experiencefreak.com

nytimes interactive map here. courtesy of psfk.

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he’s brought Powerpoint to an artform, created a book of word-tree poetry, and oh yeah he cut a few albums. now david byrne makes buildings sing:

From Byrnes website:

“I’d like to say that in a small way it turns consumers into creative producers,” Byrne explains on his official site, “but that might be a bit too much to claim. However, even if one doesn’t play the thing, it points toward a less mediated kind of cultural experience. It might be an experience in which one begins to reexamine one’s surroundings and to realize that culture — of which sound and music are parts — doesn’t always have to be produced by professionals and packaged in a consumable form.

“I’m not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartments,” he adds, “but I do think the reign of music as a commodity made only by professionals might be winding down. The imminent demise of the large record companies as gatekeepers of the world’s popular music is a good thing, for the most part.”

More from wired:

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pure awesomeness: Que Vuelvan los Lentos.

this slow dance revival/protest has me inspired. being a child/teen of the 80’s my Austin revival playlist will be as follows:

1) songs from any of the following movies: say anything, pretty in pink, st. elmos fire, sixteen candles, or any other assorted cusak or brat pack flick.

2) morrisey or the cure before they were fat or happy.

3) more cowbell (or hairspray rather): bach’s sixteen and life, here I go again, or axl’s november rain.

4) no nukes, plenty of ducky hair: forever young, true colors, or selected berlin and english beat.

don’t judge, just slow dance people and remember… there will chaperone’s. more suggestions for your Que Vuelvan los Lentos flashmob here and here.

THANKS: to Luciana for the bad/good flashbacks. ;)

→ No CommentsCategories: Guilty Pleasures · cultural fringesTags:

damn you Noah!… I’m insanely jealous for not thinking of this first ;) welcome friends to brandtags.net

The main idea:

the end result:

contribute to the clouds, through a multitude of brands yourself and watch the tagclouds grow. will be interesting… will it organically and naturally populate? will brands freak out and get their pr agencies to spin with positive tags? will wal-mart haters, and anti-consumerists hijack the clouds? only time will tell.

regardless, noah’s really onto something with this in a lot of respects. and its a prime example of how online “conversation” can be rolled up for insight, to view the world in different ways, and discover the emotive web. I’ve heard some planners using the web as a “virtual focus group”, or massive data pool but frankly for the most part efforts have been weak. blackshaw never really capitalized on the possibility to create tools for us touchy feely qual folks and instead went after the brand cops client side. …and well, most planners don’t have the tech-inclinations that someone like Noah has.

stay tuned.. I bet we see more of these pop up quick-like. I’ve been tinkering with some myself, but am not quite handy enough to start coding myself ;)

here’s a few more examples to explore:

twistori

wefeelfine.org

summize.com

tagcrowd

hunchengines

→ 1 CommentCategories: geekery · info design · online inspirationTags:

so now that i’ve expanded my twitter roster a bit, i’m noticing all kinds of twitter-heads. from a simple “what are you doing”, people have moved on to use the platform in several different ways.

here’s an unstable (literally and figuratively) sample size-up of twitter user segments:

twIDsmentation:

twiIDsters: revealing, unfiltered, if not sometimes scary personal headlines

twurps: less revealing, but ADD addled. kinda like coughing up a furball, burping at the dinner table or having mild tourrettes

ocd-ers: relentless, constant, chatty twitter stream of consciousness

EgoIDsts: Self promotional, blog promoting posters.

twIMs: People using twitter like its Gtalk/iChat or AIM. Kindof like those in the cube next to you, that have loud meetings, or personal phone calls with friends

twiocemail: Using twitter to post your status or as it all started, the “what are you doing” billboard

…i’d say I’m a twIDster/twUrp most of the time. How bout you?

→ No CommentsCategories: cultural fringes · media cultures · new media · social mediaTags:

courtesy of the Texas Chili Parlor Mens Room. Austin, Tx.

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Todays Business Week reveals a gloomy outlook for folks living in the suburban world brought to you by James Kunstler. Within the interview, James shares his very pointed views (in fact given commentary about his blog and books, some would say self loathing pessamism) on where american society is going thanks to years of rabid consumption, disseappering oil supplies, and the resulting inflation from everything to food products, commuter costs, and housing.

Far be it for me to preach too much on this subject, given I’m part of the marketing consumer culture machine. I’m more than fine with that, as long as I am able to work with responsible brands, and in an innovative/transparent culture. Regardless, I’ve always shared a degree of Jame’s pessimism. Suburban life, and it’s extreme consumption is something of a phobia of mine, not so much the lifestyle but the utter blandness and “bigness” of it all. And on a side note this culture of “stuff” is surely not just a trapping of the american suburban family, it appears to be throughly ingrained in the youngest of the working generations. For me, years of being shoeboxed into a Manhatten apartment, has contained my need for a McMansion, and most of all that keeping up with the Jones stuff. Well, except for all the techgadgets, but I digress.

But if you do live the life of a well intentioned (if not overly consumed) suburban worker, what happens when the world around you becomes entirely to expensive for car culture? If your fancy imported food get’s out of arms length due transport costs, if you can’t afford the nanny, or the one income parenting? The daily 45 minute drives to Walmart, Best Buy, and Home Depot big boxes.

My guess is you do what us free-agents tend to do. You work from home. You avoid the car whenever you can (alien to most of America, but I’m sure that we’ll see a shift (albeit small) in no-brainer car use. Foregoing the 3 hours trains, planes and automobiles is a huge savings in terms of time and money. It gives you more time to shop local, eat local, and be there for your kids. In my world it doesn’t mean isolation, in fact the opposite is true. It clears my car off the highway for at least 2/3rds of the week, and I’m enormously more productive in my work and my life.. except of course when I ramble off on a blog post. I’m able to collaborate with people through IM, iChat Video, blog commentary, social media sites, and of course the phone.

Yes, yes, we’ve heard this before. Sounds like “new economy” bullshit right? I’m not so sure. We’ve seen this ebb and flow of remote working for years. IBM, PriceWaterhouseCooper, dot.coms, and startups have experimented for it since the 90s. It appears remote work continues to rise. There’s obvious pluses and minuses, and frankly some employers HATE the concept, and some of their employees are simply not wired for it. Whatever your

I won’t go as far as to say that a nodal/loose network of remote employees will become the only solution, but isn’t inevitably a better idea in an inflation ridden, high cost of transportation economy?

You tell me.

→ 1 CommentCategories: economies · industryisms · rants · social changeTags:

Nokia hits it out of the park (though that sports analogy doesn’t work so well for this EMEA-based brand campaign).

http://www.get-out-and-play.com/. Simply awesome.

PS: Don’t let your A.D.D. get the best of you. Spend a few seconds with the video, and you’ll get a surprise that’s well worth the wait. Thanks to AgencySpy.com for the tip-off.

→ No CommentsCategories: case studies · geekery · new media · online inspirationTags:

A letter from the internet:

To my dearest technology geeks, marketing entreprenuers, info-strategists, and designers.

I love you dearly. I just want you to know that. I mean, without you I wouldn’t be here. I owe you everything, but… I’m afraid I have to break up with you. Instead of working with you direct, I’m going to do things myself, or surf the thousands of people that can do your job cheaper and better.

Really though, it’s not you. It’s me. That’s the way I’m built to think after all. Sometimes I wish you didn’t watch The Matrix, Terminator, or Star Trek Borg episodes so often.

Take care, and maybe I’ll interact with you soon. I’ll have my spiders contact your experience metatags and rfp responses posts and we’ll do lunch.

xxxooo,

The Internet

Hmmmm.. Sound far fetched to you? Your waaaay to personable, talented, well-liked, and educated right? Well think again my friends cause Amazon is into the long-tail of people sourcing, creating a project-based automation system to dole out tasks of your job to independant consultants, freelancers, moonlighters, retirees, and simply anyone people who might have the time on there hands. Enter Mechanical Turk.

The concept is amazing, though clearly not set up to make any of us alot of money. As Bezos says,while most companies and salaried folk dread the commoditization of their business, Amazon thrives within it and wants to monetize project sourcing Wal-Mart style. It’s been around for a few years, but looks as if it could be ready to get mroe traction as similiar platforms seem to be popping up all around over the past 12 months.  Though it’s hard to know how much elasticity this process has for extended marketing services, there’s a growing community of free-agents and companies that use these types of services online.

Things to consider before we get ahead of ourselves.  Quality control of output? Feedback mechanisms for strategy development? Good old fashioned relationship building and peer-two-peer collaboration to make the product better? Like the backlash of customer service outsourcing, lack of interpersonal interaction or communication skills could lead to stumbling blocks. Regardless, this direct-to-task master approach could surely make certain marketing service functions a heck of a lot easier to commoditize.

Random Tangent: ..if you take this to the extreme case, it makes you wonder if an “idea economy” matters with systems like mechanical turk in place. Does it break down the advantages of highly educated/technically trained workers in a traditional salaried job? A task-oriented “idea” economy? I’ll let Grant or Logan mull that one over, but in the mean time I’m drooling over the genius of these new Amazon platforms. I also presume that theres a similiar strategy independents could take to make this work for them.

In case your thinking Amazon is the only one with skin in the task automation game, here’s a bunch more examples.  And to my earlier point, they seem to be cropping up at an expanding pace thanks to the mainstreaming of social technology:

Source/Bid/Outsource

TechDirt

FreelanceChina

Elance

Collaboration and Sourcing:

Kluster

Automated Marketing Intel and Consulting Sources

TriggerBox

Speed To Market Planning Tools/Complexity Reduction:

Jumpchart

….also talked about in detail by Tim Ferris and similarly (but less task-oriented/actionable): Behance, The Purple List, etc

Can anyone help me with more?

Fun stuff to wrap your head around. And by the way, don’t lose too much sleep my free-agent friends. Our hourlies might go down but after we:

1) outsource someone to disseminate our profile’s throughout the multitude of these properties that are going to spring-up,

2) spider the web for our specialties key words,

3) and do a little SEO on our credentials,

we’ll be mechanical turks making the long-tail bucks amazon style too ;)

Note: Thanks to Noah for the inspiration.

→ No CommentsCategories: online inspiration · social media · techTags: , cloud staffing, crowd-sourcing, elance, marketing outsourcing, micro-automation, online task automation, people cloud computing, web automation

I usually don’t do the old cut and paste on trade articles, but this one is a keeper. From David Armano’s Brand Interactions are Our Future.. But Are Interaction Designers Part of Our Agency?, this piece is telling and also a great summary of why I left my day job to go it alone on the free-agent consultant side things.

Whatever buzzword you use: comms planning, interaction design, connection planning, user-centered marketing, info-architecture or just plain old integration (the old and often villified predecessor buzzword), there are far to few of these so-called “renaissance” folks to go around. And nearly not a one really desire to work in an ad agency.

So how do we develop more of these folks? And what will it take for Agencies to actually accept AND utilize them? <read David Armano’s article below>

Brand Interactions Are Our Future

But Are Interaction Designers Part of Your Agency?

Posted by David Armano on 04.22.08 @ 01:24 PM

David Armano

Ever wonder how on Earth Google went from a technology company to one of the world’s most recognizable and successful brands? Was it the whimsical brightly colored logo? How about the ads? Wait, Google really doesn’t advertise all that much — do they?

Brand Google was built on a lot of different things. If brand 1.0 was Coke, built on a solid foundation of marketing, then brand 2.0 is more like Google, built on an ecosystem of experience and natural word of mouth referrals. But the one thing I want to call out is something I like to refer to as “micro-interactions.”

Micro-interactions

Micro-interactions are the everyday exchanges that we have with a product, brand and service. Each one, in and of itself, seems insignificant. But combined they define how we feel about a product, brand or service at a gut emotional level. In the case of Google, each time it helps us find what we are looking for, view a map, send an e-mail or connect with a friend, it deposits a positive impression in our memory banks. Kevin Roberts expresses a similar sentiment in his book “Lovemarks”:

“Lovemarks transcend brands. They deliver beyond your expectations of great performance. Like great brands, they sit on top of high levels of respect — but there the similarities end.

Lovemarks reach your heart as well as your mind, creating an intimate, emotional connection that you just can’t live without. Ever.”

All You Need Is Love?

Sounds all syrupy sweet and romantic right? Who wouldn’t want to have a “lovemark brand?” And who wouldn’t want to work with one? Only there’s a bit of trouble in paradise here. Back to the example of Google, and maybe even more appropriately the whole host of 2.0 web applications that are shifting consumer behavior, there is a core discipline that is fueling this movement: interaction designers.

Call them information architects, experience designers or Jack or Jane — they are the design geeks who love to sweat the details. They care about “micro-interactions” and toil away at the building blocks of what actually results in a “lovemark” in the end. We love to use applications that help us do things like plan vacations, find old friends and share our passions with the world. The ad industry has made a big mistake in the past by thinking technology was for geeks. Technology, in fact, is a love affair.

Agency 2.0, Interaction Design and Renaissance People

Back to interaction designers. Here’s a concept worth thinking about: many of them don’t want to work for your ad agency. How do I know this? Because I talk to them daily. The most common response I get is, “Why would I want to work on a constant stream of microsites and promotions?” Interaction designers thrive on long-term project engagements. They yearn to sink their teeth into complex problems, wrapping their heads around how they can help solve them.

An agency environment that churns out digital program after program is less appealing — especially when there are opportunities to go work with a start-up, a non-agency or even, perhaps, the future Googles of the world. In an industry built off of the copywriter-art director dynamic duo, it’s time to think about talent in terms of “Renaissance people.” Many interaction designers fit this bill.

Get Serious About the Intersection of Design + Technology

So what’s an agency to do? Case studies such as Nike +, Domino’s Pizza configurator and Harley-Davidson’s trip planner point to a future where interaction design plays a significant role.

Speaking at Interaction ‘08 recently, I referenced some of these examples and our work on the “My Vegas” social utility to highlight the opportunities to move brands beyond typical marketing campaigns into more of a “micro-interaction” model. We can actually create models of engagement that are sustainable over time. This is where the opportunities lie and we have to get serious about it if we want to attract the talent I’m describing.

Some agencies are seeing the writing on the wall. Crispin, for example, sponsored the conference for interaction designers. A recruiting opportunity? Perhaps. But one thing is for sure — moving a brand forward will be measured by the interactions a person has with it and technology plus design will play a critical role. That’s brand 2.0 in an interactive world.

Article URL: http://adage.com/digitalnext/article?article_id=126579

→ No CommentsCategories: connections planning · industryisms · info design · rantsTags: brand interactions are the future, comms planning, connections planning, david armano, interaction design.