I want to have a group video chat and was looking into whether or not FaceTime supports that feature yet. It appears that FaceTime does not yet support group chats. This post is actually a series of 3 articles that I copied and am reprinting pretty much verbatim. Each one discusses a Group Video Chat App or Apps, that work on ios as well as what features the apps include, as of of March 2017.
For each article the title links to the main article itself and the author’s name appears right before the the first paragraph on the left.
Jam Kotenko’sarticle for GottaBeMobile.com is really great. Had I found this first, I would have looked no further…but I found it last, which is why the other 2 are included. But the other 2 articles, discussing Fam and Houseparty are unique in some senses, so it’s nice to know about them too I think. But Kotenko’s article is the most comprehensive I’ve encounter in a very long time on the subject, and I’m thrilled to be able to share it with my readers.
In addition to great writeups on each service, there are links to each platform’s version, as well as helpful videos about each one.
I’ve also included reader’s comments at the bottom, because they add additional information that’s also helpful.
Gottabemobile.com
JAM KOTENKO
12/23/2016
Video chatting is an important part of Internet culture. It is a great way to connect with people who are important to us, no matter where they are in the world. Of course, having access to the best video chat apps is also crucial, and while there are many options out there, only a few are deemed well-designed and easy to use, with all the important features provided.
Here are a few video chat services for your consideration, most of which are available not only on both iOS and Android platforms, but on the desktop as well.
Skype is the pioneer of video chat apps, and since its initial public beta version release back in 2003, it has steadily grown its number of registered users. The service is heavily ingrained into the online chatter’s psyche that the name has become a verb almost everyone recognizes – “I’ll Skype you!” means you’ll be seeing each other’s faces on your chosen device. If they’re not available, that’s OK – you can leave them a video message.
Skype has had the group video feature enabled for quite some time now, and allows you to converse via webcam with up to 25 people, making it a valuable tool for bridging distances between colleagues, friends, and loved ones.
Hangouts is an instant messaging and video chat platform developed by Google – that fact alone should be enough to give you an idea of the many things you can do with the service. You can video chat for free – both via Wi-Fi and mobile networks – with up to ten contacts, all while being able to share your desktop screen, slap stickers onto faces, and share photos, among other things.
Messenger is Facebook’s all-powerful chat client. While it’s got all the bells and whistles you’ll want in a text messaging app – including the ability to group text and use integrated services like Giphy and Uber within the app – its video call function is simple to use and reliable. The best thing about Messenger? Almost everybody is on Facebook and is therefore reachable via video call, as long as they have the app on their device or have the website open on their Web browser. (If you don’t want to deal with the information overload that usually comes with Facebook, you can contact your friends using Messenger’s dedicated website.)
Oh, and if that’s not good enough, Facebook recently updated Messenger so you can finally make group video calls, which was the only thing Skype and Hangouts had that kept Messenger from being the ultimate go-to video chat app.
Just like the previous services, ooVoo lets you video chat for free, either one on one or with a group of up to 12 people at once. You can send text, GIFs, photos, and videos while an actual video call is in progress, allowing you to have a dynamic interaction with people you are talking to from anywhere in the world with a decent Internet or mobile network connection, whatever platform or device they are using the service on. Additionally, ooVoo lets you talk to your friends as your favorite avatar character – which you can try on and buy through the ooVoo Store – or wear a mask during a video call.
Tango also lets you make video calls and leave video messages for free. You can also send animated stickers, add filters and masks. You can even play games with the person you are speaking to while you are in a call. While it doesn’t seem to be available on desktop, it’s very straightforward and simple to use.
Viber is another straightforward video chat platform that you can use on almost any device, including your desktop. As long as the person you are talking to also has Viber installed, video calls are absolutely free. The interface is clean and user-friendly.
7. FaceTime (Pre-installed on iOS and MacOS)
If you are an Apple user, then your go-to service for video calling should be FaceTime, if only for the sole reason that it already comes pre-installed within your iOS device when you purchase it, so downloading isn’t necessary. (FaceTime isn’t readily available or might not appear on devices bought or used in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates.) Some important things to note, though: 1. Only contacts who also have iOS devices will be the only ones you can video chat with, and 2. You can only video chat with one person at a time. Having said that, using FaceTime is pretty easy and convenient.
Finally, to wrap up this list, we’ve got Camfrog, a service that not only lets you video chat privately with your friends and loved ones, but with anyone within the Camfrog community. You can join any of the thousands of chat rooms to connect with people worldwide via video, allowing you to make new friends online, just like in the mIRC days. Proceed with caution, though, because some rooms allow explicit content that’s NSFW.
7 RESPONSES
12/23/2016
Davin Peterson
FaceTime is not the best app because Apple doesn’t make it for Android or Windows. That is the problem with Apple software, they make it for platforms. That is not fair and they should since Google & Microsoft makes apps for Apple’s platform, so Apple should make apps for their platform as well.
12/25/2016
smule sing video
My opinion is : Messenger, ooVoo, Skype, Hangouts, Tango, Viber, Camfrog, Fring, FaceTime, WeChat
12/26/2016
Markoff
ever heard about a small unknown so called WhatsApp? it has video calls as well
01/31/2017
Ana
My opinion is : WhatsApp, Skype, Hangouts, FBK Messenger, ooVoo
Good luck
02/12/2017
Jaquline Sofia
You have shared very helpful and gorgeous apps. I always try to use the above app. But most of the times these apps are unable to make a video call in low quality network signal and 2G network.
There is no 3G network in my village, As a result, i can’t open the facebook messenger in my village.
So i installed the imo messenger. Now i can make a video call in 2G network also. I can connect to my town’s friends via imo.
By the way, thanks for share an informative article.
03/02/2017
Amber Fahad
Agree with you! Skype is my first choose for online free video calls. But I dislike the Facebook messenger video calls. Because it is very disgusting for poor video calling quality at low quality network signal. But I can make a high quality video call via skype within poor quality network also! But your information is very useful. So Thank You.
You might have seen people excitedly tweeting in the last two weeks that “group FaceTime” is finally here. But make no mistake – it’s not tech giant Apple behind this new iMessage -based app. It’s three guys in Boston you’ve never heard of.
Giuseppe Stuto, 27, Frank Iudiciani, 23, and Kevin Flynn, 32, are the three co-founders behind the hot new live group video chat app, Fam. Launched on Dec. 5, it has already been downloaded more than 1 million times and has received hundreds of thousands social media mentions, Stuto says. As of today, Fam is featured in the No. 2 spot under “Top Free Apps” in Apple’s iMessage App Store. (For an explainer on the iMessage App Store, read this.)
Fam – Group video chatting for iMessage
Fam is a big deal because users don’t have to venture outside of iMessage, Apple’s instant messaging service. Unlike competitors such as video group chat app Houseparty, Fam lives in iMessage the way your GIF or Bitmoji keyboards do. Once you download it once through the new iMessage App Store, you can start video chats with up to nine people at a time in your existing iMessage conversations without opening a separate application. Because it runs through iMessage, it can only be used in conversations with other iPhone or iPad owners.
All of this started in September when Apple opened iMessage to developers as a platform to create apps that could include stickers, text, video and audio. At the time, Stuto and his team were working on Smack Live, a group video platform where teens would broadcast their conversations publicly with other users also using the app. The three co-founders wanted to find a way to give users a more private experience exclusively for their family and friends.
“We were trying to think of solutions to build a home for these people who wanted to use it as a private group FaceTime feature,” Stuto says.
Within two days, they had a working version of the Fam app. And within four days, they submitted the first Fam iteration to the iMessage App Store. “Fam was literally a weekend project,” Stuto says.
That weekend project has taken a life of its own and exploded in popularity, particularly with 13 to 22-year-olds. Though Stuto would not disclose the average time users spend interacting with the app, he said it was “millions of minutes” of video streams per day.
Smack Inc, the two-year old company behind Fam, had raised about $2.1 million in venture capital for its previous group chat apps Smack Live and SmackHigh. But since the launch of Fam, the founders had to raise an emergency interim round of financing to keep the new app afloat. “We literally wouldn’t have been able to afford our server costs for next month,” Stuto says.
Flybridge Capital, Boston Seed Capital, and Wayne Chang, who led Smack’s seed round, have re-committed in the interim round. Stuto says he’s speaking with more investors about a Series A round, which will likely close in 2017.
There are a few more kinks the company has to iron out. Right now, there are numerous steps a user has to go through to download the Fam app. (Here’s a preview: open iMessage, click the dark gray App Store icon, click the 4 dots on the bottom left, scroll left or right to find the Fam app, once you see the “create group video” button, click that button. Got it?) Still, the app has gotten more than a million downloads in spite of this.
Two, it doesn’t run on background meaning that if you want to open another app, like Facebook or Snapchat, the Fam video chat will terminate.
The Fam team is already working on solutions. The company will soon release a standalone iOS app that will take care of both issues outlined above. The iOS app would come bundled with the iMessage app, automatically installing it in the user’s iMessage. It will also allow Fam to run on background.
The biggest question mark is what’s next for the 14-day-old app. Will Apple build its own group video chat tool and eliminate the need for a product like Fam? Right now, the likely answer is no.
If Fam is successful, it gives Apple the ability to tout the innovation coming out of its new iMessage App Store. It also doesn’t hurt that millions of people are spending more and more time in iMessage.
“Apple is opening up to a whole new wave of innovators and product builders,” Stuto says. “We’re fortunate enough to be here at the early wave, and I think Apple sees that.”
After pivoting from livestreaming video to a group video chat, Life on Air, the developer behind Meerkat, is finally ready to talk about a new app and lessons learned.
Meerket, the company’s original live streaming app, went viral just before the South by Southwest festival in 2015. With help from the huge interest in the app, it collected $14 million in venture capital from a number of VCs and Hollywood insiders.
But the success, as with many Silicon Valley startups, was fleeting. Even though at one point Meerkat had accumulated millions of users, the app faced a tough challenge in competing in mobile livestreaming against Twitter’s rival offering, Periscope, and Facebook’s competitor, Facebook Live. While Meerkat is still in the Apple App Store, the startup behind the app has changed course and is working on something new..
That new venture is called is Houseparty, and CEO and co-founder Ben Rubin best describes it as an informal way to have group video chats on phones. After use of the livestreaming app started slowing last summer, Rubin, his COO Sima Sistani, and the team decided that the startup should focus on something new. “Retention wasn’t good, people were not coming back,” explained Rubin. “Live video is great as a feature on top of an existing social network, not as its own medium.”
Rubin and his team still wanted to focus on live mobile video, but in a more private, yet social experience. “We didn’t want to be a theatre, we wanted to be a house party,” said Rubin. By the end of February, the company had created and quietly debuted their new vision, Houseparty, in the Apple App Store. It’s also available at the Google Play store too .
In simple terms, the iOS app is a way to chat with friends and family using video. After downloading the app, users can invite contacts to become friends within Houseparty. Whenever the app is opened, friends get push notifications about it and can start to video chat. The amount of push notifications could be intrusive, but users can also turn them off. Users can add other friends to a maximum of eight people in one chat. Users can also make chats, or “rooms” private, and they can switch from room to room.
If a someone who is not a friend joins a video chat such as a friend of a friend, users get a notification that a stranger is entering the room in case they want to end the chat.
Between February and May, the app started taking off, Sistani and Rubin explained. This was partly because the startup was marketing the service at colleges and high schools in the South and Midwest. Word spread, and the app quickly gained hundreds of thousands of users, according to Rubin. At one point, it rose to number two in the Apple app store rankings for top apps.
But over the summer, Houseparty’s traffic dropped off. That’s mainly because the app had not been built to handle the load of hundreds of thousands of simultaneous video chats. So the team had to rebuild the app, and re-launched it in the app store a month ago. Now Houseparty has hit one million users (but declined to say whether these are monthly or daily users), and is growing steadily, says Rubin. Signups have quadrupled in some of markets in the past month. Sistani says that the app’s userbase skews to the under 25 crowd, with many of the users at universities and high schools.
And like Meerkat, Houseparty doesn’t yet make any revenue, and Rubin and his team have not yet thought about how to make money. The company has not yet decided whether to shut down Meerkat’s app.
As for competition, there’s no shortage of group, mobile video chat apps, including Microsoft’s Skype, and Google Hangouts. Facebook has group calling in its popular chat app Messenger and it’s likely only a matter of time before the social network adds video capabilities. There’s also Tango and Facebook-owned WhatsApp.
But Rubin claims that these apps are formal in nature, meaning you have to plan Google Hangout by sending a link around to friends. There’s not a social component to these apps, he adds. The comparison he makes is that Picasa and Flickr were great ways to share photos with people before Instagram, but when Instagram launched it added a new social element to how people viewed each others photos. “We want to do that with group video,” he said.
Even though the company has a renewed direction, there are still struggles, or “growing pains,” as reported by tech news site Recode this week. After Life On Air hired a new head of engineering from Twitter, the startup decided to restructure its engineering team, downsizing its team in Tel Aviv, Israel, and centralizing engineering staff in San Francisco. The company still has a video engineering staff in Tel Aviv, but the bulk of its 16 employees are now based in the Bay Area. Rubin adds that the company is hiring more engineers.
But Rubin and his team have resilience, if all their pivots are any indication. Meerkat was actually born from another pivot. Prior to Meerkat, Rubin and the same team had spent years of working on other unsuccessful livestreaming apps, formerly known as AIR and Yevvo. The company had just recently shifted focus to Meerkat when it caught on—albeit temporarily— in 2015.
Perhaps the fourth time is a charm for Rubin and his team. He remains optimistic despite Meerkat’s past struggles. “If we are a little but lucky and a little bit smart, maybe we will have a big impact this time,” he said. “The last thing I want to do is waste investors money and die slowly.”
My Comments
Fam
You can add up to 16 people to a group chat. I added an App Store link and screenshot of the Fam app to the 2nd article. Reading through user reviews they are generally positive. It seems the developer is updating the app regularly and there are some fun additions to the ground chat feature like games. The biggest problems seem to be glitches which cause the app to crash and battery drain.
Houseparty
I added LINKS to the Houseparty app for ios and Google Play in the article above. As well as a screenshot of the ios app. The developers seem to be actively updating the app a lot, and paying lot of attention to what features users want. There are some cool fun features that are hard to explain but you can watch YouTube videos to get a better sense of them. The one big negative I read consistently about the app, which appears not t have been fixes as of March 20, 2017, is that the app drains iPhone batteries a lot. Other than that it appears to be a really fun app with a great dev team behind it.
Comments
I really love getting feedback from my readers!
Therefore I try to make it as easy as possible for readers by not requiring you to add your email address, unlike most comment sections you’ll encounter on blogs. I’ve gone a step further though because you don’t even need to include your real name. You do need a name of some kind…but that can be whatever you want it to be.
I’ve done it this way because it’s your actual feedback that’s really important to me. I’m not really interested in collecting readers’ email addresses which is usually done for the purpose of creating a subscription mailing list.
Smartwatches are not just for adults any more. But why should you consider buying your child a smartwatch? Well, today’s little ones are growing up surrounded by computers, tablets, Youtube… Technology has always been a part of their every-day life – quite different from just 10 or 20 years ago. Some parents want to encourage their child to…
When I first published this I would update it by adding new things at the end. In 2019 I switched to placing any updates 1st, or at the top of this webpage.
Updated February 2019
An all new 2018 Introduction follows this one.
Why I’m Publishing My Notes About Learning LumaFusion
I recently purchased LumaFusion Video Editing app for ios because I’m continually frustrated with iMovie. It seems to me based on the tutorials I’ve found that this editor is really new…so there isn’t a lot of material for learning yet.
I began searching for an iMovie alternative about a week ago after spending several days editing a really complex video (at least foriMovie ios apparently) with a lot of clips, voiceovers and photos interspersed throughout it using iMovie for ios. I was just about ready to publish it when I decided to add a small audio clip that caused all of my audio clips to move around randomly & drastically changing positions which seemed to follow no pattern or logic. Had I been able to discern a pattern I could have sped up the amount of time it took to find each clips new placement and return it to its correct location. But I couldn’t. I messed around for a few more hours trying to get them back to their former positions…but ultimately gave up in futility.
Weeks later a complete re-edit of the entire video, clip by clip took me about 8 hours before I could publish it. Even then I knew it wasn’t as good as it had been because I couldn’t figure out where some little segments had been, so the whole project wasn’t really worth the time I’d sunk into it.
This wasn’t the first time I encountered an extremely time-consuming malfunction with the ios version of iMovie. The last time this happened I was unable to publish a very long, time-intensive project which ultimately I was never able to publish or even save in any way useful fashion…it was just stuck in the app on that device forever.
The day after I finished fixing iMovie’s most recent epic failure I began searching in earnest for a new video editing app again. After a lot of reading I arrived at the decision to go with LumaFusion. Even though it was one of the most expensive apps I’d ever purchased to date $20. (Ironically I also just purchased another even more expensive app, Ulysses, which is a writing and markdown program for writers…it’s $25. I never spend that kind of money on ios apps! Ulysses has proven to be well worth it but the jury for me is still out regarding LumaFusion.)
Ironically, a year and a half later…the opposite has ended up being true! Ulysseses has ended up becoming a hugely disappointing app…onethat I never use anymore, because in addition to the huge upfront fee, they are now charging an equally costly subscription fee that I simply can’t afford. They’ve lost many, many good users as a result.LumaFusion on the other hand has begun making quite a name for themselves in the industry!!! Everyone who’s anyone has picked them as the best video editing app out there for ios! One big reason why I’m determined to learn this! And…its one thing that almost everyone (reviewers I mean) stated as a reason…becauseLumaFusion is offered for a onetime price purchase…and is not an ongoing subscription!
The next day I imported some clips into LumaFusion and realized I had absolutely no clue how to use it! I figured it would be easy to figure out because I’ve been using editing software for a longtime…but it’s a powerful app. It’s got so many features packed into it that it’s going to be a learning curve. The only problem with that is I’m not finding a lot of tutorial literature. There are some videos, which are great, but I need written material too. Which is why I’m accumulating everything I find here to have it all at my finger tips when I need it.
But then I started thinking that if I needed this information, other people probably do too. The fact that someone liked my accidentally published notes which were pretty bad within five minutes of publishing was a clue. So here’s the deal. I’ve decided to republish my notes, with the strict understanding that these are notes…not a polished, completed post.Which is why I’m not putting sharing links for social networks and other things I’d normally add to a finished post. There may be typos too, or sections that get messed up because I’m also practicing some coding in HTML too.
Keeping those caveats in mind…welcome to my notes on learning LumaFusion.
New Introduction February 2018
I didn’t ever really learn to use LumaFusion…there just seemed to be too many barriers. Now, almost 11/2 years later I’m at it again. But this time there’s so much more resource material out there for learning. I’ve been keeping my own notes on Apple Notes…but decided to share them here too. So the way I’m going to add things is in the section immediately below…‘My Notes on Starting Out…’
**Important**
I will always place my most current help tips and links at the beginning of this section…or at the top. These may be redundant of things further down the page…but that’s OK…because these are just notes and end up being exactly what my notes really look like!
My Notes: Starting Out Learning to Use the LumaFusion ios App
I found a whole new set of tutorials from LumaFusion on YouTube.
It should have become obvious by now that LumaFusion has really worked hard to create a complete set of comprehensive learning tutorials. So I’ll stop listing these here now that you can see the structure.
Structure or Hierarchy of Tutorials
LumaFusion staff have their tutorial videos available on YouTube under their channel name…Luma Touch.
The videos are grouped into categories which use a different colored thumbnail image to help keep them separate in user’s minds. So, the example I show above immediately follows after the 5 minute Overview and its all about Projects and Media. I’m calling it the Project/Media Playlist. Although whether not they’ve actually done this on YouTube, I don’t know. I do know that YouTube’s playlists aren’t all that user friendly for channel owners to use effectively!
Under the Project/Media Playlist are Parts 1-5…(which I’ve provided individual links to above.) Each video ranges from 1-4 minutes and on average they are 3 minutes long.
The a new subject begins (in this instance Editing) and the videos flow smoothly and continuously from one to the next. If yours don’t do that, find your YouTube settings and change them to allow that.
Some of My Notes from the Overview Video
*Find the SnapShot Camera in LumaFusion*
The Snapshot camera has moved and it isn’t easy to find. I don’t know all the correct terminology yet, so I made this screenshot of where it’s located now. You get to it by going to the place you’d be at for exporting your final project.
I use an iPhone as my video camera. So here are the standard settings I’m using when I create a project:
iPhone X 30 FPS Aspect ratio is 4:3
By the way, if you’d like to check out my YouTube channel, here’s a link to it. If you’re up on YouTube things at all…you’ll probably surmise that I, like every small channel creator out there, am desperate to have new subscribers to our channels and to improve the overall watch times so that I (we) don’t lose privileges to earn income from all of our hard work.
I’d be honored if you all subscribed. If anyone else needs subscribers too, I’d reciprocate if you left me a comment with your channel link at the bottom of this post …right below my bio…in the comments section. If you don’t know what’s going on over at YouTbe, you could also let me know…because it’s pretty huge news and I’d trying to decide if I should write a post about it, or if everyone in the world is ‘newsed out’ on the topic of YouTube.
Thanks! :-)
•••••••••••••••••••••
My Notes Continued
LumaFusion Includes 5 Clip Editors
* Frame and fit
* Speed
* Audio
* Titles
* Color and effects editor
You can tap on any of my note screenshots below to enlarge them. These 4 again pertain to the Overview Video.
Notes from Part 1 Project/Media Playlist
2 More of My FAVORITE Videos for Learning LumaFusion
I read in a forum that there was a PDF Guide floating around for an earlier app called Pinnacle Studio. I searched high and low but couldn’t find it. Then I accidentally found it the next day. I downloaded the PDF and began reading it…it’s great. But when I decided to add the link to it here, I couldn’t find it again. I searched for a few hours…again…was ready to upload my copy even though that would probably be breaking some publishing copyright laws…and then accidentally found it again! Yay!
Why did I bother writing all that? Because I really think that the LumaFusion developer should make this available
to users. Or, if they feel it’s too out of date, then they should update it and make it available.
This video by Mobile Filmmakers is one of the best I found showing the whole editing process. One thing I was searching for was if you could close the app without saving a project to your camera roll, like you can in iMovie. It doesn’t seem like that’s possilve…but I could be wrong. At around the 17:00 min mark he discusses the different options for saving projects.
Things I Need to Figure Out
Which frame rate and aspect ratio is best for YouTube? Defaults are 30 & 16:9
Aspect Ratios in Published Literature
Pinnacle Studio provided a fixed 16:9 project format. LumaFusion lets you change the aspect ratio of a project at any time, and fits your media to the new aspect. You can select 16:9 (landscape), 9:16 (portrait), 1:1, 4:3, 1.66:1, 17:9, 2.2:1, 2.39:1, 2.59:1 (so LumaFusion could be used to cut a film).
Notes
The first time you use LumaFusion you should set your defaults if you want them to generally be the same most of the time. Tap in the top right picture area and look for a default icon at far right or left bottom section of that screen.
Setting Defaults in the ios app:
How to get to the Default Settings
Definitions: LumaTouch, LumaFX, Luma Clips
LumaTouch is the Company Behind LumaFusion
LumaFX and Luma Clips are additional apps for ios which offer enhanced and standalone editing features.
Other ios Apps by Luma Touch
LumaFX
LumaFx is an additional app that costs $2.99 in the app store currently (July 2017)
LumaClip is a fast, fun, and powerful tool to edit the size, position, rotation, and aspect ratio of your video clips, trim your videos, extract photos and perform forward and reverse speed effects!
Description on their website:
LumaFX is a fun and powerful app for layering customizable video FX and color correction. Add color effects, styles, blurs and distortions in any order to create custom effects. Adjust individual parameters on each effect and color correction.
Luma Clips is a 2nd app that cost $.99 that’s a standalone video clip editor
Description on their website:
LumaClip is a fast, fun, and powerful tool to edit the size, position, rotation, and aspect ratio of your video clips, trim your videos, extract photos and perform forward and reverse speed effects!
The Introduction to Luma Clips video above offers an embed code too which I’m trying here…although my free WordPress plan I don’t think includes video embedding. I was able to accidentally embed some videos above. But because it was accidental I’m not sure of the specifics. Thus, why I’m trying it here. For the earlier ones I just pasted the video link into a blockquote and ‘voila’ the video embedded. But future attempts didn’t yield the same results.
LumaFusion lets you select different layouts for the UI to best suit your needs or for a particular workflow or focus.
Project and Media Organization
LumaFusion provides a wide range of tools to organize your projects and media. The project manager shows filmstrips of each project so you can quickly see the contents of a project, and lets you scrub through the project by running your finger over the filmstrip. You can color-tag and add notes to projects for easier organization, and you can search and sort projects in many different ways.
In the library, LumaFusion gives you tools to organize and manage your media. You can name, color-tag and add notes to any clip (we’ll add searching and sorting options in a future update). We also provide a display of metadata and information about every clip in the source viewer/trimmer.
On the timeline, LumaFusion lets you rename clips, add notes, and color-tag, making it easy to manage work or highlight important clips in the timeline.
What doesn’t LumaFusion do?
Update July 6, 2017 Answer to ‘Green Screen’ inquiry and Update Notes
I received a feedback comment from a reader asking about Luma Fusion’s ability to use ‘green screen’ effects. There are a couple of comments I’d like to add regarding that:
I’m very new to Luma Fusion which is why I created this notes page as I learned. Personally, I’ve never used Green screen effects at all…with any editor. And I’ve not used Luma Fusion much either. From what I can tell however after spending sometime researching it, this doesn’t seem to be a feature offered by Luma Fusion currently.
I added information on Luma FX and Clips. Clips looks to be exactly the kind of app I’ve been thinking of getting. It’s a very small Clips editor…for fixing up Clips before importing them into a larger project. It’s $.99 and I just got it so when I try it out I’ll maybe add more.
If you’d like me to respond to a comment of even have it appear here, you need to use the ‘Comments Section’ I added to appear immediately at the bottom of my post.
There’s another ‘Feedback Comments‘ WordPress includes that’s further down the page that I don’t appear to have much control over. I tried to disable it…but who knows if that worked. For My Comments section I don’t require registering or any personal information…but I also approve comments before they appear here. If none are displayed it’s because I’m messing with the settings trying to get rid of the Feedback version…it’s temporary.
Update June 2017 It looks like voiceover is available now…Yay!
There are a few features that are in Pinnacle Studio that aren’t in the first release of LumaFusion, but all of these are coming in updates in the near future. These include Voiceover, Dual-view precision trimmer, archive and restore of projects with media included, audio-only export, and AudioShare/AudioCopy support.
I believe that Pinnacle Studio was the precursor to LumaFusion. This is a press release for Pinnacle Studio success in the App Store November 2014
Videomaker awards Pinnacle Studio as Best Mobile App for 2014
by cdemiris | Nov 26, 2014 | Press Releases |
Pinnacle Studio was named as the Best Mobile App for 2014 in Videomaker’s Best Products of the Year – 2014 list in the January 2015 issue of Videomaker.
According to the review, “Pinnacle Studio for iPad is a well-equipped editing app for video editors on the go.” Videomaker highlighted Pinnacle Studio’s great content and unparalleled connectivity with the Cloud Connection Pack.
Notes about html things…
…for copying purposes All the videos are appearing as embedded in the blockquote section, which tells me that the URLS pasted into the visual editor causes them to embed…wierd! Versus adding links to text, also in the Visual editor…which just just displays as a hotlink.
The links I applied to text just appear to be hotlinks.
Learning Jumplinks (aka anchor links)
2 Main Parts for My Purposes
The Target or where the link takes you:
The link itself…in my case this will generally be Table of Contents entry’s:
WordPress places comments below their advertising. So if you’d like to leave a comment or read those other’s have left…just scroll down a little ways past any ads and my bio. Thanks for visiting my blog. :-)
Niantics Announced Details of the New Valentine’s Day Bonuses on Wednesday
The Valentines Day event began yesterday as well…
Details of Valentines Day Event
Who: Which Players & Pokémon does this impact the most
Pink Pokémon…you’ll find more pink Pokémon in the wild during the event
All Pokémon will earn double candy during the event for any candy earning activity…including capturing, transferring, hatching and walking with your buddy.
More of the new baby Pink Pokémon including Cleffa, Igglybuff and Smoochum will be hatched from eggs.
All players can take advantage of the increased rewards, but those new to the game will probably receive the most benefits since capture rates will be greater and none of the pink Pokémon are all that rare for those players at advanced levels.
What: What are the Main Benefits of the Valentines Day Event to Players
Earning double candy
Finding more pink Pokémon and hatching more pink babies
Capturing more wild Pokémon via extended duration of Lure Modules (6 hours instead of 1/2 hour)
When: How long does the event last?
It began yesterday Wednesday Feb. 8th at 11:00am PST
It ends at 1100am PST on Wednesday, February 15th
Why: What are the main objectives for the event?
Reward regular game players
Lure inconsistent players back into action
Make it easier to complete Pokedex’es for Pink Pokémon
Strategy Ideas During the Valentine’s Day Event
I’ve may have talked about Pidgey spamming as a strategy in the past, but I’m certain I’ve never really talked about how best to take advantage of that during holiday events. Pidgey spamming is simply transferring large numbers of ‘spamish’ Pokémon back for candy. Most people have built up a huge backlog of Pidgey’s Rattata’s and Spearow’s during the normal course of game play. Saving these transfers for Holiday events like this one can really pay off in candy! Weedle’s and Caterpie’s can also be considered for this strategy.
In addition, there are a few other good strategies that people can use to assure they gain as many benefits as is humanly possible during any given holiday event.
The two main areas where you’ll incur the most positive benefits from these strategies include increasing your overall trainer level and increasing your arsenal of combat ready Pokémon.
So building up your candy reserves vie transfers, especially for hard to find Pokémon, is a must during the event. If you set a Lucky Egg in motion, and then layer up things like lures and incense…you’ll also catch a ton of great Pokémon, and many more rares than normal…which can lead to your evolving the best of those mons too…ultimately enabling you to level up really quickly. The screenshot below shows one suggested strategy by Rankedboost.com. More can be found at their website or via Google.
A recent encounter with Norovirus brought about from dining at a restaurant that doesn’t use table linens was the impetus for writing this post. I’d never heard of Norovirus before! It also turns out that the Norovirus is the main cause of most illnesses with severe gastrointestinal symptoms…who knew? The Center for Diseases and Control has a great video explaining what the Norovirus is. Norovirus is also called ‘the Winter Vomitting Bug.’ I’d never heard that expression either. You can learn more about why it’s called that at the WebMD’s website.
Food Poisoning, Flu & Colds Redefined!
Introduction
My most recent encounter began as many illnesses do with me wondering if I was coming down with something. But my time spent wondering as I lie in bed during the early morning hours didn’t last long…10 minutes later I had my answer…at least to that first question.
More questions immediately followed. I’ve only had a few instances in my life where I was overtaken by a ‘bug’ so virulent that it was unclear to me if it was food poisoning or the flu…today was one of those days. If I’m wasn’t spending time worshipping the porcelain god…I was either sleeping or trying to figure out if I was contagious. Which of course is always the main reason for determining whether or not one has food poisoning or the stomach flu.
My assumption was this: if I had food poisoning I wasn’t contagious…if it was the flu however, I was.
It Turns Out the Answer to that Question Wasn’t A Simple One
Initially I was encouraged to find a website that clearly stated known symptoms of each. I thought that all I had to do was compare symptoms, side-by-side, and then rule out the least likely candidate. I was so convinced I was onto something that I even made the chart below which would better allow me to make that comparison (because the article listed their symptoms in different orders, making a side-by-side comparison difficult.)
My biggest problem using this approach was that there’s a huge amount of overlap in symptoms. My other big problem was that the time of onset for me had been around 12 hours (I thought.) Neither column really supported that answer.
You see, 12 hours prior to my awakening and feeling like I might die, we had enjoyed a nice dinner at a popular local restaurant. The restaurant, which I’m on the fence about naming, is one that we’d never been able to procure a reservation at before. Our food was excellent! The only red flag was that the restaurant appeared to me to be rather lax regarding matters of hygiene. The reason I say this was because I was surprised when the waitress tossed our silverware right onto the table…which is a big ‘no no’ in the restaurant world.
It turns out that there’s a good reason why restaurants use table linens. A reason that goes beyond that of providing atmosphere. That reason is hygiene or sanitation. The best way to prevent patrons from acquiring the germs of past table guests or even food served previously on those tables, is by providing fresh table linens or placemats…or at a minimum by placing silverware unto a fresh napkin. Because I was shocked to learn that restaurant tabletops are second only to menus in the number of germs they harbor. That alarming fact along with several other surprising ones are revealed in this 2014 Huffington Post article.But the statistic that surprised me the most was the finding that 60% of food preparation workers report for work when they are sick! The importance of that finding can’t be overstated for reasons better explained below.
Surprise #1: I learned that there is no such thing as the Stomach Flu! It’s a Myth!
The reason that the Stomach Flu doesn’t really exist is entirely because of semantics. The word ‘Flu’ is really short for influenza. But the only kind of influenza that exists which impacts people is respiratory influenza. There is no such thing as a stomach influenza with the symptoms that we normally attribute to it. When I made this realization I remembered an old adage I used to use to identify a cold from respiratory flu. The way you can tell them apart is the presence of a fever. If fever is present, it’s influenza…if not, it’s a cold.
Now that we understand that there is no such thing as the stomach flu we need to figure out what there really is. What takes the place of what we’ve called Stomach Flu for so many years?
What we’ve come to think of as the Stomach Flu is really a group of similar conditions which fall under a category that the CDC refers to as infections of the digestive system. The CDC has identified 31 known pathogens from food borne sources that comprise this category.
The most frequently occurring pathogen is the Norovirus. In fact, Norovirus is so prevalent that…
The first article I read about Norovirus said that it was this virus which most people erroneously referred to as the stomach flu. Because Norovirus is a virus, that led my conclusion that my symptoms fall under the category of illness…as opposed to Food Poisoning. The reason? After all my research I’m pretty certain that Norovirus was what I have, but further reading only caused me to become more confused!
Factors Leading to Even More Confusion
Although Norovirus is the most prevalent of those 31 foodborne pathogens…it isn’t alone in the symptoms it exhibits. In all, those 31 pathogens fall into 3 main categories: bacteria, parasites and viruses. Below is the CDC’s Chart (called Table 2 in their report) giving more information for all 31 pathogens (here’s a link to the CDC’s chart since my repeated efforts to splice together a readable copy haven’t been successful!)
I intended to more closely examine the symptoms of each…but I never even made it that far. Because as I examined the above chart I noticed that it includes things like Salmonella and E. coli…which fall under the broad category of parasites. It was really at this point that I began getting completely confused! I’ve always believed that Salmonella and E. coli were specific types of food poisoning.
But if food poisoning is a separate malady from viral gastroenteritis (formerly known as the Stomach Flu) why do known food poisoning pathogens appear on this list at all?
It was thisMedical News Today article in which I first learned about the Norovirus. In talking about viral gastroenteritis the article states that:
Most cases of gastroenteritis are caused by infection with bacteria, viruses, or parasites
Diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain are typical symptoms of gastroenteritis
Gastroenteritis is usually self-limiting, and tests are not usually necessary for a diagnosis
The most serious complication of food poisoning and gastroenteritis is dehydration, especially for vulnerable people such as the very young and very old
It’s beginning to sound to me like barring a stool sample test, there is no good way to differentiate between food poisoning and a virus based illness. Yet, contagiousness is still the most worrisome factor for me!
This same article also states that:
The viruses that are most commonly implicated in gastroenteritis are:
Rotavirus – more common in children and the most common cause of viral gastroenteritis in children
Norovirus – more common in adults
The bacteria that are most commonly implicated in gastroenteritis are:
Salmonella
Campylobacter
Shigella
Escherichia coli (especially serotype O157:H7)
Clostridium difficile
After a lot more reading I finally began to realize that my main premise…that Food Poisoning isn’t contagious was actually completely wrong!
What Factors Really Determine Whether or Not Food Poisoning or Gastroenteritis is Contagious
Contagiousness it appears, is determined purely by the pathogen type. Viral pathogens lead to contagious illnesses. Bacterial pathogens do not.So if you refer back to the CDC’s large table 2 (shownand linked to) above…those pathogens in the top category are bacterial…therefore they won’t lead to contagious illnesses. Those in the 2nd main category, parasites, also will lead to noncontagious illnesses. It’s only the 3rd category…the viral pathogens, which will lead to contagious illnesses. The main pathogen here is of course the Norovirus…which is what, after all my reading I concluded was responsible for my symptoms.
A Little More About the Norovirus
In addition to that large study the CDC conducted in 2011, they also publish a lot of great information for the general public. This linkis to their main website for the general public describing what the Norovirus is and what you need to know about it. There’s also a helpful video explaining the Norovirus. A few important things everyone should know about the Norovirus include:
Humans are the only host of norovirus, and norovirus has several mechanisms that allow it to spread quickly and easily.
Norovirus was originally called: Norwalk-like virus or simply NLV
Norovirus is Food Poisoning…here are a few good reasons to avoid it!
It might not be obvious if you’ve managed to read this far that Norovirus is indeed Food Poisoning! It wasn’t all that clear to me either…which is exactly the reason that I’m writing this post! But there’s more to the story. I for one want to know how long I can expect to be sick and more importantly how long I have to keep disinfecting everything I touch so my husband doesn’t get this too.
In a nutshell Norovirus usually lasts 2-3 days…which makes sense because I’m almost at the end of day 3 and although I’ve been feeling better I still haven’t been able to eat anything. Tonight I ate some toast (that my husband made for me so I wouldn’t germ up the kitchen) which after 15 minutes of discomfort seems to have agreed with me…yay! That alone should go a long way towards making me better…at least with the dizziness right?
I’ve read on multiple sites that I’ll continue to be contagious for 3 days after I’m feeling better…which means since it’s Tuesday night now I should be noncontagious by Friday night…geez! That alone is a really good reason to not want food poisoning! One blogger who writes for the New York Times wrote a compelling post about the contagious aspects of the virus too…probably when she was too sick to do anything else either!
Perhaps a few more questions will be answered by this table created by Canada’s version of the FDA:
Norovirus Diagnosis
Now that I’ve successfully diagnosed my illness as Norovirus the only thing left for me to do is to reexamine how I might have contracted it and hopefully determine once and for all how contagious I might be.
What Is the Stomach Flu?
I’m adding this section about 6 months later because many family members came down with the flu that the 2016-2017 flu shot was targeting. How do I know for sure? Because my Dad’s doctor used a test kit to determine if he had it and if it was Type A which apparently the more severe form, or Type B. Although she did tell him that the test was only 40% effective in differentiating between the two. But knowing that he had it at all was important in order for her to prescribe antibiotics and an anti-viral medication…which worked because he got better much faster than other family members. But conversations during everyone’s illnesses made me realize many family members till don’t recognize that:
Flu…or influenza is really upper respiratory…and not gastrointestinal at all!
So, what we’ve always called a cold may really be the flu. One easy way to differentiate I’ve always used is this. If a fever accompanies a cold…then it’s not a cold, it’s the flu.
Most of this post has talked about Norovirus but it bears repeating in this section that what we’ve always believed to be the flu is probably really Norovirus or Rotavirus.
A Great Website: stopthestomachflu.com
I ran across a great website while getting ready for a recent trip and looking for disinfecting wipes that would kill Norovirus…because it turns out, that regular ones don’t! The website, created by a stay at home young Mom who’s a microbiologist is called stopthestomachflu.com. Her website is awesome because she conducts all sorts of experiments and tests to determine the effective of various products in removing germs. Below is a great guide from her site.
Investigating the Circumstances Leading to My Food Poisoning
As previously mentioned, the restaurant we dined at doesn’t use table coverings of any kind. Placemats I now know are intended primarily to protect patrons from foodborn pathogens. While this isn’t entirely unheard of given the new ‘farm to table‘ trend, there is one practice that can go a long way towards mitigating a lot of problems. Wait staff can be instructed to place patrons silverware onto something else. Think of that ‘something’ as a protective barrier between the utensils which come in contact with you and the seemingly hazardous tabletop environment! Something like a napkin or bread and butter plate.
Another practice which would help a lot is to use a bleach based compound when cleaning table surfaces in preparation for their next customers. Since the Norovirus is resistant to many disinfectants, adding bleach to the mix ensures that it’s germs are addressed. Although I suspect that the odor that bleach dispels might not be all that conducive to a fine dining atmosphere…which leads me to suggest to the restaurant in question this idea. That they use a multi-pronged approach. First provide a second napkin solely for the purpose of laying silverware upon, and second consider using placements.
Granted placemats don’t emanate that farm table vibe but there’s a fine line between maintaining a unique atmosphere for your customers and harming them!
To help you with that endeavor I was able to find some cute paper placemats which might work.
The placemats above are from a website called Hester and Cook. Each set is really a tablet of tear-off placemats that run from $.66 to $1 each.
Etsy has a lot of great options. One is a shop called Harper and Daisy that will custom make placemats from kraft paper like those below. Most are $36 for 50.
But was the lack of a protective table covering the only factor that led to my becoming profoundly ill?
I suppose it’s possible given my new realization that tabletop surfaces are 2nd only to menus in terms of the high number of germs they harbor. That possibility is even more likely since many of the ingredients of this restaurant’s most popular dishes are known sources of foodborne pathogens. Ingredients like duck liver, wild mushrooms, soft cheeses, lettuce, oysters and even butter immediately come to mind!
One likely scenario would be that a duck liver dish (for example) was served earlier in the evening or even in the days preceding our visit, and some remnants of it remained on the tabletop surface, which, while not visible to the human eye, contained enough germs (remember only 100 particles is necessary) to infect, my silverware.
Yet, for some inexplicable reason I feel that there’s more to this story. So let’s examine in detail what we each ordered:
In an unusual turn of events Bill and I each ordered the exact same dishes. We both ordered 2 starters (because we were attending a play at the Rep…The Foreigner…afterwards and didn’t want to be late.) For those of you who’ve never heard of this great comedy written by Milwaukee’s own Larry Shue, it’s one of my all time favorites! This was to be our third time experiencing what’s come to be known as one of the 2 greatest plays ever written by Shue…the other The Nerd is also a fabulous comedy!
The starters we ordered were:
Grilled Herb Flat Bread, Burrata, Cranberry Agrodolce, Lettuce, Smoked Almond
Pumpkin Soup, Oyster Mushroom, Creme Fraiche, Black Trumpet Mushroom, Chive
Many of the ingredients in both dishes could have been culprits! In addition, we also shared a bread basket and a dinner salad… the salad included these ingredients…Mixed Greens, Finocchiona, Greenfields Cheese, Apple, Almond, Pickled Pepper
Bill had a beer: New Glarus Moon Man, Pale Ale, New Glarus WI
I had a glass of wine: Pinot Noir, Bishops Peak 2014, San Luis Obispo Country, California
Since we ordered the exact same dishes it’s hard to imagine that one of those would have been responsible for my condition. But after I became very ill I discovered that Bill had never touched the salad that we’d intended upon sharing! So the salad is where I’ll focus my examination.
The mixed greens appear to be a likely culprit. I learned that lettuce is a common carrier of food pathogens. The only way to insure that lettuce doesn’t transmit infectious germs is by proper washing. This requires only water, but washing each lettuce leaf is important. Lettuce greens can become contaminated with E. Coli, Listeria and Salmonella. Surprisingly even a Staph infection may be present if the greens are prepared by someone who’s sick (remember earlier when I discovered that 60% of food workers still go to work even if they’re sick!) Staph infection can also be transmitted by someone preparing food with an open wound on their hands or even if they have a nose or eye infection.
Here’s helpful 3 minute video created by the FDA which shows you everything you need to know about the safe handling of fresh fruits and vegetables…and even what not to buy!
At this point I’m really quite exhausted thinking about all the possibilities…and I’m kind of amazed that I’ve managed to dodge such harrowing consequences for so long…because we like to eat out a lot!
The fact that I’m still feeling the effects of whatever infected me 2 1/2 days later points even more adamantly to Norovirus. I’ve eaten nothing for 21/2 days, have no energy and get dizzy every time I stand up (although I’m clearheaded enough to realize this may be in large part because I’ve eaten nothing in days!) The dizziness could be due to dehydration but my husband made sure I didn’t become dehydrated by getting me Pedialyte.
Right now I really think this thing just needs to run its course. But I really hope that the next time I’m at a restaurant if I happen to clean off my hands using antibacterial wipes after handling the menu, or if I wipe off the salt and pepper shakers or some other frequently handled utensil that others don’t judge me too harshly. Because I wouldn’t wish this upon anyone else and if something as simple as using those would prevent how I’m feeling right now…well…would you really chose to judge me?
Last night I ran across a news article about Melania Trump. It was in The NY Times and talked about how she’s speaking out on behalf of her husband to say that the women who’ve claimed that Trump has made advances towards them or groped them are lying. That’s not the man she knows and she doesn’t believe those claims. She said he was the victim of a broad conspiracy. I could only wonder how dense she must be or how desperate Trump must be feeling to resort to using such a pathetic tactic. Within that article was a link to the Access Hollywood video that started the fervor. I’d not seen it before so I watched both that and the rather lame apology video Trump made a few days later to the American public.
As sad as the state of our country’s politics are, they pale in comparison to events occurring in other areas of the world. Places like Swat, a beautiful village in Pakistan which the Taliban have invaded and taken over. Their members continue to reek havoc with the lives of residents living in this beautiful and quaint part of Pakistan. I watched a moving 1/2 hour documentary entitled Class Dismissed: Malala’s Story about a young Pakistanian girl who desperately wants to return to school and her father who runs a local school. The father daughter team are almost single-handedly fighting a courageous fight against the Taliban to allow females to receive education.
Malala herself is desperate to continue with her education, recently changing her long term career goals from physician to politician. It’s a huge shift, but she recognizes that she can have a more beneficial impact in the later profession by aiding her country in joining the 20th century.
The NY Time’s Videos Include Many Short Video Clips as Well as a Lot of Longer Documentaries Too
The documentaries I watched were amazing! Each story is beautifully produced, insightful and eye opening in some sense. They provides much needed windows into the lives beyond our borders which oftentimes depict struggles much more trying than those of our own current political crisis. Above is a link to the longer documentaries. These vary in length a lot and are they are always preceded by the same increasingly annoying (due to the repetitious nature) AT&T commercial. I only figured out after about the 6th video that you can actually tap to skip the repetitious ad after a predetermined amount of time!
The videos themselves often offer truly fascinating glimpses into lives far beyond our borders and show some of the struggles faced by average people just like you and me. It’s well worth your time to take a look at some of these if you have a few minutes to spare.
Not All the Documentaries Take Place on Foreign Soil
Below: Kim Souzzis’s Reddit Campaign to raise funds for her own brain’s cryopreservation
One documentary I really loved viewing tonight and which moved me beyond belief was the story of Kim Suozzis. She was a young college student who in 2012 discovered that she had a rare form of brain cancer. Her unique story began during her last year of college. Because she was studying to become a scientist in neurolinguistics and psychology, after she received her diagnosis, she engaged in a compelling journey to look for less obvious solutions which would help her in coming to terms with her undeniable future.
With the end of her life rapidly approaching, she discovered cryogenics. Her creative solution employed a spectacularly successful Reddit campaign in which she raised a large portion of the money she needed to preserve her brain cryogenically. This story follows the last 6 months of her life. We watch her peaceful death with her boyfriend at her side as well as the post death process of her brain’s cryopreservation. The process was lovingly overseen by her incredibly supportive boyfriend, who never ventured far from her side throughout her short, dramatic ordeal.
Since cryogenics was a topic my family had also recently engaged in lengthly discussions about, watching this young woman’s bravery and seeing how the process unfolded was simultaneously fascinating and heart breaking.
Without doubt I’m sure there are other equally ‘edutaining’ examples of video collections produced by likeminded news sources. As I encounter those I’ll try to remember to add links to them here. Prior to my stumbling upon this New York Times collection I was oblivious to the existence of this content rich genre. My serendipitous enlightenment perfectly captures the essence of why I began my vsatrends website.
September 17-18 Marks Milwaukee, WI’s 6th Annual Doors Open Event
Part I In a Series of 3 Posts About Doors Open & Open House
Milwaukee’s Annual Doors Open is One Unique & Distinguishing Event That Sets Our City Apart from All Others
So, What Exactly is Doors Open?
Doors Open is a city-wide event that’s held in just a few select cities in our United States as of 2016. It’s a celebration of sorts…celebrating our city’s architecture and art, but also our history and heritage, as well as all the things in our built environment that we’ve come either to take for granted or ignore…ignore, because we can’t easily find out anything more.
Built environment is a sort of trendy term we use because we can…after all, there are relatively few cities in the entire United States that have been able to pull off hosting a Doors Open event annually (there are only 7 cities as of 2016.) There are however, many more globally. Canada is the one country that has added more new cities to the Doors Open ranks than any other. In fact, there are more Doors Open events in Canada than there are in the rest of the world’s countries combined! Even Detroit, is literally a couple of minute’s drive away from Canada has yet to garner the resources to pull this off…although maybe they haven’t tried that hard because Windsor, which right across the border does hold their own Doors Open festival every year.
How Canada happened to become the one and only country hosting more DO events than the rest of the world combined is anyone’s guess. I suspect it had something to do with the fact that Toronto hosted the first Canadian event ever…in fact the first North American event too, wayback in the year 2000! Torontodid this in part because Ontario, which is the province that Toronto belongs to, was influenced in a big way by London’s earlier success in hosting a very similar kind of program…called Open House.
Actually, London’s event was really called Open London. Open London and Open House were both born from the inspiration of Victoria Thorton, an aficionado of architecture living in London. It was this 1st event that was instrumental in spreading excitement and enthusiasm around the world for an innovative concept which closed the gap between ‘common man’s’ understanding of the mysterious world of architecture.
OK…So Milwaukee’s Special…But What Exactly IsDoors Open Milwaukee…aka DOMKE?
In a nutshell…Milwaukee’s Doors Open Event provides unique opportunities for people to visit buildings that are never usually open to the public. And it’s free! It’s one of the most fascinating, city-wide celebrations I’ve ever encountered. Well, me and 25,000 other people that is. For 2 days over a weekend in September each year, roughly 160 unique buildings, business’s and governmental departments open their doors to welcome anyone who’s interested in seeing how they operate and what their space looks like. Some of the sites tend to change each year, but some overlap multiple years, which is OK, because 2 days just isn’t long enough to visit 165 sites. In fact, you should spend a little time beforehand perusing your options so that you can make a beeline for those which appear to be most interesting to you each year. In addition to the link above, here’s another one which is a PDF of all Milwaukee’s sites this year.
A Little History About Doors Open
There are only 9 American cities that consistently host this type of event annually, however that list of cities is continuing to grow despite the monumental effort required to make it happen. You’re probably thinking “wait a minute…you said only 7 cities just a few paragraphs up!” And you’d be right…I did. But that’s because there’s another, very similar event called Open House which also is represented in the U.S. The 2 cities which hold Open House events are New York and Chicago. And they’re events are even larger than Milwaukees! But part of that larger size is explained by the fact that Open House events also include private homes, whereas Doors Open events do not. Incidentally, you might be interested to know that both Chicago and New York’s events will be help on the same weekend this year…October 15-16th.
It wasn’t until 2011 that Milwaukee, WI came on board with what perhaps has grown into one of the most successful venues for ‘Doors Open’ in the United States. Milwaukee’s idea was originally spark plugged by a retired public librarian, George Wagner after he visited similar events in Toronto and Denver. That first event was widely successful and included 100 buildings. You can read a great indepth article about the inaugural 2011 event from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal’s archives. In 2016 that number has risen to 165 and over 25,000 people (this was last years attendance record) are expected to attend.
The tour we had about how the city’s drawbridges work was
probably one of my favorite experiences.
Details On This Year’s Event in Milwaukee
This year Doors Open Milwaukee 2016 will be opening their doors to 165 local businesses and buildings. Some of the side events Milwaukee hosts include Doors Open Story Slam a food and entertainment extravaganza with locale story telling and food trucks, Murals in Clark Square which focuses on one unusual neighborhood with a lot of unique locale artisans’ public art on display and Open Archives, a program that allows visitors to examine documents, photographs, rare books and art work in the archive libraries of 7 large public museums.
Advice for Families & Kids
My kid’s are all grown so I’m relying on other people’s advice here. Historical Milwaukee has a program just for kids they call Family Passport. You can download the passport here and kid’s goal is to see as many sites on it as possible. There’s actually another passport they call the Water Passport, it’s a special guide to all of the water focused sites. In 2015 metroparent Milwaukee wrote a family and kid’s guide to DOMKE too. More recently the Journal Sentinel wrote a news article on September 9th about sites where you can great rare views of the city featuring a beautiful rooftop pool. What kid doesn’t love a rooftop pool? My last suggestion is to more seriously consider the free tour bus mentioned before, because at their blog they have some great information about where your kids can catch Pokemon during the event. It sounds like they may be tailoring the route to maximize catching wild Pokemon too!
Tips & Tricks
First off it’s good to map out where you want to go and get a brief notion of where and when each site you’re interested in is open. Most sites are open for the full duration of the events but a select few aren’t. They may only be open one of the days, or for shorter hours on both days…its up to the site’s owner. But it’s best to check these details early in the process. For example, there’s one site my husband and I are really interested in seeing this year called Above View. We understand that they make and will demonstrate aspects of their production process for their exquisite collection of artisan quality ornamental plaster ceiling tiles. That’s a mouthful but we’re super excited to see this place because unique ceilings have always been a ‘thing’ for us! By visiting Above View’s Building Page at DO Milwaukee we found out a lot more about them…when we should go (Saturday) and what to expect (no photography.)
You’ll want to check out parking information here.So, really, do this OK? Because it turns out that Brigg’s & Al’s Run will be going on too…and you’ll want to know which streets are closed off for that. You might even want to consider using Milwaukee Food & City Tours Hop On & Hop Off Sightseeing Bus. This bus is also free and operates both days beginning at 1:00, 2:00 and 3:00…no tickets are needed. But you might not have run across it at the main event sight. That’s because information is found for this under the ‘Tours‘ submenu. There’s a lot more information on Milwaukee’s DOMKE site than there appears to be…so if this is your first time going…its a good idea to peruse the site for a little while.
You can get a lot of this same information and bring it with you in digital form (for possible offline viewing) from their PDF brochure and Guide. The guide is 31 pages long so it’s a great resource! There was also a free pullout section in last Sunday’s Milwauke Journal Sentinel newspaper. You can also visit Historic Milwaukee’s Facebook page for really up-to-date news and some cool extras…like a special SnapChat filter! When I just did that now to grab this link I found that I’d just missed my chance to pickup 2 tickets to a paid tour by a local celebrity…that special tour has been sold out for months but apparently someone had to cancel! Oh, I think I forgot to mention that there are also some additional events hosted by Historic Milwaukee that aren’t necessarily free…but that may be free to their members or to volunteers, or are just simply too priceless to be completely free.
Extras
If you’d like to learn more about these 2 worldwide programs you can do so using this link to Part II of this series. If you’d just like more resource information or links you can find those at Part III here. If you like to see some pretty awful videos that I made the first year I attended Doors Open Milwaukee…here are 2 of them…but they really are terrible so I wouldn’t bother!
Pōt·pöur·rï´- a confused collection; a miscellaneous mixture; a medley; a hotchpotch (Webster’s Unabridged)
Updated: August 27, 2018
When one of our daughters was seven years old she suddenly developed a problem with her kidneys that had us become very concerned. Our family physician, and other doctors at our local hospital, began treating her for acute glomerulonephritis but, as things did not improve and we asked our doctor what the prognosis was, we were told that the worst that could happen is that her kidneys could shut down. But, he didn’t think things would get that bad. When I asked him if that were to happen, did we have the know-how and equipment locally to respond adequately and he said “No” and suggested that, if we were uncomfortable with this, we should try to have her admitted to the Mayo clinic in Rochester, MN. I called the clinic and was advised that I could bring Vicki to them the next day which is what we did after a four and one-half hour drive over to them. A day or two later, her kidneys did shut down and the clinic sprang into action. At one time I counted seventeen various types of doctors that had been involved with her treatment. Her primary doctor was the head of the pediatric unit, Dr. Finkelstein, but the doctor determining her treatment, we were told, was, at that time the leading pediatric surgeon from Austria who specialized in the problem Vicki had.
Instead of using kidney dialysis they decided to use a new procedure, peritoneal dialysis. Although she was in very serious condition the procedure worked and, after a couple of weeks of treatment, she was totally cured. Throughout this ordeal Jane and I were continually impressed with the attention and treatment given us by the clinic personnel and, it was at this time we made the decision that, if any member of our family ever again suffered a life threatening medical problem, we would take them nowhere else but to Mayo.
Now, a few things to understand about the Mayo Clinic.
The clinic was established in Rochester, MN by two doctors, the Mayo brothers, and their father, and grew to be one of the best clinics in the U.S. As a patient there you may find yourself in close contact with former presidents, the richest people in the world, chief executives of major corporations and also with farmers from Iowa and truck drivers from Wisconsin. Whichever of these you may belong to, as a patient you will be treated the same. By all their employees, from doctors who head up departments to the lowest ranking staff members, you are respected, listened to and treated in a manner that leaves you feeling you are probably the most important person they have met that day.
I don’t know if it is a historical fact but I understand when the Mayo brothers got started and their new clinic was becoming important to, at that time, the small city of Rochester. They called a town meeting and informed all attendees that henceforth all patients at the clinic were to be treated with care and special attention and, to this day, that seems to be the way the residents of Rochester treat their visitors. During the course of the many years my wife and I have visited the clinic we have experienced the following:
The cost of temporary living near the clinic is very reasonable. Expensive housing and eating can be found if you are so inclined but more than adequate low priced facilities are available and moderately priced food services predominate.
You may be rubbing elbows with important and wealthy people; and celebrities, One day Jane and I were having lunch at an adjacent restaurant and sitting at a table next to us was former president George W. Bush and one of his sons. Sitting next to them were four secret service guys and a fifth was standing at the restaurant’s entrance. Another time two floors of the hotel we were in was occupied by a Saudi Arabian sheik accompanied by his three wives and a bunch of children plus a large staff all of whom traveled to and fro in seven stretch limousines, We were in the hotel’s jewelry store when the three wives dressed all in black entered accompanied by a couple of guards and an American woman. They meandered through the store for a while and after leaving I asked the manager what they were doing. “Oh, they were shopping.” She said. “All they would do is point at something they wanted and the American woman, who is from our State Department, would make a note of the items and then arrange for them to be paid for by their husband.”
On the other hand, there were many times I would be sitting in the clinic’s huge cafeteria and be joined by a farmer from Idaho or a mill worker from Michigan.
The Clinic itself is composed of a number of large buildings and a hospital all of which are connected. A system of tunnels is available connecting them underground so you don’t have to go outside in winter. Also accessible by the tunnels are some hotels and motels. In the tunnels are numerous shops and eating places. There are also some enclosed overhead bridges that connect a number of the buildings and a small mall.
Wherever you go in the clinic you will see volunteers stationed ready to help you find your way around. The hallways are lined with a large collection of valuable art by world known artists. One of my favorites is a statue of a man created by Rodin. It stands in a side corridor and, I’ve been told, it is the only one of Rodin’s sculptures that is displayed totally unprotected, not behind glass or out of reach of the spectator, and that the doctors Mayo wanted it that way so that people could run their hands over it. When you have free time you can join tours of the buildings and docents will identify the art works.
The main clinic building has an immense entry hall in which stands a single grand piano. At various times throughout the day local people will sit at it and play, sometimes joined by singers.
But the biggest impression is the way patients are treated. A good example was my first experience. In 2003 a local ENT doctor who I had gone to in order to have my hearing checked noticed I had some swollen glands in my neck. This led to a series of tests and examinations by my doctor and others including biopsies with no definite diagnosis being obtained. My patience was finally lost when one more biopsy was scheduled but postponed for a week because the pathologist wanted to be present for the biopsy but was going on vacation for a week first.
Later that day I called Mayo’s and asked if I could have an appointment without a reference. A lady told me that could be done but I might have to wait a day or two for an opening to see the proper specialist. But then she asked me why I was calling and, after explaining my experience to date, she told me to wait a minute and returned with the question, “Can you be here tomorrow at 2:00 P.M.?” “Absolutely,” was my answer.
The next day Jane and I drove to Rochester through beautiful country scenery. My 2 o’clock started with a short visit with Dr. Cynthia X. Ma, an absolutely delightful young Chinese lady who was in the Fellowship program at the clinic. She set me up with a number of tests including a full body CAT scan. At 5:00 we were back in the hotel for a very pleasant and low priced dinner. My morning appointment with the same Dr. Ma was at 8:00. Jane and I sat in her office and she had me sit next to her at the computer monitor while she gave me a tour through my entire body in great detail and revealed the results of all the tests. She had identified my problem as being Chronic Lymphocytic Lymphoma, (in later years it was changed to Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia), an incurable form of cancer.
She could see that both Jane and I were shocked and quickly informed us that I was not in any immediate danger and, although not curable, they had a number of ways it could be treated. She then said she would have her “Boss” talk to us and left to return with Dr. Thomas Witzig who seated himself next to me and, at some length, began to describe to me the course that the rest of my life would take. With a pad of blank paper in his hand he said, “Most other people’s lives will take this course.” Then he drew a straight diagonal line dropping from left to right. “Yours will take a different course,” he continued and drew a line from left to right that descended in a series of steps. “Your life will also descend over time in a steeper path but, we will then bring it back when it’s time to do so.” Needless to say, Jane and I were both much relieved and that is exactly what happened. It wasn’t until later that I learned Dr. Witzig was the head of the Hematology Dept. and one of the most noted specialists in that field in the country
Over the years of my visits to the clinic I was shuffled through a number of doctors in the hematology department as its membership changed. All were great, but the one that made the most impression on me was the last one before we retired permanently to Florida and that was Deborah Bowen, C-FNP, Nurse Practioner. One couldn’t help but feel during a visit with her that her time and attention were totally focused on and available to you.
When my cancer had proceeded too far, a course of chemo treatment would bring me back to almost normal which has continued for the past 13 years until the chemo treatments were replaced with a “miracle” drug, Imbruvica.
In all my visits to the clinic I have never had a bad experience. I also discovered over time that, although one would expect the opposite, their charges are less than almost all other medical providers I’ve used around the country. At one time, when part of my chemo treatment was given by the Moffet Cancer center in Tampa, I found their charges were almost double those of Mayo’s. Once they have diagnosed your problem and established a program of treatment they are also amenable and helpful in transferring that course to a site that is more convenient to you.
Another example of Mayo’s superior service was when Jane also had numerous tests performed without local doctors being able to identify her problem. In accordance with our family pact to run to the clinic under such circumstances we did so and, in a couple of days they had diagnosed her as having Charcot Marie Tooth disease, a rather rare neurologic disorder.
Over the years I have experienced many of the services of many medical facilities. Some give excellent service. One of these is the Florida Cancer Specialists here in Bradenton, Florida. However, as far as I’m concerned, there is no one better than the Mayo Clinic.
Additional Resources
If you’d like to read more about my Dad, his website, and how that came about, you might enjoy the story I wrote about him last year called “I Love My Dad’s Website | He’s Written a Legacy for Family & Friends.” That story was my most popular post of all time, gaining more readers in it’s first day than most of my posts had (at that point) in 6 month’s time!
I wrote this post for a friend who needed help diagnosing a very complex situation. I tried to get her to schedule an appointment at Mayo Clinic in Rochester to get the answers her life depended upon. I failed. As of December 2016, she’s no longer with us.
Mayo Clinic has a ‘mystique factor,’ at least in the Midwest, that may intrigue but also intimidate patients. This can have a detrimental impact on individuals who’ve perhaps known someone who faced a life threatening situation and benefitted greatly by visiting Mayo’s. I think my friend didn’t believe her health concerns were important enough, or dangerous enough to be considered life threatening.
But that wasn’t the correct ‘rule of thumb’ to use. Her situation was complex and confusing. Her specialists were disconnected from each other which contributed even more to the confusing complexities of her case.
I believe that the correct rule of thumb to use when making the decision to visit Mayo’s should have more to do with if your current care is having a positive impact on your outcome. If it isn’t, then examining why that’s true is important. If, in answering the ‘Why?’ question, you determine that communication across specialties is an important aspect that isn’t being met, then irregardless of any ‘life threatening” nature your condition may pose, seeking out answers from an institution that’s undoubtedly recognized as the ‘top tier’ or the ‘gold standard’ of medical treatment should be strongly considered. That’s been my own personal experience and my husband’s too.
If you or a loved one are facing a similar situation then I hope this information will help to aid you in making better decisions, and give you the proper tools to allow you to successfully plan a visit to Mayo’s in Rochester. If you have more questions after reading, please contact me using the Comments section at the end of this very long article.
An Overview for First Time Patients Considering a Visit to Mayo Clinic
Introduction
Mayo Clinic of Rochester Minnesota is a world-renowned medical center in the heart of Midwestern United States. The clinic, begun in 1903 attracts patients from all corners of the world. Many of the wealthiest and most important world figures visit the small town of Rochester Minnesota for their medical care.
Yet there’s a bit of a perplexing phenomenon surrounding Mayo’s in Rochester. In Spite of, or maybe because of, the fact that Mayo’s is recognized as a world-class facility that offers a standard of care second to none in the world, Mayo’s seems to be perceived by many as inaccessible, or as vaguely elitist by regular people.
These are people who are obviously familiar with the institution, yet who’ve never given serious consideration to actually seeking treatment there for either themselves or someone they’re close to. The irony is that many of the people I’m referring to live within a 300 hundred mile radius of Rochester (it’s only about a 4 hour car ride away.) Even more ironic is the fact that there are so many people who live less than 85 miles away in neighboring Minneapolis, which is Rochester’s closest large metropolitan neighbor, who never have considered visiting Mayo’s!
The Kind Of Patients Mayo’s Attracts
Royalty, Presidents, Celebrities, Sports Legends and Regular ‘Joes’ too
It is truly ironic to me that ‘Regular Joes’ with close access tend to not avail themselves of the world-class resources that are right in front of them while others from much farther away do! Sheiks, Princes and Presidents from countries like Saudi Arabia and even the United States don’t bat an eye before hopping on a plane when some new symptoms crop up that bother or worry them. Oftentimes they’ll bring along entire entourages too. In the Sheik’s or Prince’s cases that entourage might include their entire family, close friends and staff!
It may sound to you like I’m exaggerating, but I assure you that I’m not in the least! My parents saw George Bush Sr. along with his Secret Service entourage on more than one occasion. One time Mom even had a nice chat with President Bushes Secret Service detail in the restaurant that they were all dining at (this was maybe 15 years ago.) The SS team was seated close to Mom and Dad’s table.
I myself ended up being the only non-Saudi tenant on my floor of the Marriott (including the floors above and below me too) when I went for a physical in 2013. I’d scheduled a physical because the department that I really needed to get into wasn’t going to be available for a long time (this is one of my tricks for getting in under tricky circumstances that I cover in more detail further down.) I ended up staying longer than the 2 days of my initial reservation.
The Saudi Prince had scheduled his appointment more recently than mine. He asked for several floors and was given the three floors sandwiching the concierge level…which was my floor…with the exception of my room. Worth noting too is I discovered this serendipitously while grabbing some snacks from the great concierge lounge* one night…no one from the Marriott staff ever approached me or requested that I change rooms.
*In case I forget to mention this little detail in the ‘Where To Stay’ section, although the Marriott Hotel that’s directly connected to the Mayo Clinic Subway has higher priced room rates than the other ‘directly connected’ option…the Kahler Grand Hotel, by staying on the concierge level I was able to forgo the cost of meals.
At the time I was there complete meals were provided in the lounge daily along with a great spread for cocktail hour. Except on the weekends. There were a few meals provided then, but much less than what’s offered during the week. This for me, was a significant savings in both time and money. An added benefit is that the concierge lounge is also a great place to meet others who’ve also made the trek to Mayo’s. Talking to other patients and family members has probably been my best source for useful information that’s not otherwise readily available.
Mayo’s in the ’60s
A Little More About Me
Some may be wondering who I am and what my qualifications are for purposes of discussing this topic. While I was only tangentially connected to the medical profession many years ago when I worked as a Coopers & Lybrand consultant for the administrative side of very large outpatient medical practices, it’s my experience on the other side of the equation that has given me the necessary credentials to write this post. In that role I’m just a typical Midwesterner who became gravely ill as a child. Contrary to what my generally wise and widely loved doctor advised, my parents decided to transfer me from our local hospital to one in Rochester Minnesota. They brought me to St. Mary’sHospital which is one of the 2 main hospitals in Rochester that’s primarily affiliated with Mayo’s. By affiliated I mean they are now all under the same corporate umbrella. Also, in 2014 St. Mary’s was renamed the Mayo Clinic Hospital.
I’ve heard more than my share of stories that are very similar to my own…leading me to wonder why my doctor hesitated to refer me at the time…which, for the sake of thoroughness was 1964. For a multitude of reasons, many, many local doctors are hesitant to refer their patients to Mayo’s.
I’m not entirely sure why that is. I really don’t think, in this day and age, that those doctors fear losing their patients to Mayo’s…because that’s simply not how Mayo’s operates. The many years of my own personal experience as well as the experiences of many close family members who’ve sought out Mayo’s expertise all point to the same conclusion. The conclusion is that Mayo’s prefers to be used as a resource to aid in patient’s overall success…never to assume the full care of those patients. They prefer to be doing the things that they do best. Oftentimes this means helping to figure out very complex diagnoses. Once they’ve accomplished their goal they immediately send those patients back home again armed with lots of information for their own local doctors to use to treat or heal them successfully. They also can provide additional resources if called upon or if the circumstances warrant it, in an expedient manner, because the groundwork has been laid to make this possible.
In My Case I Wouldn’t Be Alive Today if My Parent’s Hadn’t Acted Against My Doctors Advice By Taking Me to Mayo’s
A few days ago I asked my Mom & Dad (who incidentally are now 88 & 92 years old…and yet another tribute to Mayo Clinic,) to relate my story to me once more just to make absolutely certain that I portrayed everything correctly. The information in the box inset below was the result.
Additional Resources
Shortly after completing this guide I learned that my Dad had also begun writing a story about Mayo Clinic for his own website a long time ago, but that he’d never finished it. After reading my guide I convinced him that he should finish his…so he did! That’s why I’m adding this link to his own story. Although he recounts many of these same events, his rendition is much different from mine. There is a fair amount of redundancy…but I think that his version may have much wider appeal than my ownfor a couple of reasons.The first isbecause he’s clearly a better writer than I am. The second is because his views are written from an entirely different perspective…that of a parent facing their young child’s life threatening health crisis.
Shortly after Dad published this I tried to share it on Facebook for a friend and Facebook wouldn’t allow me to. They said that my Dad’s website might pose a threat! I wrote them and told them I was intimately familiar with my (then 90 year old) Dad’s site and there was nothing even remotely threatening about it. Naturally a good 8 months or so passed before I received a stock email reply from Facebook telling me there was nothing they could do to reverse the ‘dangerous’ reputation that their automatic filters were responsible for. In the meantime, knowing I’d probably never get any response, much less a favorable one, I republished Dad’s post here on vsatrends so that I could share it with friends and family when situations dictated. So here’s a link to my republished version of my Dad’s post The Wonderful Mayo Clinic.
Overview of My Childhood Health Crisis
Very briefly this is what happened. At the young age of 7 years I suddenly became extremely ill. A day or two after being admitted to our local hospital the primary cause of my illness was determined to be that my kidneys were shutting down. Mom and Dad asked a lot of questions of our local hospital staff and doctors. One significant question was…how likely would it be that my kidneys might completely stop functioning and if that did occur, what treatment options would be available to us. My doctors told them that this scenario was highly unlikely. But they added that if that situation didarise they wouldn’t have the resources locally to address it. While they didn’t come right out and say this, the implication was that in that event, I would most likely die.
Mom and Dad decided that even a small chance of this occurring was too much of a chance for them to take. They packed up our family station wagon, converting the back seat into a sort of ‘traveling hospital bed’ for me and we drove to Mayo’s within hours of that conversation.
It was the right decision, because that worst case scenario did in fact occur. Despite my condition deteriorating so much that at one point a priest was enlisted to confirm me and to give me my last sacraments, I did finally manage to come back from the brink of death and ultimately I survived. Survived really isn’t the right word though because I didn’t just ‘survive.’ I made such a complete recovery that it surprised everyone except the Mayo’s doctors who’d cared for me. I thrived far beyond all expectations. :-) But it’s still a little hard to think about sometimes.
What my family and I gained from this experience was the reassurance that we had one of the most amazing medical resources available to us should the need arise again for that kind of expertise. Over the course of many years we also learned that in general, engaging with Mayo’s as a patient early on in a process makes much better sense than leaving that option as a final resolution when all else fails.
Photo Gallery of Mayo’s in Rochester in the 1960’s
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
What We Learned: The Best Ways to Engage Mayo’s as a Resource
It probably doesn’t surprise anyone to learn that my experience as a child was a life altering one. Had I not been treated at Mayo’s no one doubts that I would be here today to tell my story. But it wasn’t just life altering for me, it was for my whole family.
Because my family got to experience first hand the unprecedented and profoundly successful mechanism that places Mayo’s in the enviable position the clinic occupies. It was also life altering. Being there helped us to understand how inclusive and completely patient-centric Mayo’s truly is.
It’s taken many, many years for me to come to my current realization that the vast majority of people don’t believe their medical issues are significant enough to warrant seeking the expertise that’s available at Mayo’s. To me that mindset is short-sighted at best and naively dangerous at worst. Perhaps the reason so many people delude themselves into thinking that their own health and life isn’t as tenuous as it may really be is rooted in fear. It’s a form of denial that serves no one well, which I know from first hand experience too. I was very lucky as a child, but some others my family is close to weren’t. Nothing is worse than finding out too late that you could have been successfully treated had you arrived sooner.
Nothing is more important than one’s health and well-being for the obvious reason that without those, life will reach it’s inevitable forgone conclusion sooner rather than later.
As I’m writing this I’ve come to the realization that the old adage…‘if you’ve got your health, you’ve got everything’ is so much more profound than it appears to be on the surface.
This really resonates with me. A lot of people I know are fanatics about eating healthy, exercising, keeping fit, or being attuned to nature and the great outdoors…in part because those are thought to be good for your health. But then when situations arise in which they have the opportunity to make really good choices about solving difficult health issues they completely drop the ball. They fail to be pro-active in pursuing the best advice medicine has to offer! The really sad reality is that far too many people choose to ignore logic until they find themselves in situations which have advanced so far that their backs are ‘up against a wall’ and there’s no place left to turn. That’s when they choose to go to Mayo’s. Mayo’s istheir last resort.
That’s the wrong way to go about it.
Doesn’t it make more sense to stack the deck in your favor as much as possible when it comes to something as important as your health? Doesn’t it make sense to concentrate your efforts on not letting bad situations become bad in the first place? If you treat your medical decisions as pro-actively as your efforts to maintain a healthy lifestyle then you’re giving yourself a fighting chance when the need to fight arises. And more than likely it will at some point in your life. So having a plan and arming yourself with good information before that need arises seems to me to be the best course of action. And waiting until there are no really good alternatives left open to you seems to me to be a really bad idea.
Why Do People Wait & Utilize Mayo’s Primarily in ‘Last Resort’ Situations?
The answer to that question continues to elude and frustrate me!
Especially when the fact that Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota is almost universally know to be perhaps the most exceptional facility worldwide in the diagnostic realm. Mayo’s has a world-class medical facility with proven positive patient outcomes that far surpass all others in the United States, and more likely in the entire world. That fact is indisputable. Their ‘patient first’ emphasis combined with their expertise should make the decision process an easy one. Yet time and time again I see instances of friends and family putting off this important decision to be their own advocate for their health until their choices are severely limited rather than early enough to allow them the greatest number of choices.
It seems to me that there’s a significant perception of ‘barrier to access‘ by the exact same patient population Mayo’s set out to serve first. Those people who are residents of smaller cities and towns or who reside in rural areas of the upper Midwest. There seems to be an aire of mystique surrounding Mayo’s leading to the belief that to visit there as a patient one must meet some vaguely defined set of rarely encountered criteria.
Some probable perceived barriers to being seen at Mayo’s Rochester:
That patients should be either extremely wealthy, celebrities, or highly visible public figures in some manner
That individuals need to be experiencing immediate life threatening symptoms or conditions
That generally only patients who’ve been previously treated at Mayo’s may go there
That people should exhaust all other medical avenues before seeking treatment at Mayo’s.
That their health insurance won’t cover their expenses from a facility like Mayo’s because they may be ‘out of network’ and so exhausting other ‘in network’ alternatives first is mandatory
That in general a world-class facility like Mayo’s must be prohibitively expensive
That it would be too difficult logistically to arrange for treatment there
That because of the distance involved and the need for travel it’s just not a viable alternative
The truth however is that these barriers simply don’t exist. Each and every barrier mentioned above can easily be addressed by Mayo’s staff if patients just gave it a chance! And in the unlikely scenario that a first contact situation doesn’t result in removal of the aforementioned barriers…then a second attempt is needed for the simple reason that sometimes you just happen to get someone who’s having a bad day.
Common Misconceptions About Mayo’s & Why They Are Misconceptions
Misconception: You should only go to Mayo’s for a diagnosis
The Truth
While it’s true that the one thing Mayo’s has become known for is diagnosing difficult cases, it’s also true that Mayo’s excels in many, many areas of medicine…not just the one involving making accurate diagnoses where others have failed.
But it seems at times that Mayo’s other strengths fly somewhat ‘under the radar‘ so many people may not realize them. In my case as a child, my local doctors did diagnose my condition. They were even well equipped to address many aspects of it…but not all of them. It turned out that what my local doctors couldn’t do ended up being the most important aspect of my care and it’s what saved my life.
Some US News rankings for Mayo Clinic:
US News & World Report ranks Mayo Clinic 1st in the US in Diabetes & Endochrinology, Gastroenterology and GI Surgery, Geriatrics, Gynecology, Nephrology, Neurology and Neurosurgery, Pulmonology and Urology.
US News ranks Mayo’s 2nd in the country in Cardiology and Heart Surgery, ENT, and Orthopedics, and they’re ranked 3rd in cancer, 4th in Rheumatology, 5th in Rehabilitation and ‘high performing’ in Opthamology.
Misconception: Mayo’s will be very expensive and my insurance won’t cover it
The Truth
Your insurance will probably cover it and you will more than likely pay less than if you would have received the same services at home. I’ll write more about this later…but for now just trust me when I say our insurance is awful and out-of-network for Mayo’s. The out-of-pocket costs for our most recent visits were $161 for my husbands 2 day Executive Physical. (He had A LOT of tests and the bill total was around $16,000) I paid $200 out-of-pocket for the week-long visit that I refer to several times in this post. (My total bill was $60,000 and insurance paid all but $200.)
Because there are so many different kinds of insurance plans it probably isn’t a bad idea to call your carrier before you go. I forgot to do that and I’m sure my husband didn’t yet we had no issues. I think our plan may be a PPO…but even that is unclear. We have our own plan because my husband owns his small business and he provides coverage for a few employees too. Our rates our exorbitant and our coverage usually is not great with very high deductibles. I just about fainted when I saw my bill, but decided to do nothing other than wait. I used to be a consultant for outpatient billing and insurance computer systems and know that medical providers do not send accounts to collectors unless it’s a last resort…meaning you can wait for pretty long to give your insurance the time necessary to process everything. Once everything was processed I was again shocked, but this time in a good way to find out how little I needed to pay personally!
Mayo’s Rochester provides information at their website about insurance coverage and billing and they give telephone numbers to call them and discuss coverage prior to a visit.
Misconception: Mayo’s Clinic’s locations are all the same in terms of quality, therefore if you live closer to their Arizona or Florida locations, you should go there rather than fly all the way to Minnesota.
The Truth
This sadly is not true. Mayo’s Clinic in Rochester Minnesota was the original clinic. Their Arizona and Florida facilities are much newer, with a newer staff and less time under their belt to master what the Rochester location has turned into an art form. No doubt, in time, these locations will get to this level…but they aren’t there yet. In addition Mayo’s has planned other expansion concepts which may or may not be in the works presently…but the same concept holds true.
Many have tried to replicate the success that Mayo’s Rochester enjoys, but to date none have been able to. This holds true for the Mayo’s umbrella as well. They aren’t really sure exactly why Rochester is so successful which is why they haven’t been able to replicate that success at their other locations.
So it makes sense that if you are faced with a very difficult, complex, frustrating, or ongoing medical problem that needs the highest level of expertise possible to solve it that you would want the most experienced resources available…the ones with the best proven track record…and that would be the Rochester location.
Misconception: Getting into Mayo’s Clinic is difficult and you need to have a doctors referral.
The Truth
That simply is not true. All my visits as an adult have been initiated by me alone. My one and only attempt to visit using a physician’s referral failed. Since that was the first time as an adult I had made an attempt at scheduling, initially I gave up in frustration. But my Mom and Dad ho are both current patients convinced me to try again. I’m thankful I took their advice and did so. This time on my own and bypassing the department that refused me.
So now I know that all it takes is a simple phone call. You can confirm this yourself by calling and asking if you can setup your own appointment without a physician’s referral. Just call (507) 538-3260 during normal business hours.
Getting in really isn’t very difficult at all. You just need to call them and talk to someone. One reason that I decided to write this was because I did encounter difficulty getting in a few years back, and I did pretty much everything wrong that one person could do. So I thought by putting all this information in one place and mentioning what didn’t work for me, that I could hopefully save some other people some of the frustration I experienced.
Mayo’s does offer an online mechanism for requesting an appointment but that’s all it really is…you’re just submitting a request which is still ultimately scheduled via telephone. If I’m not mistaken the online request results in their calling you. They also offer excellent online medical records and provide a lot of patient information online…they even have an app which helps considerably with managing your appointment schedule and viewing your test results and current records once you’re scheduled and in their system.
The reason I believe that Mayo’s prefers to talk to potential new patients by phone is so that they can explain how things work as well as give them the best possible advice regarding their specific medical needs. Which makes complete sense if you think about it. Be prepared to talk for a while* when you call, because you’ll get their undivided assistance in making the arrangements for and then navigating your visit there. Also be prepared to wait for a month or two before your actual appointment. Because there is such high demand for appointments, a couple month’s of waiting is standard unless circumstances dictate otherwise. If there are serious immediate concerns they will work very hard to get patients in as soon as possible.
*Mine and my family’s universal experience has been that unlike traditional medical practices, every personal encounter that you will have at Mayo’s, even those leading up to an actual visit are treated as very important. You will never be hurried and you’ll never feel as though you needed more time to ask questions…everyone from the highest level doctor on down will bend over backwards to make sure you are well taken care of.
Misconception: Scheduling an appointment in a specific specialty is the best way to request an appointment
The Truth
Not necessarily. Appointments that are requested in specific departments go through a review process to determine whether or not Mayo’s services are the best use of their resources and the best alternative for patients making the request. This can end up being a lengthy process involving forwarding a lot of medical records and writing out long descriptions of why someone is seeking treatment. Then there’s a waiting period that could be several months before you find out whether or not you’ve been accepted. If you are, then you begin the scheduling process which can also involve a long wait for your actual appointment. If you’re not accepted you may be uncertain about how to proceed.
This is the exact scenario that I faced several years ago when requesting an appointment with the Neurology department. I requested an appointment with Neurology and has a referral from my own doctor. I had a condition which had eluded diagnosis both locally and at a center specializing in that condition…yet all my symptoms pointed to only one diagnosis. What I learned in this scheduling process has been invaluable going forward…and it’s the second primary reason I decided to write this guide.
Neurology is perhaps the one department at Mayo’s that doesn’t appear to operate completely within the Mayo’s high standard of placing the patient’s needs above all others. This may be because the department fields many more appointment requests than it can serve.There’s a very good chance that you won’t get in at all if you request an appointment in the Neurology department.
My Successful Work-Around for the Problem of Scheduling Neurology Appointments
What works a lot better if you know that you need to see neurology is to schedule a physical in the Internal Medicine department instead. That’s what I did when I was rejected. My appointment date was set about a month in the future. (The first process for requesting an appointment in Neurology had taken longer than 6 months.) When I arrived I had a complete physical that was more thorough than any I’d ever encountered. All of my medical concerns were addressed and appointments with additional specialties were scheduled for the following days. The way these appointments are scheduled and orchestrated is pretty amazing!
My Internist sent me to a desk with some of my records and after about a 15 minute wait I was given a schedule with a map and directions for the next 2 days of solid back to back appointments. Every single appointment was perfectly timed so that I had just enough time to get from one to the next and they even left some time for lunch! The last appointment on my schedule was with the Internist again. After I completed all of those and met with my Internist a second time, he decided I needed some more tests and I went through the same process again…but this time just for one additional day. *Then I met with him a third time to discuss results and where to go from there.
*The one little ‘chink in the armor’ (once again) was with Neurology. While I had all the neurological tests accomplished without any problems, actually meeting with a neurologist to read my results proved to be more difficult. Neurologyactually wanted me to fly home and come back 2 weeks later! But I wouldn’t take no for an answer this time! I badgered one of the poor, overworked desk staffers until she let me in on a little known secret.
If I was willing to arrive at 7:00 am each morning and sit patiently waiting for some extra time to appear in someone’s schedule, or for a cancellation to arise, then I could be part of a queued walk-in program…I forget what exactly they called this arrangement. But since seeing Neurology was really my primary reason for being there and I really needed answers, I did exactly that…for 2 or 3 days…I forget the exact details. It turned out that there was a whole group of us patients waiting in this odd arrangement and we’d cover for each other to take breaks, to get food and things like that. I finally got in and once I did the Neurologists I met with couldn’t have been kinder or more helpful. And surprisingly unhurried!
Please heed my warning. The Neurology department is the one exception to the rule that Mayo’s functions as an extraordinarily efficient and well-oiled machine!
Δ Δ Δ Δ
If someone from Mayo’s reads this…
please, please…
try to fix this problem!
Δ Δ Δ Δ
Misconception: If you visit Mayo’s Clinic as a patient, then you’ll need to continue going there for all your medical care going forward for that particular condition.
The Truth
Nothing could be further from the truth…the Doctors at Mayo’s will diagnose your condition and send you back home to your own doctors with a plan.
I’m not entirely sure why there is a reluctance by so many physicians to refer to Mayo’s. Maybe doctor’s fear that Mayo’s is building their amazing reputation by attracting some of the most difficult medical cases in the world and then keeping those patients to treat…as sort of a reverse ‘creme skimming concept?’ But nothing could be further from the truth. More than likely it has to do,with the fact that most doctors really do become invested in their patient’s outcomes…and it’s very hard to both let go, as well as to realize and/or admit that you’re infallible.
Understanding their true intent and mindset is really important to understanding what Mayo’s is all about…so I’ll elaborate a little more here.
A Little Background About Mayo Clinic’s History
The story of how Mayo’s first began is a somewhat unspectacular one. A young doctor, William Worrall Mayo moved to the area initially because he was asked by Abraham Lincoln to be the local medical examiner for the military during the Civil War. After the war he liked the area so much that he decided to stay and raise his family there. Fast forward a few years to when his sons joined him in practice and together they rapidly expanded the size and scope of their practice…an expansion rate which continues to this day.
The other significant event that is responsible for the core structure of Mayo’s is that right after his first son joined him there was a horrific tornado in Rochester that killed many people and injured many more. A couple of nuns joined the Mayo’s Drs. and several other doctors in treating the injured. Following that, one very determined nun approached Dr. Mayo Sr. about building a hospital and following an agreement they built St Mary’s hospital together, which became affiliated with the clinic. Shortly thereafter Mayo Sr. retired and several more doctors joined the ranks and together they were the founders of the first integrated group medical practice in the US.
What set this clinic apart was really just good old Midwestern work ethic and values, an intolerance for mediocrity and a model for an integrated medical practice that would operate more efficiently than any before it.
One additional key factor was one of the founding fathers, Henry Plummer. He held an intense interest in technology and set about to utilize ground breaking technological advances in everything from the design of all of the Mayo Clinic buildings to the environmental equipment they used as well as their medical equipment. Many years later he took on the role of Chief Engineer and dedicated his focus entirely towards making sure that every step of the way they utilized progressive technology which served their patients far better than any other clinics of the day. By insuring that risks such as infection were minimized their patient outcomes began to consistently be better year after year.
At the heart of the practice was the concept of keeping patients needs prioritized above all others. Just like how really good retailers treat their customers as golden…using the concept that the customer is always right, so too does Mayo’s treat each and every patient as golden…and as deserving of the absolute best level of care that any institution could provide…patient’s needs have always been placed above anything else.
By projecting that as their message, by creating a unique culture for physicians that promotes a collegiality that de-emphasizes competitiveness, and by pursuing excellence on all fronts including patient care and leading research, Mayo’s ultimately created a phenomenon that to date has been impossible to replicate…even by themselves!
In 2008 Dartmouth Conducted a Study to Determine Why Mayo’s in Rochester Outperformed All Other Medical Clinics
Dartmouth conducted a well-known study in 2008 that focused on why Mayo’s in Rochester is so successful, and so far ahead of the curve compared to everyone else. Their main findings confirmed what many suspected all along. That not only were patient outcomes significantly better there than anywhere else in the USA, but that they were also the most efficient in terms of successful outcomes being realized earlier and using fewer resources, resulting in lower costs for both insurers and patients.
But another interesting result of that study was that while Mayo’s success was generally believed to be unparalleled…that wasn’t true. 2 other programs were also highlighted as having exemplary outcomes with high degrees of patient satisfaction coupled with low costs. The 2 programs that were also singled out for excellence were IntermountainHealthcare (IHC) in Utah and the Sutter System hospitals in Sacramento (see more at the HealthBeat Blog.com article.)
What follows are excerpts from the article referenced above. Mayo’s founding father, William Worrall Mayo working alongside his sons, William and Charles Mayo, created one of the first group practices in the U.S. back in 1903. So…first, the group practice concept was a new one. Early on they began attracting some of the finest, most highly skilled providers and researchers in the world to join them. They proved to be a magnet for talent because they offered an environment unlike any other in the US at the time…thanks in part to Dr. Plummer. They focused on collaboration rather than competition (all doctors are salaried and receive the same amount of pay as their peers in their department…regardless of training or seniority…also the salaries tend to be 25% higher than elsewhere) and by striving for success on all fronts…patient satisfaction, economic success (i.e.higest profits to lowest costs) and high satisfaction amongst doctors who believe themselves to hold important roles within an enviable system.
How did they do It? By building in factors that removed all competitive mindsets. Doctors are salaried and all doctors within a specialty receive the same pay after their first 3 years. The first 3 years are essentially their training period. If, after 3 years, they don’t seem to embrace the collaborative nature necessary they don’t continue on. Although the Dartmouth study also indicated that most physicians figured that out within their first year there. By removing the usual pay incentives that automatically introduce competition rather than cooperation, the stage is set for collegiality.
A Few More Reasons or Situations to Consider Going to Mayo’s
When someone is suffering from an illness or condition that is chronic or becoming chronic because their local doctors can’t pin down exactly what’s going on, they should consider going to Mayo’s Rochester. Call it a 2nd opinion.
When someone is suffering from an acute condition that is life threatening or may quickly become life threatening, and their doctors at home are unable to figure out exactly what it is (and are therefore unable to determine how to treat it,) they need to get to Mayo’s ASAP!
When someone does have a diagnosis, but it’s a complicated one in which fine distinctions may make significant differences in how to proceed with treatment…they too should go to Mayo’s.
My only rule of thumb is this. If my doctor or a routine test discovers something bad or potentially bad…I’ll have 3 additional tests to diagnose or rule things out. If, after 3 more visits, which are usually with different specialists, no one is father along to the truth…it’s time for me to go to Mayo’s. Because usually these appointments have been spread out over several weeks and oftentimes months, and getting into Mayo’s isn’t immediate…so by the time I do make it there and finally obtain a diagnosis…more than likely 6 months have passed. 6 months can be a very long time when it comes to certain things such as cancer or matters of the heart.
When you do have a diagnosis but your doctors don’t have a good prognosis for you…it’s time to go to Mayo’s.
OK I’m not being completely exhaustive here…I’m sure there are more situations that apply…but common sense should rule and once you’ve read my whole post, you should be equipped with the tools to use the right kind of common sense in making these decisions. If you’re still confused…do you see a pattern here? If you or a loved one is suffering for a medical condition or problem that, in spite of everyone’s best efforts, eludes diagnosing, good information for making decisions, or good treatment alternatives…that is precisely when it is the right time to go to Mayo’s.
Appointment Scheduling Resources
The Main Patient Phone #
(507) 538-3260
Mayo’s Clinic in Rochester
When in doubt, call the number above for anything and everything, and you’ll be directed to the right place…but do it during normal business hours.
Some Useful Phone Numbers for
New Patients to Mayo’s
Mayo’s Rochester Executive Health Program
An alternative route for scheduling a first appointment at Mayo’s is to request a physical through their Executive Health Program. Mayo’s was one of the first institutions in the world to offer such a program and its an amazing one. They recently built a whole new facility within the walls of the Mayo complex and its a beautiful space.
My husband and I visited it in 2016 and both had physicals. Our care lived up to Mayo’s highest standards and the concierge service their facility offers was top notch. This spacious, well-appointed facility is a great place to operate from for a busy executive, with amenities like its own lounge which resembles the first class lounges many airlines provide. There is an additional fee for utilizing this premium service, but its well worth it and moderately priced compared to similar executive programs at other large health institutions in the U.S.
In addition the Executive Program offers some innovative and unique services we wouldn’t have known about otherwise. We were fortunate enough to have them orchestrate a meeting with a genetic counselor and I had genetic testing done for a familial health condition I have. This information was extremely valuable to us and not something that would have been available to us locally.
Getting the Lay of the Land
Mayo’s Subway
Mayo Clinic in Rochester has created an extremely patient friendly environment to navigate when people are going to appointments in many different specialties. The most unique aspect of Rochester is something they call the Subway.
The Subway isn’t what you’d normally think of when you think of a subway system. What the Mayo’s subway actually is, is an underground complex of businesses, hotels, restaurants and of course clinics, connected by an underground tunnel system which is really almost a pedestrian urban city center…similar to those found in China, Australia and Hong Kong (and probably more countries too but those are the ones I remember being impressed with during our travels. It’s really so cool you have to see it to believe it!
Where To Stay
There are 2 hotels that connected to the subway that I know of for sure. Both have very good access to Mayo Clinic and you can get there o foot within 5-10 minutes without ever stepping foot outdoors…so these 2 are highly desirable in the wintertime.
In addition to those hotels, there are several more that are connected to the skywalk network….which in turn is connected to the subway. Further down I’ll attach some maps which should help you identify what those hotels are.
Mayo’s has out together a lot of really helpful videos helping new patients with every aspect of logistics in getting there and getting around. There’s even a video about the Rochester airport and their shuttle service. Here’s a link to the video page.
Links to A Great Article That Explains the Mayo Culture in More Detail
If you’d like to read other’s comments, or leave a comment yourself, please do so by scrolling way down this page…past my bio, past the WordPress ads, and past the Related Posts section…to the little Comment box.u
I Can’t Believe it’s 20 Years Old Now Because My Sebo Felix is Still Beautiful!
Introduction
I love vacuums. Everyone who knows me, knows this. If a friend needs a new vacuum, they seek out my advice. If a friend learns of a new vacuum entering the US market they rarely ever fail to let me know about it. And if a friend has a multitude of problems with a vacuum, they generally share that information with me too…which is great. I’ve become our local clearing house for vacuum cleaner knowledge!
My SEBO vacuum, which is German made, is one of the main reasons I love vacuums so much. If you’ve ever owned one you’ll know what I mean! Vacuuming with the Felix doesn’t feel like a chore because it’s fun! 20 years ago when I first found my SEBO no one in the US appeared to have ever heard of this brand…I certainly hadn’t. Despite all it’s awesomeness, even now in the year of 2016, this brand still seems to not be well know in the states.
Currently I’m considering the purchase of a few new vacuums for our home and I decided it’s time to re-analyze the state of the vacuum cleaner market in the USA.
Why Has No One in the US Ever Heard of the German Vacuum Company Called SEBO?
I get that 20 years ago when the Internet was in its infancy that dissemination of information was extremely limited. But by now the Internet has created a new phenomenon…that of a global marketplace. I’m sort of stunned to realize that the brand name SEBO has yet to become a household word here and I’m left to wonder why.
SEBO’s Main Competition | A Little More Information About Dyson & Miele | One Miele Vacuum that I’m Currently Considering Purchasing
Maybe it’s because of Dyson? Dyson is another European model (made in the UK) which was just entering the scene around the same time that SEBO made an entrance onto US soil. But Dyson seemed to dominate our market for a long time. The market was high-end residential vacuums.
For some unknown reason when Dyson entered the US market they created quite a fury…which resulted in their dominance of that high end marketplace here for what felt like a very long time. One reason I’m so familiar is because I have a Dyson. My opinion? It’s OK…actually I guess I’d begrudgingly have say it’s even pretty good. Specifically, it’s very good mechanically but it’s really confusing to use…therefore it rates very low scores for user friendliness.
My old Dyson vacuum
The one other brand that I’ve looked at a lot is Miele. I’ve considered acquiring one myself off and on for many years. Miele is also German. Miele tends to focus on canister vacuums…this isn’t a form of vacuum that I’ve ever loved.
Conversely, SEBO tends to focus more on upright vacuums…which have always been my preference. Granted there is some crossover between the 2…Miele makes a few uprights and Sebo makes a few canisters…but they generally tend to stick to their chosen favorites. I first learned about Miele because I had a cleaning lady who swore by her Miele.
Right now I’m looking for something that’s versatile. Something that I can use to get behind furniture and also reach way up high with. That’s why I’m reconsidering the Miele brand. What my cleaning friend loves so much about her Miele is the extra long hose. She loves that you can even add additional extensions onto that hose to be able to reach almost anywhere.
But there are a ton of different Miele models to choose from. There are so many features, and there seems to be a lot of overlap amongst features. It may be this aspect alone which accounts for the fact that the US hasn’t readily adopted this particular brand of vacuum. More likely it’s that coupled with the fact that most residential consumers in the USA currently don’t purchase canister type vacuums very frequently.
The many different models can be really confusing. I spent quite a bit of time trying to make sense of the Miele canister lines. Eventually I pasted together a cheat sheet for myself of the lower priced alternatives which you can see here.Ultimately, I determined that if I were to get a Miele, it would be this one which is $429 right now on Amazon (my link has my affiliate ID attached.) The model I’m considering is a compact, very lightweight canister vac that has a sealed HEPA filtration system, lots of tools, a tool carrier, and a combination floor tool for both carpets and hardwood surfaces. It’s a newer model that’s about $200 less than the one that my cleaning lady swears by.
The Miele Cannister Vacuum I’m Considering | It’s called the Quartz
What Features I’m Looking for in a New Vacuum Currently
Vacuum # 1 || A Canister or Backpack Vacuum
I decided that I need a canister type of vacuum for vacuuming underneath, inside and around large immovable pieces of furniture like our bed. It has 2 memory foam extra long twin mattresses which combine to make it a King. We have allergies to things like dust and dust mites. I cringe when I change the sheets and observe the amount of dust that’s collected in really inaccessible places around where we sleep.
Initially I’d decided that I’d bite the bullet and get a canister vacuum. But during my research of those I discovered a newer type of vacuum called a backpack vacuum which intrigues me. The backpack vacuums I’ve seen are expensive and relatively big. It’s their size that causes me to worry. Although they tend to be lightweight for carrying purposes their overall profile is big. I worry about bumping into things while wearing one in my back because I’ve read user reviews that indicate this can be a problem. Yet overall, the mobility features of backpack vacuums are commendable. Most of the backpack vacuums I’ve seen are essentially canister vacuums which have been slightly redesigned to be worn on one’s back. Here’s an example of one I’m thinking about.
Photo Above by Home Floor Experts
Home Floor Experts is a website dedicated to every aspect of maintaining floors beautifully. They have a nice article about backpack vacuums and overview of the major backpack models available.
Vacuum # 2 || Probably an Upright Vacuum
I also need a new vacuum for a different part of our house. It was while searching for this that I discovered that Amazon now sells my exact SEBO vacuum, which has been my favorite vacuum for so many years. It sells for about $150 more than what I paid for it 20 years ago…given the rate of inflation this makes sense to me. Since I seriously love this vacuum I’m going to look at all the pricing for the various models of this same one, and once I find the best color and feature combination for the best price, I’ll come back and add a link to it here. But for now…here’s the link to my exact vacuum. I should add that this is an affiliate link, as is the Miele one above.
Why I’m Testing Out the Amazon Affiliate Program and What It’s All About
I’m a brand new Amazon affiliate, which is something a lot of bloggers sign up for when they begin to realize that their blog has become a full-time job for them. Sadly, it’s most often an unpaid job which is hard to justify after a few years time. Bloggers are generally told that they need to build up a good reputation and a significant body of work before considering alternatives which would help to earn an income. On average this takes at least 2 years time. I’m at the 2 year mark right now, so I’ve been exploring ways that I could turn this blog along with my otherblog vsatips and my YouTube channel into a real occupation going forward. My new affiliate status is my first foray into that realm.
The Amazon affiliate program works like this for my readers*. If you were to purchase a product that I supplied a link to, and if that link had my Amazon affiliate ID appended onto it…then I would receive a 4% commission (**usually) of the product’s sale price. That commission would only be earned if the purchase was made within 24 hours and it would be added to an account in my name. Once the account reached a certain minimum threshold (usually $100 I think) I’d be paid in the form of an Amazon gift certificate. For readers ther’s no downside because the price remains the same. For Amazon there’s a little downside because the commission is taken from their profit. But they encourage use of their program anyway because they expect that overall they will have a greater number of sales as more bloggers recommend products available on their website. It’s a pretty sweet Win-Win-Win situation for all parties involved!
I’m going into the detail of how this works not to pressure anyone…that’s actually the furthest thing from my mind! Rather I just want to be entirely upfront about it because the whole affiliate program concept is so new to me and because I’ve come to realize that this is one of the primary methods bloggers use to make a living. Many bloggers are completely upfront about their participation in affiliate programs, but probably an equal number aren’t. While that’s not a bad thing per se, because there’s no harm to anyone, and everyone benefits..personally I believe that complete transparency is an important aspect in my role as a blogger, so I error on the side of caution. But frankly I don’t think that it is necessary or required that blogger’s to disclose this, so those that don’t aren’t ‘untrustworthy.’
*It turns out that many popular products and companies today offer affiliate programs for bloggers. I suspect that many established bloggers participate in more than one affiliate partnership.
**The commission scale at Amazon is complicated…it varies by product category and sales volume. So bloggers with high traffic websites designed exclusively for that purpose actually earn higher percentages because they ‘sell’ more!
More Information About the SEBO Brand
I was excited to discover that SEBO now has an American office! There’s a great video about the company and you can now purchase vacuum cleaners directly from them. They have this interesting ‘try it out’ program where you can try out a vacuum for 30 days then return it if your not completely thrilled (the actual # of days is 45 to allow time for return shipping.) Here’s a link to their brochure of my vacuum. SEBO has a YouTube channel and this is a very cool animated video of my vacuum!
The prices at SEBO’s website are the same as those at Amazon, which shouldn’t surprise me given that SEBO is the seller at Amazon too. They also offer free shipping from their own website.
One thing I forgot about and just rediscovered in watching their videos, is that the White House uses SEBO vacuums…that’s a pretty awesome endorsement I think!
My Earlier Blog Post About My SEBO Vacuum
Just in case it hasn’t become abundantly clear to you yet, I’m really obsessed with vacuums and specifically with my SEBO…which I’ve had for a very long time. Much longer than I’ve had my WordPress blog. Rather than rewriting my complete story about SEBO here, I decided it’s better to just link to it. So here and below are links to my main story about how my obsession with vacuums began, my glowing review and much more detail about my SEBO, as well as a lot of information about the other vacuums I’ve used throughout the the years.
But the success, as with many Silicon Valley startups, was fleeting. Even though at one point Meerkat had accumulated millions of users, the app faced a tough challenge in competing in mobile livestreaming against Twitter’s rival offering, Periscope, and Facebook’s competitor, Facebook Live. While Meerkat is still in the Apple App Store, the startup behind the app has changed course and is working on something new..
OK…So Milwaukee’s Special…But What Exactly Is Doors Open Milwaukee…aka DOMKE?
vsatrends 