Posted: 20 April 2010 | Author: Chris Unitt | No Comments »
I was up bright and early on the Saturday but none of the earliest sessions really took my fancy so I went exploring, wandering towards the upper floors of the Convention Centre and happening upon the Day Stage, which turned out to be a good move. 37signals’ Jason Fried came out came out and held forth on the subject of running a business.
He was reading chapters from REWORK, their latest book and one that I’ve since bought and (more surprisingly) read. It’s full of short, opinionated chapters, most containing some good common sense. The general aim of the book seems to be to try and dispel the myth that to be a successful business person you need to take on as much work as possible, please as many people as possible, work 23 hour days and grow as much as possible. Simple stuff and, as I said, pretty much common sense, but a useful counterpoint to much of the perceived wisdom out there.
It was a good morning actually, because next I went along to Design for Awareness: Mobile Technologies and Health which I went along to because I thought it would be interesting and a sidestep from my usual areas of interest. As it turned out it couldn’t have been more relevant to my current interests. I don’t think my notes quite reflect what was going through my head while I was sat there but I’ll try and get them written up separately later. In the meantime, here are Jason Hall’s notes.
Next up was Designing The First Fifteen Minutes. Another good session and another one I’ll write up notes for separately. My go-to person on this kind of stuff is Joshua Porter who was name-checked right at the end. It was good to get some different examples of effective sign-ups.
At this point I had a bit of a break before catching the second half of Ze Frank Conversation: The Creative Lifestyle. The main topic of conversation seemed to concern Ze’s attempts at cracking the traditional entertainment industry. I’m not entirely sure what the main story was there but he had the air of a man whose time had been wasted on an endeavour he was never utterly sold on. Actually, his story reminded me a bit of Stringer Bell’s (without the drugs, guns and so on)
The last session of the day was Gaming the System with 4chan. A generally amiable meander with Christopher Poole and a pretty decent end to the day. I didn’t take any notes because I wasn’t really there to learn anything, although a theory that Wikipedia is a game for fans of bureaucracy has stuck with me.
Posted: 19 March 2010 | Author: Chris Unitt | 2 Comments »
I got back from SXSWi yesterday. I’ve got notes to write up about the various sessions I went to (the good ones at least) but for now:
- It was good. Not revelatory, but definitely worthwhile
- Sitby.us was a great iPhone friendly tool, much better than the official app. Here’s my schedule for the week
- I lost my voice for the first few days. Socialising when you can’t talk can be a depressing experience
- Again, meeting folks from the UK was the best and most useful part of the trip
- We stayed in a great house (above) but next year I’d rather be closer to the centre of town
- If you think there’s a limit to the number of foods that can be served with cheese, you’ve not been to Texas
- Texan cab drivers are great ambassadors for their city, although the one that kept going on about the Cherokee nation did scare me a little
(Pic by Toby Barnes)
Posted: 11 May 2009 | Author: Chris Unitt | No Comments »
It was a while ago now, but I’ve got a few notes left over from a couple of panels I went to and I may as well dump them here in a single post – you never know what someone else will find useful, so here they are:
Regional Whuffie – Attracting Innovation
Or ‘the co-working panel’. Truth be told, ‘awesome fatigue’ had taken hold around this point and so, although the panelists were all interesting people doing interesting things, the excessive chuminess and back-slapping was a little hard to stomach.
It’s a problem that marred many of the panels – a lack of incisive questioning which glossed over the troubles, mistakes and difficulties to allow much less useful evangelism/self-promotion.
To spin the self-promotion more positively, this panel saw some interesting case-studies including The Runway Project and ArtCamp.
On the question of how to fund a coworking space, the advice was to not think of it as a business but to do the minimum necessary at any time. Focus on improving community and the city as a whole. The space will follow.
The other piece of advice was to adopt successful international projects such as Pecha Kucha nights, Ignite or 20×2.
How LA Built a Successful Tech Community
The worst panel I attended but the fascinating awfulness of it all left me rooted to my chair. Apparently LA’s scene is a humble one, living in the shadow of LA’s entertainment industry and the San Francisco scene. I didn’t see a lot of humility though.
Half the room were LA residents and things never really lifted above being an insular love-in/bitching session.
The lessons, such as there were any, were to self-promote and to promote others around you. Actually, this is probably worth bearing in mind – there’s been plenty of good stuff happening in Birmingham but information about this rarely gets outside the bubble. The social media surgeries, for example, tend to generate a few blog posts where people say what a good thing they are and those posts are read by others who attended. What about writing a press release and sending it to a newspaper/some council officers/charity workers instead?
Posted: 26 March 2009 | Author: Chris Unitt | No Comments »
Remixing the Museum Exhibition
Speakers:
- Jim Forrest – Peabody Essex Museum
- Ben Tucker - GreenRiver.org
- Ellis Neder – Creative Dir, Sway Design
- Steven Alvarez – Dir of Programs & Media, Alaska Native Heritage Center
Museums can be conversational – you can go with friends and chat about the exhibits. Museums have not generally translated this online. The idea is to get visitors to help museums to collect and share.
The object on display is the point of conversation.
Echospace
Each item in the museum’s collection will be on there eventually.
The site has a digital uploading tool similar to Flickr or YouTube. The site also plugs in to Flickr and YouTube’s APIs.
It also has a touch of wikipedia about it. Users can grab museum resources, add their own and tell a story.
Why did they do this?
Not bandwagon jumping.
It’s a very diverse organisation with locations all over. They are used to using tech just to operate.
They take a lot of viewpoints – academic, tribal, and cultural values and mash them together. Media has been very useful to find commonalities.
New Trade Winds (2002) – project was to use web 2.0 tools to bring together stories.
Artscape – personal collaborative bookmarking tool
Hawaii Alive – traditional navigation/database model did not suit the best way to represent Hawaiian culture and values. Divided by realms of gods, man and ocean.
Teachers Domain – a crucial step on the way to Echospace. Filtering the best from worst practices but tricky to do so – delicate matters not wanting to insult a tribe
Realise that they’re being very open and that won’t go down well with some. Also accept that they don’t know everything and others can be brought in to give their view. Dark side of that conversation might come out but that’s needed.
Steven Alvarez
They’re not stuck in a pre-contact ‘leathers and feathers’ state. They use tech.
However, there’s a tension when doing traditional stuff with new methods. for example, new media allows shift from telling a story to a few people in a room to being able to amplify that voice immediately and, potentially, globally.
They’re targetting a narrower audience with Echospace – that’s a good thing.
All user uploads via the site go to a single YouTube account. A video that breaches YouTube’s T&Cs could be enough to have the account closed – a problem they’re still working on (although they keep back-ups of all videos).
Fears
Joy of oral history is that it changes with the telling – recording in this way captures and freezes those stories.
Also, the tribes have been burned before – people have taken stories, got rich off them and not paid promised royalties.
What happens if no-one uses this resource?
That’s fine. It’s a modular site so if some areas are not used they can dump it.
Is there moderation?
Yes, there is a moderator – a non-native anthropologist who will have her set of biases. Already found snags.
Posted: 26 March 2009 | Author: Chris Unitt | No Comments »
Building Strong Online Communities
BlogHer started from a flame war about where all the female bloggers are.
(Liked the line “We decided to do something instead of blogging about it”)
How do you talk to your community?
F – have to take stuff with a grain of salt. Decide if their views are representative of all users.
R – give users the tools and let them do their thing. There are areas they have little/no knowledge of. Found a use for Twitter – can do a search so if someone’s ranting about Reddit he can see and get a conversation going.
A – Twitter useful for engaging people who are on the fringes of participation. Created a forum for complaining about Ars Technica. They don’t have to answer everything as other users may not agree. Doing this publicly can be tricky – give people a chance to slate you in public but transparency is appreciated and if there’s a problem that many complain about you should probably fix it.
How is the community policed?
B – strict community guidelines. Provide safety from trolling/hate speech. Set that standard very early and now the site polices itself quite well.
F – Their rule is don’t be too much of an asshole. They have ‘Nark’ button for reporting users but sometimes see people using this to report comments just to get people in trouble.
R – they set up a wiki for guidelines. Became a list of dos and don’ts. Now they let people set up their own Reddits and let them moderate them themselves.
What do you do with problem bits of content?
B – pulled immediately and email sent to originator to explain why. Anything borderline gets you yanked.
F – similar but philosophy is it’s not capital punishment, it’s just deleting comments on a web page. Can always revisit/reconsider.
R – ditto
A – they leave stuff up unless it’s spam. Worry about silencing people as it’s seen as censorship in the AT culture.
DON’T:
- Tell rather than ask
- Change things without telling community in advance
- Not involve the community
- Troll your own readers
- Listen to readers too much (tyranny of the minority)
Also need to pay attention to the silent majority who don’t login, contribute, etc but make up most of traffic. Stats will tell you what they’re looking at, what they like and don’t like.
Common problem – forums with loads of topics. Starts off emptier and makes it hard for people to get to content.
Expectations online are very low. Engaging people in real life (or just via email) can be very powerful. Do this with the most engaged participants.
Is it worth educating users about being good net citizens?
B – yes. New people are always coming in so it’s good to restate things occasionally.
Other notes about this panel:
Posted: 24 March 2009 | Author: Chris Unitt | 1 Comment »
HOWTO: 149 Surprising Ways to Turbocharge Your Blog With Credibility!
Speakers:
Talk about everything and you talk to no-one.
Who is your ideal reader?
If you’re going to copy something successful make sure you’re copying the right parts of it. Not just the outside bits but the attitude, etc. May have been the unique circumstances surrounding something that made it a success.
Lawyer – a person who knows which forms to fill out to ruin you.
Getting paid – you get paid in attention. You can’t buy stuff with that but it’s amazing what you can do with that when it builds up.
When there’s news you want to know what happened, what it means and what that person thinks of it. Not many people will do that. Loads of people will just tell you that something happened.
Top tips:
- Give away stuff. Make it easy to get and give away more than you think you should.
- Have diverse revenue streams and keep looking for others
- Don’t do stuff that seems profitable but interferes with why people liked you in the first place
Photo by Randy Stewart, blog.stewtopia.com.
Posted: 24 March 2009 | Author: Chris Unitt | No Comments »
Curating the Crowd-Sourced World
Speakers:
This talk is available as a podcast.
Notes
Curation – taking suggestions from your audience. In the echo-chamber though. Making the popular even more popular. Doesn’t help with reaching beyond that audience.
There is value in changing perceptions.
Is presence of a curator a recognition of failure of the crowd?
No. Useful to inspire the crowd (cf V&A’s approach re setting a standard for other users to follow)
On too high a level (ie with a very large crowd) there’s a signal:noise problem.
Other notes about this panel:
Fwiw, my notes on this panel are sparse because (without wanting to sound big-headed) I found it was pitched a bit too far below my level. The panelists are all engaged in interesting projects but some of them seemed unable to step back from their practice and articulate what it is they do and how.
Posted: 22 March 2009 | Author: Chris Unitt | No Comments »
What Can We Learn From Games
Speakers:
- Henry Jenkins – Co-Dir CMS, MIT
- James Gee – Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies, Arizona State University
- Warren Spector – GM Creative Dir, Junction Point – Disney Interactive Studios
People are turned off by learning in the education system, but games are using learning as a ‘gateway drug’.
Games don’t just exist in the game, they survive online in the social networks. Support and advice on how to get through a game can be found eg in a forum.
Schools reward autonomous learners – collaboration is seen as cheating.
Trend now is to see the player as a designer – ie Spore
Critical media literacy is important.
When using games for education the authority/basis of the simulator/game is not questioned – just as textbooks don’t tend to be questioned. Need to look at mechanics of a game, critique it and so be able to design one yourself.
Games have taught that failure isn’t bad and collaboration is good. Opposite of schools.
Sci-fi is more interested in world-building than character-building. Reading for a world invites more creativity than reading for narrative. Readers can fill in the gaps in that world – flesh out the stories/narratives for themselves.
Photo by austinistdotcom.
Posted: 21 March 2009 | Author: Chris Unitt | 2 Comments »
Tips for Making Ideas Happen
Scott Belsky – CEO, Behance
This talk is available as a podcast.
There is a love for ideas generation but organisation is as important as creativity.
In the creative sector there is a general lack of accountability and leadership as well as disregarded and isolated networks. There’s also a lack of feedback.
Behance’s aims:
- Macro – organise the creative world’s work
- Micro – productivity for creatives – tips and tools
They have developed The Action Method (now online and with iPhone app).
Big point is that ideas don’t happen because they’re good. There needs to be a bias to action.
Ideas happen if there is:
- Ideas
- Organisation/productivity
- Communal forces
- Leadership
Ideas
Generate ideas in moderation and have someone to kill off the rubbish ones.
Distinguish urgent from important. Hoarding urgent items is a problem. May be able to delegate constant time-based stuff. Also, use windows of non-stimulation to get important stuff done
Organisation/productivity
Creativity x Organisation = Impact
Organise with a bias to action. Achievement is action taken.
The Action Method – from any occasion of creativity (meeting, dream, brainstorm, etc) one of the following should happen:
- Action steps
- Backburner items
- Reference items
Reference items are often worthless and only useful for legal reasons or for when someone is absent.
Measure a meeting in action steps.
Don’t just meet because it’s a Monday. Periodic meetings can be a waste of time if you get into the situation of itinerary-stuffing.
Publicise productivity. Brainstorming can be creative and visual – need to do the same for the process of getting things done.
Create a backburner ritual. Take time to sit and work through it.
Foster a culture of capturing action steps. Make sure people write things down. get people to say what they’re doing at the end of a meeting – makes sure less is missed and nothing duplicated.
Attraction breeds loyalty. Applies to productivity systems as much as anything else. If it helps, make folders pretty or, if someone likes to hop from system to system then let them – newness of organisation may be helping them.
Prioritise projects visually – use an energy line. This will show capacity of the team. Plot projects on a line showing priority from Extreme – High – Med – Low.
Create action areas (ie a post area) to group jobs
Communal forces
Doers, dreamers and incrementalists. Need to pair doers and dreamers. Are incrementalists the ideal combination? They may be trying to do too much.
Share ideas liberally. This is hard because:
- worry that ideas will be stolen (but if it’s that easy to execute was it that great/unique an idea)
- tendency to hang on to an idea until it’s fully formed
Share ownership of ideas too. Let others run with them. Letting go can be hard, but beneficial too.
Fight your way to breakthroughs – let all parts of a team fight their corners to make sure their standpoint comes across.
Don’t become burdened by consensus. Fight for a few of the more extreme ideas and let go on the rest (example of the person designing the World Trade Centre memorial.
Get respect – overcome the stigma of self-marketing. Example of violinist Joshua Bell busking.
If you’re not getting respect for your strengths then you won’t be listened to. It’s your responsibility. Creative community – lot of talent but don’t want to market themselves well enough because there’s a stigma attached.
Leadership
Leaders talk last. Not speaking is not a natural inclination for leaders.
If leader speaks out first then others are more likely to fall into line behind or not differ quite so much in their views.
Also, this discourages new talent and younger team members from getting involved/engaging.
Reduce the amount of ‘insecurity work’. Cut down on checking information – analytics, Twitter searches, stats. People check these out of insecurity, not business need.
Value the team’s immune system. Some ideas need to be killed off. Need the people who will shoot down ideas and will help to cut down unnecessary features, etc.
Stop focussing on visionaries. Most new ideas fail. Ideas often generated for the self of the person’s own crowd. Run them by someone ‘normal’ to see if they stand up (ie your mum).
Judge new hires based on initiative, not experience. A history of taking action is better than a history of good jobs.
Value chemistry over people. Having all the best people is good but having a complementary mix of skills on a team may be better. Harder and more expensive to hire for this but worthwhile.
Unique is opportune. Tend to shun people when they go against the grain but we celebrate heroes as being like this. Conformists are the oil that smoothes the operation of society.
Other posts about this talk:
Photo by alexdesign
Posted: 20 March 2009 | Author: Chris Unitt | 2 Comments »
F*ck Stats, Make Art
Dave Olson – Dir of Fan Communities, MovieSet.com
Art Makes The Future
More interested in what to blog or twitter about rather than blogging about blogging and tweeting about Twitter.
Popular art is not the stuff that lasts
No matter the circumstances, etc are, it’s the words that live on.
Craft + intent / integrity = art
(not a perfect formula but something to work from)
Tips:
- Upgrade your heroes
- (something about telling stories)
- Embrace translucency (because not everything is interesting)
- Improve cross-training
- Up your skills
- Don’t get precious
- Ignore the gatekeepers (you can publish yourself)
- Reap the rewards
There was a time when bloggers had the space to themselves and could be dismissive of traditional media, saying ‘they don’t get it’. Now all newspapers have blogs and there’s some good talent out there.
How can you rise above that? By being a better writer. Blogs, etc are the medium. That’s all. It’s still writing.
Build your castles in the air and put the foundations under them.
