Only Dead Fish

Skypephone Confession

I have a confession to make. Late last year I was asked to trial the new Skype phone as part of a blogger outreach programme and I agreed, partly because I love the whole concept of Skype and partly because I thought it would be interesting.

Well, I have to admit that I have hardly used the phone. Not because it's a rubbish phone. It's very good. Easy to use, nice looking, quite intuitive and all that. No, the reason I haven't used it much is simply because not enough of my friends and family are Skyped-up. So it was difficult to take advantage of it's key feature - the big fat Skype key in the middle of the phone which allows you to make Skype-to-Skype calls for free. The numbers of users of Skype services seems to be growing apace, but I'm afraid I just don't know enough of them. Sorry guys. You can have your phones back if you want. I'd feel a bit of a fraud doing a full review because I just don't think I've used it enough to justify it. But if your interested in reading some, there are plenty out there.

The blogger outreach programme itself seems to have been a bit patchy, but was generally handled OK from my experience of it. They got the tone about right, and there were quite a few ideas as to how you could get more involved (though I didn't actually take them up on any of them). And they seem to have been pretty balanced in their representation of reviews. Outreach programmes like this seem to be on the increase but I think it's a real skill to get it right and get people sufficiently engaged. I think we've still got a way to go on that score.

Web Trend Map 2008

Like last years, only bigger and better (and updated):

My how things have moved on. Click on the image to enlarge it.

Clickable online version here

Big A3 PDF here

Thanks to Information Architects in Japan

The Greatest Natural Resource

You Tube have been hosting a channel for video content from the World Economic Forum in Davos ("This year, you get to join them"). Amongst the videos of the sessions, is a fascinating little project called "The Davos Question". The question in question, so to speak, is: "What one thing do you think that companies, countries or individuals must do to make the world a better place in 2008?"

As well as contributions from the great and the good (here's the one from Bono, who looks like he's been caught on the hop somewhat) they invited You Tube users to submit their own answers to the question, some of which were screened at Plenary sessions. Amongst the submissions is this one from freesoulJAH in which he makes what I think is an amazing point about how if we just thought of our children as our greatest natural resource instead of oil, or gas, or anything else we dig out of the ground, then our priorities would be a whole lot different and, frankly, a whole lot better. I know I'm an old hippy, but that just meant something to me. Here he is:

Related links:
World Economic Forum
WEF images on Flickr
Jeff Jarvis answers The Davos Question with one word: Transparency

Sleeveface

This is a lot of fun.

First saw it a while back but was reminded of it by Andy and it's now got some more good ones up. Go see. If you're in the mood for the real stories behind famous album artwork, check out sleevage.

On Brand Utility

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I like this from Zeus Jones:

"To me, marketing as a service is an operating philosophy - not a deliverable. It's a school of thought around how business success and customer care/acquisition can be achieved. One shouldn't deliver branded utility as a part of an integrated campaign or even as a campaign per se; instead there should be a commitment to work being useful into the heart of everything that's done. This is as true of the agency side as it is of the client side. Once you embrace this as the way you've decided to go to market, it's not about issuing or working on a brief. Instead it's about a holistic approach to doing business."

Samaritans - Vectorscope

Beautiful, this new ad from Lunar BBDO for The Samaritans. As they say on their blog:

"People call Samaritans for hundreds of reasons that range from exam pressure to suicide, so representing those states of mind without being off-putting is a tricky job."

I think they've done a great job.

The Leaders of the Future

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Like Russell, I've made it my mission this year to widen the scope of presentations I choose to see and pay to see. I want to hear some new perspectives and have some new input. So in keeping with this resolution I went to a talk yesterday by Richard Gerver, an ex-primary school head who turned the school he led around from a failing institution (it was, in his words "near bankcrupty") to a school that received A+ ratings by inspectors and was reknowned globally for being a centre of educational innovation and excellence.

So how is this relevant to marketing, brands or communication? I think it's highly relevant. Apart from anything else he acheived these results through a ruthless focus on involvement and participation - he engaged a hard-to-engage audience by empowering the pupils. They had genuine involvement in running the community and genuine responsibility. The lessons in his schools weren't lectures - they were highly interactive sessions. The kids at his school weren't told they had to go school, they wanted to come to school.

Many people look at the problems in education and think about how they can make kids learn better. Richard turned this on it's head and started looking for ways in which he could reawaken children's natural desire to learn. The kind of desire that we suck out of them early on. Particularly when we box in creativity, when we encourage them to colour in between the lines, not to take risks. So when these children go into the world of work they are trained out of many of the qualities that many (including me) would argue are fundamentally important in todays rapidly changing environment - creativity, flexibility, willingness to experiment and take risks.

Richard used a school assembly analogy. In his school he runs two assemblies - one for 4-7 year olds and one for 8-11 year olds. And occasionally he'll go and do an assembly at the local secondary school. His assemblies are as interactive as his lessons. When he asks for volunteers, he is deluged with enthusiasm from the younger kids and everyone sticks their hands up (pick me! pick me! pick me!). In the older assembly, the 8 and 9 year olds are slightly less enthusiastic but most stick their hands up. The 10-11 year olds are starting to wise up. By the time they're at secondary school the alpha-male and alpha female thing has kicked in and they're looking along the rows to see if it's 'OK' to volunteer. And of-course most of the time it isn't.

I think this is relevant because we live in a culture where everything is about trying harder. If it's not working, try harder. If something isn't gaining traction, we're not working hard enough. If it's not cutting through, we're not shouting loud enough. Go back and try harder. This encourages us to push against the problem instead of taking the time to step back and find a different, smarter and quite probably quicker solution to the problem by thinking about it in a different way. It reminded me of a Stephen Covey quote I saw recently:

“A leader is the one who climbs the tallest tree, surveys the entire situation, and yells: ‘Wrong jungle!’”

The Age of Conversation 2.0

Almost a year ago Drew and Gavin did a very special thing in engaging 100 bloggers from around the world to collaborate in authoring the e-book Age of Conversation. It was an inpsiring project and a great read. Well, they're at it again, and are now after contributors to another project.

This time, they are doing something different and turning the topic over to us. You can vote for your favourite out of the list below here.

• Marketing Manifesto
• Why Don't People Get It?
• My Marketing Tragedy (and what I learned)

So get voting and get contributing, and let's make it even bigger and better. As I think Richard said last time around, now that's what I call collective intelligence.

Memes Like Buses

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No memes for a month and then I get tagged on two on the same day. Just like buses. So I thought I'd aggregate my response here in one post for the sake of interest and brevity.

First up, Asi tagged me (thanks Asi) on the current meme sweeping the sphere - 'My Media Week' - the meme that gets you thinking about your own media consumption rather than everyone else's :o). So here goes:

What I've Read
As well as my FeedDemon reader, I also like to read direct from blogs. Somehow you get more of a personal context by doing that and I like that. And I guess I fit this in when I can. I don't really read the trade press anymore. I look at the news stories on the alerts but find that I get far more information, opinion, insight and inspiration from people's blogs. Apart from that, I subscribe to the consistently brilliant Word Magazine and, true to form, I'm currently reading four books at once:

Wikinomics (How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything) which I'm just finishing having finally got round to reading it
The World Without Us - which I've just started. I was fascinated by the whole idea behind this book - a thought experiment on what would happen to the world if tommorrow, all humans disappeared.
No-one Belongs Here More Than You - debut collection of short stories by Miranda July. Very idiosyncratic, very good.
The Steep Appraoch to Garbadale by Iain Banks. I'm a Banks fan and this is nearly as good as The Crow Road.

What I've Watched

Like Asi, I don't watch a great deal of telly (apart from regular doses of Dora the Explorer and Wonderpets with my daughters). If I do it'll be Sky plussed mostly. But I did catch "Paradise or Bust" the other night about TribeWanted, the "birth of a new tribe through the power of the internet".  An experiment, in other words, by two social entrepreneurs to combine a web community with the establishment of a new eco-community on a remote Fijian island.

What I've Listened to
My radio listening is pretty patchy. Radio 4/5 and occasionally 2 (note, all Beeb and no commercial - I really do find the repetitiveness of radio ads annoying. On my local station they've had Paul Simon Curtain Superstores on a loop for the past 2 years). My commute means I do a lot of iPod listening. Right now I'm absolutely loving Fireproof from Dawn Landes. Mellow, and in places quite hypnotic. This mixed in with some Ed Harcourt, Gogol Bordello, Beth Orton and random 80's throwbacks.

For "My Media Week", I'm tagging Graeme (if only to get you posting again mate ;o)), Laurence-Helene, and  Katie

Next up, Gil kindly tagged me on the thinking blogger meme (thanks Gil). Participation rules are...

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme
3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn't fit your blog)

On this one, I'd like to thoughtfully tag:

Gavin at Servant of Chaos - who surely must have been tagged already on this one but if not...his blog is always full of thought provoking and well written brain food.
Katy at KitschBitch. Only recently back in the sphere but already posting some great stuff.
Asi at No Man's Blog - right back at yer!
Charlie at tantramar
...and Kris at Crossthebreeze

A New Way To Be Good?

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I heard on the radio this morning that today was apparently meant to be the most depressing day of the year (happily I'm not feeling it). So in trying to think about more uplifting subjects, I read about the strategic launch of Google's philanthropy venture Google.org.

Led by the rather wonderfully named Dr Brilliant, Google.org's 40-strong team has already been going for sometime but has only just unveiled their key strategic intent based on an over-riding objective which is, they say, to "use the power of information and technology to address the global challenges of our age: climate change, poverty and emerging disease". When it launched, Google.org represented what The Economist terms "a new sort of philanthropic entity", being set up to pursue opportunities for for-profit investing as well as charitable grants, and funded not only with 1% of the firm's equity and annual profits, but 1% of Google employees time.

Dr Brilliant (who bizarrely was once Doctor to The Grateful Dead) had a blank sheet of paper and the world's biggest problems to look at when he started so it's probably not surprising that it's taken a couple of years to announce the strategy. They started with 1000 ideas, whittled them down to 11 (the 11 which were "the biggest, most imminent, least well resourced problems."), and then finally focused in looking specifically at what Google had to offer in terms of resource, reach, their command and proficiency in handling information, their technological and engineering capabilities, and their entrepreneurial culture. They ended up with five key initiatives:

1. RE<C: Clean, renewable sources of utility-scale electricity that is cheaper than that produced from coal
2. RechargeIT: supporting and fostering the mass commercialisation of plug-in vehicles
3. Fuel the growth of SME's
4. Use information to inform and empower in order to improve public services (education, health, water, sanitation etc)
5. Predict and Prevent: Identifying hot-spots and enabling rapid responses to emerging threats like disease or climate based situations.

It's tempting to be cyncical about this (cheaper, renewable electricity must fit nicely with Google's own priority to efficiently power all those server farms) but it's the commitment and the capability which I think sets this apart. Just think about that last one again. It builds out of the InSTEDD project (Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disaster) which Google.org has now invested in and for which Brilliant won the TED pize two years ago. This project aims to use web and communications technology to help communities around the world identify, act upon and warn others of  infectious disease outbreaks or natural disasters.

Think Twitter, Facebook and other ubiqitous but free software being repurposed when and where  necessary for humanitarian benefit. Like the Twitter bot framework which "bridges the web service and phones with a location detection feature that can link to a layer in Google Earth". So imagine an aid worker with one bar of mobile reception being able to twitter on SMS not only to a network of fellow aid workers, but also to their headquarters back home who can view the message on screen showing the location on Google Earth and reply telling them where the nearest other aid workers are. 

In typical Google style this is a hugely ambitious, high risk and high return strategy. But then, perhaps that's what's needed. Particularly when you consider that, according to a recent Oxfam report, there has been a four-fold increase in the annual number of natural disasters. Perhaps this goes beyond philanthropy. As The Economist speculates, perhaps this is "a new model for how a big firm should engage with society".

Related links:

Google.org blog