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.
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.
