.oO Tailwind

All this digital stuff is funny isn’t it? My ‘digital friend’ @Charliegower is more up-to-date with my moods, locations and general activity than my real-life, long term buddy Nick Foster (who’s not plugged in enough to have the Twitteresque ‘@’ prefix on his monicker).

Charlie and I have only met once, we share a mutual friend in Nick, but we’ve hardly met really. Yet somehow, some reason we’re connected on all the usual social properties, Last.fm, Facebook, Flickr, Plaxo, Linked In, Twitter, Plazes, Dopplr etc etc

Twitter in particular interests me at the moment because of what it’s doing to relationships I have with people. The ambient familiarity is an extra layer that I think is only beneficial. It ‘warms the cockles’ as they say to know that:

@drpig (Will Bloor) is making homemade pasta

@brackers (Andy Braxton) is engaged!

@casablance (Phil Whitehouse) is struggling to install his BT Vision box

@melb (Melissa Bezar) is off to another posh London restaurant

@charliegower (Charlie Gower) is (again) procrastinating by going swimming

@gavinedwardsuk (Gavin Edwards) is on the train to Sheffield, again

@stephenbarber (Stephen Barber) is picking up his guitar (which is what he should do more often)

As we all know, Twitter is a broadcast medium where users can announce ‘what they are doing’ via sms, instant messenger or the web. It’s predominantly utilised as a ‘I’m doing…’, ‘I’m feeling…’, ‘I’m thinking…’ medium.

I’ve also used it in a practical means when trying to navigate New York looking for a top-drawer deli for breakfast, but it’s mostly used like Facebook Status, informing your ‘followers’ of what you are are doing.

Personally, I protect my updates a i don’t want people I don’t know seeing that I’m ‘out of my house’ or I’m ‘away on business’. Scamsters could mine a lot of information from active tweeters.

It stands to reason, that people ‘Tweet’ when they are doing something interesting or when they are killing downtime in a bus queue or on a train (see my post on living an ‘ALt-Tab’ existence), so you get a skewed view, but it makes entertaining reading nonetheless.

Of course, you would never say ‘Just listening to some Mariah Carey’ (Gavin Edwards) or ‘Having a poo’ or ‘Just had a row with the other half’.

No. That’s too much. You have to filter.

It’s interesting that people whom I work with are the ones I engage a lot with via Twitter. None of my ‘friends’ use it, of course I consider many of my colleagues and ex-colleagues friends, but I also Twitter with clients, friends friends, and as a result I feel like there’s something there, known between us that in some way, sustains or affects the personal relationship. Not in all cases, of course.

Phil WHitehouse wrote Ten Commandments of Twitter, which I wholly disagree with. the only rule should be ‘there are no rules’. Although I HATE people who follow but don’t Tweet. Lurkers. Blurgggh!

So, to wrap up, I could meet @Charliegower down the pub and have a rip-roaring evening of conversation, feeling like I already know him. I know his work situatiion, his exercise habits, his music taste, hi ideas and via Plazes or Dopplr, his location.

That’s all bonkers. But if you keep it real by only using such technologies with real people you are likely to meet, I think it’s quite a nice relationship enhancing tool.

Fancy a beer?
Continue reading ‘My Twitter Chums Know More’

Whilst eating some toast this morning I caught a report on BBC 1 suggesting that we’re not hugging enough. We’re not extending human contact in the form of hugging kissing and touching and we are failing to receive our RDHI (Recommended Daily Hugging Intake).

(Sorry I can’t find a story to link to on the BBC website).

Psychologists behind the report suggest that we are relying far too heavily on non-human-touch methods of communication such as texting, email and ‘pokes’. Hugging makes you happy.

I’ve been arguing for a while that humans require real, genuine and tangible value when it comes to their relationships with other humans and that social networks as they currently stand, fail to satisfy our long-term human needs because they are limited to facilitate only synthetic relationships.

Look at your Facebook account. How many ‘friends’ do you have?

Are you one of those people who accepts every invitation through fear of offence? Or are you one that only accepts invitations from people they actually, really and still know?

Do you consider tenuous links with colleagues you are simply ‘aware’ of? Or do you keep it focussed down into people you actually know? People you are actually friends with?

Social networks tap into out latent need to belong, to be part of a community and to be recognised. They provide us with recognition and allow us to say “I am here and I belong”.

It’s a Maslow thing.

But over a long period of time social networks will fail to deliver real value in the form of tangible, off-line and physical benefit unless they evolve into real space. Doing something, actually being there together, in real terms.

A search on the BBC website reveals this:

A hug is, first of all, a form of non-verbal communication. It brings people together in a feeling of mutual love, comfort and safety. Research suggests that everyone needs physical contact to survive, especially infants. Hugging is an act of giving and receiving support, moral and physical, and love

BBC - Guide to Hugging

Loving the ‘Huggers’, ‘Huger’ and ‘Hugee’ references there.

Great digital ’start-ups’ such as Facebook, MySpace and Last.FM could just be limited by their lack of real physical space and I wonder if this is something they’ll need to evolve in order to survive?

It’s all very well having ‘friends’ on these sites and receiving witty pokes, funwall messages and music recommendations, but I can’t engage with them on a “so how are you doing?” basis. I can’t really and truly care.

I personally have noticed some of my more distant friendships relying on Facebook to stay in touch. We poke, message and send things to each other whereas before we’d phone.

That’s rubbish. I’m changing it. By using Facebook to message each other we’re saying that we don’t really care.

I’ve also observed some friends and family resolving sticky issues via email, text or by writing a message to someone’s Facebook inbox. How sad is that? Complete avoidance of true, emotional disscusion.

What is that doing to society?

I guess in the old days we used to write letters but I don’t consider that the same thing. Letters unlike email/text etc, take time. They take effort and flow from the end of your pen in an emotional, stream of consciousness kind of way.

Email is synthetic, easy and impersonal.

We all know that teenagers don’t use it.

Emoticons were invented to try and bridge this emotionless communication. ] :p :s =|

(My blog tool has probably ‘emoticonned’ some of those).

I remember back in 1996, when I started using IRC (internet Relay Chat) in the form of Foothills and Resort, we communicated using a telnet window using text only using the ‘emote’ command to show emotion.

Warren> Emote is happy.

‘Warren is happy.’

Fundamentally, even though the technology has evolved the need hasn’t changed and the need hasn’t be fulfilled.

When we are born and as babies we learn primitive methods of communication such as touch and hugging. But as we progress to our teenage years the level of non-family touch drops away considerably.

I don’t know about you but on a personal level I’m getting bored of social networks. On a professional level I’m still enjoying the challenges of seeding a community and designing tools for them, but I have to say, I’m not really seeing any great value.

I could talk about Twitter here, but that’s for another day. this post is already too long, if you got this far, well done and thanks.

As I write this post I can’t help but laugh at the fact that next to me on the train into London, there is a couple smooching, kissing ad making lip-smaking noises, cooing and warbling together like teenagers.

They are in their late thirties and it’s irritating the hell out of me!
xx

Image credits: Dina_Mehta

Technorati Tags:
social networks, community, backlash, behaviours, emotion

I’m sitting here after another intense day and instead of picking up a book or struggling to learn my bass, I’m watching another series of car crash TV super hero - Big Brother kick into action.

Every year you think that the ‘contestants’ can’t get any worse, but my word, this year is special. Talk about celebrity culture vultures, and all girls so far.

Twins, work drop-out come self-styled ‘it-girl’, pill-popping raver, retired head-hunter, indie rocker, Wakefield’s answer to Posh-Spice (please) and an eye-shadow collector thus far.

All girls and all mad as brushes.

Secretly, I love this program. I love the way the contestants give their all for stardom without realising they are there to be deconstructed, played with and torn apart…publicly.

As a nation of curtain-twitchers this program taps into the psyche of British people and it will be the water-cooler conversation for many this summer.

In truth that’s what happens. Super-close character scrutiny on a national level.

Love it or hate it, it’s back.

I also admire, from a distance as the digital media machine kicks into action. It’ll be interesting to see how they ride the current web-two-oh trend.

Quote so far:

‘I’ve got so many shades of eye shadow, I love clashing my colours’
‘Are you twins?’ - said when staring at two identical twins
‘Is it a tanning booth?’ - when looking at the diary room

Interestingly, after Carphone Warehouse dumped BB in light of the Jade Goody racism slur, Virgin Media have dropped right in.

Is it a risky strategy? Convergent brand in for convergent brand.

Well - it is the target audience. They are a ringtone, download, gossip, exclusive clip hungry bunch BB viewers. Virgin think so, they’ve made siging-up with them a usp.

Oh my. Weeks of joy ahead.

Links: Big Brother, Virgin Media

Our company is currently going through a bit of a change after some fairly heavyweight mergers. Firstly Oyster with Framfab and then Framfab with LBicon. The group is now an 1800 person, multinational full service design agency. It’s essentially a rollup of Oyster, Framfab, LBicon, Lost Boys, Wheel, MetaDesign, Scient, iXL and some bits of Razorfish.

We now have offices in the UK, US, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Italy and China (!). Pretty huge I’d say.

But with this growth there are the inevitable challenges such as knowledge sharing, creative agility, familiarity and moreover team culture and individual identity. Certainly in the London office where I work.

I wrote about the begining of this challenge, here and here.

The team culture has no doubt been impacted which breeds some questions around personal identity and the sense of place an individual has within the whole. On the whole everything is positive, there are just some interesting challenges afoot. there are also some very interesting opportunities afoot in cross-polinating the disciplines from one country to the next as there is so much to learn.

I’ve already been part of a knowledge exchange with out Dutch counterparts at Lost Boys in Amsterdam. Cool bunch they are too.

Anyway, in order to deal with this the London outfit has arranged into ‘ecosystems’ and these groups seek to deliver small group thinking, sharing and agility within a large, well supported network. The are teams of about 60 people grouped around clients with a natural affinity.

Growth brings process as process is required to control the new chaos. Process can all too often equate to bureaucracy and bureaucracy is an innovation killer in my book. So we’re working on ways to reintroduce chaos (a bit anyway), to reinvigorate a mistake-embracing culture where it’s okay to try new things and get it wrong.

This is design. It’s about invention and experimentation.

All this starts with people and my key observation about agency culture after a few years first hand experience is that very talented people join to work on ‘cool’ brands. Those same talented people are used on projects from week to week, month to month so that all the ‘learning’ takes place on-he-job. Yes there are training course and development packages etc.. but that’s all too often structured around a skill-deficit and is rarely about just trying things out.

I don’t like that and I think that it’s wrong. Who has ever been on a course where they say “Just play. make and break stuff, be curious”?

My colleagues at LBi who lead our ecosystem also agree so we are currently introducing an 80/20 culture to our team.

80% on billed client work. 20% making mistakes working on things that excite them.

It’s not new but the reasons for pursuing it are obvious. It is all about creating an innovation culture where people are challenged and encouraged to work on subjects that intrinsically motivate them. To create a sense of ‘play’ in our workplace.

Any professional service company worth its salt has this approach but I haven’t heard of anything similar in a digital design agency. Yes in product design, but not in digital and certainly at none of our competitors.

I’ve always said that our discipline has a lot to learn from other design disciplines, being the new kid on the block and I stick to that.

So. 80/20. How do we make it happen?

Well there are 2 challenges to deal with from the off:

1. In a culture of 100% billable, creating breathing space for the ‘20′ to happen
2. Finding out what topics individuals should work on and what the prospective projects might be

Firstly we can consider blocking out sometime each week where we switch mode from billed work to private work. I like the idea of this all happening at the same time each week as I think it will create a nice buzz in the team to have everyone on ‘pet projects’ at the same time.

To get started we’re thinking of setting ‘Design Challenges’ to run for a time-boxed period just to introduce the 80/20 way of life. 80% on projects, 20% on other stuff.

We can let this run for a while, enjoy the distraction and nurture our capacity planning to accommodate the new activity.

While we are re-engineering ‘how’ we do things we can be thinking about those ‘pet projects’, what they are, what interests us all as individuals. Some people can team up and start making, trying and developing ’stuff’. The Design Challenges will help us establish the time slot and be a conduit for developing some personal ideas.

I’m always up for feeling our way towards this by trying things out rather than talking talking talking too much.

We’ll let you know how it goes.

We’ve discussed it and it’s all systems go on our new innovative, mistake embracing, creative, fun, developmental culture.

Yay.

My good friend from university, Fosta is again in Tokyo (he’s a product designer for Sony) and he always makes interesting posts from the weird and wonderful out there.

We were chatting on Skype last night (3 am Tokyo time) and he showed me this stuff which I find all to strange to be honest. The dolls are nearly £200 each and are about 25 cm high.

Oddities.
Continue reading ‘My friend Fosta in Tokyo’

A colleague of mine has recently posted on the state of cycling in London. I wrote about my frustration at the lack of integration between the rail networks and the city when it comes to the transportation and storage of bicycles, but Stephen highlights a very good point.

Riding a bike in London canbe exhillerating fun (!) but the authorities do little to encourage us out of cars and onto greener forms of transport.

I spoke with a colleague yesterday who tiold me that it takes the same amount of time to ride a bike in as it does to ride a motorbike!

I mostly ride through Holborn or Blackfriars on my way to Clerkenwell where the office is. Either route I take is strewn with potholes and uneven drain covers.

I have a rather nice folding bike that has thin wheels so I try to avoid riding through these hazards as a way of saving my wheels.

Swerving from buses and eager taxi drivers who just love pulling out in front of me is enough fun as it is, I don’t need the crappy roads. They are horriffic.

Recent visits to Amsterdam and Cologne show what it should be like.. Incidentally here is an interesting statistic from a Dutch cab driver; there are 1.5 million people in Amsterdam, 1.6 million bikes and 700,000 bike thefts a year!!

So everyone has a bike, but half of them steal them! Brilliant.

Would you believe it?

I’ve started talking to another of my ’station platform buddies’ now! He’s a guy I’ve stood next to for 3 years and we’ve never so much as said hi before. But today he joined in a conversation I was having with the only person I speak to at the station.

Of course, being English we have to be given permission by the circumstance, so the fact that the train was n hour late was enough. If you just openly speak to someone for no reason, you’d be locked up here!

Stupid isn’t it.

I’m going to try and reel in the other ‘platform buddies’ - I challenge you to do the same.

Yeah you know the guy, say Hi to him.

Okay - so this post is pure drivel. But I do find this behaviour interesting.

The English are funny aren’t they (we)?

We’re not overtly social creatures unless of course we have a drink or two then we’re ‘right up for it’.

I was trying to explain to someone the other day why I think that we have such a problem with drinking in this country and I think it’s due to our traditional reservedness.

In times passed we’ve ‘used’ drink as a way of ‘releasing’ ourselves.

As an island nation with Victorian legacy, this was necessary I guess.

But today’s generation will grow up so distant from those days of ‘British Reserve’ they have no idea why they get battered, they just do.

The days of worrying about what others think, I believe have gone. As a kid when I used to get up to no good we’d ‘scarper‘ just at the sight of a grown-up.

Nowadays they threaten to knife you and tell you to f*ck off.

Those scallywags!

Anyway, I’m interested in this erosion of British reserve but am happy to see it alive and well in certain quarters.

Silence in a lift for example.

I catch the same train form the same point on the platform every morning and see the same faces day in and day out.

I talk to one of my fellow travelers because we’ve broken the ‘duck’ as it were, we’ve had consequence to exchange. Not that I remember when. But the others? Oh no, not the others.

I can’t talk to them, I’ve no reason to.

It makes me laugh that we Brits need a reason to talk. We won’t talk to people we see everyday, but we will be half-way across the globe and we’ll ‘tip our hat’ on first sight of another from Blighty.

Why are these rules different when Brits are abroad?

Also, in my building I see lots of people, those whom I’ve spoken with I will always say hello to, but those who I haven’t I don’t.

I think that this behaviour is consistent with everyone, but I noticed today that because I had spoken to someone new at work and when I passed them on the stairs I suddenly had consequence to say hi.

I’d seen them lots before, but because we’d exchanged words on that day it now seemed okay to say ‘hi’.

Bloody weird isn’t it?

Or is it just me?

I don’t have much time today as I’m in a client workshop from 9-6. Ouch.

But I read this post on the Communities Dominate Brands blog about why Korean social phenomenon Cyworld has actually succeeded.

Predominantly, it’s because of a couple of things:

1) South Korean internet policy largely asks for peoples real names in registration of services such as Cyworld. this raises the trust levels implicit in the system.

2) SK blogs are more about a social and emotional representation of self, rather than an intellectual representation prevalent in western blogs. The need to express one’s true self in a highly trusted social framework is an enabler for understanding each other, each other’s friends and therefore deepening relationships. S Koreans will write for their friends and not for complete strangers.

I’m paraphrasing hugely here, but these points are interesting to me.

The blog entry goes on to describe translatable facets of the Cyworld framework that can be exported, beyond the cultural ideals of SK to other countries. Woven in to this, there are also some ideas of what constitutes good practice.

Some interesting comparisons with 2L, MySpace and Habbo Hotel.

Anyway, enough of my scratchy, surface ramblings. Here is the post:

http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2006/11/cyworld_insight.html

Shoooz

Originally uploaded by Snow_badger.
I went to an exhibition come party in London last night with my buddy Fosta and his mate Charlie (cheers for the invite).

It was to celebrate 100 years of New Balance, my favourite and British sneaker manufacturer. Visit the New Balance Website to see how stylie they are.

I’m a fan of New Balance, have been for ages and I own a fair few pairs, mostly 864s, 574s, 576s, but also some 1200s too, so I was well pleased to go. I was particularly pleased to see my sneaks on a pillow likethe crown jewells.
So NB are 100 years old - wow that’s an age for sneaker firms - closely followed by Converse who are 2 years behind - So Charlie tells me. And, btw New Balance have never sponsored an athelete like Nike have. True, they’re not a global superpower in the world of sports apparell, but they have a ‘proper’ reputation in the running fraternity. I run so I should know.

During the Easter holidays 2005, I went to the factory up in Flimby, Cumbria whilst on a family holiday on the Solway coast. It stood out like a beacon as I was driving through what is a pretty weird part of the country, quite remote from the commercial world I’m used to.
So in I went and bought 6 pairs at £15 each - if anyone in Flimby ever reads this hook up with me and send me some shoes - Please!!!!

So there you go, treat your self to some NBs, they rock the disco.