Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

My professional life collided with my childhood yesterday when David Carson, the graphic designer known for Ray Gun Magazine and the movie "Helvetica" showed us this Transworld Skateboarding cover that he designed in 1985.

Notice the name of the issue is the "Full Bleed Issue." At the time (age 13) I thought it was some cool reference to skateboarding acidents. It turns out that it became possible for Transworld to make the images stretch to all edges of each page (a full bleed) for the first time. So David named the issue after a graphic design printing technique. And now, after not seeing the magazine for 23 years, I finally get the inside joke. Awesome. My life has come full circle.

Many presenters at Flashforward this year urged fearless experimentation and the courage to risk failure. Being bold, trying new things, and trusting your own instinct seemed a common theme. David Carson said that if you are not failing then you aren't pushing yourself hard enough. And Miha Pogacnik said that "the creative process leaves a trail of blood."

Transforming work into play and finding joy in your work seemed another common theme. Craig Swann suggested that we think about work as play and urged us to believe that R&D = R&R. Danny Stillion of IDEO suggest that we "fail often to succeed sooner. And we were reminded of Tal Ben-Shahar's idea that Happiness = Pleasure + Purpose.

Stacey Mulcahy gave some advice on how to unleash the creative potential of developers and the dangers of bad process. "Bad project process limits developers to implementation. Good project process enables developers to innovate and contribute. Meaningful innovation requires a good environment. Meaningful innovation is a competitive edge." I couldn't agree more. All too often coders get relegated to implementation.

The last idea that bubbled up several times was the cold, hard fact that the only way to be great at Flash is to bust your ass doing it. Call it work or call it play - doesn't matter. The only way to become great at what you do is to spend time doing it. You can stand on the shoulders of giants, but becoming a giant yourself requires passion, relentless experimentation and inspiration.

The Good

Metaliq , the new promoters and organizers of Flashforward 2008 had the courage to shake things up.  They gave the conference a strong theme.  They chose a great city. They added inspirational speakers from outside the community, and found great speakers from within the community. The event was smooth, well planned, and seamless.

I really enjoyed the raffles, the speaker slam, and the Thursday night after party. I loved Miha Pogacnik's keynote and was surprised how much of Jamy Iam Smith 's presentation carried over to Flash design.  Craig Swan , Robert Hogin , Jared Ficklin, and Erik Natzke were inspirational.

The Bad

Not all their risks and changes were for the better. Changing from a four track program to a one track program eliminated all choice. Next time I would appreciate at least two tracks.

The Ugly

The great speakers like Craig Swan and Paul Ortchanian were not permitted enough time to thoroughly talk about their subjects and show examples. The speakers seemed frustrated and the audience missed the inspirational work that these people do.

Additionally, the elimination of Q&A time make the conference a one way conversation. Q&A adds to the collaborative and interactive magic of the event and puts conference goers in touch with the leaders in the industry. I felt frustrated sitting in the dark, in an uncomfortable chair, without a good place for my laptop, watching the host get to have a conversation with the speakers.

The Bottom Line

A valiant first effort. The bad and ugly can be easily fixed. Metaliq seems to have good instincts about speakers and seems to understand the community. I look forward to next year, but will look for some changes to the format before I buy my ticket.

Meeting a lot of people so far. Ran into Bryan Zmijewski (from high school) and his coworker Jeremy.  Asked Steven Johnson to sign my book with a silver AIGA marker - I think the marker sort of threw him off. Met a couple of guys (Ian and Christian) from Deep Focus and got an update on a great friend that recently left the agency.

I had a delicious dinner and mojitos at Dona Emilias.  I have to be careful or I will eat every meal at Dona Emilias.

I just landed in Austin for SXSW. Looking forward to registering tomorrow morning and getting into the swing of things. I am going to blog while here and twitter and pownce regularly.

Look for Gin_Gin on Pownce. Gingin on Twitter or stay-tuned to this blog.

If you are at the conference, I have darts, luggage tags and pens I am going to be handing out. I'll be sure to twitter when I shoot them in the panels!

Karen Ingram (my sister) has really awesome postcards. If you see us, stop us we have stuff to give away. 

Below you will find notes from a session attended. The notes below will be interesting to those interested in next generation devices, user centered design and people who can better explain Fitts Law.  

The next generation of the web isn't going to be on your desktop, it may not even be on your mobile device. Context is going to be increasingly important and Nick Finck of Blue Flavor will take you through the process of designing and architecting for context as well as creating sites and apps that work regardless of the context. He will step through the elements of context and what is critical to think about when considering your user's environment, interface, display, task, skill level, and more.

• Nick Finck (Publisher, Digital Web Magazine)

Engaging conversation about how to design beyond the current devices.

Things to consider:
The user - what are they trying to accomplish, third party systems, paperwork, materials, tools you have to use to input information. Also people that are not using the system but are immediately affected by it and experiencing the same thing the user is experienceing for instance patients and doctors.

The environment - everyone does not have the same environment. Some environments are quite hectic even though your environment may not be.

The technology - the Web will be on all sorts of appliances - using Google maps on the gas pump. Looking for recipes on the Web on your refrigerator. Microsoft Surface- ordering lunch from a table top.

Much of the conversation focused on the iPhone, but these learnings can be applied to any traditional or non-traditional Web site.

The type of information you are looking for in a mobile experience is different. You may not want to learn about different types of tea - you just want to determine what store you need to go to to buy it.

Fitts Law - the process acquiring the target - how big the space is and how far away it is. Make the target space as big as possible. Doesn't matter where on the tab you clicked it - you can still get to it. (I have not had a lot of experience with this concept - would love to hear any additional insight. I believe I understand the concept, but do not think my description or the description on Wikipedia are easy enough to understand without someone walking you through it). 

Mobile stylesheets are good, but they are not always available to the user. BlueFavor created a scaled down version of the NY Times for mobile devices. It only takes 7 second download the NY Times scaled back verison. The real NY Times takes 30 seconds. This makes a big difference when you are getting charged by the second. NYT has a mobile stylesheet, but the site does not have detection to know if you are coming from a mobile device.

When designing, consider the optimal user interface. An Optimized UI will adapt itself to the medium. Things not related to the mobile experience are removed.

Perform contextual inquiries, a UCD approach that happen early in the project to be effective.

• You can see what you want to click on, it's just really hard to get to it to click on it. Make the hot spots really big. Make the whole summary of the NY Times article clickable.
• Ajax is really helpful on mobile devices.
  
• Search ahead functionality is really helpful.
  
• You may have to tweak the buttons for the mobile device.
  
• Make phone numbers clickable so that you can call from them. It is easy to do and helpful for the user.
• Netflix is great on a mobile device.
  
• Facebook does a good job with anticipating next steps in a large user friendly way.
• Consider the screen size.

For right now, continue to consider gas pumps and Microsoft surface projects but a lot of people are not using it yet. Interactive Plasma screens are being used a lot more.

Images - how to display and code for them on mobile devices - viewing them, not an editor. On a phone I will not be as interested in photos as I would be looking at it on the desktop.

Look to the banking industry and airline industry as leaders. Forms for mobile devices are a whole other topic.

Blueflavor.com nick@blueflavor.com

 

 

Below you will find notes from a session attended. This session will be interesting to those interested in crafting, DIY or the intersection of fashion and technology. The discussion was more interesting than my notes. I will add more to this article later.

Traditional crafts such as knitting and sewing are surging in popularity today thanks to the growing Do-It-Yourself (DIY) movement. These modern crafters on the panel not only promote the notion of DIY, they are using technology to reclaim these old techniques. From soft circuits and mathematical knitting to fashion technology and wearable computing, find out more about this new trend of high-tech crafting and how these women look to technology and science for inspiration.

• Natalie Zee Drieu Senior Editor, CRAFT Magazine
• Syuzi Pakhchyan SparkLab
• Alison Lewis Producer, IHeartSwitch
• Mouna Andraos Electronic Crafts
• Diana Eng Fashion Designer, Diana Eng

This trend is about perserving old traditions and mixing them with current technology. Technology will evolve, but when it does, people will look at the high-tech things that are created now and know that it was all a part of a particular time.

Discussion about bringing back the original use of the term 'craft.' Used to be a great label, now it is not. Probably the result of too many macrome projects in the 70s.  

One of the panelists has instrucions on the Web about how to make your purse light up when you open it. It can be made with tools that can be readily found and only takes about 20 minutes to make. To be effective you have to start looking at materials another way, for example, silver beads are conductive. 

Panelist made test tube vases that light up when you hear noise. She partnered with someone from Frog design.

MP3 player sock that you can wear as a scarf. Small nightlights created to display and highlight the technology.

Tech style - how to design fashion with technology. Grandmothers are the influencers.

There are open source sewing patterns. The Brother sewing machine company has a sewing machine that you can upload a picture to and the machine will 'sew out' the picture.

There is a difference between DIY and crafty.  

Note: For the past 3 months a guilty pleasure of mine has been watching America's Next Top Model. I did not pick up Project Runway - even though I am sure it is a better show - because of my ANTM addiction. Now I think I need to start watching Project Runway as well. Paul Smith and I have been joking about how we want to do a panel at SXSW on Django and America's Next Top Model. This panel was not that far from our proposed talk.  

Below you will find notes from a session attended. This will be an interesting read for anyone interested in trends, the Internet or collective knowledge. Both speakers were engaging. I bought books for the office!!

About: Henry Jenkins was one of the most popular speakers at last year's SXSW Interactive Festival, so we are very excited to have him return to the event in 2008. His foil in this conversation is best-selling author Steven Johnson, who served as the Keynote Speaker at the 1998 event.

• Henry Jenkins Co-Dir of CMS, MIT
• Steven Johnson CEO, outside.in

The description provided above is not very good, but the presentation was great. I picked up a copy of Convergence Culture, Everything Bad is Good For You and Emergence: The Connected lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software .

Young people are adapters of every new technology - outside of the context of parents. This is really scary for parents. In a moment of crisis one falls back on what you already know, which is why parents always say what their parents said.

School based learning and IQ - powerful tools that parents don't understand. Collective intelligence is very different than the way we process information at school. At school, we expect everyone to understand everything, with a complex body of knowledge, subjects get more complex. Encyclopedia Britanica vs Wikipedia.

The intelligence is much greater in the 30 people in front of the teacher than in the teacher because of collective knowledge, the students just have to figure out how to discuss it. This collective knowledge will require new types of standardized testing.

When presented with new technology, do you ever think - "that is just stupid." There is at least a momentary flash with everything. In the end, people don't do stuff that is meaningless. Even watching TV serves a purpose. Finding out how meaningful it is to other people is interesting.

People are idiots - be skeptical of people that say that.

Think about programs like LOST and the Wire - renissance of American TV - which is better the Wire or LOST? Depends on the criteria we would use to evaluate. The Wire represents the real world. LOST represents unreality- layered complexity.

A lot of work goes into trying to figure out what is going on with LOST. The Wire is like a last gasp of an ultimate show, whereas LOST is the type of TV we are going to start seeing, though it will be really hard to duplicate it. The fan base does a lot. Great example of collective intelligence in pop culture.

There are pink collar jobs out there These jobs require a lot of education, but their job only uses a small part of the knowledge. (teachers, librarians, etc). Why are these skills under-utilized in the work.

Convergence culture. Fan culture. Harry Potter phenom. Young people learning to read by Harry Potter. 700-800 page books. Does this lead to other reading? They are also learning to write after reading it. Feedback on creative work built on Harry Potter. Wizard Rock - 200 bands that base their music on Harry Potter themes. Songs like 'My dad's rich, your dad's dead.' Not always very good, but can be very, very interesting. The Harry Potter fan culture is open source. You have 15 year-old's debating fair use on TV after writing Harry Potter short stories. Young people are inspirired to be transformational based on the fact that Harry Potter is transformed and stands up for what he believes in.

Google generation. Digital natives. People call them the dumbest generation - but if you look closely at the 18-24 year olds they are very good, non-violent, entrepreneurs, political. Do we have a crisis or an opportunity?

Young politicans say 'we' - older politicians say 'I.' Young people say what are we going to do together?

Many I/you formations in Hillary's speeches. Obama is like a stub on Wikipedia, we are going to flesh this out together. He is building a movement, not a campaign. Waiting in line for an Obama speech the night before the Massachussetts primary, the campaign was handing out phone numbers of undecided voters for people in line to start calling those individuals.

Internet is a location enhancing device. People writing about neighborhoods and communities. People care passionatly about what is happening.

On My Radar - Facebook news feature. I am standing on this corner, show me all the conversations that are happening within 500 feet of this area. You can track information on various areas. Need to have major filters so that we can filter out the stuff that is totally uninteresting.

School Newspapers are shutting down because of lack of money and interest - but young people are writing elsewhere. Percentage of kids producing media is astronomical. Think Soulja Boy.

We also have to make sure they are safe as they interact with each other as social community and not just in the prefator world. Why do people finish their homework early and stay up all night playing games? how can we make learning that interesting and addictive. Sometimes depression is what is leading to the addition - the depression is manifesting that way.

 

 

 

 

Below you will find notes from a session attended. This will be interesting for anyone that needs to sell social media to a CXO. It lightly touches on metrics (which is what I was interested in learning more about).

• Why are CMO's afraid of social media and social networking?
  
• How can they leverage social media for marketing success?

This panel will be a combination of forward vision and practical advice from vendors and enterprises that are successfully leveraging social media today for business results. We'll discuss the pros and cons of growing a social media effort from within or hire a "ringer" to be part of the team. This is a new area for marketing manegement so the panelist will give their best advice on how to work with a manager who has no social media experience.

Other questions to discuss will be:

• How do you deal with the essential truth that in social media sometimes everyone won't love you and say positive stuff about you?
• What is the best metric to focus on to gauge success of a social media effort?
• Does social media contribute to lead and revenue generation directly or indirectly?

• Tom Parish CEO, Tom Parish Inc
• Brian Magierski Chief Dev Officer, BSG Alliance Corporation
• Michael Smith Exec Dir, USAA
• Ynema Mangum Exec Producer, BMC Software Inc
• Rohit Bhargava SVP, Digital Marketing, Ogilvy

Getting approval from the C-level people. Why are they afraid of social marketing - how do you approach them on metrics - knowing there is not a clear answer on it?

Focus:

1. Loss of control (CXO question) how do you deal with it and still control it (you can't)
   
2. Measurement impressions versus engagement. Time spent, commenting, etc. Getting the right 10,000 people has a much higher lift.

CXO types: each one has a different perspective and observes different risks.

• CMO looking at brand control.
• Senior Leadership for HR is worried about losing people. You are putting people in a social context and he has to retain talent.
• PR guy - knows exposure can be the biggest friend or largest nightmare - damage control
• Chief Sales guy - only cares if it brings in sales
• CEO - if I dont do anything is it going to hurt me. They are looking at it from the company standpoint. Dont get to talking about metrics. Is it in the company or share holders best interest.

Seth Godin - metrics - gives you a lot of good stuff to think about.

Most companies don't know how to deliver a good customer experience.

People driving social media from the bottom up and the top-down. Excited manager does not mean action. Peer pressure as a last resort will work.

Use a phased approach to determine readiness:

1. start listening
2. start participating and continue listening
3. start leading

Demonstrate metrics internally before demonstrating externally. Show productivity gains. (you can do this through corporate intranets, etc)

If you have problems with your products, fix the product and then dive into conversation marketing.

METRICS - without the right strategy, you don't have anything.

• looking at news articles
  
• community participation metrics
  
• blog metrics
  
• metrics for executive staff that show the value that is being communicated.
  
• evaluate the number of bad comments to good comments

Multiple opens and forwards are better than clicks and opens, but everyone looks at clicks and opens. Clicks and opens don't measure the viral aspect of it. It is not that we have the wrong metrics - it is that we are looking at the wrong thing

Focus on sentiment marketing; pro, negative or neutral. Aim these tools at the watering holes to see if the message gets accross.

Start with traditional metrics and then move on. Traffic to blogs generally supercede traffic to the regular site. How many people are visiting a blog? A blog can easily have a listening audience of 15,000 people because new messages are broadcast every day.

Of note: This panel ended up opening the session up to the twitter crowd because everyone was complaining (on twitter) so much that the session was not focusing on what they wanted it to focus.

We’re two weeks out from the most invigorating, unpredictable and emotional month of the year in college sports. Dick Vitale lives for this stuff. It’s March Madness, baby! It all comes down to the Sweet 16, the Final Four and the National Championship. This year, it’s the freshman class with most on the line – surrounded by huge hype and NBA dreams. Who will we watch next year as sophomores, and who will we watch live their dreams in the NBA draft? Here’s my ‘who’s who’ of the 2008 SuperFreshmen you need to be watching right now:

1. OJ Mayo (USC): Recruited himself into the toughest conference in the nation and isn’t disappointing. Scored 19 points against Memphis and Derrick Rose, absolutely no small feat. His YouTube highlights bring more hits than the videos of Britney headed to Starbucks.

2,3. Douglas Roberts/Derrick Rose (Memphis): With Rose currently out with a small sprain, this weekend we got to see more of the impressive depth Memphis can bring. Rose and Roberts are the top players for the most promising team in the nation. C-USA is likely to send only one team to the Big Dance and Memphis is my pick to win it all.

4. Eric Gordon (Indiana): Memphis is blazing the path while Indiana is hot on the trail. You don’t go 23-4 without a smart and powerful guard like Gordon. He has shown amazing versatility putting points on the board. I bet he’s coaching the Hoosiers after Kelvin Sampson gets fired.

5. D.J. White (Indiana): White and Gordon are the Tom Brady and Randy Moss of college basketball. White is unstoppable on the floor averaging 19 minutes a game. He’s also second in the Big Ten in scoring (teammate Gordon is first).

6. Michael Beasley (Kansas State): I’m renaming this guy Beastly. He could be my entire list. The number 1 high school recruit. Big 12’s Rookie of the Week, twice. The left-hander scores double-doubles in almost every game. Watch him while you can now, he’ll be playing in the pro’s next year.

7. Kevin Love (UCLA): Cousin to a Beach Boy and son to a former NBA star. By the way, he’s also an amazing center, often scoring when double-teamed. At 6-5, 260, he finds ways to put up points no matter what.

8. Kyle Singler (Duke): I’m not jumping on any Singler or Duke bandwagon, but he’s a top NBA recruit.

9. James Harden (Arizona State): Herb Sendek’s mantra should be, ‘Doing well is the best revenge’. He’s coaching a great game this year - the Sun Devils have amazing potential and some remarkable recruits. Harden averages 10 points a game, watch for him to be huge in coming years.

10. Jerryd Bayless (Arizona): After sitting out a few games early in the season with a knee injury, Bayless is now back averaging 34 minutes per game, and 20 points per game. He plays an aggressive game and can score in clutch moments.

11. Davon Jefferson (USC): A North Carolina native, he could prove to have academic issues. Jefferson will likely develop into an amazing forward, but look for him to get more minutes on the floor once Mayo’s gone pro next year.

12. DeJuan Blair (Pittsburgh): Plays hard, gets rebounds. Also gets into foul trouble. But I’m all about anyone who brings a win over the Blue Devils.

13. A.J. Ogilvy (Vanderbilt): At 6-10, 250, he holds a strong physical presence in all games for Vandy. He’s the number 2 scorer in the SEC behind teammate Shan Foster. My prediction: Vanderbilt is this year’s ringer in the NCAA Tourney.

14. Nick Calathes (Florida): I have to throw a Florida player in the mix. The defending champs freshie player is poised beyond his years. He has a great jumper but can also penetrate inside.

15. JJ Hickson (NCSU): I’m not happy with the talent Sidney Lowe’s been able to bring to N.C. State this year, but Hickson could be the start to change my opinion. I’m impressed at the fierce athletic ability he’s brought to the Wolfpack. He definitely needs work but I think we’ll see him starting more in upcoming games.

Disclaimer: Although I know my ABC’s (Anyone But Carolina), I am not a professional sports analyst.