Filed under: Get Friendly
Richard Dawkin’s Appetite for Wonder
You could give Aristotle a tutorial. And you could thrill him to the core of his being. Aristotle was an encyclopedic polymath, an all time intellect. Yet not only can you know more than him about the world. You also can have a deeper understanding of how everything works. Such is the privilege of living after Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Planck, Watson, Crick and their colleagues.
The potential people who could have been standing in my place but who will never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara — more, the atoms in the universe. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Donne, greater scientists than Newton, greater composers than Beethoven. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I that are privileged to be here, privileged with eyes to see where we are and brains to wonder why.
and from To Live at All Is Miracle Enough
After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with colour, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked — as I am surprisingly often — why I bother to get up in the mornings. To put it the other way round, isn’t it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be a part of it?
Filed under: Digital Strategy
Tim Burrowes has had a busy week. He’s been on telly. Mumbrella his blog about “Everything under Australia’s media & marketing umbrella: BETA” has been chockfull of happy clappy (and unhappy slappy) goodness. He’s been all Warhol like and aggregated and synthesised us some canned action on the viral video soupy saga that was “The Girl With The Jacket”
- Agency accused of “screwing” the industry over girl-with-the-jacket fake
- Clothing label owns up
- Boss of the agency puts forward positon on the terrirory between deceit and conceit and says truth is overrated in gaining effectiveness.
The chit chat about this campaign has moved over into some quite heated territories at times. I find pomposity and hubris to be rather astonishing. And funny. And compelling like a car crash is compelling.
And it’s never quite as feisty as when the ’social media experts’ biff it out with each other.
I reproduce this almost in it’s entirety:
Zac Martin is a remarkably young, talked-about Australian blogger. He writes an excellent blog here.
Laurel Papworth is a remarkably grumpy social media stormtrooper. But she writes a writes a very good blog here.
Got it so far? Good.
So Laurel doesn’t like Seth, because Seth doesn’t allow comments on his blog, which she thinks is bad. So Seth tried to be nice, and sent Laurel a lovely message on her blog. But Laurel was mean to him, put her fingers in her ears, and told him she couldn’t hear him. Then Zac stepped in.
Now you can watch this…
It’s just an everyday tale of life in the Aussie blogosphere…
Filed under: Digital Strategy
Six Lessons organizations can learn from the Obama New Media Team.
Here’s the Inauguration Day Tumblr
With the swearing-in of Barack Obama just hours away, we’re excited to announce that we’ve partnered with Tumblr to create a dedicated feed of content to the official Inauguration blog. We’ll be posting throughout the day and reblogging your Inauguration Day moments.
Share your thoughts, photos, links, quotes, and videos. And see what others are saying in real-time during this epic event.
In addition, we’ll be using Tumblr tonight to liveblog the Neighborhood Ball from the Convention Center in Washington, DC.
And the Photosynth moments, on CNN and here: best inauguration synths.
Filed under: Digital Strategy
When you have tap dancing, surfing, criminal mastermind, always being appropriately dressed for dinner and publisher extraordinaire as your basic skill set….logic would seem a little greedy.
(this is for Tim: have you seen this list of famous Penguins? Thanks @Boris for the find)
Filed under: Get Friendly
It’s been a hot old week in Sydney for reasons only partially due to the tilt in the earth axis.
But in the last day or so, and in unexpected contexts, a tune has been following me round, Sunscreen. I has just the right kind of cheesy aphoristic spoken word pathos that has afforded a bit of a cool breeze…
and a gentle reminder that if you have to stand in the sun it’s a really good idea to protect your self.
There are other things you can do with the elements, of course. Some imaginary friends have commented on how blimmin’ cold it is in the Northern Hemisphere right now. I’m sure lemons are in short supply where you are, so if you share the ice I can put on the citrus, and we can make margaritas.
The print below made by Aly Lenon at 2Pie “simply pushing our faces into fresh powder on cars. They are all concave, but create a super cool illusion of 3D sculptures. Enjoy.” There’s heaps more go, check them out.
Filed under: Get Friendly
My anti-hero alter-ego of today:
Naaaaaaaaaaff-tastic
Creation Story:
The pressure hothouse of pitching when all clients brief you the day before Christmas and want to see concepts the week they get back from holidays.
SuperPowers:
Intune, Intouch, Insight
Gizmos: Deflection of Distractions
Vambraces that deflect all incoming social opportunities (ptchew!ptchew!)
Lasso of Ambiguity (or the “look over there lasso”)
Theme tune:
Oh the Strat-gy Stage is a-rollin’ ov’r the plains
With the planners flappin’ and the suits slappin’ the reins
A insight they cry: a believable way!
Whip crack-away, whip crack-away, whip crack-away
Filed under: Digital Strategy
I get asked the question: what is Twitter and why would you use it? quite a lot.
It’s not something I can tell you about, it’s something you have to experience.
This week David Armano authored a brilliant experience that raised $14,000 in a matter of hours for a family in need. Entirely on Twitter. You can see all the interaction with the hashtag #daniela:
Scott Drummond has already done a magnificent job bringing this to life in his post How is your relationship balance sheet? (and why it pays to be in the black) .
We asked the people of our digital neighborhood if they could help a family. They did. And all of Twitter felt it.
I hope you can feel it too.
Filed under: Digital Strategy
lizstrauss Grown-ups like numbers. When you tell them about a new friend, they never ask questions about what really matters.
lizstrauss They never ask: “What does his voice sound like?” “What games does he like best?” “Does he collect butterflies?”.
lizstrauss They ask: “How old is he?” “How many brothers does he have?” “How much does he weigh?” “How much money does his father make?”
I saw this stream of thought from the lovely Liz Strauss on Twitter yesterday and it got me thinking. Which is not uncommon after having any kind of contact with Liz*
And I’ve been having brilliant chats, as ever, with Sean about the struggles of building meaning and defining relationships that bring value to a domain.
In the space between these conversations, I found something:
When we ask for numbers all we get is a definition. We can’t build an understanding of humans with numbers alone.
I’m loving the tension between grown up definitions and that child like discipline of asking to understand. I think that this is the core of where social media is really quite different from the grown up ROI language of impressions and click throughs. It can’t be measured in the same way, because it’s language, a protocol, a hand lens for the empathic and inquisitive.
So, what if we asked people about what really matters? Questions for Understanding? I’m looking forward to building some Q & U.
* (I feel like I’ve just dunked my head in icy water-wooooosh- a million dancing particles of life celebration just sparkled into existence)
Filed under: Great Stuff
Matt Harding presenting at Ignite at Gnomedex in Seattle last year.
Ignite is coming to Sydney on January 22nd, 5.30pm for 6.30pm at the Shelbourne Hotel 200 Sussex St, Sydney, NSW 2000.
What will these guys say in just 5 minutes, 20 slides, where each slide lasts just 15 seconds?
- Matt Moore : Words at work. What links Flickr, mind maps, and a vengeful God?
- Jason Yip : Lean programming – The fridge vs the radiator
- Kieran Ots : A year of failed projects (and what I learned from them)
- Richard Lane : Mapping the sky – Is bigger always better?
- Mark Pollard : 7 things you can learn from hip-hop
- Amy Martin : Job-hunting tips from the experts
- Pamela Fox : HTML5 vs Flex for Rich Internet Applications
- Jeremy LeBard : Australians are a nation of readers. Why do we need Amazon?
- Geoff Bowers: Setting Fire To Your Community. A tale of Japanese mummies, karmic balance and benevolent dictators
- Chloe Mason : Why Sydney needs active travel
- Meitar Moscovitz : How technology influences sexual awareness (and vice versa)
See you there. There might be dancing.
