Russell Davies

consilience

At Ted, Roger Mandle of the Rhode Island School Of Design is talking about the idea of consilience. A brilliant word. Literally it's the 'jumping together' of knowledge. More recently it's used to describe a way of thinking that unifies the arts and sciences. As such it's a useful idea for exactly the creative generalists that planners should be.

Technorati tag: TED conference

gapminder

I'm at the TED conference, listening to Hans Rosling of Gapminder. Absolutely fascinating. And really instructive about the presentation of data - great charts which use animation to massively increase understanding. You can download many examples from the site. And you should.

He's kind of like Edward Tufte but less puritanical.

Technorati tag: TED conference

finally, a point for blogging

Diablogue talks about a thing Sprint are doing - giving phones to bloggers, with free access to all sorts of broadband content - and asking them to blog honestly about the experience.

My initial thought is obvious - where's my phone? (I guess I'm on the wrong continent, that'll be it) but my secondary thought is - what a good idea. Apart from the obvious self-interest, it's the perfect thing to do with a product you believe in.

This is the start of something big, we're going to see a lot more of this. Public sampling. Public trialling.

proof - scientists hate chickens

It makes it all seem a bit Wallace and Gromit doesn't it?

information aesthetics

I have a cold and my back hurts. So I'm too ill to come up with any original thoughts today. (For which you're probably grateful.)

So, in the meantime, here's a fantastic site to visit - information aesthetics. I particularly liked this conversation table (shown above). This might change the dynamics of some meetings.

proper planning

Every now and then I'm reminded what a charlatan I am by someone who's done some proper planning. Richard at Adliterate has just done that with a fantastic bit of thinking about ad engagement in the age of the PVR. Get the speech and the slides here.

ego boost

A little belatedly I wanted to say thanks to everyone who voted for me. I'm much more pleased than a grown-person should be. And though I would say this, I thought it was a great idea, a fantastic way to get people to visit sites they might not otherwise know about.

video nasty

I've had no time to do a useful bit of video this week so I'm offering you this instead, which I made on my travels for Valentine's Day for Anne. Be warned. It makes me look extremely silly and contains no useful advice.

Valentines.mov Quicktime. 4MB.

Valentines.m4v Videopod version. 14MB.

No new postings for a few days. We're off to the country to commune with nature and to not be online. Though there may be occasional pictures from my phone.

Bye.

video - business emotional intelligence

This week's video is some slightly bleary and jetlagged thoughts on the idea of 'business emotional intelligence' - which is the stuff you need to learn if you're ever going to be any use at work.

Enjoy. If you can.

business emotional intelligence.m4v Videopod version (About 27MB)

business emotional intelligence.mov Quicktime version (About 7MB)

And this is how I originally planned to do this - thanks to the slow wonders of Bit Torrent.
business emotional intelligence with added george.mov Quicktime (About 7MB)