Russell Davies

digital campaigning

People talk about the Obama election as the first major political campaign to be fought substantially online. But many of the techniques pioneered then were about money and turn-out - data collection and activation - rather than using the internet to communicate and persuade. Obviously smart uses of the tools, but not all they can do.

And now, in the UK, we're in a slightly different environment, at a slightly different time, and we're starting to see new, slightly different stuff emerge.

The first, most interesting, development, was how successful the mydavidcameron campaign was. I bet that image, with suitably updated lines, will be around for the duration of the campaign and probably beyond. It's created a platform for people to engage with politics, playfully, but still expressing themselves. It feels like some power and voice as been re-appropriated from a well-funded media machine.

The second, really welcome development is that the lessons from that campaign have been shared - not squirreled away in a private debrief. An open campaign, open learning. And they're smart, thoughtful, usable lessons.

It was fascinating to read how they've danced on the line between total crowd-sourcing and curation. There's definitely a model here for finding resonant messages; rapid, public iteration quickly helps you discover the might tonal territory in a way that hard-thinking behind closed doors might not.

And, since they're smart cookies, it's a lesson that Richard and Saatchi's have taken right on board with their new poster. Which, actually, is clearly more of a platform than a poster - a thought that can be remixed to accommodate all sorts of specific messages. It might lose some of traditional, poster-type instant impact but this is a new, delicate, slightly different art, it's going to be fascinating to watch it emerge.

It's even more satisfying to watch the Tories struggling to construct posters that can't be 'mydavidcameronised'. You can see traditional, monolithic political posters fall apart in real time by watching alternative headlines for this new effort get suggested via the  #mytorytombstone hashtag.

This is going to be interesting.

2,000 weeks

I've been enjoying all the people doing weeknotes, inspired by the BERGians (though Ben reckons they got the idea from us.) I particularly like the different way people have thought about their week numbering system - BERG started at week 217, Rattle at week 1189. 

I'm going to do them myself - starting at week 2000 - because, looking at some actuarial tables, I've realised that, if I'm lucky, I've got about 2,000 weeks to live. So counting them down, working out whether it was a good use of a week, might be 'usefully focusing'. (Or deeply morbid, but let's assume not.)

lyddle end again

Some slow projects won't leave you alone. You might not have done anything about them for ages but your attention keeps catching on something related in the world, nagging you, reminding you that there's something that needs completing.

Lyddle End 2050 seems to be one of those. Every few weeks or so, since we started, something reminds me that we need to get it done.

Obviously some of that's because if there's a model village nearby I'll go and visit it. But then there are other things, like this Levi-Strauss quote:

Or these wonderful exercises in scale, or the connections between our Lyddle End imaginings and real-world (ish) architecture like this Terreform project or what Chris noted here.

Anyway, all of this says to me that we should get on and finish this thing, whatever finish means in this case.

So, here's a suggestion for the start of the finish - we have some spanking new offices, where we could start to get all the existing models together in a display of some sort and maybe get them photographed nicely in context. So, if you've made a model and you're willing to ship it, would you mind sending it to the address at the top of this page.  If you don't want to, or can't afford to, that's fine, we'll work out how to incorporate photos into 'the show'. If you've not finished your model, or not shot it, then here's your opportunity to rediscover your enthusiasm. Finish it off, shoot it, upload it to flickr tagged lyddleend2050 and it should end up on the tumblr.

Anyway. Just a nudge. To me as much as anyone.

digital democracy

This looks good. Wish I could go. Away unfortunately.

heroes on an iPad

Although I don't know why, I think gogos are the best thing ever. I just keep trying to work out how to use them. Maybe now I know - they'd be the perfect counters for a board game that uses the iPad as the board. They'd look gorgeous sitting on there. We'd need to work out how to make the iPad think they were fingers - maybe some sort of electrostatic sausage skin - and to remember which was which. But I suspect something gogo-like would be another perfect iDevice companion (like measuring pebbles.)

criticism

Another of my little obsessions seems to be criticism. The whole run of it from 'you are stupid' to 'that play was stupid'.

I think it started with me worrying about blog commenting and Q&As at conferences, which got me thinking about what a dreadful example Charlie Brooker is to everyone. Not because he's bad but because he's good. Very funny, very thoughtful. But his belligerent style is only effective in the hands of a skilled practitioner - and he seems to have spawned a host of less able imitators who just end up issuing unthinking sweary abuse.

And I haven't really got anywhere with understanding any of this, but I've amassed quite a collection of delicious links under the tag 'criticism'. And looking at it just now I've realised it sweeps up some moments of really interesting writing and thinking, so you might like to have a look.

this looks good

You should go. If you can. If you want to.

penguins and rabbits

The more we muck about with things like Newspaper Club and Datadecs, the more clear it gets to me that the easiest way to get people to pay for digital things is to turn them into physical things. People understand paying for objects. They don't expect to get them for free. Certainly there are lots of downsides to objects, but understanding that you're supposed to pay for them is not one. As usual, toymakers are getting there first.

lowering the point point

Charles Arthur writes about Gowalla and Foursquare here; basically deciding they're pointless. You'd have thought that post blogging, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter etc people would pause for thought before deciding things had no point. But he's a smart man so it's worth examining why he'd say that, especially as a lot of other smart people (and me) do find them pointful enough to play with.

I suspect one aspect of this is the way web and mobile stuff lowers so many barriers. It's lowered the cost, effort and skills required to build tools, express yourself, connect to people etc etc. All that. It's also lowered the amount of point something needs to have to be worth playing with. It's lowered the point point. Using Foursquare or Gowalla represents such a minimal amount of effort and energy - normally in a moment of your day when you're not doing anything else - that you only need a tiny amount of reward for it to be worthwhile. And, actually, for quite a lot of people, quite a lot of the point is in seeing how much point there is.

Playing with something like Gowalla or Foursquare is worth doing - to see if it's worth doing.

And because it's so little effort to do it you're prepared to give it a bit of time, try it for a few weeks, see how it fits in your life - rather than just doing the brief evaluation a professional reviewer traditionally used to do.

Anyway, hopefully you get my point. Ha!

pulped?

(Above: heady days)

Incidentally, can someone who understands these things explain why there only seems to be one copy of EBCB for sale in the whole Amazon universe. I seem to remember 20,000 were printed originally. (Madness, I know.) According to my last statement about 6,000 were actually sold. So have 14,000 books just got lost? Is it just not worth anyone's while to get another box out of the backroom or something? How's the long tail supposed to work if no-one knows where it is?

I guess I'd really like it to get remaindered so at least someone might buy a copy but I suppose that moment might be past now as well. Thinking about it, I don't think I've got a copy myself any more. Not sure I'm willing to pay £19.99 for it though.