by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Subjects you should never talk about: Politics

They say you should never discuss politics or religion or work with children and / or animals. I’m perfectly happy to discuss religion, since I live in a multi-faith household. I work for an animal charity,  so dogs are frequently around the office and most welcome. And I plan to have children one day, which I’m told can be ‘work’.

Clearly I don’t really listen to what ‘they’ say, but I still rarely tackle the subject of politics. For one, I don’t like talking at length about something I don’t have particularly in-depth knowledge about. It’s not through lack of interest, but it’s a bloody big subject, don’t you think? I have often erred on the side of political cynicism, too, which means certain subjects fill me with anger, frustration or contempt, not emotions I particularly want to invite into my life if I can avoid it.

And so we come onto the subject of MPs expenses. This is a topic I feel I can look at in very simple terms.

1. Screwing the expenses system is wrong. If you are caught doing it at work, you are fired. Paying it back is fine, but you should still be fired. I’m unimpressed, but not particularly angry (or surprised).

2. Spending money on wars no-one wants or agrees with, on the other hand, makes me extremely annoyed – let’s call it ‘disgusted’. Especially when you can’t even seem to spend it efficiently enough to send brave women and men into the field properly equipped.

The petty financial dishonesty of MPs should be no surprise, given that they were thoroughly complicit in the destruction of the banking sector and the much more troubling devastation to people’s lives. It should not become a smokescreen for the real crimes that have been committed.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Hill & Knowlton Social Media Event

Last night, Hill & Knowlton gathered together third sector web professionals for a social media forum to which we were very kindly invited. You can find a few tweets about the event hashtagged #hksocial. We were added to the mix via Candace Kuss, who as well as being a huge dog fan who has raised guide dog pups used to be at Ogilvy, who still work with Dogs Trust. She liked our Twitter feed and followed our social engagement with interest, so invited us to give a case study.

It worked remarkably well alongside Canadian H&K VP of social media David Jones, who gave a wide-reaching presentation on the basics of social media and engagement from a Canadian government perspective. This set the groundwork beautifully for me to babble on about what we were actually doing with the different tools. I will remind him to send me an analysis presentation from War Child Canada he mentioned, which promises to be very interesting. My focus now is on finding the right social metric; we know we’re succeeding because dogs are being rehomed and people are talking about us. Numbers are nice, but they’re not particularly helpful here. We just need to find a way to present that to people who don’t quite understand it, but want to.

As with most of my presentations, I make a few sketchy notes and then ad-lib to keep it fresh. After all, I do this stuff every day; if I can’t talk about it with passion off the cuff then I’m in the wrong job. As always there were things I wish I’d said (or said differently), but I hope I got the main ideas across and gave someone some information they can take back and use as a way of spurring internal buy-in: “Yes, I know the Internet is scary to you, but Dogs Trust did it…”.

That’s why we talk at these things; we know we have it relatively easy with a forward-thinking and positive marketing team and we want to help break down hurdles and silos in other charities because apart from anything else that’s where we too get inspiration and ideas! The more social media stuff that’s going on, the more we can all advance together.

I had to run directly afterwards as I wanted to drop in on Silicon Stilettos, a great women in tech networking event run by Zuzanna from Huddle. I’m glad I did, too. Not only did I manage to get the cutest nose-licks from Jamie Klingler’s Cavalier King Charles, McNulty, I met the fab Anna from CompletelyNovel, with whom I definitely want more to do.

No time to blog more now, but I did want to note my thoughts and thank Hill and Knowlton for the invitation.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Weekend Baking: Lemon & Poppy Seed Spotted Cupcakes

Stamping out the rounds

Stamping out the rounds

With Ashley painting the living room and me feeling anti-social, it was time to hit the kitchen. Fear not – I haven’t lost my social media mind entirely. If you’ve been following my Twitter feed you’ll know I recently went to a third sector forum on digital innovation (search for anything hashtagged ‘aquent’), and at some point when I have some better thought out and intelligent thoughts to report on that, I shall blog about them. In the meantime, we’ve just begun work with the CMS for our brand new website, and that’s taking up the majority of my headspace at work.

So… at home. Cupcakes.

The recipe was adapted from some orange and poppy seed cupcakes in Cupcake Heaven. Instead of an orange zest, I slapped in a tablespoon or so of lemon juice. I’d use more next time – I’m not one for subtlety with lemon and it’s barely-there. Otherwise it’s:

Swapping the circlets

Swapping the circlets

– 115g each of sugar, flour and butter plus two eggs and a tablespoon of poppy seeds.

– As usual beat the butter and sugar first, add egg gradually and then fold in flour and flavourings. I used plain flour because I was being absent minded, so I added about 3/4 of a heaped teaspoon of baking powder and a pinch of salt as well to make sure they rose okay.

– 180 degrees C, 18-20 minutes or until lightly golden on top and a toothpick comes out clean.

I borrowed the icing design from a different cupcake recipe in the book, eschewing the creamy topping and orange segments favoured by Susannah Blake for the cupcakes I made (I dare say she wouldn’t mind the liberty if she knew about it).  You use around 2/3 of a 500g block of ready-to-roll fondant icing.

– Divide in two, and dye each half a different colour – two that will go well together. I revisited my pistachio and buttercup colour scheme from the vanilla buttercream mini cupcakes you’ll find buried in the Baking category, and decided I’m switching to paste food colouring cos the liquid’s driving me crazy.

Cupcakes belong in a stack

Cupcakes belong in a stack

– Roll them out either between clingfilm or on an icing sugared surface until they’re pretty thin – say 3-4mm. Try and make them as close to the same thickness as possible.

– Then get a small cookie-cutter (any shape, but I’d stick to simple rounds etc the first time) and stamp out a spotty pattern, gently lifting the cutouts and laying them carefully aside. Do the same to the other piece and swap the cutouts, putting them in the holes you let behind.

– Gently roll over again, so that they stick together as much as possible. Now get another cookie-cutter, either the same diameter as your cakes or smaller, and stamp out a spotty-patterned circlet of icing ready to put on your cake. Smear the cakes with a little warmed jam and carefully put the icing on top.

As I didn’t have a palette knife and this is the first time I’ve ever worked with fondant icing, mine occasionally fell apart but I patched them back up again with little fuss or evidence. I stuck to round on this occasion, but intend to use my feet shaped ones to make pink and blue foot-shaped prints the next time anyone I know has a baby! And I reckon some lovely flowery ones will be just right for summer, perhaps in slightly bolder colours.

Om. And very possibly Nom Nom.

Anyway, the pictures tell the story if my ramblings don’t. Most importantly, they taste bloody good. I also made cheese biscuits from Nigella Lawson’s Feast with the foot-shaped cutters and they disappeared down gullets before the camera could come out, so I dare say they were yummy too.

Om. And very possibly Nom, Nom…

Nom.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Jack Brown

I’ve just found out that over the weekend, little Jack Brown died.

I first found out about Jack’s story when I was working for a company called 2Simple Software. They had done some charitable work in South Africa and Israel based around software and computers, but when they heard about Jack, a whole new part of the 2Simple Trust sprang up: helping children with neuroblastoma, a particularly nasty and virulent cancer that tends to strike very young children.

Jack was just a toddler when it first invaded his body. He had been given up as a lost cause many times, but his family battled on and with the help of fundraisers they got Jack to New York to have groundbreaking treatment at Memorial Sloane Kettering Cancer Center. This treatment undoubtedly gave Jack two years with his family that he would not have had if he had stayed here in the UK at the time.

Jack’s website was the first charity website I ever worked on; it’s what gave me the bug to want to work with another charity one day. The regular updates from his family I received to add to it were both heartbreaking and inspirational. I am so sorry to hear that Jack lost his battle, and I know that the charity will continue to use the funds it has to help other children like him. My heart goes out to Jack’s fantastically strong, loving parents and his young brother and sister.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

End of holiday post: Recovering at home

The Happiest Place I Know

The Happiest Place I Know

Well, it was a pretty spectacular holiday – actually, belated honeymoon. Everything was in our favour: good weather, fun times, well-organised and, best of all, good health all round. We went for a morning swim (I miss that already!), ate loads, walked loads, soaked up the sun and were entertained almost to the point of feeling guilty. I was left with a slight feeling of dread, even; after all that goodness surely something must go wrong?! But even the flights were good. And I’m planning a fear of flying course in the summer to stop me having any more travel-related meltdowns. I don’t want it holding me back. Plans are afoot to book our next trip once the coffers have been replenished. This time to Toronto. I’ve never been to Canada – any recommendations / tips?

My favourite moments are many, so I won’t list them all. But anyone who sets foot within 100 miles of Epcot should get over there are ride Soarin’ (one of the few we rode twice, so brilliant is its gentle, awe-inspiring hang gliding simulation). As mid-price restaurants go, Redrock Canyon Grill is lovely and does the best steak and mashed potato on International Drive by miles. Tarpon Springs is apparently a great place to walk your dog. But if you want to know more about my travels, just check out my Flickr feed, where I shall eventually put the photos.

I really want to talk books. I read three and a half while travelling: Anthony Flew’s There Is a God, a fascinating and highly intelligently written discourse on how the famous atheist found faith; Mark Gatiss’s second Lucifer Box novel, The Devil in Amber (slightly disappointing compared to the first as Box has become a little tiresome, but still amusing enough) and Augusten Burrough’s A Wolf at the Table were the completed ones. The last was relentlessly depressing. I had wondered how Burroughs could make an entire career – spanning some six or seven books – out of a dysfunctional childhood, but I had reckoned without the truly terrifying entity his sociopathic father turned out to be. Read this only if you have a good grip on your emotions; it is highly distressing and uncomfortable, not to mention frightening. There’s even guinea pig death. You were warned.

I’m still picking through Gregory Maguire’s Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, which is far better than its title. His spare, evocative writing, which I loved so much in Wicked, is put to excellent use once more in a plotline slightly reminiscent of Girl With a Peal Earring (though it might have been published before – I forget). It was totally worth loading up my Sony Reader, even with all the irksome issues I had with Waterstones before we left.

Tomorrow, we begin repainting the living room. I’ve been gently immersing myself back in social media – I relinquished all but my crutch, Twitter, while I was away, mainly to see if I even COULD – and I’ve missed my old friend. Tuesday will herald business as usual: baking, blogging, and dreaming of the next time I’ll have the time and cash to visit WDW.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Holiday Post: Disney Days

Well, I promised to greet you from the Disney side…

We landed around 3pm on Thursday and have so far packed in a trip to Sarasota to see my auntie and visit St. Barbara Greek Orthodox Church in Bradenton for a Good Friday service, an evening stroll around the Magic Kingdom taking in Pirates, Small World (Ash’s insistence) and Snow White,  a hot air balloon ride, a day at Epcot and a trip to Tarpon Springs followed by an evening at Downtown Disney.

My feet really hurt.

Ash has done all the driving. I’m generally a good and confident driver and enjoy being on the road but when we rented an “intermediate” SUV we forgot that size is different on this side of the Atlantic. The monster Jeep Patriot Dollar handed us scares the living daylights out of me; while I’m not a typical woman in many ways, sadly I fit right in the lousy stereotype category when it comes to spatial awareness. I’m used to a Toyoto Yaris – I ain’t getting behind the wheel of the gargantuan tank in the car park.

The weather has been pleasantly sunny – I have a hint of a burn from the day at Epcot – but we’re due thunderstorms the next couple of days so we’ll probably spend tomorrow indoors trawling the malls, and maybe try Hollywood Studios or hitting Magic Kingdom properly on Tuesday if it starts to get warmer. Then Wednesday we have a fun day planned at Kennedy Space Centre. I haven’t been to Cape Canaveral since I was about 8.

Highlights so far:

  • Soarin’ @ Epcot – absolutely fantastic gliding simulator. Wish it was longer, but the queues are long enough already!
  • Test Track and Mission: SPACE are just as good as I remembered too, although the More Intense Training route of the latter does your head in for quite a long time afterwards if you’re even slightly sensitive to motion (Ash doesn’t get motion sickness and felt thoroughly weird for ages).
  • Lovely lunch at Plaka in Tarpon Springs.

Alarming moments so far:

  • The ‘venomous snakes’ sign at the rest stop on I4 East (see Flickr).

Anyway, it’s late(ish), I’m tired, and a warm shower and an episode of Family Guy are calling.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Ten Days of Disney: Monorail! Monorail! Monorail!

Gotta love songs from The Simpsons. And you’ve gotta love the feeling of getting in that monorail and zooming towards the best fun you’ll ever have in an organised way ever, ever, ever. And that’s it – that’s ten days of things I love about Disney: the parks, the people and the topiary.

Disorganised blogging from me today. I’m too skittish and flight-nervous to link back to all the previous days (use the tag, though, or scroll down)…

I shall greet you from the Disney side!

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Ten Days of Disney: Fast Pass

Now, though the fella behind @TheDisneyBlog hated Fast Pass (and I have yet to get round to asking him why, although I’m very curious), I found it a thoroughly useful and excellent invention in 2004 when I first used it at WDW.

The concept is brilliantly simple: the queue is too long right now, so you get an hour-long slot (for rides) or performance time (for shows) to come back for, leaving you with a very short wait compared to the standby lines.

In practice most of the Fast Pass tickets are gone by 11am, but if you plan your park visit carefully – it does require a certain amount of military precision although there’s still arguably room for spontaneity – you’ll get hold of ones for the rides you most want to go on. For me the key Fast Passes to bag will be for Splash Mountain, Mission Space and Soarin’, I reckon (if they all do FP, which I believe they do).

No system is perfect, but as a way of helping you plan your day around the park without having to account for very long queues, it’s very helpful.

Day One: Howard Ashman & Alan Menken

Day Two: EPCOT

Day Three: Landscaping

Day Four: Pixar

Day Five: Disney for Good

Day Six, Seven & Eight: Adult Entertainment, Phil Harris & Sterling Holloway, Fireworks

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Ten Days of Disney: Three in One…

disneyfireworksEaster and Pesach shenanigans forcibly removed me from blogging for a couple of days, so here’s six, seven and eight in one post!

Day Six: Adult Entertainment

Okay, that’s a shamelessly attention-baiting title. But if I hear once more that “Las Vegas is like Disneyland for adults!” I think I’ll explode. This is almost invariably stated by people who have never been to a Disney park. Hell, they usually think Disneyland is in Florida. *sigh*. The fact is, adults pay for their kids to visit Disneyland, Walt Disney World, Disneyland Paris and the Far Eastern parks. It’s not necessarily the cheapest holiday in the world (although there are always good deals if you scout around and plan in advance), so just nagging by the kids is not going to be enough to cause parents to repeatedly shell out cash and spend hours walking around hot theme parks. No, what does that is that they’re great places to visit for an adult too. Much as with the films, the initial blast is very childlike – the dressed up cast members, etc – but the imaginative attention to detail, funny asides, great performances, scary thrills and well-designed facilities are definitely grown-up friendly. You can even grab an alcoholic drink in EPCOT. That’s not even mentioning the Downtown Disney developments with restaurants and entertainment galore.

No, Las Vegas ain’t Disneyland for adults. Except if they’re completely obsessed with drinking, I guess.

Day Seven: Phil Harris & Sterling Holloway

The voice of Thomas O’Malley, Baloo the Bear and Little John was famous for a whole cornucopia of radio work in his native US, but as a kid it was only through those three films that I had any idea who Phil Harris was. To me, this is the essence of Disney. While the modern performances of the High School Musical ilk certainly have their place – and a legion of fans – the likes of The Jungle Book will captivate generation after generation because of performances like Harris’s. There has tended to be a move to screen actors using their vocal skills for films recently, and some are very good, but traditional voice acting is a skill in and of itself. I don’t think anyone’s really topped Sterling Holloway as either The Cheshire Cat or Kaa the snake (even if Roquefort the mouse is my favourite).

Sadly, neither of these tremendous vocalists is still with us, but what better way to live forever? My nephew, at 3 years old, is as in love with The Jungle Book as his mum and auntie are, and we’ll make sure he plays it to his kids too.

Day Eight: The Fireworks

You know Sunday night feeling, when you know you have to go back to school / work the next morning? The fireworks at the end of a day in a park make me feel like that – brilliant and sad all at once.

Day One: Howard Ashman & Alan Menken

Day Two: EPCOT

Day Three: Landscaping

Day Four: Pixar

Day Five: Disney for Good

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Ten Days of Disney: Disney for Good

Disney, like most big corporations with an eye on their reputation, has an outreach programme. Disney VoluntEARS, work with the Make-a-Wish Foundation and a strong emphasis on employees sharing skills are a few parts of Disney Worldwide Outreach.

This is, given my job, naturally an area of interest for me. I knew about Disney’s work with Make-a-Wish years ago as a visit to a Disney park, studio or other related venue is consistently one of the most popular wishes of very ill children. If that doesn’t tell you about the power of Disney’s story-telling and the evangelism that rises from it, nothing will. But I didn’t know until quite recently, when my interest increased, about the amount of employee time that is donated to communities.

This is one area where I’d love to see Disney developing online. Surely this is a place where online and offline communities really have a chance to be joined up. A place for volunteers to exchange information and potential volunteers to find out more? A place where kids can find online mentors from within Disney? A place where parents whose children have been helped through Make-a-Wish can build an online wall of memories of their child’s experience? A way for Disney to teach non-profit organisations without their budgets and marketing advantage to make the most of social technologies? You name it – the list of online possibilities surrounding outreach work are virtually endless.

My favourite is the Disney mentor idea – a natural online extension of the thousands of hours of offline community work Disney employee “VoluntEARS” already do. Imagine each employee giving up one hour a week to give advice to a kid online about becoming an attraction “imagineer”, animator, or other creative professional. What a boost to the arts that would be! And then there are the legion of other employees, from web wizards to front-of-house cast members. Each has advice and talent to offer; imagine how valued you would feel if you were asked to contribute your time to the project.

What’s in it for Disney? Well, though it might be done for entirely more altruistic reasons, there’s the lifelong fans you’re going to make when your pool of highly skilled employees shares the talent wealth a little. And the reputation advantages. Not to mention a direct line to possibly the greatest market research money can buy, straight from the people who love the Disney empire best, and a contacts list of future potential employees likely to feel completely loyal to a company that’s behaved like family.

For all I know, much of this is already in the pipeline or has been discussed and rejected for any number of reasons. But, for the record – that’s what I would do.

Day One: Howard Ashman & Alan Menken

Day Two: EPCOT

Day Three: Landscaping

Day Four: Pixar