East Meets West for Creative Contest Collaboration

I did a callout on Twitter to all hypercubists looking for any musicians in the hypercube contest interested in collaborating on a remix of sorts of one of their songs. I figured this would be a great way for a couple of us to show our creative abilities and have some fun doing it.

Strych9 stepped up right away for this little creative challenge. Strych9 is from Montreal, and I'm from Calgary, so this was an opportunity to add a little cross-Canada creative to this cross-Canada contest.

The two of us immediately got to work on a new mix for his fabulous and fun rockabilly style cube song called 3 Dimensional Rock.

I asked Strych9 to produce some additional guitar segments and vocals for the new mix, and he quickly produced some very useful pieces for the mix. With additional feedback from Strych9 to guide me in keeping his original intent for the song, it was now up to me to rework the mix and apply additional mixing and mastering techniques to make his music shine.

When it comes to music production, there's a creative side and there's a technical side (I'm sure there's other sides, but just go with me on this one). My expertise lies more on the technical side and trying to bring the creative and technical together to produce the right results. My technical production work allows musicians to focus on the creative stuff, and leave the techy stuff to people like me.

Watch the 3 Dimensional Rock original music video by Strych9. And while you're there, please cast a vote in his direction.

Listen to 3 Dimensional Rock (Qubic Tesseract Mix), mixed and mastered by me (Qubic). And while you're there, please cast a vote in my direction.

I recommend that you first listen to the original version by Strych9, then listen to the mix I produced so you can hear how post-production mixing and mastering can enhance the musician's music and make it more enjoyable.

Gold (Ticket) Cube

Woohoo! I mean, Yeehaw!!! (I'm supposed to be a Calgarian)

I received an email today from The Hypercube with the fabulous news that I was selected as one of the 500 final hypercubists to audition for 1 of the 50 Nissan Cubes.

So in celebration, here's my precious Gold (Ticket) Cube...

Check back here in a few days... I'll have more information on how to vote for me, and how you can check out the creativity of the other 499 finalists.

See Sean, the Cube Man

This is a literary and visual ode to Sean Williams, the Cube Man, for his creatively daring efforts to promote the Cube... He brings a whole new meaning to playing in traffic...

See Sean.	See Cube box.	See Sean wearing Cube box.

See Sean run.	See Sean run in traffic.	Look out, Sean!

Run, Sean, Run!

See the complete Cube Man series on Sean Williams' FlickR photostream.

Edit - Apr 5, 2009 at 6:35 pm MDT:

The Cube Man currently does not appear to have a blog nor site, so you can follow @Seandubb on twitter.

Hypercube for Everyday People?

The Hypercube had asked everyone a while back about people's reactions when we mention the Nissan Cube and the Hypercube word-of-mouth campaign. I didn't actually answer it at the time as I wanted to gather more reactions.

But this evening, the Hypercube asked 5 questions that I thought I'd answer in this blog posting rather than in several tweets on Twitter. Here's the questions:

1. How did you hear about @thehypercube?
2. What was your first impression?
3. Would u have been interested if Nissan had used ads instead?
4. Have you told people?
5. What do they think?

Here's my answers:

1. I heard about @thehypercube via an email I received from Nissan Canada because I had signed up on the Nissan Cube microsite to receive notifications about the Nissan Cube.
   
   
2. I thought, "This is really cool! 50 free Nissan Cubes." But I also thought, "This is gonna be a bit of creative and techno-social work." But I was up to the challenge.
   
   
3. I would have been interested in the Nissan Cube regardless of the advertising. I knew about the Nissan Cube back in 2004 because I had an interest in all Japanese vehicles. When I saw the Cube in the JDM market, I was wondering why it wasn't in North America yet, and hoping that Nissan would soon decide to bring them to this continent. In the meantime, I had to "settle" for importing a Nissan S-Cargo from Japan for myself. But then the Cube showed up in the Montreal auto show as a concept vehicle, and I thought, "They better be serious about bringing this to Canada." It took them a while, but it's finally here.
   
   
4. Yes. Face-to-face, over the phone, email, Twitter, Facebook, forums. I'm going to try smoke signals next.
   
   
5. What do they think about the Nissan Cube? It's like my Nissan S-Cargo... Either they really like it, or they don't. There doesn't seem to be a halfway in between on this car. But I think that's a good thing. I think people who like it will tend to be more passionate about it.
   
   What do they think about the Hypercube campaign? They're mostly okay with the word-of-mouth thing, but the contest part seems like too much work and techno-socializing beyond their current circle of friends. Out of all the people I've talked to, really only 1 other person seemed genuinely interested in participating in the contest.

Papercraft R/C Nissan Cube

I had a little fun with a papercraft Nissan Cube that I downloaded from SH Illustration Studio, and the chassis from a 1:26 scale Nissan 180SX R/C car (borrowed from a colleague).

Since it was a JDM model (Japanese Domestic Market), I had to tweak the image to flip certain items left-to-right because vehicles in Japan are right-hand drive, and USDM models (U.S. Domestic Market) are left-hand drive. I also had to scale the papercraft images so it would fit over the R/C chassis.

I used wooden stir sticks, which are thinner but longer than popsicle sticks, to reinforce the papercraft construction as well as attach it to the R/C chassis.

The result... my colleague and I had a little cubicle fun driving this little papercraft R/C Nissan Cube around our work area. I only have a Canon A95 Sureshot still camera, but it took decent enough video for me to create this little segment to promote the Nissan Cube campaign...

Sweet Ride

I couldn't leave this series of X Cubes at only two. It needed at least 3 Cubes to keep this a well-balanced cubular theme.

This could be the sweetest ride this summer...

Got Cheese?

One of the other hypercubists, PhantomJoe, left a tweet for me on twitter, "cheesy but I love it!". I'm assuming he was referring to my Nissan Ice Cube image. Thanks for the, uh, compliment, Joe. :)

Well, the contriver of puns that I am, be it literal or visual, I could not resist the challenge. PhantomJoe, I give you the cheesiest cube of them all...

Note: No cheese was harmed in the making of this image.

Cool as an Ice Cube

I couldn't resist... the coolest car this summer would be a Nissan Ice Cube.

So here comes the puns...

You could really keep your cool in a hot situation with a cube like this.

Having a tough time meeting someone? This cube would be the ideal ice breaker.

If you've got other cool puns, one liners, or pick-up lines to go with this ice cube, leave it in a comment.

Hyperposts

This past weekend I thought I'd spend a little extra time spreading the Hypercube word on the Inter-web. I was trying to think of places where the young techno-savvy crowd might hit, who are interested in cars at some level.

I hit Beyond.ca with a posting. It's a car blog and forum where many Calgarians frequent, so hopefully we'll see a few more Calgarians join the Hypercube wave. Here's a snapshot of the forum list and posting (click on image for larger view):

View the actual posting on Beyond.ca

You'll notice in the list that there's been over 150 views on the Nissan Hypercube Contest: Win a FREE NISSAN CUBE posting (as of the morning of Monday, March 30). I just checked again right now, and it's over 200 views. The RealToyCars ID was the ID I created several years ago when I had my Nissan S-Cargo, which basically looked like a big toy car.

Another forum I hit was NissanClub.com, a Nissan forum dedicated to Altima owners. One would figure there would be some talk about the Hypercube contest on a Nissan forum, but there wasn't... until now. Here's the snapshot for the posting on that forum (click on image for larger view):

View actual posting on NissanClub.com

Lastly, I hit kijiji.ca, a popular classifieds site for the young techo-savvy inter-web user. I posted a classified ad for a Free Nissan Cube for Creative Canadian in each major Canadian city. I was concerned that this one might violate kijiji's policy, but took the chance nonetheless hoping that several people would end up seeing it. Here's the snapshots for the postings on kijiji.ca (click on image for larger view):

By Monday morning, I started receiving notices from kijiji admin that some notices were being pulled, so I quickly logged on and took a snapshot of those that were not yet pulled to give an idea of how many people may have already seen the notices. I was pleasantly surprised to see some of them were around 100 views, so I figure that the others that were already pulled were fairly high as well. According to kijiji, I violated their policy about posting an ad that drove traffic to another site. Oh well, at least a few hundred people viewed it.

Cube Events and the Hypercube Presentation Stand

The Hypercube announced that Cube events will be held in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver (possibly other cities), where the winners will receive their new Nissan Cube. But The Hypercube also asked for possible names for the event from us hypercubists (contestants), and the name of the event will be selected from the submissions.

I presented 2 possible names for the event:

1. Hypercube's Boxy Day Extravaganza
   Tagline: Where the box is the gift and Christmas arrives early for 50 Canadians
   
   
2. Hypercube's Block Party

Regardless of whether any of my submissions are selected, I thought it would be interesting if each of the Cubes were presented in a hypercube stand. After all, this whole Word-of-Mouth (WOM) campaign has been branded as "Hypercube", so why not go all the way with the brand.

Here's an illustration I quickly put together to illustrate how the hypercube presentation stand could look:

The hypercube shape lends nicely to having a natural ramp at both ends. Depending on the number of Cubes being given away at each event, they could have a separate presentation stand for each Cube car, where the Cube is parked on the stand prior to the start of the event. Or, if the stands are too costly to construct several of them, they could drive one Cube onto the stand, present it to one winner, who then drives it off the stand. Then the next winner's cube is driven onto the stand and presented, and so on.

More Spots Available to Win a Nissan Cube

According to The Hypercube (the custodian of the Nissan Cube contest), there are more audition spots available.

Go to hypercube.ca now to sign up for your own chance to win 1 of 50 Nissan Cubes. Cut-off is April 9, including the completion of an on-line profile, so don't hesitate - sign up NOW!

Why am I telling you to become a potential competitor? Because that's the nature of this social media contest - it's a Word of Mouth (WOM) campaign. I need to find ways to tell more people about the Nissan Cube and this contest. And I'm a nice guy - I want everyone to have a chance to win a Nissan cube.

Make sure you create a twitter account (if you haven't already) and start using it to follow TheHypercube for more details & fun, and increase your chances of winning.

And to let TheHypercube know that you heard about this contest from me, please enter the following into the input box just below "What are you doing?" on your twitter home page:

@thehypercube I heard about the Nissan cube from @qubicmx and I want to win one, too.

If you don't want to sign up for the contest, but have a twitter account, you can support my long and winding Road 2 Cubism by sending the following tweet:

@thehypercube I heard about the Nissan cube from @qubicmx and I hope he wins one.

Wish me luck! And I wish you luck, too, if you sign up.

Movies Cubed

Since this hypercube promotion is kicking off ideas from creative Canadians about all things cubed, I thought I'd take a moment and point out a couple of interesting Canadian-made sci-fi movies that are cube-related and worth the watch (if you can find it in your local video rental store)...

Cube "A man wakes up in a white cube with strange symbols engraved on the walls, the light comes through the squares that the symbols are engraved on. On each wall is a square door about two feet wide with an opening device on the front. The man stands up and opens one, inside is a small passageway and then another identical room only it's blue instead of white..." Filmed in Toronto, it won 13 awards and was nominated for additional 6 awards. Although it was a low budget film, it was not short on quality and relied on good character development around a simple plot to maintain mystery, suspense, and conflict. Check out the full details of Cube on IMDB.

Cube 2: Hypercube "Eight strangers find themselves waking up in a strange cube-shaped room with no recollection of how they came to be there. Soon discovering that they're in a strange fourth dimension where our laws of physics don't apply, they have to unravel the secrets of the "hypercube" in order to survive." Although this was a Canadian-made film, it was filmed in the U.S. and required a slightly bigger budget to accommodate the special effects. Cube 2 fell short of the high expectations set by the initial Cube movie and only received 1 award and 1 nomination. Despite it's short comings, Cube 2 was still a decent movie. Check out the full details of Cube 2: Hypercube on IMDB.

Tips for Owning a Unique Car (Like the Nissan cube)

I'm no stranger to owning a strange car on Canadian roads. I had owned a 1989 Nissan S-Cargo for almost 5 years, so I've had a lot of exposure to owning, driving, and parking a strangely unique car.

I had learned a lot about how to interact with people showing interest in the car, and how people react to such a unique car. So here's a few tips to help the winners, or any new owner, of a Nissan cube®...

Tips for Owning a Unique Car in Canada:

1. Have fun! First priority - have fun with this vehicle. It's a funky car, and the first 3 letters of funky spells fun. Take it for a drive, pick up some friends, and have a blast.
   
   
2. Don't be shy. You'll have people approaching you and asking you questions about the car. If you're shy or don't like talking to strangers, you'll have a tough time owning such a car.
     
3. Be personable - your approach sets the tone. The first few times when I walked out of a store and saw people standing around my S-Cargo, peering into the windows, and looking puzzled, I walked up to them and politely said, "Can I help you?". They would step back, look at me, realize I was the owner, and would say something like, "No, it's okay. Just looking," then uncomfortably walk away. I thought I was polite and said it with a smile. And I was sincere about helping them. So what was wrong?
   
   One time, I saw a couple standing next to the car, chuckling and shaking their heads in disbelief. I walked up and started off with a different question, "So what do you think of the car? Be honest." Well, they opened right up and we had a good 15-minute conversation about its features and how I acquired it.
   
   From that point on, I'd approach people with a question that invited a more specific answer or comment, making the experience more enjoyable for everyone.
   
   
4. Have more fun! It's that important. If you stop having fun with the car, it'll become just another car. Plan a day trip outside of the city with some friends. Take it someplace where no one has seen it before. Or shine it up and take it to a local Show'n'Shine for a day and meet more people, especially if you've added some aftermarket bling to it.
   
   
5. Plan extra time for your outtings. It was very common for me to spend an extra 10-20 minutes with people who'd stop me when leaving the S-Cargo to go into a store, or when coming back to the S-Cargo. So add some time for your errands so you can tend to your fans.
   
   
6. Know your car, and be honest. People will ask you subjective and technical questions about the car. So know engine specs, safety features, etc. And they'll ask you what's good, what's bad, what you like, and what you don't like. And be honest with your answers. You're not a salesperson - you're an experienced owner. People want to know the real scoop and will really appreciate your honesty. Let them know when the glove box is too small, or it's difficult to see or reach instrumentation, but always end on something positive or something you really like about the car so they leave with a good impression.
   
   
7. Gawking hazards. People may gawk at your car. This is normally not a problem unless the person doing the gawking is also driving a car. Keep alert and aware of potential gawking drivers as you may need to perform sudden evasive maneuvers or lean on the horn to warn them of a dangerous situation... such as running a stop sign or red light, hitting a pedestrian, or other dangerous situation.
   
   On one particular incident, the driver of the car in the lane to my right was trying to get ahead of me while leaning out the driver's window looking backwards so he could take a picture of the front of the S-Cargo... and nearly ran me into oncoming traffic.
   
   
8. Enjoy the car and have fun! You'll get a lot of attention and meet more people. Enjoy every minute of it. The cube® has a similar cute-appeal as the S-Cargo. And quite frankly, the S-Cargo was a chick-magnet... more so than any high-end sports car. If you're male and single and want to meet girls, the cube® will definitely be an ice breaker. However, after the cube® breaks the ice for you, your personality better be able to stand up to the cube's® personality, or you'll be kicked to the curb.

Coincidences Speak Volumes

When I first received the notice from Nissan about the cube® contest, I couldn't help but notice some similarities between the hypercube branding and my own Qubic branding... cube-like name, cube-within-a-cube design, and even one of the colours (blue) is used in both designs.

Coincidence?! Perhaps more like a sign... a little carrot and a bit of a nudge to persuade me to enter this social contest.

I created the Qubic brand when I first started my hobby in music production back in Jan 2008. The word Qubic is a combination of a couple of words and concepts.

First, the word cubic means having the form of a cube but is also associated with cubic metre, which is a measure of volume (gas, liquids, solids). But another meaning of volume is a measure of loudness of sound.

Second, the word cue, which means a signal to begin an action, as in cue the music to start, or cue an actor to begin a scene.

Third, the word queue is associated with cue between some languages, and means to wait in line or line up single file. Although it has some association with music (create of set of songs which are played in sequence could be considered a queue of songs), it is more relevant to my career as a Software Developer, where data and data records are queued for processing. The music production work that I do is performed on digital files, so this had some relevance to me.

Thus... cubic + cue + queue = Qubic

For the logo design, I played on the cube idea from cubic. Playing with 3D cubes of different sizes and orientation produced a very interesting 3D optical illusion of cubes.

Is the center cube in or out? If you stare at it long enough, you'll drive yourself batty.

The Road to Cubism

It starts here... now. It's a contest. It's a word-of-mouth campaign. It's a social experiment. It's a chance for me to win a brand new Nissan cube®.

Nissan is giving away 50 Nissan cubes® to cool, fun, unique, different, creative, interesting, everyday Canadians. (You can find more details about this unique contest at www.hypercube.ca.)

Wow! That's a tall order for an everyday person. I'd like to say that I'm all those things, but I don't think they'll take my word for it. So I'll need to give them some hard cold evidence.

What does this have to do with you?

I believe that the cool, fun, unique, different, creative, interesting, everyday person that I am today is partly (or possibly mostly) due to the family, friends, colleagues, and other acquaintances that I've known and come in contact throughout my life.

So I've created this little blog to gather my supporting material.

But I need your help...

I ask that you visit here often throughout the duration of the contest so you can follow my travels down the road to cubism.

But I also ask that you add comments to relevant postings... Add to any stories, pictures, music, etc., that I post... Add a little bit of your experience, or include something insightful, or add a little something about me that I conveniently forgot to mention (Yikes! That sounds like an open invitation for a firing squad!).

Visit here often or use the RSS feed for this blog to receive updates. You can also follow me on twitter (I've also put a convenient Twitter link on the sidebar).

Wish me luck!