OK, it's Monday morning. At 7:15 this morning I got an email telling me that we had been turned down for the huge 3 year NIH grant to build SickleCellKids.org and do an outcomes study. Oddly, I feel inspired and ready to kick a little NIH @$$. Go figure. Whatever works.

It's now or never here. JUST DO IT and all that. Went to a big sickle cell party Saturday night with all of the doctors here in Atlanta (it's a pretty tight knit community). Got so many insights.

I am in overdrive. Will fill you in this afternoon, but I had miraculously already scheduled a meeting this morning with some wonderfully creative graphics people. Going to go see what they have to offer.

NOW is the time I make this real. Don't know why the NIH rejection has inspired me so, but whatever works. And although the NIH money would have been extraordinary, I think there would have been some severe restrictions there so on some level I think this is a really good thing... especially since I'm not letting it get me down but using it as a motivator.

I've been planning and stewing for years. NOW is the time to put the pedal to the metal and get this company launched.

Will be back this afternoon after what I hope will be a wonderful meeting.

So glad this group is here!!

Go get 'em Cynthia!

I'm working on a document that shows the different things Art Heals will offer. The health websites, the digital murals and so on. I've been troubled by the health websites. I want so much to make them first rate, they are so needed, but there's only so far I can take them. I want to do more. Then I had an epiphany.....

What makes sense to me, Cynthia, is your passion. You want to do something meaningful, something timely, something big. You used the word "best" five times. That's not only ambitious but inspiring.

The details (oh, stuff like revenue and expenses) is secondary. Take your big newprint pad and sketch away!

Makes perfect sense.

I love the name "Wonderland Studios" Cynthia! Please let me know if I can help with any web stuff. You're doing great!

Cynthia, I'm looking forward to meeting you in Chicago and talking some of this stuff over f2f.

:D

Thanks, y'all. Meron, looking forward to meeting you, too! Trying to figure out what PJ's to bring for our pajama party. You, me and Christina in one room. That'll be something. We'll have to remind ourselves to sleep!

More soon on Art Heals/Wonderland Studios. On Friday afternoon I'll be meeting with my old producer from when I used to write for TV. She's got a very successful production company. I have a lot to do between now and then.

I want to leave something good behind in this world. I want my son to be proud when he points to something and says "My Mom did that." We're all given certain talents and it's our responsibility to figure out what they are and do the most with them. There's so much that can be done to help kids. I can only do what I can do...and I've put off being bold for too long.

Two of my favorite Goethe quotes seem like what I need to hear right now:

Whatever you do, or dream begin it now... Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.

and

Rest not! Life is sweeping by; go and dare before you die. Something mighty and sublime, leave behind to conquer time.

~ Cynthia said: ~

~ Trying to figure out what PJ's to bring for our pajama party. ~

Bring a couple 'o pairs ... you know what they say about variety and all, and it's easier on the decision making.

~ You, me and Christina in one room. ~

And don't forget Anne Marie!!!

~ We'll have to remind ourselves to sleep! ~

Personally I wasn't planning on sleeping. What's that saying? ... "I'll sleep when I'm dead!" LOL!!!

Shhhh but, besides, I heard one of the room mates, ahem SNORE!!! :D

Cynthia, best wishes on this bigger dream! I hope we get to work with Wonderland in the future.

Childrens Television Workshop has been one of my primary inspirations in building Amoration and my partner and I are now drawing up the plans for Toyshoppe, a full (forprofit) production design studio here in LA. Brent has too many creatures and worlds inside and we've built a fairly large community of artists and creators around us, so we're developing business plans for live-action, TV and film production. Perhaps there's room for synergistic growth in the future.....

Cynthia, you asked what other services are needed and I tried to think back to teaching computers to kids. It's been two years so my handle on the kids flash site market is a bit weak, but I don't remember many sites that offered educational games with recognizable characters that stick with kids. Kids mostly gravitated to the TV show sites or known brands like Barbie where the games would at most involve matching colors or solving little puzzles. There was not a lot of honest dialogue about world issues happening with young kids online and what little was out there did not have the critical mass or design saavy to be very effective.

I'd love to see more games and interactive flash that illustrates social issues around the globe in fun and simple ways. The first fun flash that comes to mind is Ben Cohen's budget education OREO flash from http://www.truemajority.org/fun/ but that's not gameplay oriented nor is it aimed at younger kids.

I really admire your determination with ArtHeals and wish you all the best!

GREAT NEWS I just had lunch with the doctor who heads up the sickle cell program at Scottish Rite (part of Children's Healthcare of Atlanta - CHOA). I told her about CancerKid.org (she loves SickleCellKids) and she is going to take my package of info to Dan Amos, President of AFLAC!!! AFLAC has already funded the Cancer and Blood Disorders Center at CHOA and she thinks he will love CancerKid.org!! Keep your fingers crossed. Education is really important to him ... and AFLAC is international so they should like that this will be in French and Spanish as well as English.

As my Dad used to say "Huzzah!"

Meron, I didn't know Ann Marie was going to be a roomy as well. Well, we are going to have a great time!

Evonne, Thanks. Would love for us to synergize at some point! You're right about the bulk of the kids' sites. They are pathetic. Very weak artistically, very shallow on content. Sometimes they'll have a great home page and I'll get all excited only to find that there is "no there there." I want to help change that.

Now, off to put together a kick @$$ presentation for AFLAC.

So I'll be up

GREAT NEWS CYNTHIA!!! way to hang in there and keep moving ahead. so exciting.

:)

Everyone repeat after me "AFLAC!"

Cyn you are on such a roll!

As I mentioned above I heard Tom Friedman speak over the weekend. One other thing he spoke of that fascinated me was how when taking a trip we can now go online to determine what flight we want and what seat we want (we become the travel agent). We then buy our ticket and print out our own boarding pass (we become the ticketing agent). So not only are we paying the airlines to fly us, but we are PAYING THEM TO ALLOW US TO WORK FOR THEM!! We do the work ... we call it convenience... and we pay them for it.

This concept fascinated me and I wondered what implications it had for the way I am setting up my company.

It occurs to me that I can set up the digital murals so that people can do the entire layout for their mural all by themselves online. Say a doctor's office wants a digital mural for their lobby. They would get the exact dimensions of the wall in question. Then they go onto my site, fill in the dimensions and are given a digital representation of the wall. Then they can go into the archives and pull over the backgrounds they want (including individual trees, flowers, etc.) and the animals that they want. They can lay it out exactly how they want it and save a lot of speculation and time on my end.

Working on the AFLAC package now. Going to take that to the sickle cell doc today to forward to Dan Amos. Fingers crossed.

Meeting with a potential angel investor next week.

Cynthia Gentry said:

Meeting with a potential angel investor next week.

If I could make one recommendation: focus on your passion. The details come later. You want him (or her) to fall in love with you at first sight.

Thanks, Luke! That I can do.

Just got back into PDX with Pam and the boys and catching up here. This AFLAC-ing great, and I really like the big picture new direction.

I love the modular digital mural idea! This could be a very adaptable and scalable solution for many clinics and hospital rooms.

Have you thought of partnering up with a printer/ink company to provide printing capacities for those without a full office or Kinkos at their disposal?

Thanks, Evonne. Actually, I would encourage folks to do their own layouts, but then the printing would be done in one central location so I could ensure quality output. You wouldn't believe how picky I am about color corrections and such... wait, yes you would! You're an artist, too!

>>printing would be done in one central location so I could ensure quality output.<<

I assume that's practical...or at least does not make things that much harder to execute?

Well, let me think this through... Here are the steps a customer could go through to create their own mural:

• go online,
• layout the dimensions of their wall(s),
• select the backgrounds they want and the animals they want,
• drop them onto the layout to achieve the desired design.

Then it would have to come to me to actually get it into the format that would go to the printer. Ah, so this is where I see that I would have to do the printing centrally. Yes, there's quality control, but then there is also the issue of production control. What would prevent the printer from making more than one copy. And who would be there to make sure the colors were correct. And that they used the correct substrate, and so on and so on.

So that answers my question for me. There are enough unknowns when you take into account that the customer would have to get their own wallpaper hanger to install the murals (or do it themselves).

The next question is how to devise a program that allows people to do their own layout online... creating the framework that matches their layout, and then having the capability of pulling the images over. But, this doesn't have to happen until later though. It will be easy to set up a "catalogue" so people can select the animals they want. The do-it-yourself capability can come later.

I've seen similar sites that let you design your own outfit; it may be possible in Flash. The only example that comes to mind are the Barbie dress-up flash pages where you can treat Barbie like a paper doll....I'm sure there are better examples to follow but nothing is coming to mind on this brain-fart of a morning.

(My daughters would give a big hooray for your Barbie flash reference.)