Personas

Great collection of introductory resources on personas and UX process from Australia's Dey Alexander.

• An introduction to personas and how to create them
  "This article explains what personas are, benefits of using personas, answers to common objections about personas, and practical steps towards creating them. It is meant as an introduction to personas, and provides enough information to start creating your own."
  (Tina Calabria - Step Two Designs)

• Getting started with personas (PDF)
  "This whitepaper will go through the basic persona building steps. It is based on a collection of persona building blog posts from FutureNow’s GrokDotCom blog."
  (Howard Kaplan - FutureNow)

• How personas and scenarios can change your website for the better, part 1
  "This is the first of two articles in which I’ll be making the business case for using personas and scenarios to improve your website. I’ll give you a flavour of what’s involved in using the personas and scenarios and provide a few examples of the kinds of problems we’ve solved for our clients using these techniques. In this first article, we’ll look at the core concepts of personas, leaving scenarios until next month."
  (John Wood - IQ Content)

• How personas and scenarios can change your website for the better, part 2
  "Personas and scenarios are techniques for representing your users and the things they do on your website. They are one of the key tools in iQ Content’s arsenal, and we deploy them at every opportunity because they deliver more benefits for less effort than anything else that we do. In fact, we have seen this technique transform confused and failing web projects by providing a sense of direction and purpose that set the team on the road to success."
  (John Wood - IQ Content)

Discussion articles

• Accessibility in the analysis phase: personas 
  "The purpose of personas is to make the users seem more real, to help designers keep realistic ideas of users throughout the design process. A persona with a disability includes the same specific characteristics, demographics, experience level, and personal details as other personas. Personas that include accessibility considerations also include a description of the limiting condition (disability or situational limitation) and the adaptive strategies for using the product."
  (Shawn L Henry - Just Ask: Integrating Accessibility Throughout Design)

• Accessibility in the analysis phase: user group profiles 
  "User group profiles describe the characteristics of product users, the people who use a product. Because many designers start out with little or no familiarity with accessibility issues, adding accessibility considerations to user group profiles is particularly important."
  (Shawn L Henry - Just Ask: Integrating Accessibility Throughout Design)

• Ad-hoc personas and empathetic focus 
  "Do Personas have to be accurate? Do they require a large body of research? Not always, I conclude. The Personas must indeed reflect the target group for the design team, but for some purposes, that is sufficient."
  (Donald Norman)

• A persona 'ah-ha' (PDF)
  "In an attempt to communicate that “ah-ha” moment of mental re-organization brought on by a really valid persona, I’ve attached a simplified before personas and after personas scenario. I hope you find it useful."
  (Bonnie Rind)

• Bringing your personas to life in real life
  "When presenting, talking about your personas, or referring to them in writing, communicate as though they are real people, people that you know. Express it like you are talking about a friend."
  (Elan Freydenson - Boxes and Arrows)

• Creating personas for information rich websites
  "Design personas are one of the most powerful tools in a designer’s toolbox. They help bring the vibrant, living presence of 'a specific user' into your design process. They facilitate communication between your engineering, marketing and design teams. Trouble is, how to get started with the making or creation of personas." 
  (Rashmi Sinha)

• Creating quality personas: understanding the levers that drive user behaviour (PDF) 
  "The best personas will also go the extra step to describe key behaviors such as a decision making process, an information browsing approach, or a shopping mode - the drivers that affect how people approach a given solution."
  (Shannon Ford)

• Customer story-telling at the heart of business success 
  "As most of us know by now, customer personas and scenarios are vehicles for helping an organization continuously keep their customers in their line of sight. Traditional segmentation identifies and categorizes a current or potential audience based upon common characteristics, including demographics, attitudes, behavior, transactions, frequency of interaction, spend, and more. They are discovered by 'doing the math', which may include data aggregation, cluster analysis, factor analysis, and other statistical methods applied to large sample sets. And then segments are given catchy names like Savvy Skeptics, Active Balancers, Indulgent Nutritionist, or Trade-Uppers. When done right, segments are statistically derived from the analysis and synthesis of quantitative data and are a solid foundation for customer understanding. We create personas to build upon that platform by bringing the individuals within those segments to life. These are prototypical, but fundamentally real, stories of the multidimensional lives of specific customers. This report discusses how the Arc Worldwide’s Experience Planning group uses storytelling and multidimensional customer-based stories to provide relevance, direction, and resonance in today’s business planning landscape." 
  (Parrish Hanna - Boxes and Arrows)

• Getting from research to personas: harnessing the power of data
  "The usefulness of personas in defining and designing interactive products has become more widely accepted in the last few years, but lack of published information has, unfortunately, left room for a lot of misconceptions about how personas are created, and about what information actually comprises a persona."
  (Kim Goodwin - Cooper)

• Is this you? (Reader persona design: an example)
  "Do you work in a medium-to-large organization whose web content you feel could be put to better use? If so, you’re my target reader." 
  (Gerry McGovern - New Thinking)

• Key steps in creating your reader persona 
  "The first step in developing successful reader personas is to decide what readers you are not going to focus on. Good web management is often more about what you exclude than what you include."
  (Gerry McGovern - New Thinking)

• Making personas more powerful: details to drive strategic and tactical design
  "Personas ought to be one of the defining techniques in user-focused design, but they've unfortunately become more of a check-off item than a useful tool. So how did we get here?"
  (George Olsen - Boxes and Arrows)

• Making personas sparkle like diamonds, part 1 
  "Early in our company's life, persona development was largely an intuitive process. We wanted to develop a process we could use to train clients and partners to duplicate the persona development process. To do this, we delved into literature and film to understand character development. We were fortunate to be introduced to a prominent Hollywood screenwriter and script evaluator, David Freeman. Freeman taught us about 'character diamonds'... Today we'll share what we learned."
  (Bryan Eisenberg - ClickZ)

• Making personas sparkle like diamonds, part 2
  "Last week, we discussed what we learned from David Freeman's character diamonds and masks. This week, we study these, and their applications, in more depth. Here's more from David Freeman."
  (Bryan Eisenberg - ClickZ)

• Perfecting your personas
  "It's easy to assemble a set of user characteristics and call it a persona, but it's not so easy to create personas that are truly effective design and communication tools. If you have begun to create your own personas, here are some tips to help you perfect them."
  (Kim Goodwin - Cooper)

• Persona creation and usage toolkit (PDF) 
  "This toolkit provides resources for a variety of situations. enables you to build up detailed profiles of the personas themselves, their relationship to the product, and the context in which they use the product. The intended user of the toolkit is the product’s designer."
  (George Olsen)

• Persona development and the law of averages 
  "Persona is a hot buzzword in this industry, yet most companies that create personas haven't fully embraced everything they have to offer. Most personas are watered-down and hard to relate to. The worst of the lot are lifeless outlines of a company's demographic targets. Most often, they don't deliver the expected outcome from using the persona approach."
  (Bryan Eisenberg - Clickz)

• Persona development for information rich designs (PDF)
  "Defining information architecture for complex web sites requires understanding user information needs and mental models in that domain. Personas, or user archetypes, created for such domains should also reflect types of information needs, and usage of information set. We have created a statistical technique to identify important underlying groupings of information needs. In a preliminary study, we show how designers can use this information in conjunction with data from interviews and observations to generate and refine personas."
  (Rashmi Sinha)

• Persona-led heuristic inspection is here
  "Sometimes we need to review a product for usability in circumstances where usability testing isn’t an option. Lack of time, lack of budget, unwilling client: you name it. So an improvement on the heuristic inspection would be a great idea."
  (Caroline Jarrett - Usability News)

• Persona non grata
  "Without any research to back assumptions, it's easy to end up with a product built for what designers think the users are like, rather than what the users really are like. It's the difference between reading about someone and actually meeting them, between fantasy and reality. The best personas are really conceptual models, which help you to digest the user research in a coherent way. They put a name and face to an observed pattern of behavior."
  (Dan Saffer - Adaptive Path)

• Personas and contextual design
  "Personas, introduced by Alan Cooper, are a technique of goal-directed design that is meant to help designers gain clarity and provide focus during the design process. They describe the goals and activities of archetypal users in a 1-2 page description based on a few ethnographic interviews with real users. Aside from the fact that personas are a current design trend, what makes personas interesting? Certainly they are seductive to design teams since they can be quick to create if they only require a few (2-3) interviews and a good writer. But good designers and managers know that reliable requirements gathering and design that meets the needs of the business, the market, and the user is not so simply constructed. So something else must be going on."
  (Karen Holzblatt - InContext)

• Personas and storytelling
  "Personas work because they tell stories. Stories are part of every community. They communicate culture, organize and transmit information. Most importantly, they spark the imagination as you explore new ideas. They can ignite action."
  (Whitney Quesenbery)

• Personas and the customer decision-making process
  "With this case study I want to show how our team used the concept of personas - fictional, representative user archetypes - and the customer decision-making process model in a project, in order to capture the nature of customers and their needs and concerns as they progress through the customer decision-making process."
  (Henrik Olsen - guuui.com)

• Personas and user profiles
  A collection of resources from STC Usability SIG. Includes articles on creating personas, case studies, sample personas.

• Personas, goals and emotional design
  "In the first three chapters of Emotional Design, Norman presents his three-level theory of cognitive processing and discusses its potential importance to design. However, Emotional Design does not suggest a method for systematically integrating Norman’s insightful model of cognition and affect into the practice of user experience design." 
  (Robert Reimann - UXmatters)

• Persona sketching
  "The value of personas in Web design is certainly debatable, but I've found them very useful, if for nothing else then using them to help pull your clients and stakeholders into a discussion about the people what interact with your designs. As well, they can be use for many other things aside from informing Web design and can be a great way to pull business and user goals together."
  (D. Keith Robinson)

• Personas: matching a design to the users' goals
  "By closely adhering to the goals of a specific persona, the designers satisfy the needs of the many users who have goals similar to those of the persona. The process is even more effective when designers design for several personas simultaneously, as they can satisfy an even larger number of users."
  (Christine Perfetti - User Interface Engineering)

• Personas: practice and theory (PDF)
  "In three years of use, our colleagues have extended Cooper's technique to make personas a powerful complement to other usability methods. This article describes our approach and outlines the psychological theory that explains why personas are more engaging than design based on scenarios."
  (John Pruitt and Jonathan Grudin, Microsoft)

• Personas: setting the stage for building usable information sites
  "As long as personas are developed with diligence, the planning and development tool has three key benefits for interface design projects of all kinds. First, personas introduce teams to hypothetical users who have names, personal traits, and habits that in a relatively short time become believable constructs for honing design specifications. Second, personas are stand-ins with archetypal characteristics that represent a much larger group of users. Third, personas give design teams a strong sense of what users' goals are and what an interface needs to fulfill them."
  (Alison J Head - Information Today)

• Practical persona creation
  "What I'll do here is show you a quick and easy method to help you create your personas, as well as the basics of how they can be used. This is by no means going to be the only way this can be done, nor is it the only way personas can be used. There is much more to the world of personas than I'll be discussing here."
  (D Keith Robinson - evolt.org)

• Reconciling market segments and personas
  "Market segmentation and personas are two different techniques that are often perceived as conflicting methods, but they are actually complementary tools that organisations can use to design and sell successful products."
  (Elaine Brechin - Cooper)

• Taking the "you" out of user: my experience using personas 
  "In 1999, I co-founded a small San Francisco-based start-up called Pyra. Our plan was to build a web-based project management tool and we chose to focus initially on web development teams for our target audience since, as web developers ourselves, we had intimate knowledge of the user group..."
  (Meg Hourihan - Boxes and Arrows)

• The origin of personas
  "The Inmates Are Running the Asylum, published in 1998, introduced the use of personas as a practical interaction design tool. Based on the single-chapter discussion in that book, personas rapidly gained popularity in the software industry due to their unusual power and effectiveness."
  (Alan Cooper - Cooper)

• The power of the persona (PDF)
  "Personas enhance focus, communication and collaboration on any project. You should particularly consider using personas in your company when there are conflicting visions of the product, when you experience difficulties in communication between Product Management, Development, and/or Marketing, or whenever your products seem to be falling short of your users' expectations."
  (Bonnie Rind)

• The return on investment for personas
  "Extract from The Persona Lifecycle: Keeping People in Mind throughout Product Design by John Pruitt and Tamara Adlin."
  (Anne Light - Usability News)

• The role of personas in successful scenario design 
  "Scenario design helps users achieve their goals. How do you plan scenarios? Well, if you're designing scenarios for a commercial Web site, one that demonstrates return on investment (ROI) by getting sales, leads, or registrants, you design persuasive scenarios by turning the information you have on your users into personas."
  (FutureNow)

• Three important benefits of personas 
  "Personas are becoming a regular staple in many of the development teams we talk to. The method helps teams make a smooth translation between requirements and design, resulting with much cleaner designs. The benefits of preventing grounding, encouraging story telling, and enhancing role playing are rarely discussed, yet very present when you see the method in full force. It's these benefits that guide our belief that personas will be a trusted method for many years to come." 
  (Jared M Spool - User Interface Engineering)

• Using personas to create user documentation 
  "Personas and other user-modelling techniques are often solely discussed as tools for product definition and design, but they are useful tools in other arenas, as well. Technical writers responsible for creating user documentation can benefit greatly from a well-defined persona set, too."
  (Steve Calde - Cooper)

• When you create personas, stay clear of stereotypes
  "You might not see their faces out there behind the computer screens and your Web analytics, but you are dealing with real people who have real needs and complicated motivations. Create a persuasive architecture based on stereotypes, and you’re gonna miss the boat."
  (grokdotcom)

• Why is it so hard to make products that people love?
  "Business people don’t sit in their offices wondering how they can make a product uglier, and designers don’t want to create products that won’t sell. Everybody (usually) wants to do the right thing for the company, the products and the customers. So why do so many good designs get trampled during the product development process? To make successful products, designers and business people need to speak each other's language. They need a translator to help them understand each others’ goals and decision-making process so that instead of inadvertently working against each other, they can make each others’ jobs easier. Personas are excellent translators between design and business. "
  (Tamara Adlin, John Pruitt - AIGA Design Forum)

• Yahoo's approach to keeping personas alive
  "One of the big struggles teams have is creating a long-term adoption of their target personas. While personas are often accepted initially, it’s hard for the team to keep them 'alive' for the entire project duration. Our research has shown those teams which manage to keep them alive are more likely to produce more usable designs, so we’re always interested in new techniques."
  (Jared M Spool - User Interface Engineering)

• Introducing personas in a software project (PDF)
  This Masters thesis investigates the process of creating personas and introducing their use into an ongoing software project, with the objective of providing the development team with information on user goals and characteristics as well as tools to use this information effectively.

• Creating and using personas and scenarios to guide site design (PDF)
  A presentation on the development and use of personas by Razorfish. 
  (Dai Pham, Janiece Greene)

• Data driven design research personas
  "Data driven design research personas and the persona DNA profile."
  (Todd Warfel - Messagefirst)

• How to effectively focus on your website users: creating personas
  "You can effectively focus on your website and intranet users by creating personas. Common complaints, mistakes and problems and be solved through using personas to provide a clear focus for website and intranet design. Case Study and benefits of using personas are provided."
  (Catherine Elder - Prescient Digital Media)

• Personas: Bringing Users Alive (PDF)
  Presentation from 2003
  (Whitney Quesenbery)

• Putting Personas to Work (PDF)
  "Improving your scenarios, reviews and usability testing with personas"
  (Whitney Quesenbery)

• The user is always right: making personas work for your site
  "How do we ensure that our Web sites actually give users what they need and deliver results? Personas bring user research to life and make it actionable, ensuring we're making the right decisions based on the right information. Discover the latest techniques for creating personas, including advice on conducting user interviews, new methods for applying quantitative research such as surveys and log file analysis, approaches for generating persona segmentation, and fun ideas for making your personas real. It's time to take personas to the next level."
  (Steve Mulder - Mulder Media)

Examples and templates

• Example personas 
  "Fictional examples of personas that include accessibility considerations." 
  (Shawn L Henry - Just Ask: Integrating Accessibility Throughout Design)

• Example personas
  "One thing to point out, depending on the site and the requirements the information gathered may be different. With these I asked alot of questions about online shopping and other things related to the Daisy Bead site."
  (Keith D Robinson - Asterisk)

• Example user group profiles 
  "Fictional examples of user group profiles that include accessibility considerations." 
  (Shawn L Henry - Just Ask: Integrating Accessibility Throughout Design)

• Example personas (PDF)
  Three example personas drawn from client work by Quarry Integrated Communications. 

• Organisational management personas (PDF)
  A set of personas for a HR application, showing primary, secondary and other personas.

• Persona chart (Word)
  From Adaptive Path, a document showing the format for a sample persona.

• Personas for the S2S Project
  Personas for a software development project.

• Persona templates
  "I'm sharing the source file templates for my data-driven personas. The main file is an InDesign (INDD) file and the visual chart is in Illustrator file. I've included a few versions, including PDF, CS3 and CS4. The CS3 and CS4 versions include a PDF."
  (Todd Warfel)

• Personal templates V2
  "Based on a few requests, I’ve included a few versions, including PDF, CS3 and CS4. The CS3 and CS4 versions include a PDF."
  (Todd Warfel)

• Razorfish personas (PDF)
  A set of three personas for a financial investment website, showing personal narrative and key characteristics along with scenarios of use.

• Web Accessibility Initiative personas
  Set of personas apparently developed for use during the redevelopment of the WAI website.

• Web Master Portal - roles and scenarios
  Includes a persona of a webmaster.

Posted via web from bitpakkit

Thinking like a storyteller

One of the great things about being an IXDA member is the nearly 18,000 other members and the resources that are shared.

Cindy Chastain-Thinking Like a Storyteller from Interaction Design Association.

"Storytelling is all about engagement. Designing with a narrative in mind can make a difference between a product that merely functions will and one that engages the minds and emotions of users. This session will explore how an understanding of narrative techniques can make us better designers."

As interaction designers we do well at facilitating the complex dialogue between people and the interactive products they use. But we often neglect to consider the story that evolves through the interactions people have with the things we make. Designing with a narrative in mind can make a difference between a product that merely functions well and a product that engages the minds, emotions and imaginations of users.

Drawing on personal experience, narrative theory and examples ranging from interactive products to film, this presentation is a call to action for designers to equip themselves with a deeper understanding of narrative techniques. It focuses on core aspects such as theme, scene-making, and sequencing to illustrate how thinking like a storyteller can make you a better designer. You’ll also learn how this approach can be a powerful basis for holistic design.

Cindy Chastain-Rapp has been exploring ways to engage an audience through storytelling, teaching, writing and design for over twelve years. Just recently she took on the role of Creative Director, Experience Architecture at Rapp, a global, full-service agency based in NYC. She has led projects for clients ranging from BBC Worldwide to Showtime, Fuse, Madison Square Garden, Coca-Cola and Unilever. Read Cindy's blog here:

Posted via web from bitpakkit

Making Money.

A simple and concise animated tour through the development of our the modern monetary system.

Posted via web from bitpakkit

Handy meter

You never know when you might need the handy device below:

(I tried it out this morning while reading the latest plea from Tiger Woods' college girlfriend, public feedback on the Canadian federal budget,  speculation on the iPad, and the spotty past of Jihad Jane)

 

Posted via web from bitpakkit

Scobleizer chats with Adobe about the Flash Platform on mobile

Scobleizer chats with folks from the Adobe Platform BU about Adobe Flash on mobile phones.

Covers three recent announcements:

1. A new 10.1 Flash Player for Android and Palm, with other platforms coming soon.

2. A new compiler/converter for packaging Flash apps up and shipping them on the iPhone and iPad.

3. A new AIR runtime for mobile phones so developers can ship AIR/Flash apps like Tweetdeck or Seesmic directly onto Android or Palm without doing additional work.

Erik Schonfeld's post gives a good tour of the issues and important points.

Posted via web from bitpakkit

Handvetica - comp-y awesomeness

Found this great font for decks and docs around UX and UID work. I know it would be good for the right site or print piece as well, but this definitely keeps the handmade approach without having to resort to all the comic sans lookalikes which are hard to take seriously.

You can make a title png or grab the whole font here.

It was handmade in Switzerland by Studio Kmzero, who have authored a few more excellent contemporary and well designed fonts. You can see those here.

10 Common Misconceptions about UX

10 Most Common Misconceptions About User Experience Design

View more presentations from Whitney Hess.

UX @ Mom 2.0

Consider User Experience (UX) @ Mom 2.0 Summit

View more presentations from Normal Modes.

Posted via web from bitpakkit

UX @ Mom 2.0

Consider User Experience (UX) @ Mom 2.0 Summit

View more presentations from Normal Modes.

Posted via web from bitpakkit

Cindy Chastain on UX

USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN SLIDESHOW by Cindy Chastain

View more presentations from innomind.

UX Paris 10/02/10

UX Paris 10/02/10 - Designer l'invisible

View more presentations from David Raichman.

Posted via web from bitpakkit

UX Paris 10/02/10

UX Paris 10/02/10 - Designer l'invisible

View more presentations from David Raichman.

Posted via web from bitpakkit

UX Paris - 10/02/10

UX Paris 10/02/10 - Designer l'invisible

View more presentations from David Raichman.

2010 - and where are they now?

I've been thinking a lot about user experience lately and how it ultimately underpins every aspect of adoption in the tech space today - from platforms through to internal government applications, our users are increasingly picky, intolerant and bring realistic, informed and high expectations to the table for what they want.

You have a choice - make it work, keep your promise, and help people get stuff done - or fade away forever. It's never the whole story, but bringing a pure internal, ivory-tower, self indulgent, ICT-lead thinking approach to new products and strategies ensures you will have more of a chance to fail than ever before.

On that note, I was following a Google Buzz outburst on "where are they now" and it netted out a random collection of links to stories and posts about the new new thing that was not to be. In no particular order (and I will let someone else rant about the benefits or bonkers-ness of each) some of the ones that came up were:

• Virtual Boy
• Sinclair C5
  
• Consumer surface
• Palm Foleo 2.0
• Microsoft Courier
• iPhone tethering
• JooJoo
• XOXO OLPC laptop
• Duke Nukem Forever
• Microsoft's Cairo
• Apple's Taligent
• The CueCat
• CDN iPhone tethering
• Joost
• KnockaTV
  
• Vidoop
• CD-i
• Wikia
• Tipjoy
• Pownce
• Flowgram
• AllPeers
• Delver
• UMTS 3G video calls
• Modu
• The CueCat
• Two year battery for cell phones
• Teledesic

I know there's way more...what are they? Should some of these not be on the list? Why?

Someone else reminded me of the connection to this thread that sits squarely in Daniel Gilbert's book "Stumbling into Happiness" <-official site, not buy now link talks about our inability to predict the future. I love this quote from Gilbert's site, "Like the fruits of our loins, our temporal progeny are often thankless. We toil and sweat to give them just what we think they will like, and they quit their jobs, grow their hair, move to or from San Francisco, and wonder how we could ever have been stupid enough to think they'd like that. We fail to achieve the accolades and rewards that we consider crucial to their well-being, and they end up thanking God that things didn't work out according to our shortsighted, misguided plan."

While we are not total failures, as evidenced by all our successes in improving the life of our peeps, I think we may cloud our view of the new new thing simply by focusing on the success of others sometimes. Call this a reality check...users will protect us from ourselves.

Now let's hope someone can turn this nonsense into an actually useful article.

Is Google the Next Microsoft and Microsoft the Next Apple?

Rather strange but provocative (clearly intentionally) POV in this article... http://www.technewsworld.com/story/69374.html  Former Forrester analyst Enderle does tackle the notion of UX in the various brands and why that matters but its a cursory and obvious take at best.

"Google, Microsoft and Apple appear to be playing a game of musical chairs, with Google taking the "dark side" throne away from Microsoft and Microsoft stealing the innovation perch from Apple. Where does that leave Apple? Perhaps it's the one still looking for its place when the music stops."

Posted via web from bitpakkit

User Experience Design in context of Graphic Design

View more presentations from Jiri Jerabek.

UX on Everything - Reality Overload

Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

I've decided to play for change

On the plane on the way back from 5 days in the mountains and teaching a course at the Banff Centre I finally watched the whole Playing for Change movie. Impressive and it got me thinking...

Listening to music has formed the basis of a mass market industry and a state of mind which discourages, minimizes and even ridicules those who would rather play than listen.

A mother singing in the kitchen, a child humming absent-mindedly while rearranging her toys, a construction worker whistling - these are the remaining signs of a musical soul that has been somehow displaced over time; lost in our culture's senseless indifference and the boring clamor for sameness and a mundane albeit practical order.

What stops us from making it, from listening to and giving in to our inner music, and takes us down the path of purchases, makes us fans of the freedom instead of the stars of our free lives; and finally plastic wraps our solace and faith, propping it up in the bestsellers list for as long as we continue to conform in mass quantities.

Through cover music we can easily avoid the ridicule and excel through emulation (often exact) of those who have somehow previously escaped ridicule for creating and through the careful assembly of notes and words constructed to extract value from a constantly fleeting market - formulaic rock, country, gospel, etc - almost every genre has its share of this in the discount bins of our consumer worlds.

Great music only makes it to the discount bins in the worst parts of the world - horrific places like big box stores, late night TV and the credit roll portion of DVD soundtracks - places with no real depth, roots or tradition of any kind. The discount bin collects the detritus of lost dreams, broken hearts and the bastard children of greatness mashed into a bland, mushy soup of professional karaoke - at best.

So it should be no wonder that this bizarre oxymoron referred to as the "music business" is failing. No wonder people steal it in mass quantities. No wonder there appears to be no centre except the iTunes store or whatever money collection machine has the best scale. It has no centre, no sense of being and the location and point of contact to the music has little if any intrinsic value to anyone.

In much the same way we take french fries from a bag instead of from a potato, we have reduced one of our most spiritual, beneficial and collaborative gifts to another credit card purchase and forgotten how to create and sing ourselves.

Its not so much the fault of musicians, although if you believe this you will quickly realize that there are different kinds of musicians - those who deliberately participate in this veiled circus of marketing and hype and far more importantly those pure true souls who only have the most legitimate distribution and listenership through the collective sharing force of the like-minded, friends, family and movements that they play a role in.

These musicians and those who listen to it know that to play it, to truly play it, is to feel it and understand the feeling, to be pulled by strings that wrap around our hearts and minds, planting seeds that last forever in our fondest of memories.

True music lasts forever. Greatness supersedes the marketing machine capability. Sadly, music that plays for change, plays for peace, that brings tears to your eyes and joy to your heart has hardly any more place in the western music world that surrounds us today.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - @bitpakkit

Now as for Playing for Change, watch the latest episode...

Pictures of Lily, Lily of Lily

Just found out about Lily, a Firefox add-on that enables users to create rich, complex applications within the browser. You create Lily applications by connecting functional modules that they call "externals" inside a document (program) called a "patch". Each object serves a single purpose, such as adding two numbers together, displaying an image or providing interactivity like a button. By connecting the output of one external to the input of another, it becomes possible to quickly build complex programs that do what you want. External objects are written in JavaScript (like Lily itself) and it's simple to write your own external to do whatever you want.

The Lily team have already built in over 180 externals objects:
- web service modules for APIs like Twitter, Amazon, Flickr, Wikipedia, Yahoo;
- UI modules that wrap web components from YUI, JQuery and Google Maps as well as the browser's built-in UI elements;
- modules that offer access to the network, SQLite storage, TCP sockets or the file system; modules to interact with the browser;
- modules to send and receive Open Sound Control messages or talk to the Arduino physical computing board;
- and, graphics modules that encapsulate the browser's SVG functionality and multimedia modules for playing sound and video.

Hello World from Bill Orcutt on Vimeo.

Now it's possible to use a browser-based program to make web or desktop mashups, allowing people with basic skills to visualize and animate data, modify webpages, play music, or connect to world outside the computer.

Another neat aspect is that your programs can be shared with other Lily users as text files or they can be run by anyone as Firefox add-ons or standalone XULrunner applications.

Math from Bill Orcutt on Vimeo.

Lily is free and open source, released under the MIT license. Lily runs on Mac, Windows or Linux, just like Firefox.

Find out more or get started at the Lily site - http://www.lilyapp.org/

The project is now available on Google code (recent change) - http://code.google.com/p/lilyapp/

The Invisible Man

Lou Bolin becomes the Invisible Man with no Photoshop or camera tricks - just stillness for a moment and some very careful paint work.











These images were emailed to me and I have not been able to attribute them as of yet.

Google Wave simplified

Great Creative - Ira Glass on Storytelling

Timeless video(s) with Ira Glass talking Storytelling...


"...just talk like a human being, talk like yourself..."

Video 1

Video 2

Video 4

Best music video ever?

The Fragmentation of Aggregation

Over the past few years, we have witnessed the emergence of a new trend that is ultimately driven out of the need for more consolidated access to data records, integration between disparate systems and the goal to provide users of systems with single access points that can share profile data across different service types.

As we as users move to aggregate our feeds and integrate our desktop experiences, the emergence of new services vying for attention simply means we have an inverse trend of fragmentation pulling us away from the hard work of getting everything aggregated.

I call this the "fragmentation of aggregation" which will most likely precede a phase of aggregating the fragmented tools, signs of which we have seen through increased usage of OAuth, single client apps that support multiple IM services and more, but these are the exception currently, not the norm.

Everyday I log into 15 or 20 interfaces all of which bear news for me to read. But I still read or source all of my news through Google and the Google reader. Yes I visit around 50 or so sites a day, but only as a result of the hard work done by my services to gather me relevant information and bring it to one of the few screens.

The challenge in this situation is setting the strategic goals of a new application or service with regards to its output, resource directory, login/account information and ultimately its share-ability. How do you determine which services to support? How do you know where your audience is clicking in from today? How do you manage the three screen experiences separately and effectively.

We are thinking about this on the enterprise level as well. Multiple apps with data storage, document storage, back-ups, online storage, and then multiple apps for reading and processing documents and the need for remote workers, secure access, timed access and more make for complex business process management that needs to serve multiple sources and multiple output points with varying degrees of controlled interaction.

In the web space we simply put the emphasis of choice on the end user, but in the enterprise we typically need to remove the burden of choice and systematically make selection based on rules. We need to find the user, observe the rules, investigate the request and then return the right stuff, and hopefully do all of this at the speed of 'Google'.

Do you have examples of the fragmentation of aggregation? Perhaps you would share where it is impacting you in a negative way, or even better, where you think someone or something is doing a great job of sorting all this out.

Update: Google Fast Flip launches providing yet another example: http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/

Social Media Measurement: I stopped on slide 27...

...and realized, Beth Harte is right - we really have to throw away the current model of how we think about lead generation, selling and loyalty. And of course the other slides about having a plan are great too (if you like that kind of hard goals thing-y :-)

Beth Harte / Social South 2009: Social Media Planning & Measurement

View more presentations from Beth Harte.

k.Tel (#songsincode > 100) ;

Python, javascript, cobol and more - good, bad, ugly syntax and all - jumped to the forefront of entertainment for a few hours today as the #songsincode hashtag on Twitter shot up the charts. I see some folks hating on it already, so that proves its gone over the top. Just so I don't have to drill through all the spammers everytime I want to look at them and love them all over again, I am putting some of my favorites here, attributed to the awesome Tweeters who made them possible.

In no particular order...

John Zeitler from Pittsburgh contributed several good ones - http://twitter.com/jzeitler

public void reality() { try{ if( this.realLife()||this.justFantasy() ) { throw new Landslide(); } } catch (Landslide l) { this.reality() } }

public void timeWarp() { this.jump(left); this.step(right); this.thrust(pelvic); this.timeWarp(); }

if( me.has(you) || !me.has(you) ) { /*this won't happen*/ me.live(); }

if( me.cash > 1000000 ) { house yourHouse = Store.buy(house.class); you.give(yourHouse); }

djbigdaddy from NYC tips in - http://twitter.com/djbigdaddy

cometogether = [] cometogether.append('right now') cometogether.append('over me') for i in cometogether: print i

import stalker stan = stalker() if eminem.be(just like him) == 'yes': stan.girlfriendintrunk()

m = 'Makes us harder, better, faster, stronger!' x != 'kill me': x + 1print 'Can only make me stronger, %s' % (m)

Here's a few from Tallahassee's Ben Clark - http://twitter.com/benclark

$self.dance = !$madame.ask($self, 'dance'); do { $madame.mood('charming', 'gentle'); } while ($madame.style == 'continental');

$alive = ($you['location'] != 'by my side') ? array('afraid', 'petrified') : TRUE;

$self = trap($purgatory); destroy(new Object()); while (not $reprisal) { wait(1); } $others.acquire(DEATH); $sky = '#FF00000';

Geoff Longman adds some variations http://twitter.com/metageoff

require 'barenakedladies'; if me.cash >=1.million.dollars; Realtor.find_house(:nice).first.buy.give_to(you) end

puts 'We are DEVO' if we.are_not_men?; %(D E V O).each {| l | puts l } if we.are_not_men?

assert me.is_a?(Girl) && World.find_by_type('Barbie').contains.me && me.life.type == :plastic && me.life.status == :fantastic

Adobe's Ryan Stewart weighed in with some of my faves - http://twitter.com/ryanstewart

itsyBitsySpider.upWaterSpout(); new Rain(); itsyBitsySpider = null; new Sun(); rain = null; itsyBitsySpider.upWaterSpout();

it_array.push("bulls","blood","dust","mud","boots","chaps","cowboy hats","spurs","latigo","ropes","reins"); rodeo = it_array;

$self.dance = !$madame.ask($self, 'dance'); do { $madame.mood('charming', 'gentle'); } while ($madame.style == 'continental');

crazy:Crazy=new Crazy(); crazy.feelingLonely=true; objMe=crazy; crazy.feelingBlue=true;

Josh Buhler from http://ghostradio.net joined the fun - http://twitter.com/joshbuhler

if (myLife.contains("you") == false) { myLife.sucks = true; }

if (you.want == Want.DESTROY_SWEATER) { while (you.holdThread()) { this.x++; } }

if (elevator.brokenDown) { while (currentFloor < abletorock =" false;">var whatYouGet; if (Math.random() > .5) { whatYouGet = whatYouWant; } else { whatYouGet = whatYouNeed; }

if (friend == @ryanstewart) { friendsInLowPlaces = true; }

var bottlesOnWall = new Array (99); while (bottlesOnWall.length > 0) { var b = bottlesOnWall.pop(); passAround(bottle); }

Jude.makeBetter(sadSong); while (studioTimeLeft) { trace("na"); }

Not to be outdone, mesh (Mike Chambers) joins in - http://twitter.com/mesh

var brothers = new Array();i=0;while(i <>queen.dead = true; limb.lonely = true; while(limb.on) { life.lonely = true; } if(you.lonely) { life.long = true; }

my.name = "Jonas";my.carry(wheel);for each(var a in you.haveShownUs){a.thanks()};my.feel = this;

(Mike correctly pointed out that at this point worldwide developer productivity was in serious decline for the day)

Canadian Trevor Squires chimed in - http://twitter.com/protocool

self.boat? && self.go_out(:on => Ocean) { self.pony? && self.pony.ride(:on => self.boat) }

(1..3).map { "a lady" } && i.love(:you)

Some other notable ones I found:

Tracey Kensing
if ( i != 'colorblind') { $world = 'black and white' } try { keepAnOpenMind() } catch(Exception $e) { cantSleepTonite(); }

Zach Moazeni
(!Elephants.treated_unethically? || Elephants.count == 0) { assert Humans.count == 0; self.binary_solo! }

if self.location == "boat" { self.yell "I'm on a #{"mother effin " if rand(2) == 0}boat"; self.find_mermaid.deflower! }

Leandro Ferreira
while(me.hate<2){me.love=me.drinks++%2==0;me.hate+=me.drinks%2?1:0;}

Alex Sanchez
while(true){cliente.habla("buenas, tiene madalenas?");panadero.habla("muy buenas!");

Micah Craig
me.job[policeDept].quit()&&me.job.add(steady); try{ her.help(me); her.steal(); her.rob(); }
catch(CannotRob cr) {mon.phone(me);}

Eskaban
Sky.Describe(Me); if (PERFECT_DAY) {PerfectDay.LayAfter(); while(We.Opacity > 1) We.Opacity--; We.CreateWorld();}

SniperZN
if(name == "Lola" && isShowGirl && hair.feathers.color == "yellow" && dress.cut) { merengue(); chacha(); }

cesque
10 LET n=1 20 IF n<>13 THEN PRINT n,", ",n+1,", ",n+2,"oclock,",n+3,"oclock rock!":LET n=n+4:goto 20

RickGladwin
if ("you_want_my_body" == TRUE && "you_think_im_sexy" == TRUE) { baby.cmonletmeknow();}

say_to_you = New.array[]; say_to_you[0] = "Da doo doo doo, de daa daa daa"; end; I.want = say_to_you[0];

san1t1
function check(){if (timeHasCome){document.getElementById("theButton").click;}else{setTimeOut}

Jeff_Lamarche
self.target = sheriff; // self.target = deputy; self.selfDefense = YES;

xiinite
class ParadiseCity(){ public static const grass="green"; public static const girls="pretty";} me.take(new ParadiseCity());

z_rose
$i = new Istanbul; $c = new Constantinople; $i = $c; $i = $i; /* !$c */ $c->why_works = $you.turk ? $you.business : $you.nunya;

admast
if($tickets_to_paradise == "2"){ $packyourbags=true; $leave='tonight' }

Nathan Blevins
var BuyStairWay = Lady.IsSure() && All.ForEach(x => x.Glitters = "gold") ? True : False;

Stuart Sharpe
function start(x) { if (day.isNiceDayFor("White Wedding")) start("again"); }

Chronotron
satisfaction.addEventListener(IOErrorEvent.IO_ERROR, noNoNo());

There are tons more...I had to add my own as well.

girl.OnceHadMe(); var NorwegianWood = good; switch (timeforbed); do laugh.SleepinBath while girl = workMorning };

I would appreciate people posting any really good ones to the comments here.

Object-Oriented Approach to Design (OAD)

OAD is a wireframing and specifications technique for documenting complex business logic and interactions authored by Nick Iozzo of TandemSeven. As it says on Nick's blog, "OAD allows the designer to decompose a screen in a manner that reduces complexity. Even if the screen has millions of variations, OAD can document the design in just a few pages."

Below is a presentation from the talk Nick gave at Interactions 09 in Vancouver. The talk was specifically on methods of documenting wireframes for RIAs and complex business logic.

Reading this as someone who gets caught up in this process all the time, and struggles to effectively communicate to all levels of affected parties in a complex project, I find this kind of thinking and research is a refreshing look at how to stay inspired through the process by using the right tools and methods.

Interactions 09 Object Oriented Approach To Design--OAD

View more presentations from Nick Iozzo.

@bitpakkit Inc.

Made the decision to go 100% independent a few weeks ago and have started working for two clients on long term engagements now. Both are very interesting projects and both have very clear value in their respective markets and promising technology already in place.

bitpakkit.com will continue to be mostly a blog, but the site is being worked on to showcase my work from the past years and the blog will simply roll up onto the homepage. Those of you who know me well will know that I have been working on smaller side projects and a few big ones, on the side, off and on over the past ten years. This has progressively become more and more of a focus for me and I am pretty excited to be going into it full force.

I will be supporting both local (Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa) and international businesses and I will update on the projects here when I launch the new site. Disclosure: I will also investing in a few of the smaller projects (really ideas at this point) I am looking into in order to help them get off the ground and flush out the potential.

I have created a vator.tv profile to provide some information about the services I am offering:
http://vator.tv/pitch/show/bitpakkit

To contact me regarding projects or to discuss this:
bitpakkit [a] gmail [dot] dom

Skip iPhone. Proceed straight to Android.

Update: I am setting up the Android now.

I may be slightly late to this game but I still feel like an early adopter. I have decided to bite down and buy an Android so I can deploy and field test applications on actual hardware without relying on the SDK emulator or access to T-Mobile service. Plus its a pretty cool phone - definitely faster and more typist friendly than it's Apple flip-flop wearing cousin.

Thanks to a little windfall, some fateful events and 'devigner' inspiration I have bitten the $25 application fee for the Android Marketplace and then purchased the device directly from Google for $399.99 (US). I can run it on a Roger's SIM here in Canada and a separate AT&T one in the US. You can join me as a late early adopter and grab it here now. Update: With duty, taxes and shipping it tips at close to $600.

Two notable features that sealed the deal for me were the completely unlocked GSM/UMTS hardware and an unlocked bootloader for development access to hardware and unrestricted deployment of unsigned apps. Routers aside, I honestly haven't touched firmware since that bizarre Microsoft moment we had years ago with Smart Personal Objects Technology, or SPOT (I have a couple and the devkit for them actually - make me an offer).

For more great ideas on ways to use a dev version of Android, check out PhoneGap and some stories. That way it won't matter that I don't have an iPhone ;-)

Big, huge even, but with a healthy side of practical

Austin makes great ribs. Huge ribs. Generally speaking the ones that come on paper plates like Sam's BBQ or styrofoam like Ironworks are the best, and the simple addition of a slab of white bread to lap up the sauce is pretty much all the trimmings you need. In uncertain times, while discussing uncertain things, that is a comforting thought. And it just may be the last vestige of great and huge.

SXSW was great. SXSW was huge. But you had to be there.

The technorati and their entourages partied late into the wee hours every night, never failing to make their morning sessions or open the trade show floor. While there was not a lot of unbridled optimism on the future of ad-driven models for UGC, there was a lot of practical thinking around "free-mium" models and a healthy dose of "we'll have to see what happens" that indicated to me that the practical and pragmatic will survive. Inflated valuation, especially the kind that grows between the ears, is losing its soapbox in a world of free technology and land of too many options. Sure the big brands were there, but with the exception of the obvious few stalwarts of desktop domination, the showboating and glam has given way to a more practical approach of "lets do business" and "together we are stronger".

Highlights for me were:

• tweetup with Guy Kawasaki, about ten of us hanging out on the tradeshow floor
• Microsoft BizSpark - some brilliant ideas (we were the honorable mention in video)
  
• Chris Anderson being grilled on why his book wasn't free
• blogger lounge (sparks flying as the grinding wheel sharpened the wit and pens)
  
• a session on crowd-sourced recommendation engines with the bookmarking labcoats
• meeting about 200 Twitter friends in in person

So many great chefs in the kitchen, well refined recipes for success, and the knowledge that being successful going forward is going to be all about great products, great experiences and value creation. Sure there are still a few "YouTube killers" floating around in the minds of serial entrepreneurs, there always will be, but the technologies that seem poised for profitability and persistence are the ones lead by practical thinkers that are focused on well-cooked, good old-fashioned "how this helps you-ness" and rubbed down with the unmistakable flavor of reality.

TV of Tomorrow

Halfway through the first day of TV of Tomorrow in San Francisco and the 'conversation' is very vibrant, varied and thought provoking. Tracy Swedlow and the ITVT team have done a great job of pulling together more than 100 thought leaders in the interactive, television, media and advertising space to talk about where the industry is going.

Some great discussions this morning on the Future of Broadband Advertising, a panel I was part of along with folks from Fox, IPG, Volo Media and Klickable hosted by Bill Neiemeyer. The panel after that focused on the convergence of addressable and interactive television (I think its safe to use convergence in that context) and was eye-opening in terms of the maturity of the space and the similar issues faced by the various players, including Canada's etc.tv, Backchannelmedia, Navic, Time Warner, Invidi, Visible World and Think Analytics.

I will post more thoughts about where the TV of Tomorrow is heading after I get through the keynote by thePlatform CEO, Ian Blaine - so far it seems to be all about lengthening and strengthening the leash, and the obvious inability to put the toothpaste back in the tube. Which tube, you ask?

@bitpakkit @buckingham

I don't really vlog but I had a couple hours free and I walked from downtown London (the actual 1 square mile that is London) over to Buckingham Palace - bit of a hike - and shot a video. I confess I am being a bit tongue in cheek here but there's still serious message hidden in here, I swear.



You can click on some of the stuff in the video...

Press play. Make work.

I spend too much time pressing play. For the purpose of this argument, I will default autoplay into the same conversation. On the flipside, I spend too little time making it work. Not because I don't want to or because I don't try. It's just not really possible yet. Like everyone else I take videos, stick them on the internet and then tell people where they are.

I am not going to slide into the media fervor on video monetization models or the lack thereof. Outside of the fact that the economic pressure on the segment makes speculation nothing short of useless, I am actually more specifically concerned about making the playing itself work better.

For example, let's assume it is possible to create, recreate, share and repurpose web video into a more personal experience and that we are not really all that happy firing millions of bits of unwanted bouncing pixels into our retinas in a fire-and-forget fashion.

We want to benefit from deep engagement, we want sites and tools to understand how we use them, and we want them to improve their recommendations and results for us, but everywhere we turn content and site owners are forced to push semi-relevant or just plain old irrelevant messages into these emerging channels. All this serves to do is make a few dollars and unfortunately further alienate viewers. Short-sighted is as short-sighted does, even if it drives a few eyeballs hopefully in the right direction.

Increasing responsiveness to commercial messaging in online video through rich interactivity and powerful personalization is still emerging and while this holds promise there are still a lack of standards and a definite shortage of relevant data to realistically project how audiences will interpret, interact, share and extend these experiences.

Moving along

Companies in the space are also working to maximize traceability with the goal of understanding and exploiting usage patterns, but there is little indication or promise that this data will be used to enhance the experience or help the user towards their explicit goal. Ultimately this means that the promise will have failed every time, at least for now, to empower content and marketing teams by providing any meaningful rich insight into the way video is consumed. So, guess what happens, everyone just puts it on YouTube - at least they know people watch it there.

Compounding this issue is the way in which we have traditionally imagined introducing this new layer of interaction and engagement within the viewing experiences. The whole objective we have traditionally been focused on in advertising is to yank the viewer out of the wonderful experience we have decided to sponsor or support through getting them to click, to leave. Recently a publisher told me that they were not interested in building promotional experiences that drove viewers out of the site. Seems logical, and somehow I forget what made us (the collective industry us) think that the exact same interaction model as search or banner ads (click to visit, click to learn more) could ever effectively translate to engaged viewers in an on-demand world. The reason you change channels during commercials on TV is not really going to translate well here.

Or the alternative to just sticking your stuff out where the world watches currently seems to be a slippery slope of high investment, mass customization, expensive content production, and ultimately complex IT-centric integration to systems designed to handle text and images in order to arrive at a point where you are still going to need to drag the eyeballs in front of your new screen. I have spent a lot of time tripping through corporate channels and video areas, and unless the video is actively integrated into the content the views are disparagingly low in most cases.

I am not saying there are not solutions out there that solve this. I am simply pointing out that from a layman perspective, the incredible complexity and potentially high investment rate have not delivered a returns model that can easily translate to a normalized business decision making process.

Okay, so I've put the problem out there...what's the solution?

The first step is to unbuckle our collective, exhausted Frankenstien and let him out of the corporation video lab in order to make room for some cleaner R&D and fresh thinking to happen. While that happens, I don't expect anyone to stop pressing play, but I am willing to bet that clicks on the little X to close continue to increase. I will most likely never post 'my' version of the solution here until I have something to show but I will absolutely jump into any conversation on it.

Morgan Brown, director of marketing at TurnHere, said in this Advertising Age article, "Web video is its own medium. Authenticity and information are a critical part of ensuring that viewers aren't disappointed in their decision to view the video. Video advertising with poor production quality or uninspiring content creates a negative brand experience. To make a video truly actionable it must emotionally engage viewers, building the trust and familiarity that forms the backbone of return on investment."

Great points, but now that you have them emotionally engaged with that amazing story and appropriate level of production value for the web, what makes it actionable?

Twestival Ottawa

On 12 February 2009 175+ cities around the world will be hosting Twestivals which bring together Twitter communities for an evening of fun and to raise money and awareness for charity: water. What's a Twestival? Why a Twitter Festival, of course.

There are a lot of ways to get involved:

• Attending one of the events detailed on the city sites listed on this page. The event I am producing is detailed below.
  
• You can now upload or buy music at Twestival.fm.
• Take part in the t-shirt design competition.
• Donate to charity: water.

The Twestival is organized 100% by volunteers in cities around the world and 100% of the money raised from these events will go directly to support charity: water projects.

Ottawa Twestival kicks off tomorrow night at 7 PM at Suite 34, 34 Clarence St., Ottawa in the Byward Market.

Big shout out to our sponsor - Overlay.TV - for making sure we can donate 100% of the proceeds from the night by covering all the base costs for the event. Rob Lane, CEO, will be helping us pry your wallets open for this great cause so be ready.

Some great prizes were donated - check out the post below for information on the silent auction. More came in today and we will update the list shortly. Thanks to Ryan Anderson’s hard work the local traditional press has agreed to grace us with some coverage - Ottawa Citizen, the CBC and the Ottawa Sun (24 Hrs) have been working on their unique angles to the story. A few event attendees have also agreed to give their unique perspective on the situation - more on this coming soon.

For the night of the event we have now confirmed the logistics for a live video feed and our ability to pickup the feed from all the other participating cities. Having done several internet broadcasts in the past, I will ask you to bear with us in the event of us having any issues getting this part to function perfectly

We are expecting a full house now, so please be sure to get your tickets online http://www.amiando.com/twestivalottawa.html if at all possible. If you cannot, please @bitpakkit or @sassymonkey your details to make sure we have tickets held for you in the event you are arriving late.

DJs confirmed - Ottawa scene-rs GrahamJ and DJ Plush are on the bill - more information on that below as well. Shaping up to be a great night - plan to hang out and have a few drinks, meet some people you may only know as avatars today, shake it up with the belly dancers, and help propel Ottawa into this unique global stage and ultimately make a difference in the life of someone who does not have access to the same clean water that we take for granted.

Brand evolved. Agency too...

The video above was produced by Scholz & Friends, a self-described network of friends that functions as an advertising agency, interestingly using the entire spectrum of communications tactics to deliver brand advertising for a broad range of clients. According to their website, their approach is a composite similar to that of a band where "we compose solos for individual voices and we design orchestrated campaigns which bring together a multitude of different instruments." You can explore all the different agencies in the group by country or by instrument here.

In their own words...

"Scholz & Friends ist das einzige europäische Agenturnetzwerk deutschen Ursprungs und seit der Gründung 1981 eine der Top-Kreativadressen der Kommunikationsbranche. Als „Orchestra of Ideas bietet die Agenturgruppe das gesamte Spektrum der Kommunikationsinstrumente an: von klassischer Werbung, Public Relations, Online, Event, Promotion, Architektur, Dialog, Design bis zu TV-Produktionen."

The business structure is also a radical departure from traditional agencies even though as indicated above they do provide all the requisite services - classical advertising practice, public relations, on-line/interactive, event production, architecture, copywriting, design right through to TV production.  In 2003 the network was formalized, and a group of roughly 40 leading executives across the agency business became shareholders in this new agency format. Of that forty executives, 12 members were then selected to sit on the 'board', which is basically a revolving committee that has been mandated to discuss key issues across all subject areas within the network.

This is a very interesting approach to crafting an agency business model and distinguishing between the members. While it is perhaps similar to the "colors" of Dentsu, it seems less personal than the individual colors and somehow more practical in terms of defining expertise and value. I'm not saying it's better - but it is similarly unique.

You can find more videos from them on their YouTube channel.

Twitter Timelines

One of the most interesting things about following thousands of people on Twitter at the same time is the topic clouds and the way topics can burst onto the 'Twage' and exit almost as quickly. One of the most interesting visualizations I have ever seen of this was done around Superbowl XLIII the New York Times Superbowl Twitter Timeline. Obviously, Cardinals and Steelers are very topical throughout the entire game, but scroll about halfway into the halftime show and all of America lights up Springsteen.

Very cool. I love data visualization and I love topic bursts in social media - put them together and you got me scrolling back and forth like it's a Tinkertoy truck and I'm five years old. You can also see the ads spring up as they run for the first time during the event.

Stand by Me

Bill Moyers takes us around the world mixing the voices and music of musicians from across the globe to a beautifully orchestrated and shared experience that transcends the original message of the song in a beautiful and compelling way.

This is very inspiring. I was also amazed at how many of the places in video I have stood in myself and perhaps that made it even more emotional to watch. Of the many places in the video I recognized specific locations I have been to in New Orleans, Moscow, Rio de Janiero, Venezuala, New Mexico and Amsterdam. Now I have a bucket list addition for a few more spots to get to.

Its a rare video that brings tears to my eyes, and this was one of those moments. Kleenex please...

I have overlayed the video with links to the Playing for Change website. Please visit and join me in supporting this amazing cause and idea.

Resolved to Create Value and Focus

This is a combination of personal objectives and an evolving downturn mantra written from the perspective of where things could do well or better with focus or change. 

I think there is a mantra here that can easily be distilled to - Create Value. Focus.  It might be obvious but I am sure we can all do 'more better'.   Hopefully you will find this useful.  

1. Constantly create value.
Pricing according to value - Look across all services and offerings and strive to define how to create 10x at least (why not go for at least two areas that can drive 100x in value).
Charge a premium price and provide an extraordinary value & experience in exchange.
Create recurring revenue from transactions.
Always have something else ready to add even more value when a transaction takes place.
Don't be a commodity.  It's not a good time to do that apparently.

2. Focus on who and what you know.

Reuse data intelligently.

Make sure existing customers and users are coming back. 
Work to increase your 'membership' and get members advocating for new members.
Coordinate the right time/right message for each person or segment harder.

Are your customers coming back?  Say thank you!

Are they not coming back?  Why?  (go to #4)

3. Be transactional.

Sell stuff. That's the idea.  

Remove roadblocks to transactions.  Remove all of them.

What are people buying that you sell?  Do that more.

What are you selling that people aren't buying?  Stop that.

Which customers really want to work with you and know it will help them?  Call them today.

Which customers are wasting your time?  Call them less.

Define and move on opportunity to work with partners where there is overlap in pipelines.

4. Fix and apologize.

Focus harder on overlooked / late / not-well-done areas that will generate revenue.

When  you fix stuff, let people know.  They might be waiting.

Help technical users more.  They complain more if you don't.

Deep focus on user and customer experience. Get feedback.  Do something about it.

5. Prioritize results.
Constantly force teams to focus on the 'critically few' proactive activities that produce exponential results. Don't get caught up in minutia.
Cut all superfluous activities and immediately backfill with quicker deadlines on other stuff or new things that drive the first four areas.
Eliminate all scatter-shot approaches - too hard to measure and quantify.
Focus on core strengths.  Work harder in areas that leverage these strengths.

6. Celebrate victories. 

Got it?  Got it.  Woot.

7. Get a life! 

Do you really need to update that status one more time - what else could you be doing to relax, rest and be ready to get the other 6 areas right.

In short this can be summarized as activities that will drive business, increase site usage, move sales and pricing up, fill the funnel, build out customer and user database and generate repeat business, and ensure you remain focused on defined transactional value.  And you get to have a little party when you kick ass and enjoy some downtime.  Sound good?

Okay - there's only 349 days left until 2010 - get moving!!!

bitpakkit Wordled

Wordle is an amazing way to visualize information from any text source. In the example below, I fed it all the text on this page. Click on the thumb to see what happened:

Try it out, or check out the examples. Very cool.