If you’ve been to CES before, you already know it’s a glittering, gadgety onslaught of technology wonder (and to be honest) a hoard of electronic chest thumping.  Throw in a tsunami of technology sales people, marketers, game geeks and aisles and aisles of mediocre third party accessory manufacturers you’ve suddenly ventured into strange land. A land where Best Buy has just taken over Times Square New Years Eve, moved it to Vegas while a porn conventionsets up next door. Welcome to 2012 International CES in all it’s sales glam, technology girth and corporate gimme.

Which of course is why it’s glooooorious to observe…

But it’s also why you need to do a little pre-work to make sure you’re not sucked into 4 miles of convention floor with several hours of iPad docking stations and 500 inch 3D plasma screen televisions.

Here’s a basic, but handy guide to the “big picture” of CES 2012 for those of you that head to the show.

Ipsos-IOTX Austin Futures Group and UPSTREAM Design Innovation teams take a look at this years 2012 International CES pre-show, with trend observations, technology examples and recommended panels and exhibits. Co-Authored by Andy Hunter, Paul Noble Campbell, Jerry Courtney & Jeff Mulhausen.

But wait, there’s more.  Interesting background on Stromberg Carleson.

There’s so much I did not know about Steve Job’s as a person, and how much of his success was shaped by a very unique life.

His adoption, raised by working class parents.

His unusual education path, a college dropout… yet a non-dropout who essentially made a conscious decision to create his own education.  Observing classes that were interesting to him and drove his passion, and making that happen by sleeping on the floors of friend’s dorm rooms.

The depth’s of his lows when being fired from Apple and nearly begging an apology for screwing up Apple.

Realizing in hindsight the blessing of failure, and the freedom created by lifting the weight of leadership expertise and corporate success by relinquishing to becoming a “beginner” again.

His study of the art and science of typography design that clearly inspired is attention to elegant technology, creating a unique design centered business culture.

His countercultural experimentation and practice of Zen Buddhism.

And his terrible and rare cancer diagnosis that was both a blessing and curse that directed a long battle filled with hope and day-to-drive to live every day like it was his last.

I’m sure many of you already know some of this backstory.  It’s explains much and is also a reminder of how much our life experience shapes who we are.  No matter your view of Apple or the Man, spend the 15 minutes of your life watching this video.  It’s worth every second.

“Don’t be trapped by Dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.  Don’t let the noise of others opinions drown out your inner voice. Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.. they somehow already know what you truly want to become.  Everything else is secondary.”

[RIP Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011)]

*more inspiring quotes at Mashable.

[Repost from my entry at the openexchange.org.]

Created by Google Creative Labs,”3 Dream’s In Black” is part art experiment, musical collaboration, part CGI video and breakthrough web coding assignment. Driving a culture of experimentation, all Googler’s are encouraged to pursue experiments both relatable and non-relatable to Google’s business. All to drive a passion of innovation.

How Google makes innovation part of the cultural fabric, not a project or a siloed process.

• Democratizing Ideas. Engage “the people.” Have people magnify the mania and become your evangelists. The user is your marketer.
• Gaining Credibility through the right partners: With finesse of smart salesmanship to make ideas happen.
• Challenging conventions. Question how things should be done (e.g., YouTube and the Guggenheim??)
• Don’t do marketing. Solve problems.
• Know the user. Know the magic. Connect the two. What’s the emotion behind the idea? * taken from Jeffrey Davis’s blog, post his visit to Google Creative Labs.

Rome: 3 Dream’s in Black is an impressive feat with famous musicians including DJ Dangermouse of Gnarls Barkley fame, Jack White and Nora Jones. For most of us it might appear interesting, but not far from what we expect from video games and animated movies. The true stunner, is that this was essentially built with web code, “Web GL-JavaScript” and HTML 5. And.. through a Google Chrome Browser, you can steer and immerse yourself within it.

Amazing. Say hello to the future, the 3D virtual web experience.

Great stuff under the direction Chris Milk, Google Creative Director, Aaron Koblin and @radical media. More about the project at Mashable.

Though not blogging , I have been pulling together thinking and training in the digital space – content to help senior marketing and business folks understand the digital landscape.  Here’s an example of our latest long form work: Social Evolution: What’s Next For Social Media Marketing 2011. A collaboration with Graham Saxton, Ipsos Global Insights Director .

Share, steal.. and of course share-and-share alike.  Check out the Open Thinking Exchange blog at www.theopenexchange.org for more.

Math makes my head hurt.  In fact I’m horrible at it.  I can barely remember phone numbers much less memorize functions and derivatives.  Just ask any of my past calculus professors, I repeatedly had several of them.

Enter Mandlebrot, something of a rogue in math circles.  One that sought out the patterns in things around him and was intensely curious.  Only in the past few years had I been exposed to his work and I found it amazing. He was a technologist (working for IBM) and and academic (later a Yale professor) and something of an outsider who didn’t care much about making the establishment uncomfortable. Here’ a wonderful quote from his NYtimes Obit.

“He knew everybody, with interests going off in every possible direction,” Professor Mumford said. “Every time he gave a talk, it was about something different.”

He saw science in nature and nature in science and was a master at makes sense of the complex and presenting it back in genius simplicity.  Again from the NYTimes:

“Using fractal geometry, he argued, the complex outlines of clouds and coastlines, once considered unmeasurable, could now “be approached in rigorous and vigorous quantitative fashion.” Instead of rigorously proving his insights in each field, he said he preferred to “stimulate the field by making bold and crazy conjectures ”

I’d always been much more of a fan of geometry, it’s seeming logic bound to an aesthetic-visual mathematics.  I think if I came back as a quant geek, it would be quite nice to be the second coming of the ‘Brot. 

“I decided to go into fields where mathematicians would never go because the problems were badly stated,” Dr. Mandelbrot said. “I have played a strange role that none of my students dare to take.”

[Mandlebrots NYTimes obituary here]

[Seminal work. The Fractal Geometry of Nature on Amazon]

[Google Gallery of Fractal Imagery]

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This is quite old, but one of my favorite infographics of all time from Wired Magazine. Tracing the technology lineage of the Star Wars films and the impact of Industrial Light and Magic’s breakthroughs on multimedia, film and interactive technology it’s really interesting to dig into.

Check out the fully interactive version on wired.com.

Posted via web from experiencefreak

Re-Imagining the Newstand from experience freak on Vimeo.