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anti-creative spaces
I'm at the Media Week Media360 conference in St. Andrews. They offered me a gratis ticket and though it's not really core to my job I love hearing/talking about media so I thought I'd take a couple of days holiday and come up. And Anne and Arthur have come too.
The hotel is grand, (our room is bigger than our flat), the organisers have been very efficient and very kind and the speaker-list looks interesting.
And then you walk into the actual conference room and it looks like this. God, it's depressing. Exactly the same sort of room as every other conference. Same chairs. Same tablecloths. Same bottles of mineral water and mint imperials.
No natural light, no air, no atmosphere.
I know there are all sorts of logistical issues with rooms like this, they have to be flexible, controllable blah blah blah but surely there must be a better way. This is a new hotel, they could have thought harder about this, created a room that at least felt like you were somewhere specific. Or somewhere that stimulated some thought or excitement or stimulation.
There's all this gorgeous scenery outside, could we perhaps have a hint of that?
And I suspect that I'm the only person blogging in here. I don't see any other laptops. But maybe they're all doing it via neural implants.
TV has a good idea
I know this isn't particularly new or innovative but I was struck, in these days of bashing TV for being stupid, that QVC's 'Jewellery From The BAFTAs' is a good and clever idea. (The Bafta's are like our Oscar's. In the same kind of way that Acorn is our Microsoft. And that's a cleverer comparison than you might think.)
The BAFTAs were on telly last night, QVC were 'official jewellers' and tonight you can tune in and buy versions of the stuff the stars were wearing. A good, modern, consumer-centric, non-invasive, sensible, respectful but seductive way to do things.
(And I know there are all sorts of clever online versions of this and stuff, but I think the simplicity and old-media-y-ness of this is what makes it good.)
scary youth 2
I mentioned a while ago that I was going to stick up a link list for all those of you who are trying to find planning gigs, and are blogging. And if you look right and scroll down a bit you'll find it. Email me (russell at russelldavies dot com) if you want to be on there. But I think you only qualify if you're not currently working as a planner. I'll start another list for everyone else soon. And if you find a job, please let me know and I'll take you off.
remixing cinema
A Swarm of Angels combines many of my favourite things; Warren Ellis, The Kleptones, voting on things, being in a semi-secret club where you don't actually have to meet anyone and Sticking It To The Hollywood Man. They explain it better than I can, but the basic idea is they're trying to fund a film by getting $25 from 50,000 people and then they'll distribute it online to a million people. It's like a pyramid scheme gone good.
I've joined up, you should too. If you want. (I'm never very good at those 'call to action' endings, not enough commitment.)
idea linking and embedding
I love collecting jargon from other industries. It often reveals another way of looking at the world and that's normally an interesting thing for a planner.
I've come across OLE a lot in my life adjecent to technology brands but I've never really stopped to think what it meant. But then the other day I did - Object Linking and Embedding. It still doesn't mean a lot to me but I love the notion of Linking and Embedding. It seems a really useful construct for the modern world.
And then it struck me - branding is really 'Idea Link and Embedding'. That's what we do. That's meaning management. We take one idea; a company or a product, we link it to some other ideas; perhaps some attitudes, some aesthetics, a bundle of associations and we embedd some other ideas within it; a colour, a logo, a piece of music, a smell.
And that's what the web's about too. Blogs especially. Idea Linking and Embedding. (Which is kinda akin to the thought of Theory Objects. Perhaps. I'm a planner I don't look that closely.)
But it's interesting isn't it? It's not reinventing anything but it makes you think about it slightly differently, which is all you could ask for.
(letters courtesy of Spell With Flickr, via Servant of Chaos)
being happy with your strategies
I just listened to this great bit of radio on an NPR podcast. It talks about various studies people are doing about the effects of choice etc. Many of the arguements will be familiar if you're read The Paradox Of Choice.
But although this is really interesting stuff when thinking about people buying things, I think it's potentially more interesting when thinking about how planners and organisations behave when they're thinking about strategy and ideas.
One of the studies described involved students looking for jobs, the researchers analysed their decision styles and found they split into two groups who they described as Maximizers and Satisficers.
Maximizers would study tons and tons of options and only pick the optimal one after careful consideration.
Satisficers would study a few and plump for one fairly quickly.
And, it turned out, Maximizers made much better choices, they tended to get better jobs, with higher pay. Which would suggest that strategically, you should be a Maximizer.
Except of course, it's not that simple. Because the Maximizers were much less satisfied with their choice. All that analysis, in a world where there isn't one perfect choice, just showed them all the things they were potentially missing. They were much less content with the option they'd chosen, and, I bet, much more likely to quit prematurely and try and find something better.
I bet you could easily divide up planners and organisations into Maximizers and Satisficers, and it would be just as valuable. Some planners, some organisations, leave no strategic stone unturned, they investigate every possibility, they draw endless SWOT charts and maps to ensure they've considered every option, and they use rigorous analytical tools to make their ultimate decision about where to go. This probably gets them to a great decision.
But it takes forever and six months later they do it all again.
All the analysis and choice creates Corporate Strategic Unhappiness and there are constant tweaks and changes of direction. There's no commitment to the decision and however great the option they chose was, they execute against it badly and just cause more internal FUD.
Other planners and organisations are Satisficers. They consider a few options, they plump for one fairly quickly and they get on with it. The chances are it's not quite as brilliant a strategy as a Maximizer might come up with, but it doesn't matter because they really commit to it and they execute it without doubt. That makes it a more effective strategy.
All this was going through my head this morning, on the way for breakfast, and it seemed like it's a really interesting question to ask yourself as a strategist - are you Maximizing or Satisficing? - and then, when I logged on today I found this really interesting post from Mr Mysterious Noisy Decent Graphics Guy, which essentially says the same thing but from a more practical point of view.
Think about this next time you're involved with a pitch or something. Do you really need to explore every conceivale strategy and deliniate it's pros and cons in 7point type? Aren't you just irritating your colleagues and your client? Try and be satisfied with less thinking and aim for Strategic Happiness, not Strategic Genius.
chat with me
Time for a new School of the Web experiment. I thought we'd try a chat Q&A/teach-in sort of thing.
I've very rarely used any kind of chat stuff so I might need some technical advice. I have iChat on m'mac - will that do? is it interoperable with all the big popular chat things you lot might be using? Or do I need to get some thing off someone else? Hotmail or Google or someone? Any suggestions?
I'm thinking of 6pm (BST) on Tuesday 23rd of May. How does that work for you, where you are?
If this works I think it might be fun to do it regularly, maybe in conjunction with feedback on the assignments, speaking of which, I'll get a new one up soon.
Or maybe we'll move on to that skypecast thing. Or does anyone know how to jaunt?
creative spaces and frames
Been reading this. Rather good. Mr Layard tells of an experiment where a sample of people were asked their social security number and then asked to estimate the number of doctors in California. The higher the social security number people had the higher the estimate that they gave. If a frame like that can shift something in that way, what do we imagine might be the effect of the frame of the space we work in?