A freak stranglet from the Large Hadron Collider is interfering with many potentials incuding my ability to get my thoughts down in post form. Time is not my friend right now. Perhaps the future is merely being kind.
There are heaps of speaker notes in the presentation- loads of chewy thinking:
Our relationships to each other, the cities and places we inhabit and navigate have been transformed in the last few years by the technology, products and services that we have designed — but what about that last one of the three — time?
“People, places, time. The triumvirate of factors at play in mobile, social, locative services might be familiar at the surface level to designers and developers.
Using examples from the development of Dopplr.com and other services — alongside historical and science-fictional perspectives — Matt Jones explores what we might call neochronometry and illustrates some directions we could take as interaction designers to treat time as a material.”

Jeff Bullas summarizes a couple of reports about what top brands are doing in Social Media.
His 4 Key Observations
- As the number of channels increase, overall engagement increases at a faster rate. Brands that were in seven or more channels engaged deeply across all channels where they were present, as compared to brands that were present in fewer channels. There is an exponential growth in the depth of engagement as the brand extends itself into more and more channels.
- Engagement differs by industry. Not only are some industries on average present in more channels, they also engage with them more deeply. For example, media and technology companies tend to be in more channels and engage deeply within them than,…. apparel, consumer products, food & beverage, and financial brands which is to be expected given that companies in these industries are just beginning to experiment with social media.
- Financial performance correlates with engagement. Back to the million-dollar question: Why do social media? Because it pays off. While no one yet has the data to determine direct cause and effect, what is found is a financial correlation between those who are deeply engaged and those who outperform their peers
- It Provides ” Multiple Communication Touch Points” More touch points can present a ripple effect, inducing viral marketing, boosting brand recognition and driving sales volume. Simply it means that different people prefer different types of communication, so the more types of communication, you as a company are enaging in, the more chance you have of creating a broader and deeper reach in the market place.
15 Best Practices of Social Media Implemented by the Top 100 Brands
- Deputize people throughout the organization.
- Understand how each channel provides a different dimension of engagement
- Centralize coordination
- Find champions who can explain and mitigate risk.
- Be in it for the long haul
- Pick channels carefully.
- Spread engagement to employees beyond the social media team.
- Open the platform to anyone and everyone.Encourage employees to tap into social media to get work done
- Engage in new channels where people already are
- Support engagement as an extension of the company culture.Be conversational from the start.
- Be conversational from the start.
- Make social media part of the job, just like email
- Modularize and synchronize content across channels
- To scale engagement, make social media part of everyone’s job.
- Emphasize quality, not just quantity.
Filed under: Digital Strategy
The Rodney District contains a highway that leads north of Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city. It’s one of the most dangerous roads in New Zealand and has a rising death toll due specifically to speeders. The message: Slow down.
The agency (Saatchi and Saatchi NZ):
We wanted to prove how violent the force in a crash was, so we had an engineer calculate what a head on collision would be equal to in grenades. At 125 kph it is equal to 10 grenades exploding. To demonstrate this we blew up a car, collected the debris, reconstructed it with 1000’s of pieces of string and invited people to see it. Visitors included the Deputy Mayor, head of police, TV3 news (one of New Zealand’s main news station) and, but most importantly, a surprising number of 18-25 year old males.
Filed under: Digital Strategy
In Defense of Eye Candy by Stephen P. Anderson looks at trends in neuroscience pointing out that how we “think” cannot be separated from how we “feel,” and applies that to web design.
Love these quotes :
“…emotion is not a luxury: it is an expression of basic mechanisms of life regulation developed in evolution, and is indispensable for survival. It plays a critical role in virtually all aspects of learning, reasoning, and creativity. Somewhat surprisingly, it may play a role in the construction of consciousness.”—António Damásio, Emotion and Feelings: A Neurobiological Perspective
In the early 1900s, “form follows function” became the mantra of modern architecture. Frank Lloyd Wright changed this phrase to “form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union,” using nature as the best example of this integration.
The more we learn about people, and how our brains process information, the more we learn the truth of that phrase: form and function aren’t separate items. If we believe that style somehow exists independantly of functionality, that we can treat aesthetics and function as two separate pieces, then we ignore the evidence that beauty is much more than decoration.
Filed under: Digital Strategy
As promised here are the notes I was referring to on the Ad:tech panel. All the research and loads of the thinking were done by the lovely and talented Rachael Maughan at the white agency.
Here’s measurementcamp’s list of free tools:
- Addictomatic A cool search engine that aggregates rss feeds into a nice visual dashboard
- Blogpulse Blog search engine with conversation tracker tool
- Boardreader Search forums and message boards
- Boardtracker Forum search engine offering instant alerts
- Buzzmonitor Embeddable widget showing recent instances of your search term
- Compete.com Comparable site metrics for any website
- Del.ici.ous Social bookmarking engine. Search by tags and subscribe to feed results
- Facebook lexicon Searches facebook walls for words and phrases
- Google alerts Email updates of key search terms
- Google insights Compare search volume over time
- Google trends Compare search term trends
- Howsociable Gives a social media score for your brand, with email updates of your score.
- Ice rocket Blog search engine with results rss feed
- Newsflashr News search engine, presenting results in nice dashboard
- Sphere Related content widget
- Summize Search for keywords in ‘tweets’.
- Technorati Blog and social media search engine
- Twing Discussion board and forum search engine
- Twingly Spam free blog search engine
- Twitturly Track what urls people are talking about on twitter
- Xinu Shows how well your site is performing across different metrics. Also gives a site diagnosis.
- Quarkbase Fricking cool mashup tool
- Twitter Grader Enter your twitter username to get your grade and ranking
- Twist Graph Keyword trends in Twitter. Very cool.
- yExplore Not strictly social media, but easy access to see inbound links to a page.
- Trendpedia Excellent blog search engine that graphs results over time.
- Website Grader Not completely sure how accurate, but cool tool anyway!
- Yahoo Pipes Err, yeah, can’t believe I missed this off in the first place.
- Socialmention Real time UGC search engine, with social rank
- Bit.ly and Cli.gs – analytics for your tiny urls.
Filed under: Digital Strategy
I love a bit of fist shaking shoutyness.
I’m taking a week off and stepping down from my soapbox, but I’m happy to share and introduce you all to Peter Bray, who has been in the digital industry for around 13 years, is a Director of CHOICE (the Australian Consumers’ Association) and the NSW President of AIMIA (the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association):
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I am starting to feel a bit numb about social media. I thought I knew what it was, and how to use it, but now I am confused. Really confused. More so than usual.
Recently there have been people redefining what social media is, defining rules of engagement, and generally trying to one up each other in a public display of ego driven “rankings.” Lists of top bloggers, top twitterers, top facebookers and top brands that use social media are deluging down my connection like an empirical tsunami. And a lot of people seem to be riding the wave, while others, like me, are simply feeling a little swamped.
When did it all get out of hand?
Please, please, to all the digerati out there, perhaps it is time for a bit of quiet, humble success rather than screaming from rooftops at every possible moment. It is a long way to fall, especially if you position yourself at the top of the ladder.
It all used to seem so fun, this whole social media caper. It just doesn’t feel the same any more. Social media is in danger of killing the digital star; metrics are undecided; pundits are confused with professionals; flaming is out of control – why is it that social media has all these growing pains?
Perhaps it is something to do with the personality types that are attracted to social media. Could social media provide a way for people who are otherwise socially inept to finally quantitatively prove that they understand relationships? Are the social media experts in fact introverts who are now, through the bright lights of their computer screens, able to tell people how they should behave? Is a pre qualification for being a social media expert the attainment of level 12 in Dungeons and Dragons (sorry for the out of date reference, but I don’t know the World of Warcraft equivalent?)
My point is (if I have one), that social media should not be positioned as the “next big thing” for brands, simply because not only has it already arrived, but the effectiveness when it comes to marketing is very questionable. Social media has some wonderful uses, however given then number of brands that have invested in social media, there is a striking lack of successful case studies when it comes to brand marketing.
We know social media is out there, we are just not sure how to identify and tag it, let alone breed it in captivity. So it seems that people are firing pot-shots, trying to define what social media is and the rules for engagement, instead of simply letting it run wild for the time being.
Social media needs a lot of time to develop and grow, since it is still in the awkward teenager phase. If we are not careful, by creating so many arbitrary rules and restrictions, social media will never mature and achieve its potential. People need to stop acting like overprotective parents. No one owns the social media space, no one is an expert above others, and such activity will inevitably stunt innovation and experimentation in the social media space. Anyone remember Second Life?
I advocate not enforcing any rules when it comes to social media, apart from one simple guideline, that applies not only to brands and consumers, but social media practitioners as well: TRY NOT TO DO DUMB THINGS, BECAUSE EVERYONE IS ALWAYS LOOKING.
Oh, and play nice.
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Peter can be found on Twitter http://twitter.com/peterbray
I won’t be found in Sydney town until Ad-tech next week. I’m on the panel about social media measurement and I’m bringing my boxing gloves. See you there!
Filed under: Digital Strategy
I recently got a message from my friend Sean who was buzzing after having read Saul Kaplan’s article on “Creating a Passion Economy“.
He got inspired ( as he does so well) and was so enamored with this concept that he asked a bunch of peple to weigh in on their views regarding “The Passion Economy” and it’s role or impact on business, brands and each of us.
I want insight into what this idea of a “passion economy” might mean in the context of brands and our lives. Professionally and otherwise. Or whether this is even a real force in our world.
The result is here The Passion Economy: opportunity for brands or just a fad? (PDF, 2.3 megs)
And now, a round of applause for the contributors:
Scott Suthren
Ellen Di Resta
Gavin Heaton
Charles Frith
Mike Wagner
Mack Collier
Mike Arauz
Alan Wolk
Peter Flaschner
Matthew Milan
……and me! A sneak peak on my bit:
We live in times where there is great need- and vast resources. Some of our greatest needs are a sustainable vision for the future, purpose, quality of life, and sense of belonging. The resources that we have to meet these needs are just waiting to be harvested: the will of everyday people to do good. I have yet to meet a person who does not want to be part a strong community, contribute to a safer, greener and more equitable world and see all children meet the future healthy and well prepared. So why aren’t more resources flowing to needs?
Please read, share this document freely and join in the conversation!
Filed under: Digital Strategy
Newspaper + Sharpie = Poems. Austin Kleon awesomeness can be found here.
Instead of starting with a blank page, poet Austin Kleon grabs the New York Times and a permanent marker and eliminates the words he doesn’t need. — NPR’s Morning Edition
Sort of like Michelangelo carving away the marble that imprisoned what he saw within.—Cleveland Plain Dealer
One can imagine taking up blackout poetry on their daily bus commute in place of sudoku or the crossword puzzle.— Toronto’s National Post
Some of the results are hilarious, some are profound and even unsettling, but they are never bland or boring.—The Ephemerist
Part “writing with constrictions,” part happy accident, part found art, part design challenge…the collection…gives a well rounded and consistent view into a guy most of us would want to buy a beer. —Radio Exile
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)








