I have enormous respect for architect/developer Jonathan Segal. He’s a living, breathing case study for sticking to your guns and pursuing what you believe in, even at great risk if required. Segal has chosen a rebel path for his life’s work, eschewing the safe route, the established process, for a professionally trained architect by instead choosing to design and build what he wants, for himself. He’s certainly nothing if not incredibly confident. Very early on Segal was determined to not waiver, compromise, or work under the direction of another. He’s been profoundly successful as a result. Personally, I love his design and the environments that he creates. I love the disruption of his properties in areas that seem to have been overlooked, are in transition, or perhaps may be close to tipping to a more “suburban” style of development. Segal’s buildings stand out not because they are loud, sharp, or trendy. They shine because they are design and experience uncompromised. His work is the slamming of a fist on the table, the pounding of the podium with a shoe. Jonathan Segal knows that urban development does not have to suck, and he’s going to make sure that his fellow citizens of San Diego know this, too.
The video above is about 12 minutes of interview with Segal about his work. It’s excellent, and illuminating of the power of disruption. Rock on. That Segal is also rumored to ride a Ducati and pilot a Carrera GT… well, those that know me well can easily guess what level on the badass scale, from my perspective, Segal comfortably occupies.
Last week I spent some quality time researching and learning more about the concepts of transmedia storytelling and convergence as it relates to marketing, advertising, and content authenticity. I came across this video of Henry Jenkins, the director of MIT’s Comparative Media program and author of Convergence Culture, and in it he succinctly explains the impact of transmedia on our culture, and ultimately on how we engage/create/distribute information. Essentially, the convergence of technologies and cultures is creating a new media landscape. Jenkins not so subtly relates that we are at a paradigmatic moment, one where an old form of media is dying at the hands of the new. To his point, the old media is one where storytelling has been held and controlled by big corporations who leverage arcane revenue models for distribution, and the challenge from new media is by contrast diffuse, networked, and empowering of the individual and democratizing of the story. This is happening in news, advertising, movies… it is happening everywhere. I love this stuff, this change happening right before our eyes. The video is brief, but dense with ideas and articulation. Jenkins is also great at putting some memorable statements out there. Like this one:
“George Orwell imagined a world where Big Brother is watching us. We, instead, with little cellphone cameras are watching Big Brother every moment of the day.”
Henry Jenkins, Director of Comparative Media Studies at MIT
Found this video of artist Shepard Fairey via Twitter this morning. I value the opportunity to see artists in the process of making, to watch them as they’re in the creative groove. Often, I don’t actually care about the final product as much as I enjoy detail on their process, especially as each artist’s approach is so proprietary, so unique. Fairey layers really simple elements that are individually interesting, but in aggregate make complex images that appear deceivingly simple. Watching this video of Fairey in action reminded me of other favorite hooligan artists, like Jackson Pollock:
That headline is a quote from the video above. It’s only one of the many great lines from one of the many smart people interviewed in this thought-provoking video from Honda. They were asked the simple question of what they thought transportation might be like in 80 years. It’s crazy, fun, and absolutely vital that we speculate on the possible answers to questions such as this. Projecting out a few decades unbinds us from the constraints of now, of the current state, and empowers us to not only stretch our imaginations, but to tap into the collective desire to unwind the status quo and envision something that is truly better for all of us.
Above is an incredibly interesting presentation from Matt Jones of Dopplr. In it, Matt digs into the opportunities presented by the growing river of data presented to us by the abundance of devices now ubiquitous in our world that do nothing but monitor, collect, and regurgitate endless streams of data. Making use of this data, and making it useful, is an increasingly necessary skill. This reality would coincide with the gathering momentum around data visualization, and the incredibly creative ways in which designers are beginning to represent the seemingly mundane with graphics that both engage and elucidate. Some are referring to this as “data sculpting”:
“Can we explore Data as a seductive material in the same way as stone, wood, metal can be used for beautty as well as structure and commodity?
What happens if we look at Data through lenses comprised of the sorts of properties we find in precious, seductive physical materials?”
Matt Johnson of Dopplr
Originally came across this series of slides at Only Dead Fish, the killer blog of Neil Perkin.
On September 14, 2007 the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched the Kaguya mission to the moon to obtain scientific data relating to both the lunar origin and evolution. Kaguya is also helping JAXA develop technology for future lunar exploration. The video above is from a recent overflight from earlier this year of the lunar surface by one of the three lunar satellites that make up the Kaguya mission. Incredible detail. You are looking at the actual lunar surface.
I have spent much time over the last few months digging deep into the business processes that support business development management. I was surprised to learn just how prime this space is for innovation as so many of the “accepted practices” utilized by people focused on business development for their organizations are arcane, inefficient, and lacking the advantage of effective supporting technology. There seems to be limited discussion and effort focused on “next practices” in this area, which is itself a tremendous opportunity. Glaringly, one commonality I have observed is the struggle by the business development community to force CRM tools to work in support of their efforts. Universally, I have heard of much pain around this effort. Another commonality is a belief in the power of social media and open networking, but limited knowledge or experience in how to do this effectively.
This all compels me to propose the development of “business development radar” (BDRadar) as a tool that truly supports business development management (or BDM), and that integrates a priority set of functionality in support of open networking/marketing/business development goals. A tool that is accessible via the web, and is perfectly designed for easy use on mobile devices, that is cost effective for the soloist, independent, or smaller organization that realize the value of collaborative networking, and that seeks an alternative to the limitations of a closed enterprise tool. Essentially, a tool that can surface business intelligence, visual network maps, and patterns whenever and wherever we need it, and that is seamlessly integrated into the networking and business development workflow. From one unified interface, a tool that provides:
- Open, collaborative network mapping
- Custom profile building with selective sharing
- Intuitive filtering and sorting
- Concise management of next actions with automated minding
- Unified contact management integrated with tools already in use
- Support of open networking/social CRM/CRM 2.0
No, LinkedIn does not do this.
The key differentiator from closed network CRM tools is that BDRadar would be designed at its core to support the open networker, and enables the creation of massive, mapped, searchable collaborative networks. It would support co-marketing and collaborative networking opportunities in support of business goals outside of the organizational firewall. I strongly believe that this is the future of business development, and to my knowledge the tool to support this does not yet exist. Driving the need for this BDRadar are critical key obsessions, and competitive necessities for business development professionals and marketers:
- Effectively determining context of opportunity
- Freshness of information
- Speed to intelligence
I have explored an endless array of tools to support and automate the addressing of these obsessions. What is required is an open tool that not only manages information, but that can recognize the patterns that identify opportunity, and supports the sometimes collaborative liberation of that opportunity into real business with individuals and teams outside of your organization. I’ve cobbled together a series of mostly freemium tools that I maintain. Tools that automate contact management, opportunity profiling, social media search, and network mapping. These work, but the inefficiency of moving between different interfaces, difficulty in easily sharing information, and the lack of integration compels us to create a better solution, to design something that REALLY works, and that we can easily share with others.
It’s fun to talk about the death of advertising (or anything perceived to be old, unchanging and stodgy), and everybody seems to be doing it. It’s true that advertising faces serious challenges. And yet, advertising’s not going away any time soon, if at all, though it is going through pretty interesting changes. Some of these are driven by technology, and others driven by the changed habits of consumers… which may also be driven by technology. But isn’t everything right now? It would seem that creative destruction has been unleashed on a broad range of industries for a dizzying diverse number of reasons. A common and consistent reason for this, though, is forgetting who your customer is and what they want. This would be despite the array of incredible tools now at our disposal to make this an incredibly easy thing to do, to stay connected to our customers. This is doubly true for advertising, and the cartoon above from Hugh McLeod (a favorite of mine), sums this up rather nicely. Add to this the very interesting presentation below from Futurelab:
“There will, of course, continue to be times and places where iconic, one-way messaging make sense — like bringing out the fine china for a special meal. But these instances (e.g., the Super Bowl), are increasingly rare and increasingly expensive. The real challenge facing one-way, brand-centric, non-conversational advertising is its focus on making the perfect presentation. The perfection model benefitted from very limited media outlets. Advertisers essentially spent money to guarantee craft, which theoretically helped a message stand out amidst the clutter. That formula had limits. Until now, marketing tools have existed in just two dimensions — words and images — sometimes in motion, sometimes with audio, always focused in a singular direction at the consumer.
Then someone invented the Internet. And Search. Quite suddenly, brands were no longer solely in power. The audience is in control. Media fragments. Most important, words and images are joined by a third dimension — technology — and now the marketplace flows in two directions instead of one.”
I happen to know of more than a few marketing/advertising firms that understand the terrain on which they navigate. As a result they happen to be doing quite well.
An appropriate follow to my previous post. The diagram above does an excellent job visualizing not only the elements that comprise design strategy, but also gives some detail on how this strategy could be applied to ideas as actionable steps. You can learn more about this diagram from Ralf Beuker and Erik Roscam, and also download a larger file that makes the detail easy to read.
An excellent overview of one firm’s perspective on effective design strategy, and the value of design to the challenges facing business as we work to identify valuable ideas and pursue opportunity. Coincidentally, I first found this video last week while I was in Palo Alto visiting with IDEO and Steelcase on essentially the same subject, to learn more about their methodologies for user centered research and how that research is realized through smart, informed design strategy.
That headline is a quote from a 14 year old girl asked her perspective on television from this really interesting video clip of interviews with a group of 14 year old girls. They provide us a brutally direct take on the future of television, and it’s not pretty. They are absolutely right, though, as broadcast television is going through incredible challenges, and what comes out the other end of navigating these challenges will be something completely different, and perhaps a business model that these 14 year old girls can get behind. Personally, I’m with them.
This week we had to say goodbye to a member of our family. Her name was Flash, she was a dachshund, and we had been together for 15 years. I’ve been pretty open about this loss, and felt it necessary to also share it here. Flash was a great companion, and a loving friend. She had a terrific life.
Sometimes it seems as though Marc Newson and Philippe Starck are trying to occupy the same space in the world of super-star designers, having notched successes in “designing” just about everything that they can, from bottle openers and wallpaper to luxury mixed-use developments in Asia. Newson has an edge though, he’s a total geek. Starck is just a bit crazy, which he uses to his advantage, but Marc Newson displays that special geeky enthusiasm that we often see in people who are absolutely obsessed with something. I especially enjoyed seeing his studio and how he prototypes many of his designs. Newson trained as a jewelry maker, not a designer, and this is definitely evident to me as you tour his studio in the video.
The video above is the first part in a five-part BBC feature on Marc Newson, called Marc Newson: Urban Spaceman, which I came across the series a while ago at Core77. It’s a great window into Newson’s thinking and approach, and showcases some pretty incredible, and incredibly beautiful, work. If you cannot sit still long enough to watch the entire series, definitely watch part 5, which is where Newson gets into his work in aerospace. Beyond designing aircraft interiors that I would kill to fly in, he is essentially pioneering the user experience of space tourism, which is utterly fascinating.
Via the very cool FlowingData comes a comprehensive graphic representation of the latest data from UNdata of The United Nations. There’s a ton of information to represent, but FlowingData does a clear, concise, and incredibly well-designed job with its Progress: A Graphical Report on the State of the World, from which the image above is excerpted.
The graphic above is from a report by management consultancy McKinsey (click to see entire report and larger image of the innovation hubs map) in partnership with the World Economic Forum. For the report, researchers investigated 700 variables (including infrastructure, demand, regulation, human capital and business environment) in order to assemble a clearer picture of innovation activity around the world, and this activity is visualized in the “map” above. This shed light on some interesting revelations, and emphasized other points that are very probably common sense… things like the importance of political stability and the quality of transport and technical infrastructure being in place in order for innovation to thrive.
It is interesting to see confirmed that “innovation hubs” typically develop an area of focus (think Silicon Valley), and over time begin building credibility and awareness as the specific, central, geographic area for that area of focus. This is usually driven by a core, small group of companies (again, think Silicon Valley), and in this way innovation success begets future success by consolidating talent, resources, and ambition.
Tomorrow evening, at about 9:50PM CST, NASA is launching Kepler (depicted in the animation above), its new planet-hunting space telescope on a mission to find Earth-sized and Earth-like planets that might have liquid water. This is important, of course, because it means that these planets could be home to life. It is also important as this means these planets might be “habitable”. To understand the significance of this quest, I point you to the recent TED Talks presentation by Jill Tarter of SETI, which is well worth the time to watch:
At the heart of this mission is the effort to determine just how common planets such as our own are. Some fear we are a unique occurrence in the universe, others believe that earths are possibly quite common. Kepler is departing to bring some resolution to this schism.
Future Vision Montage, put together by Microsoft, is a window into what the world of gestural interfaces, touchscreen, data portability, and the future of newspapers just might be like in the year 2019. It is very nicely done, and full of optimism, though I struggle with the point of exercises such as this as the ways in which technology develops is nearly impossible to anticipate over a ten year time horizon. To be fair, they acknowledge this reality and assert that this is more an ongoing exercise for Microsoft to continually research and envision their own place in the future. Honestly, for insights into what the future may be like I believe there is more value in looking to science fiction (Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, etc…) as opposed to promotional vids from enormous global enterprise. Regardless, this is still an interesting perspective for Microsoft to share with the rest of us.
The Cassini robotic explorer continues to send back incredible imagery from its mission amongst Saturn and its moons. The latest series of images are part of the Equinox mission to observe the changing seasons on Saturn, and are rendered to expose the incredible detail of the stormy atmosphere underneath the signature rings of the planet. If you look at the lower left corner in the image above you will see an especially well defined storm, seen essentially as a blue dot in Saturn’s atmosphere.
This image was taken with the wide-angle camera on-board Cassini on Dec. 29, 2008 at a distance of approximately 680,000 miles from Saturn.
It’s really interesting how quickly those that I follow on Twitter have become an invaluable, customized, expansive resource for news, information, humor, and conversation. For a time I thought Twitter would amount to not much more than a time suck, but increasingly I find it an indispensable tool for keeping me connected to cool, smart people and progressive thinking and ideas. And in a very rapid fire fashion, like a firehose that I can talk to. It has also brought me face-to-face with some of the most interesting people I’ve ever met, but only after first connecting via Twitter. If you’re not already following me, I’m @johnfschneider, and please do.
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