Get Shouty

Let’s get things straight here. They live on an island in Fiji. They (spear) fish, grow fruit and veg, compost their crap and drink a muddy narcotic and play guitars under the stars. That’s what they like to do.

And they won a big shiney silver wedge of a trophy. One that declares that Tribewanted is a more innovative and impactful social networking site than Skins on E4, and hold your breath…MySpace. Yes, MySpace, the world’s biggest online network, in a social networking competition. Bloody hell – how did that happen?

The team try to explain it here:

I think its hard to see it from the inside looking out – but here are the reasons the tribe members gave when we entered . I think it happened because we’re trying something different. And its starting to work. Very simply its about using a new and exciting way of communicating to make life better. And we’re not the only ones doing it either.

Not everyone can work on a project that is about building a sustainable island paradise. But we can all take inspiration in this vigorous enlistment of a community, the cleverness of building context in the clear signposts of their distributed messaging and consistently compelling stories.

John Dodds shared the American Marketing Association new definition of marketing:

Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.

It’s a big ask to educate our clients on the ever changing world, but if Apenisa Bogiso (Tui Mali) the Chief of Vorovoro can understand it I’m pretty sure I can help my clients get it too.

*thanks Kris Hoet and Kneale Mann

Strategy
When the brief’s all wrong and you can’t go on
Its Stragedy
When the planner cries and you don’t know why
It’s Stragedy
It’s so hard to care
When no-one gets that it’s goin’ nowhere
Stragedy
When you lose control and the insight has no soul
Its stragedy
When the reason flies and the goals just die
Plan! It’s a dare!
With no-one to guide you you’re goin’ nowhere……

The extremely entertaining Mark Pesce presenting at the Next Wave festival.

More of his thinking on the 3.4 billionth phone, hisMAD twitter army and a social experience of the China earthquake.

Lovely storytelling

Over six weeks writers including Booker-shortlisted Mohsin Hamid, popular teen fiction author Kevin Brooks, prize-winning Naomi Alderman and bestselling thriller author Nicci French will be pushing the envelope and creating tales that take full advantage of the immediacy, connectivity and interactivity that is now possible. We Tell Stories begins with Charles Cumming’s Google Maps adventure. ‘He was the wrong man, in the wrong place, at the wrong time’. Now you can follow his adventures across the nation and across the world, step by step.

But somewhere on the internet is a seventh story, a mysterious tale involving a vaguely familiar girl called Alice. Readers who follow this story will discover clues that will shape Alice’s journey and help her on her way. These clues will appear online and in the real world and will drive readers to the other six stories where they will have the chance to win prizes, including The Penguin Complete Classics Library.

The gaming community has been awaiting the first project from SixtoStart and the next digital publishing initiative from Penguin whose last project, the wikinovel (http://amillionpenguins.com) generated 85,000 unique visitors in five weeks, arriving at a rate of 10 per second at one point.

Jessica Hagy’s lovely requiem for Authur C Clarke He knew science fiction didn’t have to be an oxymoron.

Thanks Arthur:

• “Life is just one big banana. Science fiction allows us all to peel open the reality and discover the yellow truth inside.”

• Clarke’s three laws:

1. “When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.”
2. “The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.”
3. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

• “The truth, as always, will be far stranger.”

• “Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.”

• “How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.”

• Of UFOs: “They tell us absolutely nothing about intelligence elsewhere in the universe, but they do prove how rare it is on Earth.”

• “Somewhere in me is a curiosity sensor. I want to know what’s over the next hill. You know, people can live longer without food than without information. Without information, you’d go crazy.”

Wired’s Adam Rogers wrote a lovely, sweeping obit for Dungeons and Dragons creator Gary Gygax in this weekend’s New York Times that included this flowchart showing how D&D was a gateway drug into every kind of nerd-dom: great D&D geek love flowchart by Sam Potts.

Coke Zero has launched in Brazil an extreme guerrilla marketing campaign using people’s tongues. Trendhunter reports that several shops in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre and Salvador give free piercings with the brand logo, with the only condition of taking pictures to publish on the website which redirects to a Google Picasa Album set. It would seem that the promise is that the brand can do your talking for you while you can’t.

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners,
contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love
chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the
servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter
the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company,
gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their
teachers.”

Sound familiar? It’s a paraphrase of a quote about two and a half thousand years old.  Socrates knew that the more thing change……

• Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions; but those who kindly reprove thy faults
• True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.
• We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is a habit.
• Philosophy begins in wonder.

These are all robust building blocks to create a sustainable CRM strategy, which can be seen as your philosophy for generating great relationships:

• Value criticism
• Know that you can’t learn without questioning
• Excellence is not set and forget
• Genuinely want to know the people that you communicate with, genuinely believe that your relationship can be better the more you learn

I went to a forum this week : Is online media dumbing down journalism? Liz Jackson (Four Corners), Peter McEvoy, Catharine Lumby, Dylan Welch (Sydney Morning Herald Online) and Jacqueline Breen (ElectionTracker.net) were on the panel put together by New Matilda.

I won’t summarise what was spoken about ’cause Tim does a great job here:

“What has happened to newspapers could be summed up as follows: once upon a time newspapers were sold as three course meals, and no one really knew what was being eaten - the entré, the main or the dessert (or all three?). Now we can measure readers, it turns out most people are just interested in the dessert. So does that mean you just focus on desserts and stop making nutritious mains? Or does it mean you have to work harder to make the mains more appetising?

It seemed to me the room last night was full of people that just love to eat vegetables. They know how good vegetables are for them and they’ve acquired a taste. Now they’re nervous - if people are only eating dessert, what does that mean for the health of democracy? or ‘public discourse’? And more importantly, if we’re the only ones eating vegetables, who’s going to be paying for them?”

My outtake was that it seemed to me that what was missing from the debate was any real vision of how the online medium might advance the essential offer of journalism which was put forward as ‘originality, credibility and analysis’.

The focus of the panel seemed to be on how online effects the economic model of a news masthead and then how that relates to the resources that are given to journalists in order for them to deliver their craft.

I’m into the notion that in the current explosion of data there is a valuable role to be played in an offer of synthesis of information, contextualisation with authority and transparency of agenda. In this scenario a newspaper might be seen as an umbrella brand with its journalists becoming brands of their own. The role of the newspaper is then to facilitate and add value to the relationship between the content created by the journalists and the audience.

An example of this might be a meme/topic tracker so that you can follow issues as they unpack over time or visualize how silos of news interact with each other (a finance story and a policy decision or a gossip piece and a media merger).

The Digg Arc model is a baby step towards this- imagine if you could colour code and navigate your way through topical information and see how it related and informed other silos of activity….

The ability of the online medium to tell stories and to allow journalists to create new ways of creating understanding and describing the agenda seems to be lost in the contemplation of dwindling revenue.

In response to will online “Shaft or Save?” journalism I come down on SAVE, so long as there is a willingness to innovate.

UPDATE: I watched the 2007 Andrew Olle Lecture given by John Hartigan broadcast last night on the ABC.

You can read the transcript here or listen to it here.(MP3 RealMedia 28k+)

Amazing. No really. Inspirational, visionary, passionate. Go check it out:

‘….journalism is in very good shape. In many ways, better than ever. There has never been a better time to be a journalist. And the value of good journalism has never been greater. “

‘…digital technology is delivering a more diverse range than ever of wonderful journalism. Our audiences are capable of telling the difference. The one thing they don’t have is enough time to consume what’s available. This is why demand for high quality news from credible sources will grow, not decline.”

“Newspapers draw our attention to things we didn’t know we were interested in. The internet hasn’t induced passive browsing in the same way but I think the content that achieves this will attract a huge audience. As journalists we’ve never had more inducements to open our minds, stretch our imaginations or reach more people.”

Some of the best ideas happen over a drink, perhaps not including me doing video posts but here you go anyways…

Beers n Ideas is an hour of inspiration during which experienced idealists present snippets of work over a schooner. This month Craig Allchin from Six Degrees Architects opened our eyes to the potential of laneways and cheap rent to transform a city into a cultural hub.

Six Degrees isn’t a design principle. It came about as a result of having six young graduate architects working in a shared studio environment in the early 90’s. None were registered architects, they were also interested in the power of a group being greater than the sum of the individuals. The Beers ‘n’ Ideas team are also responsible for Raise the Bar.

The Hope Street Markets are a joy. Fantastic new designers supporting urban compassion. A better life for the less fortunate and hip lucky dips? Bring it on!

Watch this space for news on Sydney’s newest Interesting node….

After following along with Interesting2007 from over here on this side of the world, Emily from Conformists Unite and the Sydney coffee morning gang thought why should London have all the joy? So we’re putting on an Interesting South here in Sydney at the end of November. The evening of November 22nd actually.

This is a marketing conference for marketing people but none of the speeches will be directly about marketing.

Not about brands, advertising, blogging or twitter but interesting, unexpected, original things.

We’re hoping to find fascinating people and have speak about something they care about. We want to replicate the experience of clicking from one really good blog to another, ranging across sciences, arts, musics, jokes and whatever.

There will be 10 minute slots and 3 minute slots to speak. And some people who can’t be there will send in three minute videos. The idea is to be informal and fast paced.

Interesting South is sponsored by Open Intelligence Agency but overall is very much a collaborative, not-for-profit project.

So we’re deliberately keeping the price low enough so anyone can rock up.

First batch of tickets available at: http://interestingsouth.eventbrite.com

We’re currently looking for speakers! If you know someone who would be good or have any idea yourself, just jot down a brief description (25 -100 words or so) you can submit them via our Facebook Group Interesting South by October 25th.

YouTube has launched a program that enables non-profit organizations to setup their own channels free of charge. The channels enable non-profits to upload public service announcements, footage of their work, and calls to action. Additionally, the channels allow non-profits to use Google Checkout to collect donations without being charged any fees.

YouTube also plans to launch a central location where users will be able to browse all of the non-profit channels. For the moment, you can browse some of the channels that have been created so far on the YouTube NonProfit Program page.

On a similar note, Pure Digital (makers of the Flip video camera) are offering a million camcorders for non-profits. Combine the two and you have a great platform to show people why you matter to your community.

At under $200, Pure Digital’s recently announced Flip Video camcorders are already pretty inexpensive, but the company now looks to be trying to make them even cheaper for non-profit organizations — as in free. That’s the goal of the company’s just announced Flip Video Spotlight program, which aims to give up to one million of the camcorders to non-profits and other non-governmental organizations over the next five years.

Apparently, the initiative (which is set to get underway this December) will operate as a donor matching program, with donors (or the organizations themselves) able to purchase so-called Flip Video Spotlight Kits, which Flip Video will match one-to-one. Much like the OLPC program, Flip Video sees virtually no end to the benefits of its camcorders, with Pure Digital CEO Jonathan Kaplan saying the company believes “video can help change the world.”

In addition Current TV offer a pretty comprehensive online producer training course

Thanks for the head up Matt!

The lovely Ann Handley asked attendees at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum in Chicago were asked what interesting things they’ve found when they Google themselves.

 It’s great to see fellow Age of Conversation authors C.B. Whittlemore, David Armano and Matt Dickman in full flight.

Comfortable is just boredom with good PR.

The only people who say they have all the answers don’t have all the questions.

I’m a big fan of Continuous Learning and I need to feed the fire of my insatiable curiosity with great regularity or I get anxious (or bored, same-same).

One of the many things I’ve learned is that one of the best ways to really clarify knowledge is to try to bring it to life for someone else, which also brings to life this little gem I found on the tiny public school in Bourke St:

• Teaching is the greatest form of optimism.

Matt has recently commented: “ increasingly, being a professional will be less about doing the work yourself (although that should never go away) and more about showing amateurs how to do it good themselves. In effect, we all have to become teachers“.

I love the teaching part of my role- it’s tremendously rewarding to see the lights go on and I’m committed to creating pathways to understanding (it’s not so ronely then). I’m optimistic that I’m not actually speaking martian to marketers and that I have the ability to create a common language, and I learn more with each success I have in creating comprehension.

For me learning and teaching are the warp and the weft  that allow you to see the cloth of the future.

 
In the depths of a couple of fairly significant international pitches this week and I found a lovely piece of research that made sure any chip that might have been trying to take up residence on my shoulder was firmly given the flick.

This poll sought to determine what prompts brand spenders to search for a new agency, the most effective ways for agencies to engage with clients, and the reasons they choose one agency over another. Among the studys findings:

• In general, clients don’t feel that size matters, but agencies tend to believe it does.
• The majority of clients (83%) don’t feel geographical location is an issue, but many agencies think it is.
• 85% of clients say agencies don’t prepare  enough.
• Most clients (75%) are seeking to buy actual solutions to business problems - whereas most agencies think the client is looking for advertising, PR, design or some other silo-fit.
• Clients want agencies to be far more proactive, whereas most agencies like to sit in the bunker.

Examining the reasons for choosing one agency over another, the study (pdf) found that though “chemistry” and “strength of creative work” scored highly, as might be expected, so did “quality customer insights.” Respondents ranked the various factors as follows:

1. Quality customer insights
2. Chemistry
3. Creative work
4.  Service level / response to needs ongoing
5. Cost control
6. Innovative / strategic thinking
7. Case for ROI
8. Client list
9. Strict adherence to brief
10. Seniority of account team
11. Location
12. Size

I’m refreshed  and invigorated that it is the ability of an agency to see connection between the brand and their audience and the passion that they bring to their work (which is what I take to mean chemistry) that are the fundamental drivers for client agency lerve. Vive L’Amour! 

I’m a big fan of Facebook- I’m mad about the open source nature of its apps. I’m a champion of random encounters with past acquaintances and silly exchanges with people you’ve just met and I love the instantaneous social clusters it generates…

Like this one by the clever clogs team here in the middle of some blog jousting on innovation:

• Name: kick a campbell  
  Description: if you see rob campbell he needs to be kicked

Or this one formed to support my favourite local coffee guys:

• Name: The Single Origin Roasters Appreciation Club
  Description: This group is for all that share the same love of Single Origin Roasters coffee! Please feel free to share your story/experience of this amazing coffee roasting house in Reservoir Surry Hills, who in our opinion serve the BEST coffee in Sydney! 

And in response to the research that has widely reported that the site is costing Australian businesses $5 billion I’ve heartily subscribed to this one:

• Name: The Church of FaceBook
  Description: Hell is other people - Jean Paul Satre
  Beliefs:
  This is religion ‘lite’, you get all the benefits of belief without the guilt and worship is as simple as logging into Facebook
  Here’s a summary:
  1. No more guilt.
  2. Idiots should not be running things.
  3. No restrictions on Facebook in the workplace

I was up for a very shouty piece on what total bollocks this article was but Matt, as usual, has said it first and much better than I could in his post How Facebook will kidnap your children and 3 trillion dollar ransom:

Using their rigorous scientific methodology, I can predict that coffee will cost Australian businesses $20 billion. Seriously, if 3.2 million Australian workers (say 4 from each of the 800,000 workplaces in Australia) spend approximately one hour a day drinking coffee with each other (about the same time the Facebook obsessives are on there, degrading themselves) then that means that coffee is four times as damaging to the Australian economy as Facebook.

It’s great to know that the generation that is leading our country to economic ruin isn’t that pesky GenY group of layabouts but, as Businessweek says, Fogeys Flock to Facebook:

 ” older users are behind the recent traffic surge. In June, 11.5 million of the individual visitors to the site were 35 or older, more than double the number a year before, according to market researcher ComScore Media Metrix. The 35-and-up crowd now accounts for more than 41% of all Facebook visitors.

I’m a big believer that the more rounded the individual, the more connected they are to the community at large, the more interests they have,  the better the perspective they can bring to their work.

I think what’s going on is that we have a pretty dedicated work culture where eating lunch at your desk is the norm and the notion of a watercooler conversation, or a tea break has gone by the wayside. Australians work longer and longer hours and face increasing commuting times, all which lead to social isolation. It could be that the more mature you are, the more you might manage your time and productivity with micro breaks throughout the day to feel connected and replenish your energy.

I was reading Rob Campbell’s post The Difference Between Science Fiction And Fiction Is Time, and, well it made me really quite shouty….

I’m a huge fan of having a rant, standing on imaginary soapboxes and not holding back from either fear or favour from sharing my opinions, so I’m going to jump in with both feet on this one. He says

“creativity seems to have been pigeon holed into the ‘output’ of certain industries or arts - as opposed to being associated with anything  where the aim is to create something new/better thanks to brains and imagination and skill.
……..resulting in a World where dramatic innovation is…becoming less frequent

I call shenanigans! Does ‘the World’ think that, or just ad-wankers?

I am interested in where you would get the data supporting the statement that we live in a ‘World where dramatic innovation is…becoming less frequent’, and that young people are failing to flourish as a result.

What I’ve learned from the recent groups we’ve done with University students is that they are (in the main) exited about the dramatically changing world they live in- they talk about technology as a connecting and equalising force, that social entrepreneurship will save the world where governments can’t and that they are confident that they have the skills to navigate a world that doesn’t exist now but that they will create. They’re not waiting for anyone to facilitate their future.

Watch out. Stand back. It just doesn’t get more innovative or creative than that.

Does the Internet not count as a dramatic change and as a catalyst for dramatic change? Like social networks valued in the billions created by people under 25? Isn’t that an example of engineering , innovation and creativity?

 Today a teacher taught her first lesson in zero gravity, answering questions from school children hundreds of miles above Earth.

Teacher-astronaut Barbara Morgan was also asked how being a teacher compared to being an astronaut.:

“Astronauts and teachers actually do the same thing,” she answered. “We explore, we discover and we share. And the great thing about being a teacher is you get to do that with students, and the great thing about being an astronaut is you get to do it in space, and those are absolutely wonderful jobs.”

There are so many amazing things happening. So many wonderful fields of endeavour. Science. Medicine. Policy. Literature. Technology. Social Justice. Awesomeness is happening everywhere under our noses. Check out TED. 

As advertisers and professional storytellers we have so many inspirational stories that we can draw on to inspire, inform and engage. We needn’t be limited to rock stars and rich girls.

We have the power to encourage and inspire. We can be heroes. Not ‘them’. Us.

 This is so good I’m reproducing the whole post. It’s by Michael Rosenblum and called The Ice Story:

There is an old expression that says, “necessity is the mother of invention”.

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Necessity does not drive invention. Rather, new inventions come along and mess up every one’s life. They would, for the most part, prefer that they went away entirely.

This is true not only in broadcasting, but in everything.

Take ice.

Ice was once a fantastic business.

If you are old enough to remember, your grandmother or great grandmother had an ice box. This stood in the kitchen, and once a week the ice man came and delivered a block of ice. That was what kept the food cold and fresh.

Ice was harvested in gigantic ice ponds that were scattered across New England. In the wintertime, ice was harvested from those ponds and stored in heavily insulated ice houses. A good ice house could keep its ice in tact through the summer.

Ice was such a good business, and the science of insulation so sophisticated, that by the middle of the 19th Century, clipper ships delivered ice from New England all the way to India. One can imagine how the crowds swarmed the docks in Calcutta when an ice ship arrived.

If your father had an ice delivery route in Manhattan, you were almost certainly set for life. The ice business was a secure trade. Ice, after all, had been around since the Roman Emperors brought fresh snow down from the Appenines into Rome in the summertime to cool them. And by the mid 19th Century, the ice industry was massive. There were delivery routes, ice tongs, ice ponds for harvesting, ice houses for storage, technologies to cut the ice… it was massive.

Then, in 1876, Jacob Perkins, an American living in London, invented refrigeration.

In a moment, in a stroke, the ice industry was over.

The much sought after delivery routes, the seemingly invaluable ice ponds, the chain of delivery… all over, in a flash.

A new technology had rendered the entire industry… an entire world, obsolete. And all the crying and complaining and whimpering did not a bit of good. It was over. Ice was dead.

Technology is merciless.

When a new technology comes along, one either adapts or dies. And death is both swift and certain.

Darwin wrote that the neither strength nor intelligence are the best traits for survival, it is the ability to adapt to change.

Kodak was once the industry leader in photography. Say Kodak and you as much as said photography. But when digital cameras came along, Kodak was arrogant. “We are film” they said in Rochester.

Kodak could have owned digital photography. They were there first, had the market position and had they moved quickly could easily have adapted early. But they did not. They were too comfortable to see what a new technology was about to do to them. It destroyed them. Tell someone you have just bought a Kodak camera and watch their eyes.

The web, and in particular, video on the web are about to do to a whole range of industries what digital images did to Kodak.

The arrival of the Internet, and particularly video over the Internet is the equivalent of Jacob Perkins’ invention of refrigeration: a fantastic new technology that in a stroke wipes out whole businesses, some of them seemingly rock solid. They are not.

What is the value of a local TV station or a transmitter when infinite amounts of video can be delivered online direct to homes for almost no cost?

What is the value of a printed newspaper when the same information can be delivered to every home in the world instantly online at no cost?

Once that newspaper is online, what differentiates it, if anything, from a television station? If online can carry video, how can your former ‘newspaper’ only be in text when the medium can do so much more? (Do you see a lot of text-only TV channels?)

The entire world of media is about to change due to a new and very destructive technology. Those who adapt will survive, but they will evolve into something very different from what they are now. Those who fail to adapt will die. Like the invention of refrigeration, the Internet means the end of what was once a very old and established business.

And what you have seen until now is only the tip of the iceberg… so to speak

P.S. Savage Chickens also boast a Metal Band name generator- it’s funny but one of my best girlfriends has eternally won this competition in my eyes.

All girl AC/DC cover band= Clakker Dakker