i-design08

i-design08 brought together a unique group of speakers (including yours truly) from wide ranging backgrounds including design, technology, anthropology, media, advertising and branding to explore the theme of meaningful interaction and the future of interactive design.

This eclectic mix led to rich conversations raising a number of issues including the need for greater collaboration between the disciplines and the opportunity for designers to move up/along the value chain in terms developing and implementing their own products/IP.

The best examples of this potential were presented by Brendan Dawes, of Magnetic North, creator of the acclaimed Mixa (pictured above) and Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, CEO of technology and design consultancy Tinker it!, who showcased some of her team's innovative work using Arduino.

Timo Veikkola of The Future Laboratory also gave an inspiring talk about digital and other trends including womenomics, ambient intelligence, emotion technology and the body as an interface.

Altogether an interesting day. Will write more later about the "Where's the money?" panel I participated in.

From Audio Tours to iPhones at Tate Modern

Spent an enjoyable day with innovative museum folks taking their institutions into the 21st century with the help of handheld and mobile devices at this Tate Modern Symposium. Heard all about best of breed multimedia tours from the Louvre to Momo as well as a host of other large and small UK and US galleries and museums.

Whilst much of the most ground breaking work was designed for the ipod touch/iphone, everyone agreed applications should ideally be device neutral. Knowing the myriad issues relating to interoperability, this may take some time to resolve. Specialist supplier Antenna Audio have tackled this issue by creating their own device thus saving the cash-sensitive sector frequent upgrading costs until these issues are sorted out.

Jane Burton, Creative Director of Tate Media, helpfully questioned what we mean by 'tour' and has developed a number of resource effective ways to create and distribute digital content both for real and virtual gallery visitors expanding and enriching the tour definition and experience. For example, in addition to ambitious gallery-wide tours, Burton has proposed and implemented simple (and cheap) video podcasts, known as Tate Shots, that can be watched online or downloaded to a handheld player.

Also of interest are Tate's research findings indicating multi-media tours not only enhance the user experience, but increase visitor satisfaction and significantly extend museum reach when also distributed online. Online distribution can include third party sites like itunes/iTunesU and YouTube. Burton shared a funny story about a Mark Wallinger video posted on YouTube which generated a significant amount of negative commentary and resulted in some satirical remixes. Hardley surprising that taking the gallery out of the gallery is not for the fainthearted.

Undoubtedly the most exciting conversation came towards the end of the day with talk about the next generation tours. Here Koven J. Smith of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York created a vision for a new approach to curation driven by the imaginative harnessing of user experiences and user generated content. "Why not give real-time feedback to all gallery goers about the day's most popular paintings, best room to visit if you are hungover or feeling blue...", he proposed.

The organisers have set up a wiki where they are posting the conference materials and ongoing contributions. I highly recommend checking out their illustrated mind maps covering conference themes which they created in the previous day's workshop.

Why was I there? Having recently proposed a multimedia tour for a client, I thought what better place to gain cross sector learning experiences and I was not disappointed. In addition, I am now in a position to share a multitude of opportunities with my colleagues who work on the sponsorship team.

The internet makes us smarter

Previously, I touched on the concept of crowdsourcing (i.e. outsourcing idea generation to selected stakeholders) but never really delved into its implications for our work. Now, I am inspired to after reading about Brain Reactions a new site that facilitates competitions for ideas.

Whilst many examples of crowdsourcing exist, this one is worth watching as beyond an initial free brainstorm which you can do for free, it will charge to use its tools and access the wisdom of its primarily Gen Y crowds. Assuming a critical mass of idea-makers, this could be a good toe-dipping exercise, for companies who want to get some experience in this area. It will be interesting to see if the business takes off.

Perhaps the best example of full integration of the crowdsourcing ethos into an existing business is Dell's Idea Storm. At the time of writing, Dell's IdeaStormers had generated 9834 ideas. These ideas can be commented upon, promoted and ultimately adopted by Dell who regularly report which ones have been used in its product launches.

Since the infamous Dell Hell situation, Dell has successfully re-engineered its business putting its customers centre-stage. Embracing crowdsourcing has clearly enriched its business leading to further innovation. This innovation seems to know no limits. Dell has just launched its latest online community, Digital Nomads, dedicated to the evolving digital workplace. Amongst other things, visitors are invited to contribute to the 'What is a Digital Nomad' white paper. This site is a great resource tracking cutting edge nomad developments.

So although embracing crowd sourcing requires a new approach to doing business, it seems clear to me the benefits outweigh any disadvantages. Although I'm not promoting general uptake as the drivers are different for every organisation and each situation needs to be assessed individually.

FYI: The Digital Nomad twitter feed is a treasure trove. Latest tweat is all about Nomad Marketing.

Alternative Reality Games

There is something inherently appealing about the idea of Alternative Reality Games - who hasn't thought of exchanging their world for one of make believe...not only is it appealing to the game participant, it sounds like lots of fun for the makers.

Thinking along these lines and because of a great fit with our consumer insight, I recently proposed (and indeed co-developed concepts for) such a game for a prospective client, but was met with some concerns from colleagues who feared the such a solution might be too niche. What an interesting conundrum.

Digital marketers are constantly seeking new opportunities for their clients and to me the appeal of such games is that they are highly engaging and work across media platforms in new ways - the fact that they would showcase this client's core technology while meeting their business objectives was a bonus. However, for those with more traditional media backgrounds, they seem (to be blunt) a bit geeky.

So how do we get over this perceptual barrier? The data indicates that digital and play (as well as entertainment) are converging. This is particularly true for Generation Y who (almost) always enjoy having fun (no surprise) and have grown up with modern consoles which are becoming more and more mainstream and mobile.

If my experience is anything to go by, some of us may need to think more carefully about the language/terminology we use when pitching games to non-experts. If you've delved into the work of expert/futurist Jane McGonigal or Keri Facer of Futurelab, you will know there is tremendous evidence for the the core benefits of game play on many different levels (learning, teamwork, fun, problem solving, etc). Brands can be the enablers of these benefits (how compelling), but for now to convince them, the opportunity may need to be reframed with a focus on play with technology as a background enabler.

This is a quick cantor around a fascinating and complex subject which I will write about again. Until then, check out ARGNet.

Debating - alive and well on the internet

Most of us know politicians are using the internet for debate and to promote their policies and positions, but what about the rest of us? Whilst divergent views are all over the web, and self- publishing is rampant, how popular are sites that pull people together for the purpose of debate? A quick scan reveals myriad opportunities to get stuck in.

Debatepedia, "the Wikipedia of debate", is a good place to start. In addition to aggregating the best of current high quality debates, it also allows anyone to start their own as well as centralising "arguments and quotations found in millions of different articles, essays, and books into a single encyclopedia, so that citizens can better understand important public debates and make informed choices."

An open source platform, it fuses the work of innovators from Georgetown University (in 2006) and the International Debate Education Association (IDEA) and has an impressive wide-ranging catalogue covering everything from the Age of Consent to Sado-Masochism and that is only in the Moral category. Set up as a non-profit, it carries no advertising and yet has attracted thousands of users.

In contrast, Friction TV facilitates debates on an internet video platform. Entirely based on user-generated content, it has a wide range of partners as well as commercial advertisers. It contains debates on topics both serious (knife crime) and light (cats versus dogs) - everything from Aliens (fact or fiction) to the Olympics (boycott or not) - presented in a highly engaging interactive format.

The potential of both these platforms to scale is considerable and if they do, they could become valuable tools for research and education as well as civic engagement.

How the internet is changing everything

I'm switching gears now to talk about how the internet is changing the media and much of the old social order along with it...This statement is not hyperbole.

As many of the early internet related predictions have now come to pass, I stand by this statement while admitting the pace of change has been slower than expected and that some of the most radical activity is still happening on the fringes. Watch Joanne Jacob's guide to microblogging/lifecasting on 2gether08 to see what I mean - she speaks convincingly about the importance of Twitter - esp. hashtags - as a means of tracking and accessing information of relevance/interest - yet only 1% of the internet users are currently using Twitter. While I acknowledge that the drivers for change are different for each sector, I don't believe many market sectors are immune and here is why.

With internet enabled media fragmentation and the parallel rise of social networks/media, the way people get news/info and increasingly entertainment is changing. This means social change on many different levels - new business models, industry (re)structures as well as career trajectories and consequently skillsets and educational requirements.

Let's look at journalism, for example. As Paul Bradshaw at Birmingham City University points out in an excellent recent blog entry, the traditional print media industry is downsizing with the rise of internet self-publishing. The article talks about how journalistic skill sets are evolving so fast that many journalism schools can't keep up - the capacity to curate and work across a wide range of media platforms will become as, if not more, important than the craft of writing. This analysis applies to many fields. The related world of advertising is another one but there are many more.

The need to change has a different effect on everyone and so the pace of change is as much about people as it is about technology. I am fortunate to meet many fascinating people through my work but the ones I admire the most are the entrepreneurs who are leading the charge.

Here are a few of my favourite new business models - I'm always looking for more examples, so please share them with me. A good source is Start Up Squad.

• Unchained Guide, a network of independent retailers proposed as an alternative to the oligopolies


• ASwarmofAngels, a revolutionary approach to film making using an open source model


• Unlimited World, a new social network for social entreprenneurs - imagine the power such a network could eventually harness.

Traditional (yet progressive) organisations are paying heed: 4IP, Channel4's new 50M fund is just one example. In my mind, all of these initiatives are worth watching, supporting and, ideally, participating in.

Social networking goes mobile

A logical next step in the evolution of social networks is mobility, i.e. using social networks while on the move , geo-locating friends old and new for spontaneous get togethers, allowing your location to be tracked in real-time for all or some to see, etc. While it is easy to see a host of related privacy and safety issues, if managed properly, what fun mobile social networking could be.

Typically, Asian markets (in particular Japan, Korea and China) are ahead in this regard with many mobile extensions of existing social networks as well as bespoke mobile networks already doing well. Early US market feedback indicates: ".. .there could be demand, particularly from teens and young adults. Already, 33.2% of 18- to 24-year-old Americans post photos to Web sites via mobile phones, according to mobile consultancy M:Metrics." Business Week, 2006

Given that mobiles are the constant companion of most young people today, it is easy to envisage a future of mobile social networking. The fact that Google now own Dodgeball is a sign of future directions. The links below are indicative of some of the mobile social networking activity currently taking place but not an endorsement of them (more in depth reviews to follow at a later date):

• Dada.net
• Mocospace
• Mobiluck
• Bliin

The real coup for these networks will be physical presence detection, and although this feature is on the horizon for most, consumer adoption will be key. With some real innovation on that front happening, particularly in Europe, hopefully, the critical mass of users required to make mobile social networking a success will soon be reached. If the technology (esp. GPS) delivers a seamless user experience and people find it useful, they will no doubt succeed.