Being Blonde

I was fortunate enough to see Guy Kawasaki on his feet yesterday, talking about the Art of The Startup at Edinburgh Informatics. He’s a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and ex Macintosh brand evangelist. He also part of the team behind Alltop, the online magazine/news aggregation site that answers the question “What’s happening?”

Over the course of an hour he talked through 10 themes that summarise his view on what makes for a successful start-up. There’s little point in me recounting in detail what he said because Ewan McIntosh was live blogging and has pretty much nailed it on the 38 minutes blog.

So enough about the content, what about the delivery?

This was most definitely a gig, and had several things in common with the musical kind (all good).

1) VIP, access all areas style wristband.

2) Guy played a great set. It was clearly not the first time he’s spoken on this topic, but his familiarity with his material made for a compelling 60 minutes. He was most certainly not going through the motions.

3) His material was good. Interesting points, well made, with examples that were new to everyone. Peppered with candid and personal anecdotal asides. The equivalent of a continuous series of crowd-pleasers with no duff tracks off an unfamiliar new album.

4) If his ten themes were the equivalent of ten songs, then the linking banter between them was spontaneous and tailored to the audience. He wasn’t afraid to go off piste for a while.

5) He’s a natural front man. OK so there was no band behind him but he owned the stage.

6) His slides were his supporting act and he was the headliner. Like all really good presentations, this was about him not his Powerpoint. How many times do you see the reverse in action?

7) Encore. Courtesy of Mike Coulter in the Q&A, we were treated to an encore in which he speculated on the monetisation of Twitter. He suggested that Tweets could be treated like text messages. Say 250 free Tweets per month and $5 for more than that. The audience seemed to react well to this idea.

I was invited by TRC media to speak about Branded Content to a group of independent production companies last week. I was the last on of several speakers but decided to spend the day to listen to what the others had to say. I’m glad I did.

The other speakers were Mike Dicks of Bleedinedge, Adam Gee, cross-platform Commissioning Editor at Channel 4, Lisa Sargood, BBC Multiplatform Commissioner, and Charles Wace, Chief Executive of Twofour Group. Each was speaking about their experiences in the realms of multiplatform content, 360º commissioning and/or platform convergence.

As usually happens when you attend an event whose scope lies outside your usual areas of interest, it was disproportionately interesting. That said there were some useful parallels between the world of TV company commissioning and that in which we talk digital marketing with advertisers.

There was a general feeling that the multiplatform bit of multiplatform commissioning was growing in stature and influence - no longer the poor relation of the “main”, broadcast programme idea, no longer the bit that comes “after”.

Parallel 1 - Digital is no longer the poor relation to broadcast.

This is being driven by a growing catalogue of award winning case-studies and some amazing numbers being delivered by multiplatform properties.

Parallel 2 - TV companies are suckers for awards, just like us and our clients.

Many examples of multiplatform excellence were cited, one of the most compelling of which was that of the partnership between CNN and Facebook for the live streaming of the Obama inauguration speech. The numbers (quoted here on Mashable) were tremendous.

What made this especially interesting to commissioning editors is the way in which a mass online event became a “shared” viewing experience. You and your Facebook friends could share feelings and observations in real time, creating the virtual equivalent of the mass, shared broadcast experiences whose demise as a result of media fragmentation is lamented by traditional advertisers.

Taking this comparison further, Mike Dicks described Facebook as having “gone ITV”. In other words its user base has expanded well beyond the geeky early adopter phase and is now a genuinely populist channel, potentially affording populist opportunities to advertisers.

Parallel 3 - Commissioning Editors, like advertising clients, are turned on when digital channels deliver “broadcast” numbers.

Based on his experience of multi-platform projects, Mike presented an ideal multi-platform production process and timeline. Contrary to the instincts of most TV producers this has the digital components of the multi-platform property commencing before the video/film aspects of the project. This was music to my ears. Mike’s full presentation can be viewed here and the timeline is slide 14.

Parallel 4 - the digital aspect of a multi-channel project should be aforethought, not an afterthought.

Building on the CNN/Facebook case-study, Adam Gee waxed lyrical about Sexperience. The online element of this property delivered 1 million page views in a single night, and continues to deliver 5,000 elements of user-generated content per week, long after the series has gone off air. At its peak Sexperience was ranking number 3 on a Google search for “sex”. It is still appearing at number 6 at the time of writing.

He also cited the example of Embarrassing Teenage Bodies. 99,000 teenagers took online STD risk assessment tests in just 4 days.

Building on the theme of user-generated content, Adam described himself as not so much a commissioner for content, but a commissioner for the infrastructure for content. For instance the back-end technical engine for Sexperience online is being re-used for an Adoption project on which he’s working - a direct lift of the technical IP and a direct lift of the infrastructure. Multiplatform commissioning editors are waking up to the fact that there is long term value not just in content, but also in the technical IP that turns that content into a compelling user experience.

Parallel 5 - content IP and technical IP can be equally valuable.

Adam finished his talk with a list of significant differences between what he called “networked media” (they are no longer “new” media) and television. These differences  are the foundation for the challenges and opportunities with which multi-platform commissioners are presented.

And there’s our sixth and final parallel.

Parallel 6 - a TV mindset doesn’t cut it in a multiplatform world. This applies equally to commissioning editors and advertisers.

Amen.

This weekend (14-15th March) saw the Maker Faire UK set out its wares as part of the Newcastle ScienceFest 2009.

Bit of background, Maker Faire was established by Dale Dougherty  who along with Tim O’Reilly, founded O’Reilly Media. Dale is the founder and publisher of Make: magazine which celebrates tweaking, hacking, creating, merging and generally mangling technology.

The problem I have with this event is the name – Maker Faire. It conjures up images of paper doilies, home baking and bad arts and crafts, even the website graphics use party bunting which doesn’t really help matters. The reality of the situation though is that it is a lo-tech nirvana full of passion, creativity and innovation. It is more about personal technology and making technology personal than slick, mass produced tech which, as an pproach, is refreshing in itself.

The Faire was in a Marquee in Times Square, the Life Science Centre and also the Discovery Museum. There were about 30 stands that covered everything from virtual graffiti, twitter controlled devices including Arduino bot, a host of audio and visual interfaces to robots, plants, dolls and hats (all of which were far more interesting than I’ve just made them sound).

Walking round the event with two kids both under the age of six did pose a few “issues” for me but I managed to get a fairly good overview of Make: and some of the fantastic projects the guys had created. This is a small selection of what was on offer…

And the weekend wouldn’t be complete without some Robot Wars thrown in courtesy of Robo Challenge…

A week ago we set out our stall to provide live tracking of EdTwestival socialising as it happened.

The idea was to do this using a newly created Twitter account @wemet. By sending a direct message to WeMet with the Twitter @names of the people you met, you would help to create a real time database of all the social interactions as they happened.

That was the theory…

In practice in turned out pretty well. The EdTwestival event itself was an unqualified success - well organised, well supported and much appreciated by all who attended. By comparison the live tracking element was more of a mixed bag.

What worked

• Roy, Andy and Fraser did a grand job in a short space of time to grapple with the Twitter API, develop the application and sort out the front end interface.
• Excellent support for the idea ahead of the event from the EdTwestival team and the “community”.
• At the event itself there was a generous spirit and plenty of good intentions to participate in the idea.
• In the end, from a universe of 189, a total of 58 people sent direct messages detailing conversations with 118 others. These “meetings” involved 124 unique names or 66% of the universe. The resulting social graph of the event is shown in the image above and the movie below. You can also view a replay, condensed into 5 minutes, here.

What could have been better

• Despite the best efforts of the EdTwestival guys the venue wifi couldn’t cope with demand for bandwith resulting from the furious content creation of 200 avid twitter-bloggers. We ended up running the application through a 3G dongle that could only manage a 2G connection.
• A design that looked great on screen could have been better optimised for large scale projection.
• Despite the predictably high penetration of iPhones within this geeky group, many people simply weren’t packing the right kind of mobile devices to make participation easy.
• Even with an iPhone, sending a direct message at the start of every new conversation is actually an anti-social act. In the end, an idea that was enabled by technology was also limited by technology. More accurately, and reassuringly, the idea was limited by people’s desire to be socialising rather than technologising.

Nonetheless a big thank you to all who did “technologise”.

To retweet this post, copy and paste the text below into Twitter, Tweetdeck, Tweetie, Twhirl, or twhatever.

Results of Wemet live tracking at #EdTwestival -  http://bit.ly/yblG3

Code should be elegant and pure – in fact some believe it’s an art form. The following is an extract taken from the TOPLAP draft manifesto. TOPLAP are a conglomerate of interactive programmers better known as live coders…

<snippet>

We demand:

- Give us access to the performer’s mind, to the whole human instrument.

- Obscurantism is dangerous. Show us your screens.

- Programs are instruments that can change themselves

- The program is to be transcended - Artificial language is the way.

- Code should be seen as well as heard, underlying algorithms viewed as well as their visual outcome.

- Live coding is not about tools. Algorithms are thoughts. Chainsaws are tools. That’s why algorithms are sometimes harder to notice than chainsaws.

</snippet>

Inspired.

Related:
Fluxus Live Coding Workshop

I’ve always been interested in the interaction between humans and machines. Recently Superstar DJ ENO passed this over to me and I thought it was well worth a mention…

Felix’s Machines Composition 2 is a lovely example of what would be known traditionally as Mechanical Music – taking reference from music boxes, barrel organs, player pianos etc. The real appeal for me is the inherent beauty created by a hybrid of computers (sequencing), mechanical engineering and structural sound design - a lovely contemporary take on a 9th century idea.

Subjectively, it’s melodically and rhythmically beautiful and well worth a listen. Objectively, it’s a great idea.

Hey, maybe it’s really shallow, but this made me feel good. Software registration telling you that “you ROCK!”. In caps. With an exclamation mark.

That just makes me want to register more software, see what they’ve got to say about me.

Adobe > Thanks for registering, you really are the best. Really. I mean it. We love you… don’t go away.. hello… please be loyal.
37 Signals (if they had desktop stuff) > Your rock, but we rock way more than you do. Way more… Can’t tell ya how much more.
Microsoft > It looks like you’re looking to receive an unwarranted and shallow compliment…

I ROCK! Versions app says I do. So there.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

OK, perhaps just a teensy tiny bit of sensationalism in the title there… it’s hardly SkyNet or HAL but this little snippet (courtesy of the beeb) made me initially think “grr spammers” then “interesting software/wetware mashup” before settling on the title of this post…

Assuming I’ve understood how it works properly, it goes like this:

1. You get a virus/trojan/adware/malware on your computer by some means (dowloading “interesting_screensaver.scr” off an email attachment perhaps)

2. This trojan runs a script which tries to create a dummy Yahoo! account for evil spam purposes, but gets blocked by the CAPTCHA

3. The script then pops up a picture of a stripper, along with the captcha it’s been given by Yahoo! and says it’ll give you another picture if you enter the code.

4. Being silly enough to get the trojan in the first place, you’ll enter the captcha which the script fires back to Yahoo! and bingo, a new spam email address is born from which more people are spammed with the virus and the cycle continues.

Now, not having been infected with one of these things I’ve no idea if the trojan fulfills its promise by showing the next picture, but if it did it’d ensure its already engaged user would continue to provide free CAPTCHA-breaking services…

So we have the human user enslaved by the promise of scantily clad women (instead of the classic “threat of extinction”) providing services for a malicious script in order for it to replicate itself throughout the web…

Tis’ but a short jump to human battery cells powering gigantic killer robots, no?