Boulder Digital Works instructors in innovation, software companies, social media and more
I got plenty of questions here and on Twitter for the 10 folks who spoke at the last Boulder Digital Work Making Digital Work sessions, which just ended this past Thursday.
Here’s where we netted out. Thanks to the willing Nick Todd, who shoots and helps edit the videos we do at these sessions, we got eight of the 10 speakers on film answering all five of the questions below. Believe it or not, while many of the answers were consistent, few if any were overly redundant.
It might take a few weeks to get a finished video together, but my instinct tells me you’ll find it both interesting and insightful to hear answers from Matt Howell, Gareth Kay, Tim Malbon, Ben Malbon, John Winsor, Kim Laama, Sheena Matheiken and Scott Prindle when we do.
In the meantime, below are the final questions and a few of the answers.
How can agencies inspire clients to do more innovative work?
Answers ranged from setting up internal labs to experimenting more ourselves. That way we can vet new technologies and platforms and develop ideas that we know will work before taking them to clients. Scott Prindle suggested taking on the role of teacher, educating clients more frequently in what’s possible with all the software, social networks and digital toys coming at us. Others talked about the need to bring inexpensive ideas to the table in hopes of inspiring more experimentation. In short, spread excitement.
What lessons can agencies learn from software companies and start-ups?
As an industry, we no longer look to each other for ideas and inspiration. We draw on Silicon Valley, new social platforms, as well as companies like Google and Apple. If any answers stood out, they were these. Speed is your best friend. Stop perfecting the design of something and get to a Minimum Viable Product quickly by prototyping. Another equally compelling suggestion – stop organizing people around disciplines and put people together by team. It accelerates solving problems.
How can agencies stop the drain of talent to young startups and tech giants?
As we hire more creative technologists and developers, we’re competing with a much broader range of companies. Want to attract and retain people whose goals are to make things that matter? Give them more responsibility sooner. Consider a program like Google’s 20 percent time. Eliminate organizational hierarchy.
Do agencies have a role in executing a brand’s social media when authenticity, transparency and access are the key attributes for good social engagement?
This was the most controversial question. Some participants insisted outright that agencies should have no role. Social media and all the new platforms simply emphasize the diminished need for the middleman. Others vehemently disagreed, suggesting that if agencies master the art of conversation strategy and engagement that they should take the lead. Creativity matters even in the new space and agencies are better prepared to be inventive there than clients might be themselves.
What are the core talents you look for when hiring people who’ll drive change and implement contemporary digital work?
This might be the only real throwaway question, but the answers were still pretty good. Kim Laama wants familiarity with the entire digital landscape. I suggested curiosity and a T-shape. Tim Malbon wouldn’t consider anyone who didn’t have a real social presence. (If you haven’t already connected, interacted, shared and contributed on Twitter forget about working at Made by Many.) Ben Malbon, director of strategy at Google’s Creative Lab had my favorite answer. “I’m less interested in people who use technology and more interested in people who want to create it.”
Eventually we’ll have more thorough answers on film. In the meantime, thanks for joining in.
Crowdsourcing questions for BDW’s Making Digital Work instructors?
I’m taking questions. Starting tomorrow I spend three days with some of the smartest people I know at Boulder Digital Works where we’re conducting another Making Digital Work workshop.
This time around we have the usual suspects –Matt Howell of Arnold; Gareth Kay from Goodby; Tim Malbon who hails from Made by Many in the UK; Scott Prindle of Crispin; and Kim Laama who joins us from AKQA– but we have some newcomers, too, including Ben Malbon, BDW board member and director of strategy at Google Creative Lab; Sheena Matheiken, who founded the Uniform Project; and Will McGiness, creative chief at Venables Bells and Partners. Plus, back for his second visit, Daniel Stein, founder of EVB.
Virtually everyone of the presenters is either a company founder or c-level executive. And all of them have been creating, leading, or initiating digital work for a long time.
I thought it might be fun to crowdsource a set of questions we can ask everyone. For example:
What do you see as the next emerging digital or social trend?
What’s broken about the way your company does business?
Will Mesh-type businesses pose a challenge to traditional marketers?
Can ad agencies really learn how to build stuff?
What changes to you plan on making inside your organization over the next year?
What holds your company back from evolving as quickly as it should?
How do you inspire innovation?
If you have anything you’d like to ask us as a group leave your comments here. It might be fun to see if the answers we get back are consistent, different or even contradictory.
I’ll take the five or 10 most provocative or original questions posted here, on Twitter or on Google+ and try and solicit answers from all 10 individuals above. Who knows, you might learn something, or simply conclude that no one knows what’s going on.
The next five social media trends and their impact on marketing
“It’s when a technology becomes normal, then ubiquitous, and finally so pervasive as to be invisible, that the really profound changes happen. “
Clay Shirky
Remember when we talked about social media and mainstream media as two different things? Not anymore. Today, social media is the mainstream media.
True, on Google + we may be talking about the novelty of Google +. And there may only be a few of us puttering around on Percolate or scrolling up and down on Shuush. But despite the never-ending introduction of new social platforms, social media in one form or another has pretty much become everyone’s primary source of content and interaction.
So what does it mean now that we’ve all joined the conversation, mastered the art of engagement and embraced the concept of transparency? Your guess is as good as mine. But one place to start thinking about it might be the following trends.
Influence gets more influential
Initially I thought that Klout was a superficial measurement of influence. And while it still has a way to go – it needs to add Google +, Instagram and others for a start – it represents the next wave in social media marketing: learning to identify and leverage influencers. Already Klout can pinpont influencers by category (sneakers, beer, social media) and geography and help brands connect with them.
Perhaps more telling is the slew of new tools to measure, promote and identify influence. We’ve always had Hubspot, but just this week Edelman launched Blog Level and will no doubt be encouraging clients to use it.
As marketers begin seeking out such influencers it’s only inevitable that more individuals strive to become one. And why not? It’s easier than ever to share expertise, whether blogging, tweeting or answering questions on Quora. And as marketers covet your connections, you’ll benefit further from the validation.
If you’re a marketer you should be developing relationships with all the influencers who can use your product and invite them to play a role in marketing it. If you’re an individual with any specific area of knowledge, share it, engage, build a following and raise your score. It could help with everything from making a few bucks to getting a job.
Individuals are the new filters
We, as individuals, organize the people we follow into columns on Tweetdeck. We place them into specific circles on Google +. We use them to filter the content that comes into our lives. We create our own magazines with Flipboard and Pulse. And eventually (see below on the stream beyond real time) we’ll search, using our categories of friends, for recommendations from their past likes, shares and posts. The challenge of course is how any brand or marketer maintains some degree of control over what it stands for as it passes through those individual filters. We all remember what happens in the first grade exercise where a message gets whispered from one end of the room to another. It comes out as something entirely different than when it started.
For brands and marketers, it’s more important than ever not only to stand for something clear and simple (Zappos and happiness; Jet Blue and service) but to assure it gets passed on and represented accurately (if that’s even possible) by consumers. Clarity will become more essential, along with behavior and tools that mirror what you claim to stand for.
Content generation and sharing gets even easier
Burberry's Instagram via Statigram
Percolate makes it easier to blog by giving users content based on their interests. Instagram has enabled anyone, including the vocabulary-impaired, to fill the stream and attract attention with quickly generated and easily doctored images. Pinterest, a visual bookmarking service has a social component to it that makes it a little like Tumblr, the latter now more popular than WordPress.
What this means, of course, is that more people will generate more content than ever. As they do the stream will rapidly become a waterfall of never ending, rarely memorable digital bits, making it even harder to stand out, get remembered or inspire enagement. I recently saw someone tweeting about how they had abandoned their nightly hour of television to scroll through their Instagram feed instead. He found the images and imagined stories behind them more interesting than network programming.
For those of us in the business of attention and engagement, we’ll find it harder to be noticed. We might get on the radar for a moment or two, but the real trick will be mastering the network effect and getting more people to generate content for us. Quantity as well as quality may be our friend. Burberry has 55,000 followers on Instagram, but if 25 percent of them also generated content and used a hashtag calling attention to the brand it would be even more valuable.
The stream moves beyond the moment
I don’t know about you, but I miss 90 percent of what flows through my social networks. Going back and filtering or discovering stuff that might be genuinely meaningful is hard right now. I can save a tweet, or throw a link into Trunkly, but what if next month I want to search what the 10 top creative directors have shared as links over the past month? What if I want to know what new books have been liked more times by my trusted Facebook or Google + friends?
These capabilities are coming. New platforms like Postpo.st, while still buggy, could make Twitter a far more valuable resource. I know one company in particular that will soon turn Facebook likes into real social currency. When that happens, we will all have more reasons to encourage social response to our products and content.
Wondering what the value of a “Like” is now? Imagine what happens when it becomes a searchable source of recommendations. Don’t think it matters what someone says about you on Twitter a day or two later? Think again. For marketers it means sharpening your engagement and content strategy with an understanding of the long term value of a Like or a +1 along with learning to earn rather than buy them, ideally from people whose influence is meaningful.
C2C rivals B2C as Mesh-type businesses proliferate
We have too narrow a definition of crowdsourcing if we think it’s about soliciting cheap content. Its real value comes from the new platforms that encourage sharing. Sharing tools, apartments, cars and more. If you haven’t checked out Airbnb, (or read Lisa Gansky’s bookz The Mesh) do so. Sure you can find the exotic igloo in Greenland, but there’s a room with your name on it in just about any city.
Fueled by environmental concerns, economic realities and the possibilities of the web this trend is just starting to take off. It will inevitably grow and affect lots of businesses, from car companies to hotels, bicycle manufacturers and toolmakers. And if my familiarity with Gen Y is any indication, there will be an entire generation more open to this way of living and sharing than either Gen X or Boomers.
Brands should create their own versions of these networks. It may be too late for a credit card company to invent Groupon or for a camera maker to think up Instagram. But if you’re a business paying attention to what social media is doing (care to share your breast milk?) then you’re thinking about how to create new business models yourself.
There’s a consistency across all of these thoughts. And it’s this. The individual –content generator, media force, smartphone toter, uber-connector – is driving the bus. She is influencing, searching, producing, accessing, connecting and deciding with more control than ever before. Time to move beyond the basics of social media and learn to be even more creative in the new spaces.
Thoughts? Other trends – personal data, images, visualization – you think are as or more important? Please share.
An argument for the slow hunch
We all want immediate gratification. It doesn’t matter whether we’re individuals or companies, we crave instant results right out of the gate, either in the form of traffic, visibility, revenue or at least venture capital. But it just might be possible that if we make those our only measures of success then we miss out on what Stephen Johnson calls The Slow Hunch.
I’m hoping the slow hunch materializes in the case of TNGG. A year and a half ago a few of us speculated that it might be a good idea to start a crowdsourced blog by and about Gen Y. It struck us that marketers would be interested in the next generation’s perspective and that young writers would rather express their own points of view directly rather than have some third party researchers speak on their behalf. It also seemed a good way for an ad agency to play around with consumer generated content and get a little better at social media.
Well I’m here to report that our trajectory hasn’t quite been that of the Huffington Post. We’re not flush with VC money. Nor have we received any offers from Murdoch. (We’d probably decline anyway.)
But we have accomplished something by being patient and by plodding along. This week TNGG will publish its 1500th article. Not bad for one paid employee and a community of volunteer contributors. Today seven talented and committed editors inspire and curate content from nearly 200 writers (some active, some less so) who generate 30-plus articles a week. Editor Alex Pearlman has become a sought after voice in advocating for Gen Y and community manager Christine Peterson has been singled out as a future leader by MITX.
Of course while all of that is nice, it doesn’t make for much of a business model. But that doesn’t mean the two ambitious 20- somethings who run TNGG aren’t working on it. In fact they’re about to close their first distribution deal as they slowly develop a model that will create new outlets for their content, generate more traffic, collect fees from media properties and provide pay for the contributors.
If we’d demanded that such goals be achieved in the first month, quarter or even year TNGG would be long gone. Instead this little experiment has yielded numerous lessons, gathered a valuable community, jump-started a good number of careers – at least 30 of the student writers who’ve come and gone attribute their first jobs in part to their bylined articles — and kept the possibility of that Huffington Post dream alive. It’s a slow hunch. But you never know, it may turn out to be a good one.
Working on something that’s long and slow but you hope might turn into something? Please share.
Four great examples of social innovation happening right now
Submission to Open Ideo in response to getting kids to eat healthier: a smarter shopping card
Perhaps the coolest thing about the web, social media and the multi-billion dollar infrastructure (Google, the Cloud, 3G, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Skype) that is now available to all of us isn’t that we can simply connect with one another in more ways than ever, posting status updates, sharing funny videos, and uploading photos.
Nor is it the new power we have to generate content, hi-jack brands, or even become brands ourselves.
Rather it’s that we can actually do things of value. We can effect positive social change and make the world just a little bit better (or at least try) by uniting like-minded people, inviting participation, understanding the appeal of extrinsic rewards and leveraging the communities we join and build.
Here are four really great examples worth paying attention to. Note that I’m involved with two of them now, the Uniform Project to which I’ve been asked to be on an advisory board, and No Right Brain Left Behind, which I just signed up to support.
Open Ideo
Ideo is a one of the world’s great design companies, taking on monumental challenges — access to safe drinking water, immunization delivery –from the perspective of design thinking, an approach that considers the needs of people, the possibilities of technology and the criteria for success. But in the last year they’ve launched Open Ideo, an invitation to all of us to join together and design for the community.
Their first challenge, in partnership with Chef Jamie Oliver, was to raise kids’ awareness of the benefits of fresh food so they can make better choices. The idea is that rather than talk about obesity perhaps we can do something about it with ideas and solutions generated by those who have the most at stake — parents, families and even the establishments that grow, distribute and sell us our food.
What can we learn from Open Ideo?
- Ideas can come from anyone and anywhere
- You don’t need to be a professional designer to think like one
- Extrinsic rewards are as important as intrinsic rewards when it comes to motivation
The Uniform Project
Sheena Matheiken launched her social initiative last year as a fundraiser. She wore the same dress every day for year to make a statement about the value of simplifying your life and wardrobe. In the process she raised over $100,000 to send kids to school in India and learned that her fans and followers would help in a variety of ways — buying dresses, donating to causes, providing accessories, offering to spread the word. The support she encountered gave her the confidence to leave her day job and turn her passion into a new company with a model that proves, “You can do business while doing good.”
TEDxDubai 2010| Sheena Matheiken from Giorgio Ungania on Vimeo.
Now she is designing and manufacturing dresses using sustainable materials and techniques with a real focus on helping women both simplify their wardrobe and express their individuality. She’s found a new way to raise money for worthy causes, by inviting emerging “celebrities” to wear the same dress for 30 consecutive days in support of a charity. And she’s allowing customers to get involved by creating their own Uniform Project with a do-it-yourself program that includes everything you need to make a dress, host a site and get the word out.
What can we learn from Uniform Project
- Business motives and social good can co-exist
- There are multiple ways to involve your community — they can be customers, donors, participants
- The content you create is as important as the product you make
The Common
This is the latest from Alex Bogusky, Rob Schuham and their Fearless Revolution. After having spent a good chunk of his career selling burgers, fries and pizza, Alex has shifted his focus onto creating a new kind of relationship between consumers and corporations.
To his credit, he’s not simply talking about it or applying pressure to current companies to change their ways, he’s instead attempting to incubate future brands and companies that will embrace social responsibility as part of their core mission.
The Common intends to assemble a new kind of capitalist community, populated by all kinds of creative people. It will charge its members and participants with identifying problems, collaborating on solutions, “out-cubating” new companies, funding the new initiatives and spreading the word.
The Common is about transitioning from competitive advantage to collaborative advantage. In some ways a little like Open Ideo but in this case the desired outcomes are actually new companies.
Knowing Alex and his determination, this could succeed.
What we can learn from The Common (even in its idea phase)
- there are alternative ways to define a brand
- the web gives us new ways to collaborate
- there’s life after advertising
No Right Brain Left Behind
This very well might be The Common model in the works, also not unlike what Open Ideo strives to do. A bunch of creative types get together, perhaps inspired by the likes of Sir Ken Robinson, to overcome the “creativity crisis” in our public schools. Given that our schools have put all their emphasis on narrow definitions of intelligence and standardized test scores, neglecting to identify and develop all the other intelligence that are equally important, it’s time to come to the rescue.
So as part of Social Media Week 2011, NRBLB is asking the creative community — advertising agencies, innovation companies, design consultancies, and communication schools to submit ideas in the form of tools, applications, or products that might help school’s better prepare kids to solve 21st century problems.
The program (here’s the plan) already has media partners lined up and funding to pilot the best ideas. Whether we end up with a list of great ideas, or programs that actually get implemented remains to be seen. (Anyone who’s taken on teachers and education in America knows it’s an uphill battle.) But it’s a great idea on many fronts.
What we can learn from NRBLB
- people are willing to come together for good cause
- it’s easier than ever to organize and unite a community
- inclusiveness is the best invitation you can issue
Hope you’ll find a way to participate in some, if not all, of the above projects. Or better yet, create your own. Thoughts?
