The thoughts, opinions and suggestions on this blog don't necessarily reflect the opinions of my employers or associates (past or present). Just so you know.
This is a bench. It's located about eight feet from where I'm moored on the canal at the minute, meaning that when I'm onboard I see or at least hear whoever inhabits it. In the past seven days we've had young French men eating takeaways and drinking pilsner from sunset to late into the night. Fathers teaching their sons how to fish. Arguing couples, of all ages. Retired couples bringing a home made supper and small bottle of wine to share together, along with sharing two hours of silence. Young Euro architects stopping off after a night of clubbing in the early hours to discuss life love and London, and staying until the sun had long since come up. Gangs of local youths who's use of English was far worse than their behaviour in reality, rambling alcoholics with only super strength cider for company, a nightly visit from the canal bin man and his portable World Service broadcast to announce his arrival, and just about everything in between (it's in Kings Cross after all). If it wasn't for the bench they probably wouldn't stop, as a sit down in the nettles isn't quite as appealing. But they do stop, and take a short, sometimes long, break from where they're going to or coming from. They stop and have proper conversation, or just think for a bit. They sit and spend some time with now.
If benches hadn't previously been invented a long time ago I think we'd be getting pretty exited about them right now. They'd be the subjects of blog posts listing what brands can learn from benches, they'd probably attract Governmental funding. We'd call them 'social media for society' and look for monetization opportunities. But we just take them for grantage all those benches, all those conversations, all those stories.
I never really got transmedia, I understod the concept but the examples of BatMan films and stuff never really did it for me. But I got it last night.
I went to see SUM at The Royal Opera House based on David Eagleman's book of the same name. Go and see it, you won't be disapointed.
Then I watched this talk with David Eagleman when I got back.
Then I got hold of the book at The School Of Life this morning. And stacked up his two Sermon's (on uncertaintly and being yourself) to watch on the weekend. Now I get it.
I've just joined Udacity to get some online education. On having a look around the community discussion boards it quickly became evident that the main traction for conversation (or statements of opinion) was where other members of the community are from. By quite a significant amount.
I also went past a chap in Trafalgar Square the other day who'd drawn up all the world flags in chalk and was encouraging the square's many international tourists to place coins on their home countries flag. He was making a killing both in crowd engagement and financially.
Seems that we'll always have a deep rooted sense of ties to our homes, and interest in others own origins. So if you ever need to get a discussion board going just ask were everyone is from.
There's a great articel in the new edition of Frieze magazine Kirsty Bell called 'Open Eyes: Online or in person? The different ways of paying attention today'. You can read it here.
In it she references the Von Heyl's exhibition at Tate Liverpool, an exhibition she hasn't been to in person but has seen a short film of on the Guardain. She sates she became aware of the paintings holding their own in the airy light filled space of Tate Liverpool's upper galleries, but questions what kind of seeing this really is? What kind of potential does a screen bound experience allow us for paying attention?
Having been to the exhibition in person I can say a whole new world of attention. When I visited the vast upper galleries housing Von Heyl's work a couple of weeks ago I was stuck by the juxtaposition of the light and energy created by each of the paintings and the views of the River Mersey from the galleries many windows. The light changing by the second as the clouds pain their own pictures on to the refractions of the rivers water. This in turn reminded me of Ed and Nancy Kienholz's installation at the National Gallery a few years ago that recreated Amsterdams Red Light district. When questioned whether the instalation was a statement about the age old industry of prostitution they replied that it was "all about the light" that you find in the red light district. Light and the way something is lit being an ongoing fascination of artists for eternity (both literal and metaphorical).
That's what I took from the in person experience that I never would have from an online experience. And it led me to think about my idea to save the world with two pieces of A4 paper idea. I was talking to Rob and Molly about it the other night and they were asking how much input I'd had to it so far. I had to admit than in reality is been a bit light, and limited to the ever helpful James so far. But then we got talking to whether online input was the right channel for the task, as they'd had three or four conversations about the idea but just hadn't got around to adding anything online. So perhaps I should have hosted an in person exploration around the idea instead. In a coffee shop, with clever people. Perhaps I should have just converted the idea into a conversation, but a real life conversation? Perhaps we should all be striving converting things into real life conversations.
Everyone's seems a bit worried about the collapse of capitalism and the ensuing apocolypse. I think it could be a good thing in reality, because it will cause us to become self contained again for a while.
Take Cuba for example. They had their own apocolypse when the communist revolution caused them to be isolated from the rest of the world. This in turn caused them to become self contained quite literally with import/export bans put upon them. In theory, and practise, freezing them in time. I went to Cuba a fair few years ago and you get a very real sense of just how frozen in time they are. The fact that all the cars are old American Cadilacs for example, the trade embargos put a stop to many further automobile updates so they just carried on driving what they had. But 50 years later those same cars are still moving, because they have no other choice than to keep them moving.
And take for example my boats engine. It's 25 years old but it still keeps my boat moving. As Steve my engineer says "they're good old girls if you keep them happy".
So rather than the world coming to an end. We might just learn to live with what we've got for a bit longer. And get self contained.
We're constantly being asked to 'join the conversation'. I kind of think it's one of the bigges, fattest digital lies we've all collectively bought in to. Because if we're honest with ourselves it's not a conversation really is it? In few instances it is, at the most though it's just series of statements of opinions. One after another after another. And that's not a conversation, it's a series of statements of opinions. Having looked after innocen't blog, twitter and facebook presence for over four years I saw very little genuine 'conversation'. There was some, stuff like this was ace when it happened. But it was rare. That's not to say that what we got up to wasn't valuable.
That's not to say that conversations don't happen digitally
The last few nights I've taken the bus from Bethan Green tube station to Broadway Market. And the last few nights I've noticed that a good proportion of the passengers are using iPhones, but more interestingly they're all using them for messaging. They're having conversations with their friends, but one at a time in a back and forth tennis match style. Not on mass. See I'm not sure that 'on mass' works for conversations, it works for a series on statements of opinions, just not so well for those conversations we're all ment to be joining.
So I can't help but wondering why the stuff we make and use doesn't reflect this really basic behaviour. Here's an example of how it could. I'm reading an article on Atlantics's App, I think it's really interesting and want to have a conversation about it, but don't just want to post a statement of my opinion. I actually want to talk about it, do some of that polo stuff. I want to talk to Asi about it as he's hot on start up mentality. So why can't I? Why can't I send him a message there and then from in the app that shares the link with him and starts up that conversation. To me that would be really useful. No one else would be able to see it, but that doesn't matter really, people would be talking about stuff, properly talking and not just stating opinions.
So a new button please, for conversations.
(This should be a mocked up conversation between me and Asi, it isn't though).
I've had an idea for this Cannes Chimera thing. Kind of like the ideas for London, but with a bigger potential prize ($100,000 of Bill Gates' dollar). Here's a quick overview of the challenge.
And here's the brief in words: Many people in the developed world are aid weary. They know billions of dollars go into aid, and yet the problems never seem to go away. This leads them to question if the money ever gets to where it is needed, and even then, if it is used wisely. The media seems full of stories of corruption, waste and broken systems. But that’s not the whole story. Effective aid programs help developing countries become self-sufficient. They do not replace those countries’ efforts, but rather support the important work that’s already under way. And here's the rules.
So here's my idea..
It's pretty basic, not fully thought out, and probably doomed to failure. But then so was capitalism, but that didn't let it stop it from taking over the world. My solution to the above brief would come at it from a slightly different angel than just providing transparency of aid work via a clever social media campaign. It would try to get right to the heart of aid, and make an audience in the developed world the very seeds that aid is grown from. And is basically a question: "What would happen to aid if rather than give to charity, you were a charity?" It's got a working title of 'Be Aid'. Have a click of the sketch below and see what you think.
And now how YOU can (REALLY) help...
The idea is pretty basic as I say, and more of a question than a solution. But I feel there could be something in it if I had some good brains to help me think it through a bit more. Your brains basically. So I've pasted my existing thoughts into the entry form format, and made it an open source Google Document here. Anything what-so-ever that you think might make the entry stronger please just enter into the document. Point holes in it, add opportunities to it, sort out the whole scientific measurement bit. Do what ever you want in short. Or if you're not into Google Docs just email me at ted@this-is-helpful.com or tweet me @this_is_helpful. Or leave a comment on this blog post. The deadline is May 15 so you've got a few weeks to ponder.
We're looking to impress Mr Iain Tate et al, so it needs to be good. In the slim chances it does get shortlisted I'll make sure that all contributors get full credit, and a yankee burger and chips on me.
-UPDATE-
The final entry has been entered, and lives here. Thanks to everyone who helped with it.
Ideas, information and points of interest tend to spread in extreme peaks and spikes at the minute, like Pipa Middleton's bottom. So a key behaviour for business in this day and age is to convert these peaks into value as quickly as possible. An example of this would be the current interest in telepscopes born off the back of Brain Cox's passion for star gazing (you can see the highest ever peak in Google searches for 'telescope' in January 2012 above, exactly when Brian was doing his stuff). Then the cognitive conversion came for Amazon who were able to deliver physical goods to match the interest being generated in the form of affordable telescopes, and resultingly saw a 500% uplift in telescopes sales in the UK.
I think that more and more busines revenue is going to be driven by being able to convert extreme (or niche) points of interest into real world sales of items that deliver on that interest. Hopefully I might have some more examples of stuff I'm up to at the minute that does exactly this.
I've been thinking about cognitive digestion the last couple of days. The idea that once you come across a new idea, you need time to properly digest it for it to actually mean anything. I first came across it as a concept at the Do Lectures, where you're given a couple of back to back talks and then allowed 20 minutes or so to go outside and talk to people about what you've just heard. Those were some of the most meaningful times during the Do Lectures for me. David Hieatt decribes it as "the polo effect, it's the bit that isn't there that's the most important".
I've also been helping to edit a video at the minute where we've been trying two different version. One where we hit people with lots of short sharp statements back to back, and one where we allow the speakers to tell a bit of a story around the statements, put them in context and allow for some pauses and natural nuances of conversation. I far prefer the second version.
The final example I'd give is again from the weekend. Where I went to see Clay Shirky in conversation with Alan Rusbridger, and bumped into Rob and Molly from We All Need Words in the que. It was a pretty inspiring conversation and afterwards I wanted to talk to Rob and Molly about it, but had to make my way straight to the next session which started a few minutes afterwards. I needed the hole in the middle of the polo.
I met a chap on the weekend who answered a question I've had rattling around my head for a while. And that is: does my iPod Touch use less energy than my MacBook Air to do stuff, and if so what kind of difference? I was going to write something in my lessons from the canal on it, as living on a boat has ment I use my iPod instead of laptop to do my digital tasks far more than I did when I was land bound.
And here's the answer by the look of it. Ten minutes online watching video on a laptpop via 3G far outweighs ten minutes doing the same thing via the same network on a device. Pretty obvious but good to see it in reality and play about with some of the variables (the chap had made his survey into an iPad app thing that you could mess about with).
Everyone's asking for feedback these days. It's the in thing to do. It's good though, because systems with feedback built into them tend to improve by default. Which is why I keep drawing this picture a lot lately (B should be 'output' not 'outlook').
But not a look of people actually give users a reason to give feedback, or any kind of reward. Which is why I like this:
1: Create a simple, quick, attractive feedback form caturing just what you want to know (sex/age/media consumption/email address in this case).
2: Offer a nice reward to people who take the time to do step 1.
3: Honour that reward. Simple.
Feedback can also be rewarded by just listening to it in person with a note book and pen in hand, and responding to it in person. As Alan Rusbridger (Editor of the Guardian) did on multiple occasions on the weekend.
A thought. The Guardian feels like a local paper to me, much in the same way as The Tenby Observer did when I was growing up. This could be because I spend some time moored a few meters away from their office. But in contradiction to this The New York Times also feels like a local paper to me, even though it's based the other side of the Atlantic, in a city I've never even visited. What make the NYT feel local to me though is pretty much based on having watched these two films recently I think.
Both films allowed me to form an emotional connection to the paper, that I otherwise wouldn't have. Especially being able to put people behind the otherwise context less references to David Carr (a former drug addict turned straight talker), Brian Stelter (digital wonder kid) and Bill Cunningham (the oldest and most eccentric style blogger you'll find).
So local is obviously working on a few levels for me. Location and shared values, but also a relationship to the individuals connected to the thing in question. I don't know if this means anything in particular at the minute, but it might one day.
I've been thinking about commenting on comments for a while now. But a visit to the Guardian's open weekend and a drop in to a session with their Comment is Free team has pushed me into action. Well, digital thinking and typing action. It seems to me that the technology and funtionality behind commenting on the internet hasn't moved on very much since it was invented over a decade ago. Which seems strange as every thing else has, including how we interface with hardware (from mouse and keyboard to jesture and touchscreen), how we organise ourselves and our communications, and pretty much the majority of services we consume and acquire.
Commenting has largely kept with one excerpt of text under and another though. Much like this..
So where could commenting go? Well the team at the Guardian are doing some interesting things I didn't know about until yesterday. For example opening a dialouge for their audience to tell them what kind of content they want to see. And then actually going and commisioning selected requests, you tell us / you told us. I really like this, it's simple but very effective.
They're also allowing for different levels of engagement in commenting. Not everyone has the inclination to leave a full verbatumn. Some might want to simply add their opinion to a yes or no poll. And this might act has the first step up a ladder into a fully engaged commenter.
So how much further can commenting go? I personally think there'd be room to explore more intuative instant message based interfaces like MSN/ BBM or Apple message. These obviously work and read well in the back and forth, tennis like, conversations between two individuals but might not work so well in a group situation. But what could a new aesthic for commenting look like? Particularly given that many see the future of communications as being "more real time, more conversational and more casual".
Another point of reference for me would be stuff Adam Buxton gets up to with comments in Bug. The way that Adam deals with comments is to make them into stories of their own, that are interconnected with their fellow comments and live in an ecosystem of commenting communities. Plus he makes commenting very funny.
It's these stories within comments that interest me the most I think. And one great example of those stories being brought to life is the new Guardian print ads. Where the splits in the communities of commenters tell a story in itself. The below being a very real reflection of the current state of the music industry for example.
I find these kinds of stories missing from the real world experience of commenting though. Unless you read every single comment, and have got a good head for insights, you're unlikely to ever see these stories.
So I thought about a way that they could be surfaced. And came up with the below simple interface where each comment thread could begin to group it's contributors based on pre-defined segments. Then it would be pretty easy to visualise these stories as nice looking insights at the start of every comment section.
I'd like it if I came across something like this I think. It would make the edges of my mouth raise.
In another session I was in on the open weekend Clay Shirky said that "people are now consuming stories through word and pictures much more than words alone". I agree with Clay.
I've had some ideas for London. Alain and the Evening Standard are asking for ideas at the minute, so I'm going to enter them in return for the chance to win a night in a boat on the roof of the South Bank. Here's my ideas, as wonderfully illustrated by Maggie at Scriberia.
idea 1: The Good Old Days
\
An idea to get young people and old people talking to each other. That would manifest itself in a series of ongoing events (The Good Old Days). Such as vintage film screenings where the participants, both old and young, would have a chat with each other after the event. Think speed dating for random strangers both old and young.
idea 2: Finding the oyster in oyster
Almost £30 million is left unused on Oyster cards every year. £30 million that could be put to very good use if only it could be released back into the world again. Why not create an affiliate charity Oyster card targeted at tourists and short terms visitors, where the remaining unspent balances are donated to chosen charities (with the purchasees permission) after 12 months of none use.
idea 3: #occupy culture
An idea to create a yearly London based '#occupy culture weekend' where a broad cross section of Londoners, who don't normally attend cultural events, are encouraged to apply for FREE tickets to a wide range of events. Participants are simply encouraged to consume less stuff and more ideas for a weekend.
idea 4: The really real London tour
Let's create a new kind of guided tour for London which takes participants through a selection of the realities of England's capital.
idea 5: Conversation Olympics
During the Olympic fortnight create a series of 'conversation with strangers' evening picnics across London's Royal Parks. Taking the unique opportunity of a time when the international community of London guests is at its richest. And doing stuff outside of the Olympic venues to constructively fill people's time while they're waiting for public transport to calm down a bit.
idea 6: Save the Hello
People don't say hello as much as they used. Let's try and 'save the hello' from a long, slow departure from our lives. Here's just a few ideas of ways that we could collectively save it.
China likes circles, it invented yin and yang after all. So I've got a new theory on China and circles.
While I was in Xiamen I visited these UFO type buildings (Tulou's) which litter a particular valley in the area. They started to appear in the 12th century, and still continue to be build up until this day, as a solution in self protected communities when the area became increasingly lawless. Internally they were pretty much self contained affairs with their own private and shared spaces and dedicated wells for water etc. So the circle in this case provides an internal secure world from the outside world where the vast majority of the variables for living can be closely contained (much like the country as a whole at present).
I also spent a fair bit of time at Chinese dinner tables. Circular tables which support a spinning centre wheel where dishes are placed and then shared with each dinner by communally spinning the content of your meal. Fundamentally different to western dinning where we order our own plate of food and eat only that, and sit a mainly rectanguar or square tables.
These circles lead themselves to a much more social and communal dinning experience. Everyone at the table is within eye contact and a conversational distance. It also leads to far more scruttiny being placed on everything within the circle, if a single dish isn't desireable for example it will quickly be recognised, discussed and outed. This scruttiny also lends itself to the inhabitants of the table leading to high social status dynamics. The consumption of fine wines for example have been in 25% growth in China recently, but reportedly in many cases purely for social status reasons with drinkers mixing £1k bottles or putting ice cubes in the most exclusive of fine wines. This trend recently came up against the growing Chinese challenge of fakery, bootleged, bogus and consumed bottles being refilled with far cheaper wine and resold. And the effects of bogus wines has directly caused a loss in confidence in investors, leading to a drop in trading prices by up to 45%. This article makes a fascinating case study into an example of the current challenges of the internal Chinese consumption market.
So there's are both opportunities and challenges in becoming part of an internal circle, and the scruttiny that will be placed on you once you're within it. Again much like the Chinese market and country as a whole.That's my circle theory.
I've written about conversations before, a fewtimes. And I've written about the now before. Today I've been thinking about both, especially in relation to real time online chat.
I've always wondered why Blackberry is still around in such a competitive mobile handset market place? My own experience of them has been that I came across a lot of business people using them a few years ago as 'they're good for reading and sending emails'. Which made sense as asethically they looked very 'business'. But then they seemed to get into the hands of teenagers, culminating in BlackBerry Messenger being pointed to as a fascilitation to the London Riots of last summer. As far as I can make out the reason why so many teenagers own a what is made to be a business tool must have been that all the phone contract shops pushed Blackberry's hard to a teenage audience. And I imagine there must have been some kind of commision or incentive for them to do this. Then the take up of Blackberry's must have reached a tipping point, fasciliated by BBM and the fact if you didn't have a Blackberry, you didn't have BBM and if you didn't have BBM you weren't going to be able to talk to your peers. The short point being that the way I see it the majority of Blackberry's value is tied into the service provision of BBM rather than the actual handset or brand (we saw the problems caused when BBM crashed a while ago supporting this argument). And that if they were smart they'd build and protect the BBM service is all sorts of clever ways rather than worrying about the handsets so much. It looks like Apple have got their eye on this and are already making plays not to be left behind. And Facebook haven't been slow to spot the same trend in real time, conversational, casual messaging.
Another example I'd give in the rise in importance of real time conversation is the new US dating site Nerve Dating. Taking the traditional, and dominant model, of the creation online dating profiles and matches based on profile criteria, and moving to a purely real time conversation based dating service. Users simply create a basic profile and answer the question of what they did last night and from here start to have immediate conversations with other users, forming opinions of who they're interested in and not interested in from these conversations. These are just examples, the potential for more of the current services we depend on being influenced by real time conversation is pretty much limitless.
The over arching thought being that the product is the service. And the service is simply the facilitation of real time conversation.
I went to see a block of arctic ice melting on the steps of St Pauls Cathedral on the weekend. It looked like this.
And I got chatting to the people who put it there who tried to explain some science to me. It went a bit like this, when things of different temperature are put into the same environment with each other they'll have a fight with each other in trying to achieve an exact balance between each temperature. So for example if you put the left overs of your roast chicken in the fridge before it has time to cool this will raise the internal temperature of the fridge until it balances that of the chicken, and then the fridge will then fight the chicken back down to it's normal temperature again. This is why we feel so cold when we go outside in the winter, our bodies are fighting to make the outside temperature the same as ours and the outside is fighting to make our temperature the same as it's own. That's a battle we're never going to win so we get cold. There's a name for this but I've forgotten it.
Anyway it made me think about other kinds of friction between elements that are fighting each other, and how they'll only settle once a balance/comprimise is achieved. It could be true of politics (government policies meeting peoples ideals), business (services matching expectations), economics, nature, relationships, the lot. And that the fight is pretty much a consistent as change is a consistent. So we want balance, but will never get it.
Or if we do it might be based on the complete removal of something else.
Even though it's the title of the post and it's mentioned 8 times in the text.
Type 'Facebook advert' into Google Images or Google Video and you don't get any ads for Facebook, they've never had to make any as far as I know. But that's not to say that Facebook has never appeared in media spaces that hold advertising, they probably appear more often than those who are paying to be there.
I was listening the BBC World Service this morning and the word 'Facebook' was mentioned atleast 5 times in 30 minutes. It's such a normal part of everyday conversation now that we don't even notice it's mention. But should we? Facebook is a commerical organisation geared for profit like any other, when they get mentioned they get awareness, and increased user engagement which can then be sold back to advertisers for a reason to be there in the first place. Like a snake eating it's own head advertisers are helping to create a media channel monopoly by plastering 'like us on Facebook' everywhere and then having to pay out the other end for what they've created to get their ads into Facebook.
This free advertising ride has come to an end on French Teleivision atleast. Broadcasting regulators have issued a stern warning that name dropping both Facebook or Twitter and encouraging users to 'check us out on --- and ---" is to stop unless the companies pay for that promotion of their brand.
American Football is a shining example of an advertiser centric product development. The DNA of it's game model is structured to cater for advertiser in a way that something like chess never will be. Multiple breaks, sponsorship opportunities and of course the holy grail of ad space; super bowl ads.
I've been thinking about 'advertiser centric product development' in contrast to the much more favoured 'user centric product development'. Particularly in relation to smart phones, and as a tactic to dislodge Apple from their lead in smart phone sales (won largely as the pioneers of user centric product development, and now probably beyond catch up).
Competitor smart phone manufacturers (anyone other than Apple) seem in complete disarray in trying to win their bit of market share at the minute. Probably rightly so as it's pretty much a rapid land grab for long term technology and platform relationships at the minute. One opportunity that seems a no-brainer, yet still not applied, would be for a handset producer to simply insert an RFID card into their handsets that allowed the owners to 'one touch' in their Facebook likes. Pretty much making that Coca Cola Village stuff universal. Then doing a deal with brands/advertisers to integrate the other side of the technology into the real world, and as there's something in it for them (real world like harvesting) they'd probably fund the process.
Because I still think QR codes are rubbish and will end up in the land fill of digital hype with Second Life, Friends Reunited and Myspace pretty soon.
Likes are the tangilbe return on engagement, marketeers like tangibles. The obtainment of them is becoming a currency in it's own right, often with a cost per acquisition/like. Likes are often confused with advocacy, but they're not. Marketeers like likes. Brands are keen to harvest likes with an appetitie like never before, with distinct opportunities to define 'harvest seasons' when cost per acquisitions look the lowest and like crops are at their most abundant.
In the 17th and 18th century coffee shops were widely seen to house an intellectual and cultural age of enlightenment. Now we just use them to connect to the network through various devices in isolation from those around us.
Carbon
In order to keep global warming below a critical 2 degrees we'll need to reduce to carbon emissions to pre 1960's levels.
Perhaps we're going to start needing to go backwards inorder to go forwards.
A while ago I went to the Saatchi gallery and found they were being so kind as to give out free marketing to visitors. And it was attracting a bit of interest.
Well I went back on the weekend to find that they're still giving out free marketing, but they're keeping up with the times and collecting Facebook likes now to.
Very forward thinking for an entry point, the only problem is that it gets a bit clunky at the exit point, where they have to actively remind people to log out to avoid a very interesting engagement for the next visitor.
Which led me to think that there would probably be a lot of money waiting for the people who can create a very clean mechanic to procure Facebook likes in the real world. Like one touch payment stuff but for likes (which is pretty much a currency in it's own right now). To do this at scale you'd need infrastructure innovation, like when Oyster cards came along. A big opportunity for the smart phone market potentially given the size of Facebooks audience and that revenue is coming soley from brands looking to engage with that audience. If they'd only start to think about something other than copying the iPhone and trying to own music.
Then all those high street shops that are sticking big old Facebook and Twitter icons in the window could stick a little box behind them and get collecting some permissions.
(I know you can do this via QR code things at the minute, but they're pretty rubbish in my opinion).
An extra child born today in the United States, would, down the generations, produce an eventual carbon footprint seven times that of an extra child in China, 55 times that of an Indian child or 86 times that of a Nigerian child.
The 2003 World Values Survey found that the happiest people in the world live in Nigeria, where almost 70% of interviewees described themselves as 'very happy'. But does this mean that Nigeria should be a model for other countries? Nigerians probably compare themselves mainly with other Nigerians and not with, say, Americans. The underprivileged tend to adjust their desires to their means. They forsake the exclusive desires of people who live in rich countries so as not to be disappointed.
I've got a brand new theory for you; great business's are built on the remarkable use of both myth and maths. That's it.
We've spent the best part of the 20th centuary freeing ourselves of myths through the growth of science and logic. Sometimes this is, of course, for the better, but sometimes for the worse. There's a lot to be said for the power of myths, and we're increasingly loosing our connections to them.
Take for example innocent's yes no bins. A mighty myth that has served them extremely well over the years, and unike a lot of myths is actually true.
But myth on it's own does not always a succesful business make. You need to get your numbers right in the background, the maths. You need to know what you want to achieve, how your going to measure that and how your going to positively effect those measures. That it from a former employee, innocent where as good as the maths bit as they were the myth bit.
Another great example of myth and maths is Obama's presidential campaign. The story is the stuff of great yankee myth, and was indeed compared to another great American myth of Abraham Lincoln. But behind the myth lay the maths, and when both came together he was off to the races. Or the White House.
Zocalo is the mexican word for town square, a place where the local community meet to eat, drink, sit and talk. I heard a great story by this chap last week of a community movement in Brighton to create their own Zocalo event once a year, in which local residents are simply asked to put a chair or two outside their front door for the day and chat to anyone who wants to join them. It's called Zocalo Brighton and was set up in 2001 by the group White Dot as a way of encouraging people to watch less telly closed off in their living rooms and form more meaningful relationships/entertainment with the people they live around. Again another great example of social media with not a hide nor hair of that Facebook or twitter stuff.
I've recently been experiencing the same effect on the canal. Having limited inside space your front and deck quickly become your extended living space for eating, reading, smoking and sitting in nature. This then very quickly and naturally leads to conversations with passers by and other boat dwellers. Here I am buttied up to Jesse and Max behind Frank and just down from Tim, all of whome I speak to a few times a day.
Perhaps we all just need to sit outside the front door a bit more.
I was having a conversation with some one a while ago about sexy digital vs unsexy digital. Sexy being this type of well talked about, case studied and awarded stuff like this, and unsexy being the more behind the scenes clever stuff with data ike this. Like most stuff we can get over excited by the sexy stuff whilst turning a blind eye to the unsexy.
This piece in The New York Times made me realised the same is true in business. On every apple product you'll find the line 'designed in Calafornia, made in China'. We hear a hell of a lot about the designed in sexy and sunny Calafornia but very very little and the China bit. The fact is that Foxconn Technology (who produce all of apple's stuff) now employs over 430,000 people and are accounted for making about half of all the electronic goods sold in the world at the minute (they don't just work with apple exclusively). Yet I've never seem to read about their growth or business strategy in the likes of Monocle or Wired, and I've no idea who their CEO is and what his secret to success is. For every Obama there is always going to be atleast one Dan Siroker though, and there's probably quite a bit they can teach us if someone would bother to tell their story. Those stories are probably worth telling.
Much has been written on the best strategies for creating the ideal conditions for success (by myself included), but very little on creating the best conditions for failure. Here's actor/director Paddy Considine on creating a playground for 'dropping the glove' as he eloquently puts it.
I used to have a couple of peony plants in my front garden that would bloom every spring. An interesting thing happens when peonies bloom, they completely collapse under their own weight and beauty. Their stalks simply can't support their magnificence and ambitions.
I've always liked informal/secret/grey economies. My parents used to partake in car boots sales throughout long summers in Wales and worked up a significant additional income in doing so. Then I came across the informal economies of Malawi last year and the associated benefits that come with them.
So I got really interested when I read a piece called 'The Gastronomic Underground' in the latest edition of the Idler. It's a very well researched and written documentation of the mercatini clandestini (secret markets) of Italy. The basic principle of which being that food producers come together on an invitation only basis, avoiding the attention of tax wielding authorities, to buy and exchange their goods on a hyper local level. The markets are often seen as a direct responce to the state's failure to support small scale agriculture and protect fragile local economies.
There are secret economies everywhere in Italy, where decades of bureaurcracy, political corruption, Mafia extortion and misguided tax regimes have created marginal trading structures that circumvent the official economy with remarkable creativity. The most recent estimates put Italy's shadow economy at around 26% of its GDP, the highest in Europe after Greece. In growing African economies this figure can jump to up to 60-70% of the total local economy.
The greatest point of interest for me however is something I've spoken about before, and that's the similarities between informal economies and agile 2.0 business. Those similarities best summed up in the below chart.
Already ventures such as Housebites (below) are bridging the divide between internet start up and a new type of ground up honest economy. Etsy being another fine example, a movement that has just delivered its first conference in an attempt to fight againsts in their words "decades of an unyielding focus on economic growth and a corporate mentality that have left us ever more disconnected with nature, our communities, and the people and processes behind the objects in our lives".
Could we be seeing a complete reinvention of the channels of trade, supply chains and methods of remunification forming before our eyes? Who knows, all I know is that they make for a bloody better story than what's going on in the chiller isles and chain stores of the country these days.
