Jerry Bruckheimer might be altering your behaviors

Last week I asked you to participate in a survey which posed the question how do you pronounce the word – Caribbean. Many of you answered, and interestingly enough some of you replied to me with answers that weren’t even options on the survey. I’ve included a bar graph below of the responses.

And here were emails about the survey that I received:

“I said “Cuh-RIB-ee-an” my entire life until Pirates of the “Care-uh-BEE-uhn” came out, and in the years since, I have said it as such. Media shaping my behavior, there you have it.”

--Alex Thomas, Clinton School Director of Admissions

“I answered your survey but for me it depends on the context! For the Disney ride/movie, I pronounce it "Pirates of the CARE-uh-be-un", but in all other cases is Cah-RIB-be-un.”

--Anna Strong, Clinton School class representative

“I cannot take the survey due to its not covering all possible answers. I use both pronunciations, and the one I choose depends on the context. That should be an option.“

--Adam Moreland, Clinton School kickball captain

So apparently only people with the letter A in their first name were so enraged or disagreed with the survey itself that they bothered to point it out to me. ; ) Don’t fret A’s – an evaluator does these things on purpose. The fact that media plays such an important part on your pronunciation is very telling. The fact that previously prior to the release of Pirate of the Caribbean, some of you stuck with one pronunciation and now say it depends on the context is also very telling. (Jerry Bruckheimer, if you’re reading this some of us want to know how you picked CARE-uh-bee-un vs kuh-RIH-been-un. Were there focus groups? Did you visit the Caribbean and ask the people? Did you think one pronunciation would produce a bigger box office hit than the other?)

What’s interesting about this movie when thinking from a public service perspective is that essentially what Jerry Bruckheimer did was put a face to a pronunciation. Jack Sparrow’s face to be exact. During the workshop last week, Dr. Singhal shared with the conference participants an interesting thing about education entertainment and measuring its effectiveness.

For the first time ever an EE program did something that was remarkable. Apwé Plezi, a program on family planning in St. Lucia, introduced a new term to the community. Within the show the characters began calling condoms “catapults.” It didn’t take long before St. Lucians began to refer to condoms as catapults too, and then began to purchase the “catapult” brand condoms that were being sold in stores. When asked where did they hear about “catapult” they would point directly to the show. Ah ha! The EE program on family planning is taking effect. And more importantly when a researcher asked another St. Lucian where they heard about “catapult” – and he didn’t hear the program but heard about “catapults” from a friend – then it became evident that Apwé Plezi was making a very real and effective change in the community. In fact, the population rate decreased from 3.4 to 2.3!

Thus by creating new terminology it’s like a marker which helps researchers like Dr. Singhal figure out the impact of an Entertainment Education program. Creating our own terminology also assists us in shaping our own worlds and realities. So, today I encourage you to make up your own markers with new and fascinating words!

The Fourth Dimension

During my last jaunt in Austin my friend and former roommate CP lent me The Fourth Dimension – A Guided Tour of the Higher Universes by Rudy Rucker. “You have to read it,” he said. Followed by “You’re going to read it right?” Followed by “If you don’t read it, then that’s ok, but just let me know.” And then “Don’t lose it.”

CP – if you’re reading this -- thank you for lending me The Fourth Dimension! And also be happy in knowing that not only did I read it but it was the first book I read during my St. Lucia travels. What a great book indeed!

Why I picked up and opened The Fourth Dimension is because it’s a book that explains our universe, the galaxy, time travel and parallel dimensions. Every time I head to Austin, in fact, undoubtedly CP and I will have a conversation about time travel. How does it work? Is it possible? Does time travel only work going forward and not backwards? Would you jump into a wormhole if you had the chance? How would you return back to this time and place if you did jump in a wormhole? Another reason is I had hoped the book would help me better understand LOST. (Did anyone watch last Tuesday’s episode? ::sniff sniff:: I don’t want to talk about it right now. I’m too choked up.)

Back to the book. Rucker accompanies very complex theories with graphics and allows an ordinary reader like myself to understand these very complex theories with simple stories. Here is an excerpt from the book that I found fascinating:

But if we take the fourth dimension quite seriously, then it seems natural to suppose that there might be other universes. All these universes taken together make up a much grander entity, variously known as the cosmos or as superspace. In traditional Christian doctrine, the cosmos has three parallel layers: heaven, our world and hell. The theosophists hold that the cosmos has seven layers, six of these being “astral.” A common notion in science fiction is that there are endlessly many parallel universes – with each possible universe existing somewhere. A variation of this last idea has actually been incorporated into modern quantum mechanics, and we will return to it in later chapters.
(Rucker 1984)

If you can imagine each universe as a sheet of paper stacked on top of each other, then it’s easy to visualize how three, seven, or an infinite number of parallel universes exist. Rucker says that if parallel universes exist that a “sufficiently dense object could bulge our space out enough to touch another space. And the two spaces might join together like two soap films that have been brought into contact.” What would a sufficiently dense object be? None other than a collapsed star, in other words a black hole, my friends. The book supports the theory that our universe is not flat but actually curved with bulges occurring all over. So another possible way to travel from one universe to the next might also be to pinch off a piece of curvature like a bubble and float off.

Have I lost you yet? Don’t worry, I’m almost done torturing you… in this universe at least.

Ok, well aside from figuring out how to travel from one universe to the next . . . I do have several questions about these parallel universes. Supposing there are seven universes – are they all connected? As in is there a Judy in each universe? Each slightly different then that one that you know in this universe.

It seems Lost would argue yes as we’ve seen the entire main (and many minor) characters exist and interact in sideways world. Doesn’t six copies of one person require a lot of orchestration though? For instance, my parents met quite by chance. And to have them meet in seven different universes seems highly unlikely, unless that is if each universe shared a common history or if it was fated to happen.

And the three universes correlating to Earth, Heaven and Hell opens itself up to another slew of questions and observations. If this is true then a sneaky person (such as myself) would bypass the whole commandment thing and simply find a black hole to reach Heaven. Right? Perhaps there are tons of imposters there now! Or perhaps not. Maybe if you visit Heaven alive you can’t really see the people who are dead. Oh Desmond, how I need you to show me the way.

Well… now that I’ve filled your head with enough nonsense for today -- be free. Explore! Find black holes! Go through them and please tell me what you discover.

These are the Stories of our Lives

The Media Impact two-week workshop has come to a close, and I’m surprised to say that I’ll miss schlepping my heavy bag to and fro every weekday to the Bay Gardens Inn. It’s not really the schlepping that I’ll miss though, but the Caribbean friends and connections Sarah and I have made in these two brief weeks amid learning, discussion and dialogue. It’s been a whirlwind of a fortnight here in St. Lucia, but we’ve learned so much about the project and each other.

Yesterday we were fortunate to have guest workshop facilitator Dr. Arvind Singhal all the way from University of Texas El Paso. It was particularly a special treat for Sarah and me because Dr. Singhal was our Social Change professor during the spring semester at the Clinton School, and he also assisted us in connecting us with Media Impact. A million thanks would not be due credit.

Dr. Singhal shared his insight and wisdom in the field of Education Entertainment and Positive Deviancy. For me it was like Singhal’s Greatest Hits as he shared all the best stories we students heard in Social Change. Hearing them a second time over, however, was just as powerful (if not more powerful) than the first listening experience. It was very compelling to hear the theories and stories intermingled with each other in a very real, practical setting. No longer were we envisioning Positive Deviancy as a tool, but we were talking about how to apply it in our My Island – My Community project. Participants of the workshop, which included government officials, educators, radio DJ’s, musicians, and more, loved the stories (this is, after all, a culture centered on storytelling). And the stories of Gandhi were not just stories to live by as public servants that I previously heard in class, we were all reminded at the workshop why we come together in the first place -- to work on social issues.

In our lives if we are lucky to come across great storytellers we are truly blessed. For it’s not just the great stories that entertain us as we learn about the lives and events from other characters and times – we learn a lot about ourselves as well. Great story tellers offer us the freedom to think about concepts and norms and allow us to rewrite our own norms. Dr. Singhal is one of those great storytellers.

In the spirit of sharing stories, here is one of those stories.

Quiet . . . We’re On the Air

Today is a day that any radio fanatic would appreciate and love. We’ve heard about theory and best practices for about a week and a half and finally today the participants got to put it all together and form their own mini radio segment as an in-class exercise.

Since I have a background in public radio, KMFA to be exact (HI KMFA staff!!!!) the sight of microphones, laptops, and weird little audio gadgets was a wonderful homecoming. It was amazing how the groups just ran with it and already sounded like seasoned announcers. I mean they used a bed of music underneath their banter! They made PSA’s! They made up a phone number for listeners to call in! They took pretend phone calls from listeners!

Oh it was wonderful. And I wanted to wrap my arms around the cute, creative radio frequency they created for us today and snuggle with it.

Radio is a powerful medium to convey messages. Unlike television or cinema – it’s free, and the technology needed to listen to radio is relatively inexpensive. So whether it’s waking up to radio on your alarm clock, hearing it on the public bus, or catching it on a boom box – radio is literally all around us. Depending on the content of the program, it can make you laugh, pontificate or bounce around in your chair. I’ve traveled to Turkey, the Netherlands, and throughout Central America. In each of these places I streamed KMFA and KUT from Austin, TX. And though I was millions of miles away from home simply hearing the voices of my local announcers immediately took me back home.

Now that I live in Little Rock I have a whole new slew of NPR voices to get to know, and I’m still in the getting to know you phase. Though there’s nothing better than logging on to Facebook and reading a status update that says, “John Aielli was crazy this morning.” Outside of the Central Texas area this might not mean much. For the folks that listen and love John Aielli it’s a nice wink and nod to a colorful DJ on KUT (the local NPR station) who probably played 15 songs in a row about paperclips and used his velvety voice to make commentary about how these songs remind him about whatever is going on his life. For the times that I truly miss Austin, I’ll make sure to stream him during the hours of 9 am and 12 pm and hear about his tomato gardening or the latest play he just saw.

That’s what public radio is for me. It’s keeping it local. It weaves together powerful stories about ordinary people to the ordinary listeners that love hearing them. And that my friend, is no ordinary listening experience.

Think Social Marketing Doesn't Work? Just Did!

Have you ever driven down the road and seen a blank billboard that reads: Think Advertising Doesn't Work? Just did! Call 1-800-….. to use this billboard. Maybe you don’t pay attention to that billboard or maybe you do. In my case those billboards really irk me. Something about their tone. Like they tricked me. I don’t know. I just don’t like it. Besides if there’s a blank billboard in town why don’t they use it to promote some regional issue?

Anyway… this post isn’t about billboards that try to trick you… but rather about social marketing and how it really works.

For those of you who aren’t aware -- social marketing is any use of marketing techniques to improve social well being by changing behavior and attitudes about social concerns, creating a change in the entire community. The major differences between commercial marketing (the marketing you all well know and love i.e. Coca-Cola) and social marketing is that social marketing is identified by it being values driven, accountable by the public, and based on building relationships out of trust.

Here in St. Lucia we’re just over half way through our 2 week workshop on utilizing Education Entertainment to affect Climate Change in the Caribbean. Today Media Impact Program Director Sean Southey gave a great presentation on Social Marketing – it’s importance, why to use it, and how to best create a social marketing campaign for each of the countries involved in this project.

Just to give you a small glimpse of the presentation. Sean explained how effective social marketing campaigns really are by showing the following pictures and seeing if we could finish the phrase. Can you finish the following messages from the campaigns? I’m pretty sure you can. Make me proud!

What does Smokey the Bear say?

Friends don't let Friends.....

Don't mess with...

Suddenly Surveyed

Friends, Romans, Countrymen! Lend me your opinions!

Since my time landing here I’ve had a major problem that I need your input on. How do you pronounce Caribbean? I don’t think I’ve ever pronounced it correctly or consistently. And the more I say it here, the more I get self-conscious about it and then just mumble “Cari…..” into some nonsensical, unheard word.

Please click on the link below and let me know how you pronounce it. It’s only one question long, so it’s fairly easy to take and you’ll be able to answer it faster than you can mumble Cari….
Results will be posted later this week.

Click here to take survey

An Open Letter to Administrators of the World

Dear Administrators of the World,

Should the next time you decide to convene the powers that be that make up your organization – I highly recommend an offsite retreat or conference in St. Lucia. Workshops in St. Lucia provide a powerful yet entertaining venue to gather your staff and board. All the necessary components of a highly effective meeting are here: wi-fi, tamarind juice, and a pool for refreshing afternoon breaks. Even The Five Dysfunctions of a Team author Patrick Lencioni would agree that a retreat out here in the Caribbean is the best way to move your group through the five dysfunction stages.

Of all the conferences that I’ve ever been to, inevitably it ends up being you go and throw your business cards (or if you’re mean you throw your colleague’s business cards) at random strangers you will never talk to again. And some type of fun activity is usually organized in the evening revolving around a Hawaiian themed dress and food in Ballroom A. Snoozefest!

But here in St. Lucia it’s for real fun times. No kidding! Last week the staff, board members, and clients of PCI-Media Impact gathered together for a little food and entertainment. We laughed, laughed and laughed some more. A very talented group of children showed us some traditional dancing. That was all fun and great, but what I’m about to show you is how we at PCI-Media Impact get along. Check out the short clip below when the group busted out into a spontaneous conga line. It was like a Caribbean version of a Bollywood film minus the 3 hours of predictable storyline and unrequited star crossed lovers. You’ll see Sarah Leer from the Clinton School, and you’ll also meet my recently adopted Aunt Lynne. Aunt Lynne is a gutsy, fun awesome board member with Media Impact who is currently teaching at the University of Cape Coast in Ghana. She’s not really my biological Aunt, but we have decided that we’re related.

Enjoy the clip and feel free to dance while you watch!

Best Regards,
Judy Watts
Associate Director of Having Fun While you Work

Confessions of a Morning Jogger

Imagine this. You wake up, walk a short 10 minutes to the beach from your home and the most difficult decision in front of you is deciding on whether to take a left or a right down the sandy beach for your morning jog. This was exactly my 7 am routine today. I went left.





It was a beautiful jog and as I began I thought of all the places I have ever jogged and how my best jogs are near bodies of water—whether that is Ladybird Lake in Austin, Texas or the Caribbean there’s something about being near reflective water that well, helps me reflect. I wish I had brought a camera on this particular jog, but I will try my best to describe it for you.


I doled out various salutations to travelers, fisherman and St. Lucians on my way. Then I saw two fishermen pull out a silvery, sliding fish and begin to gut it. Not the prettiest thing for a vegetarian to witness, but I didn’t let it get me down. Just a few feet later I noticed a cemetery near the beachfront. What an interesting place to set down a cemetery amid hotels and restaurants (though I’m sure the cemetery was there first). It was quite beautiful though to see all the crosses from the headstones near a white sandy beach.


Continuing on my jog, I came across about 40 St. Lucians huddled near the water all watching some type of event taking place in the ocean. So I wondered what they were looking at and saw two men holding the arms of teenager wearing a red shirt. I stopped to ask a man what was going on, and apparently this was a baptism. Several teens were being immersed in the healing Caribbean waters of St. Lucia after deciding to become Christians. Witnessing the ceremonial baptism served as a good reminder to me that we are all humans. And to live is to err. And to acknowledge our mistakes is to start anew. Everyone deserves a second chance. What better place to get a second chance than by the shimmery, clear waters of the Caribbean?


Religion plays an important part of the culture here in St. Lucia. As it turns out over 60% of St. Lucians identify themselves as Roman Catholic. My contacts here tell me that St. Lucian Catholics are quite different than American Catholics though (their stated opinion). When I asked what the opinions are of the Pope here, he asserted that, in his view it doesn’t matter either way to folks. There seems to be a separation between spiritual practice and the head of the church from what I gather. Most likely the beach baptism this morning was not a Catholic baptism but of another Christian sect. People also worship as Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Baptists in St. Lucia.

On my return jog past the group they had all but finished and were slowly walking toward their cars and returning to their homes. For tourists who were to walk out after 8 am they would never know about the ceremony that took place earlier this morning. But I did, and I was envious of those delicious looking waters near the end of my jog. I caught one final glimpse of the group as a mother hugged a water drenched teen. What a neat way to start the day.