Russell Davies

school of the web - assignment 9 - fighting talk

I was interviewing Paul Colman for something else, and then at the end, I thought I should try and grab him for an Account Planning School of the Web brief. Because he's smart and he's a client, so that's a useful perspective.

So Paul decided that what we should think about is, how do we make MMA a more popular sport?

Here's our conversation - paul_mma.mp3, and it's always worth checking out Paul's conversation with Alexis Demetriades.

So the task is really simple - you need to come up with a 5-year plan that will make MMA a top 5 sport in the US and the UK. Present your solution however you want to, put it on your blog, or send us a file (but the file needs to be less than 3MB). Since I'm assuming a lot of you won't know a lot about MMA (I don't) you probably need to do quite a lot of research and digging around the internet and start thinking yourself into a different mindset. No more rules or clues than that.

Anyway, have a go. I think this'll be really interesting. This one needs to be done by the end of August. Assignment 8 is with The Design Conspiracy folks for judging etc. All will be revealed when I get back from hols.

craft skills

   

           

In some ways the future of agencies is obvious. Departments and professional divisions will have to disappear. Great creative work will be made by teams of people, some of whom are good at powerpoint, some of whom know some photographers. The creative/strategic/account management distinction is already pretty meaningless, I suspect the departmental follies will wither soon too.

But it won't eradicate the need for some of those people to have actual craft skills, to actually know how to do some stuff, because craft skills inform strategic thinking. And being able to explain the mysteries of craft will make you absolutely invaluable. Which brings me to this lovely post at Noisy Decent Graphics. He takes on the challenge of explaining kerning. And he does it well. Craft skill plus a mission to explain; this mystery man has a future.

Renewed respect to spell with flickr.

schulze and webb have done it again

I've always attributed most of the success I've had as a planner to the fact that I learned how to stick images in PowerPoint way before most other people. (Partly because I used to sit through three day product briefings from Microsoft people when I worked on the business).

So basically I've been coasting for the last ten years.

But always conscious of the need for career innovation I've kept looking for the next thing that's going to make me seem interesting again. I've played around with using a tablet a bit, used mindmapping sometimes, but they've not really done it. And it's always puzzled me that more technologists haven't spent time building and developing presentation tools, since there's so much obvious room for improvement. Powerpoint and Keynote seem to have stopped evolving. They're both fine, but they just do what they do.

Well, all hail Schulze and Webb because they're certainly thinking about it. And I love this new interface they've built for 2D presentations, because it changes the way you'd approach a presentation, and that needs doing. And the physicality of it is brilliant, it gets you well away from clicking, which is huge, because clicking instantly makes you feel like you're sitting at your desk not standing on a stage, and clicking normally requires looking at a mouse or something, which puts your attention in the wrong place. Brilliant. Wouldn't you love to play with that? See how it changes the way you present.

Personally I'm desperate for someone to build the next iteration of video in presentation software - I want to be able to use video as effectively as you can use images. So not just embedding a chunk that grinds away with you powerless to stop it, but something that lets you talk for as long as you want while your video loops away behind you and then, when you're ready, smoothly transitions into the next bit of video which then similarly vamps until ready.

I hope someone's working on that.

all the planners

I love the fact that planners seem to be very blog-friendly. We read them. We write them. Quite a lot of us are quite good at them.

So I think we should try and create as definitive a list as possible of every planner with a blog. It'll be an interesting, and never-ending, process. And once we've got the list I think we'll be able to start making some trite and obvious generalisations about the profession. Which is always nice.

I've got my own list which I'll start adding as a linklist on here (it's on the right, scroll down), but if you know of a planner with a blog, you are a planner with a blog, or you can think of other useful conjunctions of the words 'planner' and 'blog' then please comment below and we'll add it in.

And, because I think planning should be a broad church, anyone who wants to be considered a planner is a planner. You want to be in; you're in.

Hurrah - another late night departure to a pointless but intriguing destination.

(Oh, and obviously, if I've stuck you on the list, and you'd rather not be lumped in with us feckless egomaniacs, let me know and I'll take you off. I've stuck some people on who I think of doing very plannerlike things, but they might not have ever thought of themselves as planners.)

what? and masses

The always watchful Freelance Fred points at this Coke job ad. Which makes you go; what?

Whatever that job is (and the description doesn't make it a whole lot clearer) I want it. I want that title on a business card. But it reminded me of a splendid quote I found in The Long Tail (more of which later) :

"There are no masses; there are only ways of seeing people as masses" - Raymond Williams.

Brilliant. There should be more Marxist critiques of quant methodologies.

OK Go.

This is genius. Almost makes me like bands with guitars. Via Dan Germain via vi-R-us.

fruitstock - good

Arthur doing the kid's assault course.

Recovering.

Paul's Piccalilli.

A nice thank you for cycling there.

Running. Sleep. Pickles. Politeness. What else could you want?

plannerware

I never understood the problem with post-rationalisation. (A blog conversation with Rebecca reminded me of that.) I guess it gained its status as a planning sin because of the assumption that strategy should always preceed creativity in a clean and linear way, and that 'the creative' should emerge naturally from the strategy without any need for explanatory fiddling.

Which is palpable nonsense.

Everyone knows that the best work comes out of strategy and creative being part of the same, continual conversation, each informing the other. Post-rationalisation is not a sin, it's a skill - a way of bringing understanding and coherence to an intuitive leap.

So I got Stefan to design us a t-shirt (see above). We've not made them yet, and I'm not sure how many to make so, an indication of numbers would be useful. Anyone want one? I'm thinking they'll be about £20.

IT conversations on Thursday 11

(I know it's not Thursday, I'm making up for lost time.) This is well worth listening to though - it's Anil Dash of Six Apart talking about the motivations and meanings of blogging. And the products that they're thinking about as a result. Really smart stuff.

apologies

We've just got back from an excellent time on the Gower and I've discovered hundreds of emails. Some of which were from people expecting answers. I should have done that 'out of office' email thing but I don't really think of myself as in the office any more so I didn't. Sorry. I'll get back to y'all as soon as I can.

Anyway. So you know, we're back for a couple of days then we're off to Mablethorpe and Robin Hood's Bay, not sure what internet access will be like so, again posting here might be spotty for about 10 days. However, APSotW assignment 8s will be despatched to The Design Conspiracy for judging before I go. And , hopefully Assignment 9 will be set too. But maybe not.

And I'll get the giving back pieces done while I'm away. There's not a lot to do on a campsite once they sun's gone down.