professionals and consumers with four expert panelists who are deeply involved in the Publishing 2.0 revolution:

• Nolan Bushnell, Serial Entrepreneur, Founded Brainrush, Atari, Chuck E. Cheese, Etak, ByVideo, Axlon, uWink. Author of new book, “Finding The Next Steve Jobs” released via Net Minds
• Tim Sanders, CEO Net Minds Publishing, Author, Speaker
• Mark Jeffrey, Cofounder & Chief Product Officer at Glossi, Author and CEO & CoFounder ThisWeekIn, Inc.
• Babette Pepaj, Founder at BakeSpace, Inc, creator of Cookbook Cafe, a DIY publishing platform

SMCLA’s Social Good panel (l – r): Liz Kelly, Mark Horvath, Chris Brereton, Alexis Henry and Nathan Havey.

The Museum of Flying was the perfect setting for SMCLA’s “Using Social Media for Social Good” event on April 17, just a few days before Earth Day.

Moderator Christopher Brereton of Picture Healing invited audience participation from the start and the conversation between the panelists and more than 60 attendees took off from the moment the speakers took the stage. Our panelists, social media practitioners from LA’s leading nonprofits, not only shared a host of best practices for engaging communities around important causes, they were able to tailor answers to individual questions and type of nonprofit.

We’ve got the best audiences! Their questions made the event take off.

The conversation was so engaging SMCLA trended on Twitter for much of the evening – way to go SMCLA attendees!

Our speakers represented a strong cross-section of nonprofits: Alexis Henry of Surfrider Foundation, Mark Horvath from Invisible People, Liz H. Kelly of The Goody Awards, and Nathan Havey from Thrive Consulting Group. These experts discussed content – both text and video – that makes the strongest impact, tools for managing and measuring social accounts, and how to move audiences through the nonprofit’s version of the “sales funnel” to garner donations.

Hurry Curry of Tokyo prepared a sumptuous buffet that filled the giant museum hangar with a tangy aroma. The queue for Hurry Curry’s seafood, beef, chicken and veggie tastes grew by the minute and snaked far beyond the Museum of Flying’s numerous exhibits.

Nom indeed! Hurry Curry of Tokyo made sure we were well fed.

Best of all – Hurry Curry brought take-out boxes, so everyone could nom down on leftovers the next day (reports indicate Hurry Curry leftovers are just as delectable on Day 2!).

Attendees enjoyed delicious, healthy beverages, including tasty zero-calorie soda from Zevia and fruit- and regular-flavored green tea from Sencha Naturals – the perfect pairing for hearty curry.

We also received a generous donation of chairs, courtesy of Pico Party Rents, ensuring our attendees enjoyed their meals and the panel discussion in comfort.

Part of the permanent exhibition at Santa Monica’s Museum of Flying.

Everyone enjoyed mingling among the Museum of Flying‘s colorful biplanes, gliders and planes from this and the last century, part of the museum’s permanent collection.

The Santa Monica-based Museum of Flying is currently host to the Now Boarding LA exhibit – a spectacular preview of the modernized Tom Bradly International Terminal at LAX, designed by Fentress Architects.

You’ll find additional reporting on this event in our Storify recap. And big thanks to our intrepid event photographer-photo editors Amanda Hoskinson and Ben Kochavy!

But, here’s a sneak preview of how two of our panelists use video and social media to create engagement and awareness around autism and homelessness.

The video below was part of The Goody Awards’ Autism Awareness Campaign, and it helped Liz Kelly’s organization engage a global audience. The campaign included honoring Dani Bowman, an autistic teen animator, who’s illustrated two anti-bullying books and a PSA, with a Golden Goody Award – the organization’s Oscar for social good. An iPad was chosen as a prize for an autistic child, “because iPads help autistic children communicate,” Kelly explains. “We asked Dani to select the iPad winner, and present it to Rosanna in this video.”

The campaign also involved social media outreach, PR, additional videos, another iPad giveaway, and a live event sponsored by Deutsch Advertising LA with teen celebrity supporters.

“Our engagement was very high on Facebook and Twitter, and Dani was also very active on social media, promoting the campaign,” says Kelly.

As SMCLA was preparing this post, we learned that Mark Horvath and Invisible People, which uses social video to create awareness of homelessness, have received the 2013 Rob Stuart Memorial Award.

The purpose of the award is to honor communities using technology to “accelerate the pace of change, making it possible for movements to grow overnight and for change to be created in new and surprising ways.”

As the award announcement notes, “Mark Horvath was moved by his own past experience as a homeless person to document real people, telling their own, very real stories. Invisible People’s vlog’s purpose is to make the invisible visible, have others connect with these stories, and keep a dialogue going to help those who are often forgotten.”

Here’s an example of how Invisible People uses social video to create visibility for the cause.

Don’t miss an evening of insight and advice on supporting important causes with social media at SMCLA’s “Using Social Media for Social Good” event, this Wednesday, April 17, at 6:30 p.m., at the Santa Monica Museum of Flying.

Liz Kelly and Mark Horvath will be speaking, along with Alexis Henry from Surfrider, which uses social media to save oceans and coastlines, and Nathan Havey of Thrive Consulting Group, which focuses on creating effective online communications strategies for small and medium-sized businesses, not-for-profit organizations, and political campaigns.

Check out the Surfrider Foundation’s YouTube channel to see how they’re using social video to connect people with their cause.

RSVP here to join us: http://smclasocialgood-eorg.eventbrite.com/