.@TEDxLBS #intersections: key takeaways from a great event

On Friday, I was at the very well-organised TEDxLondon Business School. Key takeaways and quotes from speakers are below:

Stuart Kirk, Global Editor of the Financial Times Lex column spoke about today’s commenting culture in online news and how that is leading to the ‘loss of mystique, authority and common sense.’ The Huffington Post apparently has 30 full-time comment moderators who work on 100 comments an hour! His viewpoint is that comments, while economically beneficial to publications online (more views, wider audience etc.) aren’t ideal if a media outlet is looking for authority. He quoted Goldman Sachs, McKinsey and Berkshire Hathaway as examples of companies that maintain their aura (lock out comments basically) but I’d argue they are the very epitome of rigid, bureaucratic organisations!

Alice Taylor

Alice Taylor was delightful as she regaled us with stories of toys and 3D printing, reminding me I should work on a new look for my Makie. Interesting tidbit: toy stores don’t decide what toys go on their shelves, they operate a lot like real estate agents where manufacturers like Mattel buy up shelf space and decide what toys to put on them, much to the detriment of small independent toymakers.

James Monighan

James Monighan, Head of Marketing, Strategy and Product at the Machine-to-Machine division of O2 spoke about thinking of it as an ‘internet of meaning’ instead of ‘internet of things’. Quotable quote: ‘Nest is the supermodel of the tech world.’

Glen Suarez, Deputy CEO of Knight Vinke Asset Management delivered a call to action for all bank shareholders, i.e anyone who has a bank account: we have a responsibility in ensuring our banks remain creditworthy. He spoke about shareholder activism and how journalists don’t really write about the credit of companies from the depositor’s point of view because it isn’t traditionally considered important. Quotable quote, of a bank’s skill levels at shareholder meetings: ‘the executives at the meetings lack the skill and those who have the skill lack the time.’

Shoshana Clark Stewart, CEO of Turquoise Mountain and a student at London Business School got a well-deserved standing ovation for her talk on her work with Turquoise Mountain in Afghanistan, where she lived for 6 years rebuilding the economy through crafts, regenerating society through health clinics and reconstructing destroyed buildings. Genuinely moving and incredibly inspiring.

Gabrielle Adams, an Assistant Professor at LBS, spoke about her work in behavioural economics, specifically how relating cheating to nouns over verbs has a bigger impact in changing behaviour. For example, saying ‘don’t be a cheater’ is more likely to achieve results than ‘don’t cheat’.

Erich Joachimsthaler, Founder and CEO of Vivaldi Partners spoke about how creating brands of substance matters more than creating brands of love (or trying to get customers to love you) in today’s world. Quotable quote: ‘People are tired of talking lizards and babies – that model has run its course’.

Sarah Bishop, another student from LBS, spoke about creating authentic connections in today’s world. How does someone go from an acquaintance to a best friend? Her answer: ‘it’s not about how much time you spend, it’s how you spend your time.’

Mahyad Tousi

Mahyad Tousi, CEO & Co-Founder of Boomgen Studios spoke about ‘transmedia historytelling’ and how it is important to tell stories about history that make people want to learn about it, using different media.

Orsola de Castro, Creative Director at From Somewhere told the fascinating story of her mission to make sure all the waste apparel from factories is put to good use. Quotable quote: ‘Nothing is created. nothing is destroyed. Everything is transformed.’

Samir Ceric, Founder & CEO of Debut Contemporary spoke about how he escaped a disintegrating Bosnia, landed in the UK and after an incredible journey now works to make independent art discoverable and affordable.

All the other speakers were equally interesting. All in all, a day extremely well-spent and very thought-provoking. Hats off to the organising team.

Firestarters: The @scriberian visualization

Nice visualization by the folks at Scriberia of the Firestarters evening a couple of weeks ago. Also see this post by Contagious Magazine and this one by James Caig.

Thoughts from 3 events I attended at #AWEurope

Last week I had the opportunity to attend a few events at Advertising Week Europe.

Guardian leadership breakfast

The Guardian leadership breakfast saw the CEOs of Radium One, Criteo and GoViral in a conversation with Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian. The audience questions were particularly interesting.

Mark Mendoza of Havas Media asked about the role of agencies when media startups like those on the panel can (and do) work with clients directly. I have been thinking about this a fair bit myself, given my involvement with Omnicom’s Innovation Group at work. In most cases, the clients that work with these startups directly are the biggest ones with the resources to invest, who understand what they can get out of it. The vast majority look to agencies for guidance, and that’s where we play a big role. Mark and the panel both agreed that it is a collaborative approach that includes clients, media agencies and creative agencies that will be the dominating business model of the future – indeed it is today – and anyone who doesn’t understand that doesn’t understand the business we’re in. Media agencies will often have the upper hand because of their media-buying role that directly impacts what technology gets used to increase client efficiency, but that doesn’t mean creative will or should sit it out, because the very model of the agency is changing.

The panel mentioned how Nike is known to have said they don’t need advertising because their products like the Nike Fuelband do their marketing for them. They also have access to vast amounts of data through nikeplus.com which directly informs their messages to their audience, and informs product evolution.

Nancy Cruickshank from Weve asked the panel what kinds of data would be important in the future, to which the response was social data and intent data. Social data expands the reach of brand messaging and also provides context (such as through location for example), and intent data often leads to sales and has a clear link to ROI. Advertising is now moving up the funnel, plugging into what people are doing and saying on the web, and if we can link that to purchase that’s a big win. Gurbaksh Chahal from Radium One mentioned how Neiman Marcus in the US, a client of theirs, saw a 5% uplift in sales after using their technology to analyse people’s social conversations.

The mobile issue obviously made an appearance: the average Facebook user in the US spends 8.5 hours a month accessing Facebook on mobile vs. 6.5 on desktop. There will naturally be more investment in mobile. But the key is for brands to understand the device: mobiles know location-specific information and brands who fail to understand mobility and think of the mobile as just another touchpoint, fail to to understand its unique benefits.

Channel 4 leadership breakfast

The Channel 4 leadership breakfast saw David Abraham (Channel 4’s CEO), Farah Ramzan Golant (ex-Chairwoman of AMV BBDO, now CEO of All3Media), Kirstie Allsop (TV personality of Location Location Location fame) and Simon Wells (Head of IP and Entertainment Formats at PHD’s Omnicom sister agency Drum) speaking to Cathy Newman from Channel 4 News about the new economics of content. Simon Wells referenced Drum’s work on ‘What’s Cooking in the Sainsbury’s Kitchen’ which I’m quite familiar with thanks to PHD’s Sainsbury’s team. He said that short form ads don’t engage the way content does, and even with content there has to be a strategy for different platforms. For example, with ‘What’s Cooking’, 12 minutes of online-only content is produced for each show that airs on TV. The panel agreed that advertiser-funded programming (AFP) could grow as a segment if there are great creative ideas, such as the short films Sainsbury’s made for the Paralympics.

Farah Ramzan Golant spoke about the need for brands to build a relationship with the audience through content instead of thinking of sponsorship as the only way to build a relationship. There was an interesting comment about how ‘content is the king, but distribution is the king-maker’, and the need to ensure brands/agencies have a media strategy for distribution when they create compelling content.

I was heartened to hear David Abraham mention the need for people to experiment a lot in order to create a few hits. The panel also spoke about the economics of this way of working: the hits in one part of the business will be able to fund experimentation by another part. Farah Ramzan Golant echoed this sentiment and said that we will need to learn from our audiences, change our business models as we go – even going so far as to write off profits for 2 years in order to try out different kinds of content and see what the audience likes best (this is exactly why I think Netflix’s House of Cards work is so great); ‘beyond demographics into behaviour’ is a phrase I noted down. Kirstie Allsopp made another interesting point about how people would need to get comfortable with having less control as everyone goes wider with their content work.

The event was definitely one of the more memorable ones I’ve been to lately, not least because some very experienced media people were so vociferous about the industry’s need to invest in multiple ideas rather than throw all their money on one, because the industry really needs to keep up with the times.

Wired global conversation

BBH’s Sir John Hegarty, R/GA’s Bob Greenberg, Radical Media’s Jon Kamen, Zenith Optimedia’s Steve King and DCM’s Simon Rees spoke to Wired’s Rupert Turnbull about a wide range of topics affecting the advertising industry today. This event has been covered elsewhere so I won’t dwell on it too much, but I want to pull out a few choice quotes.

Sir Hegarty minced no words when he said ‘the product we’re producing is getting worse’, with regard to how some ads continue to be terrible.

He also mentioned the ‘creative deficit’, something he’s spoken about before – it’s about our obsession as an industry with technology but not with what it’s doing as an enabler and as a behaviour change agent.

Bob Greenberg said ‘what works in mobile are things that are useful sponsored by a company’. This stood out for me as something that contrasted quite a bit with the takeaways from the Channel 4 content session, and it’s because of the challenges of mobile as a medium, which obviously everyone’s still trying to figure out.

Jon Kamen and Steve King mentioned the need to change the STEM petition to a STEAM petition (that includes arts), and how this is important not just for the UK/US but the rest of the world. Greenberg agreed and said they’ve opened offices in Austin and Stockholm to tap into the talent that these cities offer, because they want to find the best creative talent.

Simon Rees mentioned how brands are having to adjust their business: ‘the weaker ones aren’t surviving, the stronger ones are getting stronger’.

Sir John Hegarty said something I really believe about agencies: ‘it’s arrogance to pretend we can do everything. The job of the agency is to bring those people together’ (with regard to agencies’ relationships with specialists).

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All in all, some very interesting thoughts from stalwarts in the industry. My one criticism of Advertising Week Europe is that they didn’t do enough to ensure that women were adequately represented in their panels: 2 of the 3 events above had 100% male representation – just look at the image from the Wired global conversation and tell me it isn’t obvious. I really don’t think it’s that hard to find intelligent women in the ad industry (if anyone needs any ideas for where to look, I have a few listed in the right hand side of my blog under ‘female speakers for your conference’) – in fact the one panel I attended that had women on it was by far the most interesting, in my view. And it’s not just me that thought that.

Was it me or were women completely underrepresented on the panels at #AW_Europe today?—
Chrissy Totty (@tottster) March 20, 2013

A quick note about the recent @TechCityIWD

I was really glad to be a part of the International Women’s Day Tech City Showcase on March 8th. It was a great group of very smart women who were showcasing their work across a range of industries: design, games, retail, education, music, media and more. The format was very flexible, it was a really informal atmosphere and so diverse in terms of work showcased that there was bound to be something for everyone. Leila showcased her thermal printer from Happenstance, Haiyan Zhang used MindWave and Leap Motion to build a cat staring game (yes you heard that right!), Codasign showcased a music-making banana with Makey Makey (later figured out they were the ones I did the Arduino ghost-making workshop with last year) – they were just a handful of the brilliant projects there. Very inspiring.

Thanks to Alex, Becky, Ana and Natasha for organising!

My @metaphwoar talk: Why popular Indian culture is like a successful startup

[UPDATED 23rd February 2013 with video below]

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Last week I spoke at Metaphwoar, organised by Andy Whitlock, as part of Internet Week Europe. It was an absolute blast.

I’d been to Metaphwoar in 2010 and knew the format: entertain and educate people through metaphors (broadly, that is. As Andy said in his introduction to the evening, nitpickers who pointed out the difference between similes, metaphors and analogies weren’t welcome!), but wasn’t quite sure how my talk would go down with the audience. In the end I think it went off well. Whew!

I decided to compare popular Indian culture to successful startups, in the following ways:

1. They are both all about personality

In India, filmstars are a huge part of modern culture (always have been). Rajnikant is a Tamil film actor who does inexplicable things like stopping bullets mid-air:

….and the audience just laps it up. One of the many websites built for him actually runs without the internet. I tried it and it really doesn’t need a working internet connection to be used!!!

The masses in India also identify themselves with filmstars to the extent that they have fan clubs that wield a lot of power politically. Early in my career, I was working on a development research project that assessed the link between social groups and associations with politics and I had to interview people who ran the most influential social groups in different urban and rural areas in the South. Unsurprisingly a lot of them were filmstar fan clubs. That’s another reason so many filmstars enter politics, they sort of come with a readymade vote bank. Their opinions are so revered that people build temples and worship them in some cases. I’m not kidding. Look at this, this or this.

Similarly, good startups have founders with personality. One of the most well-known examples is the Y-Combinator programme in the US, where founder Paul Graham is widely known to favour startups whose founders’ personalities shine through even if they have ideas that aren’t quite there yet, the logic being that an idea can be changed but you can’t really change someone’s personality that easily. As this article says,

Graham is much more interested in the founders than in the proposed business idea. When he sees a strong team of founders with the qualities that he believes favor success, he will overlook a weak idea.

The philosophy of good startups having strong personalities extends to the whole company as well as the founders. Mailchimp is a service that I think really brings this to life – the monkey’s messages always make me laugh.

2. Both give people their money’s worth

The best example of people admitting they got their money’s worth is after they watch a Bollywood blockbuster. When news crews talk to audiences in India outside theatres after a blockbuster film, more often than not you’ll hear the term ‘paisa vasool’, which essentially means that the audience felt they got their money’s worth. These are typically films with lavish song-and-dance routines that make people feel 100% entertained.

Truly successful startups also give investors and users their money’s worth, whether it’s Facebook or Twitter. Whether it’s Series A or B or further, investors want to see whether a startup is worth investing in: what’s its potential, what kind of audience growth is it looking at, and so on. This is even truer when it comes to users of a startup’s service: you’re not going to get millions of users with an offering that doesn’t add value to their lives. The productivity app Things for the iPhone and iPad costs $9.99 while Things 2 for the Mac costs $50, but people see value in it. Angry Birds was entertaining enough for people to buy enough paid versions of the app to contribute  to 70% of Rovio’s revenue by the end of their 2011-2012 financial year, with 648 million downloads. And then there’s Kickstarter, where people only really back projects if they think the resulting product will be worth it.

3. They step in when the system fails

In India, causes like fighting corruption are taking up the imagination of millions of people – ipaidabribe.com is a site where people report encounters with corrupt government officials, which at a very grassroots level affects people day in and day out.

The Ugly Indian similarly, is another campaign run by citizens where they take pictures of dumps in public areas and take it upon themselves to clean it up.

We all know about the pretty involved debates and discussions that happen in the US around healthcare – and over here in the UK about the NHS as well, for that matter. Startups like Sherpaa in the US, which allow people to get access to qualified doctors round-the-clock by phone or email, save them time and effort because they can’t get that access with government services. Similarly, Mint enables Americans to track their expenses online and identify where their biggest spends are. Ideally you’d think all banks should do this for their customers – some, like Lloyd’s Money Manager, actually do this now – but I’d argue that it’s startups like Mint that made them sit up and take notice.

4. They both understand their audience so they can fit into their lives

The Indian campaign I showed resonated with me a lot: as a high school student in Tamilnadu, I actually taught myself Tamil by reading the titles on local film posters. Doorstep is an NGO in India that achieved stupendous results by using a similar insight to solve a huge social problem. It won a Silver Media Lion at Cannes.

Startups have to similarly understand what need they fulfil in their audience’s lives if they are to be successful. If they don’t, then they pivot. With agile and lean startups, continuous user-testing will show this up. Fab.com started out as a community for gay people, it’s now an incredibly successful flash sales site for design-lovers. Color started off as a closed photo-sharing community, it’s now a video-sharing site for Facebook users.

5. They know the difference between growing their audience by adding value, and by pandering to the base

In India, in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, there were a lot of pulp fiction magazines in local languages that were incredibly popular. These tales of vampires and sirens, villains and detectives, could get quite lurid – sex always sells. A couple of years ago, a small publishing house in India took it upon themselves to translate some of those short stories into English so they could reach a new generation of audience – like me. And typically you always lose something in translation but I think they did a great job of keeping the cultural sentiment intact and picking exactly the right stories, as one Amazon reviewer of the book said ‘It’s heartening to see that the remarkably prodigious authors of the stories (some of whom have written thousands of tales and novellas) are often capable of superb and sophisticated imagination, refusing to pander to the base…’

Outbrain is a content marketing startups whose plug-in is used by publishers the world over, from CNN and the Guardian to Forbes and Fast Company. What they do is based on what you read, they throw up other articles you might like, but it could include those from other advertisers as well. I recently met them as part of my work at PHD, and one of the things my colleagues and I were concerned about was how they were going to control spammy text marketers. And lo and behold, recently I heard that they’re sacrificing revenue for quality. Which is a no-brainer really if you want to build a company with any integrity.

All in all, a great event and a really fun evening!

 

In a world with fear (courtesy @small_media)

A couple of weeks ago I was at Small Media, a non-profit that tracks the usage of the internet in Iran, for a one-hour power introduction to what it’s currently like for people in Iran to use the internet.

It was a good reminder of how the other half lives, so to speak. I spend so much time mucking about on the web that I don’t often pay attention to the fact that freedom of speech is threatened in countries like Iran, and it was good to step out of the familiar that evening.

Graduate student Maral Pourkazemi had a large-scale representation of her work on the ‘halal’ internet, a phrase I only learnt that day but that I now realise is being mentioned a fair bit. I asked Maral it would be safe to go back to her country for a visit, and she said probably not, for the time-being. I overheard another Small Media employee, recently returned from Iran, mention how a friend of hers was arrested a day or two after she left the country and how it was quite possible she might have been arrested as well if she was still there.

We were then split into two groups, where we took it in turns to get a feel for what the internet is like in Iran. The foundation had set up two computers which mirrored the Iranian firewall, and we played a game that involved picking out websites noted down on post-its at random to check which of them would be blocked. It was fascinating to learn that the decision to block sites is fairly random; a committee of people has an eye on web usage and the government blocks any site they see has an unusual amount of activity. They unblock sites as randomly, but poetry, sexual content, blogs of any outspoken voices against the government and comedians are most likely to be firewalled.

Following that was a group discussion with staff from the TOR project, which allows anonymous use of the web, and the Briar project, a secure discussion system. There are 40-50,000 daily users of TOR in Iran, despite the fact that using VPN to access the web is illegal. TOR’s system is encrypted every 24 hours because they see daily attacks, but they mentioned that as long as they allow connections to the outside world, TOR would continue to be provided and no doubt used by thousands of people in countries like Iran.

All in all, a very well-organised and enlightening event by the Small Media Foundation. They’ve Storified the event, and you can follow them on Twitter @small_media.

My delayed write-up of @psfk London 2012

I know it seems like I’ve been out and about a fair bit lately, with all these posts coming at once, but it’s mainly that I’ve been postponing the writing for a while and have decided to actually get these notes out there, in the interest of making these ideas stick. In my mind, in yours, both – take your pick.

The PSFK Conference a couple of weeks ago was a day well spent as far as inspiration goes. They tried out some new things, like having a panel with design graduates who spoke about what it was like to search for design-related jobs today. That kind of thing – actually asking young people their opinion in a fairly high-profile conference – happens so rarely that it was quite insightful. These kids are all really clear about what they want to do – one of them wanted to be a props maker for film and theatre, for example – and it places the onus on the design and tech industries to make sure we’re top of our game if we want to attract smart people like them.

Rapha

One of the biggest brand success stories of late is Rapha. James Fairbank spoke about cycling with such passion it is easy to see why people believe in the brand. A couple of phrases that stood out: ‘cycling as a sport keeps you incredibly honest’ and something about Rapha standing for ‘a lifestyle not a product’. Rapha believe in marketing the sport rather than the product, and aim to impress experts with the sheer quality of what they do: so if they make a film they want filmmakers to appreciate it.

With reference to the Rapha Cycle Club, James said that they were set up because they felt as a brand that just setting up a store would be selling themselves short. So the club is a meeting place for people to actually go on trips together.

The Oyster ring

I remember emailing a link to the Oyster ring to my colleagues at work recently. Dhani Sutanto, the creator, spoke about his work and inspiration. He mentioned how he aims to make his work ‘reflect his personality’ in some way. Left Right OK, a project about wearable signals for cyclists, was another interesting story.

The Rockwell Group

James and Josh from the Rockwell Group were fascinating. They showcased some of their digital work as architects, such as the lobby of the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, and spoke about how digital technology inspired their work in physical surroundings. As they said, the digital and physical don’t need to be divorced from each other.

Positive Luxury

Diane Verde Nieto spoke about how she is trying to get successful brands the world over to affix the butterfly logo of her company on their sites, which would indicate that their products are ethically sourced. You can then click through to details. The more butterflies you see around the web, the better it is. Brands like ASOS Africa have already signed up.

The Little Printer

Matt Webb announced the release of developer tools for BERG Cloud, and the introduction of features such as the Little Printer’s face going from sad to happy when he successfully prints something out, and the ability to ‘give him a haircut’ (you had to be there to appreciate that!). One of the things he mentioned that was rather neat was a daily crossword with two clues – I think they’re working with a newspaper to produce that.

Innocent Drinks

I haven’t heard much from Innocent as a brand lately, so it was good to get an update from Dan, whose talk focused on how brands should build stories to get their audience engaged. Innocent did that with the Big Knit, for example. And the more of that storytelling ethos you generate, the more even your detractors can become your fans. They apparently invited one of their critics to the office to talk to her!

Government Digital Service

Ben and Russell spoke about how in-house skill requirements are changing across corporate and government institutions, and the GDS is proof of that (in government). Russell mentioned desire paths and the importance of creating content that users want to find rather than what you think should be there. The current Directgov site has unnecessary information about wearing warm clothes in winter (they really do!) and they’re trying to get rid of the pointless stuff and focus on allowing people to easily find what they really want to – like when the next bank holiday is! I got a sense of how big the task is and really appreciate what they’re doing.

Microsoft Research

Richard Banks from Microsoft Research in Cambridge (UK, not US!) spoke about sharing of content on the web, especially things like photos, and where we’re going with it in the future. He was rather optimistic and said that we’re moving to a phase where possession will matter less than sharing it socially – think of the way people pose for photos and apply Instagram filters before they share pictures with friends.

The Sesame Workshop

I’d never seen anyone from Sesame Street speak before and absolutely loved hearing about how the team are working on making TV a next generation teaching tool – something Sesame Street have done for decades but that they’re trying to reinvent with Kinect. Look at Elmo’s World.

Technology Will Save Us

TWSU is a company that came about courtesy the maker school of thought. Hack and make, make and hack, so you’re not at the mercy of technology but instead understand how it works and can use it for your benefit. Puzzle Radio and the Bright Eyes kit (below) were a couple of projects that we got an early look at, that I was rather intrigued by. Seriously – glasses with LED lights, yo!

Sayduck

Amidst all the AR players I’d heard of, Sayduck slipped through the net so it was good to hear about this mobile AR app that allows you to literally see a piece of furniture in your living room before you buy it.

 Syrum

I know I sound like some sort of fan girl, but if healthcare is a field of interest, as it is of mine thanks to being a doctor’s daughter, then you must check out Professor Syrum. John Pugh and his team at Boehringer Ingelheim are bravely tackling the key problem of the pharma industry: being good at what they do but crap at communicating it. Syrum is a Facebook game that attempts to overcome that barrier.

 Ven Funds

‘By 2017 bot swarms will control finance, not bankers.’ Stan Stalnaker took us through Hub Culture’s work on Ven, their virtual currency. Wikipedia says it is the ‘first virtual currency to be used in the financial markets and the first used in commodity and carbon credit trading’.

Apps for Good

Debbie Forster introduced us to the world of good that her team at App for Good are working on. They are getting kids to build apps that improve their (and our) world, very inspiring stuff.

The Haller Foundation

Jonathan Ford from design agency Pearlfisher took us through the work of the Haller Foundation that he is associated with and told us about how brands should stand for something larger than themselves.

Blippar

Jess Butcher wowed me with the new developments that are on the anvil for Blippar. You can soon blip a window dressing and click to buy straight from there thanks to their new patent-pending peelaway technology. Look at this:

Jaguar

Julian Thompson took us through Jaguar’s history and heritage and the reason for their relentless pursuit of good design: ‘good design communicates a product’s values; what it does and who it is for.’

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I also want to mention the various small but important eco-friendly things PSFK did at the conference; from using food and drink suppliers who practiced ethical sourcing and recycling to making sure the conference attendees returned their badges so they could be recycled.

All in all, as I said, a very inspiring day. PSFK Conference San Francisco is happening soon – if you’re in that part of the world, consider going.

Lovely afternoon at @h8ppenstance showcase, thanks @katybeale @rachelcoldicutt cc @finalbullet

The Happenstance showcase was proof of the interesting things that can happen when you put makers together with arts and culture. I’ve been following the progress of the project off and on since it began, since I know Katy and Rachel from Caper who were the brains behind it, but equally importantly because my friend Leila was one of the tech residents. It was lovely to hear what they’ve been up to. To be honest, amazing things happen when you put things and people who wouldn’t normally be put together in the same place, whatever the discipline, but the fact that Happenstance actually went and did it is really cool.

You can read all about what Kevin Walker and Linda Sandvik did at Spike Island in Bristol, what James Bridle and Natalia Buckley did at Lighthouse in Brighton and what Leila Johnston and James Jefferies did at Site Gallery in Sheffield from the Happenstance blog. This afternoon, though, I noted down a few things that the panellists and the residents said that stood out for me.

People not products as the starting point: It’s very easy to go into this sort of a project with the aim of ‘making something’. Sometimes it’s better not to, and to start with the people that are working together, what their skills and needs are.

Innovate first and plan later: At first glance this sounds like the antithesis of what I just mentioned above, but in reality it’s sort of about the primacy of agile over waterfall.

The importance of cultural fit: As with any project and organisation, cultural fit is often more important than skill. As Katy and Rachel said in an article in the Happenstance newspaper:

Each of the hosts (Site Gallery, Spike Island and Lighthouse) are small in size but big in reputation, and we needed technologists who would be interested in, and sympathetic to, their work – not only ambassadors for them in the wider world, but good people to have in the office. We were looking for the sort you’d have professional confidence in, but also want to chat to in the kitchen or go out for a drink with after work.

Don’t commission, collaborate: Art galleries, as Linda Sillars from Site Gallery said, are prone to commissioning projects via 45-page thick briefs. Today it’s better to work with artists on what you’re thinking of from the outset, rather than get mired in paperwork. (This is probably true of many industries).

Make the technology work for you: Helen Legg from Spike Island mentioned this; that you shouldn’t think any technology is the answer – you need to make it work for your specific case.

The importance of technologists as people who understand how things work: Honor Harger from Lighthouse mentioned their value on the teams of art and culture organisations, who typically don’t have that expertise.

Neat stuff I learnt about today: James and Natalia’s Offbott, a project diary of sorts, and Kevin and Linda’s Donation Box which I can’t find a link to but was on show at the event, a box that can be programmed via Arduino to say whatever you want when people drop coins in it. I already knew about the Cathy and Heathcliff printers but hey – how fun are they!

James Bridle couldn’t make it for the event, but here’s a short neat video we saw that makes you examine the work process.

Robots & Avatars (thanks @gboddington for the invite)

Last week I went to the press preview of Robots & Avatars, a selection of installations and projects examining how digital technologies can influence how human bodies might work a decade or so from now. It was put together by Body>Data>Space, an organisation that creates connections between performance, architecture, virtual worlds and new media and involved a range of collaborators and funders from across the globe, including MADE (Mobility for Digital Arts in Europe), RACIF (Robots and Avatars Collaborative and Intergenerational Futures), FACT (Foundation for Arts & Creative Technologies), the Knowledge Transfer Network and NESTA.

The commissions and exhibits were rather fascinating; my favourites were the following:

Visions of our communal dreams by Michael Takeo Magruder, Drew Baker, Erik Fleming and David Steele: Inside a beautiful golden painting frame is a digital screen that shows a virtual world that links to the physical, examining our relationships to our avatars in this digital age. Sort of like Second Life in a painting.

MeYouandUs by Alastair Elibeck and James Bailey: A camera next to a large screen records your movements as you walk by and plays them back with a slight delay, making you re-examine your movements and identity.

My Robot Companion by Anna Dumitriu, Alex May, Dr. Michael L.Walters and Professor Kerstin Dautenhahn: This reminded me of the robot companions I saw courtesy LIREC a couple of years ago. My Robot Companion is a robot whose face alone changes based on who is standing in front of it. The idea is to think about how we’d behave if we have robots as companions: what form would we want them to take? How would we interact with them?

It’s worth looking at all the projects on display – they do make you think about where technology can take us and if we’ll be equipped to consider both the practical and the larger philosophical questions that will face us at some point as a society.

The evening also featured a performance by digital artist Marco Donnaruma – a dance involving wearable technology that enabled him to produce sounds using his muscles. Yes, I did a double take when I saw that too. From his website:

During my performance muscle movements and blood flow produce subcutaneous mechanical oscillations, which are nothing but low frequency sound waves. Two microphone sensors capture the sonic matter created by my limbs and send it to a computer. This develops an understanding of my kinetic behaviour by *listening* to the friction of my flesh. Specific gesture, force levels and patterns are identified in real time by the computer; then, according to this information, it manipulates algorithmically the sound of my flesh and diffuses it through an octophonic system.

Robots and Avatars is a touring exhibition that is currently on show in London till 28th September at 12 Star Gallery, Europe House, 32 Smith Square – definitely worth a quick visit if you’re interested in technology and new media.

A big Thank You to Ghislaine Boddington, Creative Director at Body>Data>Space for the invitation.

On data, planning and not planning (cc @APGLondon)

Last week I went to an APG talk about data and planning – a pretty good one, may I add.

Andy Nairn spoke about using data to produce things that actually help people be better in some way, for example, either by bettering themselves (Nike Fuelband), the environment (Fiat Ecodrive) or their lives (SFpark.org) – definitely the future of agencies simply because our clients are heading that way themselves, and rightly so.

Sue Unerman told us that data can help brands target the right people, primarily online by virtue of recalibrating strategies based on analytics, but even then we shouldn’t lose ourselves in it. She quoted T.S Eliot: “Where is the knowledge that we have lost in information?”

A few things that Rory Sutherland mentioned bear writing down:

Variable admission bias, which means that the variables you put into your model will affect the output. So depending on what you are trying to prove you can manipulate stuff such that it works for you. Which kind of makes the whole model a bit redundant. Interestingly, I couldn’t find *anything* about it on Google. It’s a Googlewhackable phrase, if you will.

The importance of cybernetic feedback, or feedback which feeds into your (circular) process to improve it. That basically means working in an agile way, and evoked lean principles to me. I don’t know whether that was an exhortation to traditional advertising to break out of it because that’s really old hat now, but if anyone reading this needs to be reminded – stop planning on a 9-month cycle, for heaven’s sake. Babies are born that way, not successful business ideas, in this day and age at least.

The danger of category error in our business: sometimes we try to apply data to concepts that aren’t data-oriented, and we fall into a hole when we do that. I buy this outright, in that as much as I like what data can do in certain circumstances, sometimes there are nuances that it cannot reveal. He mentioned a great quote by Hayek from his Nobel Prize lecture in 1974 which is worth reproducing here:

While in the physical sciences it is generally assumed, probably with good reason, that any important factor which determines the observed events will itself be directly observable and measurable, in the study of such complex phenomena as the market, which depend on the actions of many individuals, all the circumstances which will determine the outcome of a process … will hardly ever be fully known or measurable. And while in the physical sciences the investigator will be able to measure what, on the basis of a prima facie theory, he thinks important, in the social sciences often that is treated as important which happens to be accessible to measurement.

(Emphasis mine).

Ecological rationality: based on research by Gerd Gigerenzer [PDF] and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. The phenomenon of ecological rationality says that when given two choices, you tend to recognize the one you know better as the right choice. (I imagine contestants of Who Wants to be a Millionaire use this principle by default). This plays to Byron Sharp’s work of course.

He also pointed us to Goodhart’s Law, which essentially says (and this sounded complex to me at first but isn’t, especially if you go on to read about the Lucas critique which is the precursor of Goodhart’s law and essentially the same thing but specifically in a macroeconomic setting), that once you use a specific social variable for the purpose of creating a policy, it loses the ability to impact the policy based on its content. As this post says:

The most famous examples of Goodhart’s law should be the Soviet factories which when given targets on the basis of numbers of nails, produced many tiny useless nails and when given targets on basis of weight produced a few giant nails. Numbers and weight both correlated well in a pre-central plan scenario. After they are made targets (in different times and periods), they lose that value.

And Crabtree’s Bludgeon: In relation to Occam’s Razor, which says, more or less, that the simplest solution is the best, Crabtree’s Bludgeon says that if two mutually inconsistent observations occur, then they need to have some explanation or they – in fact – do not really exist. Read this obituary of Professor R.V. Jones, credited with creating this fictional logic, for more (there’s a pun within a pun there – Crabtree doesn’t exist and was made up by Professor Jones to illustrate that people sometimes blindly believe things that are quoted without proof). I guess his point was that data can lead to some bizarre suggestions – and that we need to stop believing such possibilities are practical because it may not make sense for us to believe it, especially in terms of business strategy.

All things worth thinking about.

There’s a summary of the event by the APG here.