Only Dead Fish

Geek Dinner Social Cookbook

Eaon has a great little initiative going on subtitled "the finest brains in media and marketing share their culinary skills" - the thought being that we all have at least one signature dish which we like to roll out when the need arises.

So he's set up a geekdinner blog and is asking for contributions with the aim that if he gets enough content he'll publish it and donate the proceeds to a worthy cause. All you need to do is e-mail in your recipe along with some words on the story behind it, a brief bio, your linkage and a pic of yourself. The latest recipe is the legendary Basque Chicken (heavily based on an old Delia favourite) donated by some bloke with a distinctly dodgy goatee.

Cognitive Surplus

Excellent talk from Clay Shirky at the recent Web 2.0 Expo  (and in many ways relevant to the post below). I like his concept of the 'cognitive surplus' from which social and collaborative ideas will gain share. 16 minutes well spent, if only to hear the great example he uses of the Pluto page on Wikipedia .

Via

A Tale of Two Stats

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More evidence (if any were needed) of the degree of disruption new technologies and social media are having on some traditional media models from this entertainment media research study conducted at the beginning of the year. Most notable, is that relating to TV advertising, including:

• 27% of people agree or strongly agree that social networks have the potential to be the MAIN way in which they access video and music content
• 17% of people think that social networking has negatively impacted the time they spend watching TV (the most effected medium)
• 18% of people think that video streaming sites have made them watch less 'live' scheduled television
• The majority of people (58%) with the ability to record television digitally watch an equal or higher level of recorded than live programming. Of those who watch recorded programming 46% fast forward past the ads all the time, 79% all or most of the time, and only 2% never do.

Interestingly, according to the AA TV spend rose year on year in 2007 and is forecast to be up again year on year for Q1 2008. Work that one out.

The Brand of 2.0

       

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2.0.  It's become a cliche already hasn't it? But it's a suffix that attempts to express transformational change in many things - the way we work, the way we vote, the way we consume media, the way ideas spread. Enterprise 2.0, Politics 2.0, Publishing 2.0, Advertising 2.0 - it says we have moved on, arrived at a new place, drawn a line in the sand.

But it also suggests definable change. Staged change. I finish 1.0, now I'm in 2.0. When I finish 2.0 I'll be ready for 3.0. In reality of-course life is a whole lot blurrier than that, and things aren't so easily compartmentalised.

And so I think there's a danger with this kind of thing that we assume boundaries where there are none. That we set our objectives against an end point which doesn't exist. That we sell ourselves short instead of realising the fundamental change that needs to happen. Which I why I like this quote from journalist blogger Howard Owens speaking in the context of the changes facing the newspaper industry:

"See, I’m kind of tired of people talking about how newspapers are going through a ‘transition’. As in, ‘we just need to get through this transition.’ Transitions have beginnings, middles and ends. Transitions eventually stop and you get a chance to take a breath and say, ‘cool, we survived.’"

I think that applies right across the communications industry.

Linda McCartney

I'm rather liking the informality in the photography featured in the Linda McCartney exhibition that has just opened in London. There's only 28 prints on show featuring images from the 60s right through to the late 90s but there's an interesting mix between sensitive but challenging portraits of some of the most iconic rock stars of the time (including Jagger, Joplin, Morrison and Lennon) and intimate shots of McCartney family life including the first one below, which I love, which features Paul standing on a fence in his bathrobe.

Paul, Stella and James, Scotland, 1982:

Paul, Venice, 1976:

Horses in Snow, Sussex, 1986:

Simon and Garfunkel, CBS Studio, New York, 1966:

Jim Morrison on Stage at Filmore East, New York, 1968:

More here

Where's Waldo 2.0

Canadian artist Melanie Coles has an interesting project on the go - a radically new version of the old 'Where's Waldo' game. Instead of children trying to find Waldo in a picture busy with people (like in the famous books), Melanie has 'hidden' a huge painting of Waldo on a rooftop somewhere in Vancouver. She "subverts the whole earth into being part of my game" by encouraging people to find it on Google Earth. There are even instructions for how you can join in and create your own Waldo image ready for the next fly-past. Nice.

Moustaches And Advertising

"A man without a moustache, is like a woman with a moustache" said Nick Cave. There are too few moustaches in advertising, so I was particularly pleased to see this ad for the Buenos Aires International Film Festival which features a plethora of hirsute top lips. Quite made my day it did.

And if that's not enough, you could always try Lee's tip and sign up for moustache me.

Barriers to Change: The 10X problem

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"Gourville’s rule of thumb states that one will underestimate the advantages of a new technology by a factor of 3 while simultaneously overestimating the disadvantages of giving up old technology by a factor of 3. This means that unless a new technology is ten times better at doing something it is unlikely to get accepted."

This, from the Wikinomics playbook, is an insight about barriers to change which I think broadly applies not just to technology but to change in any system or even model. And that includes media, advertising and marketing. We focus on the physical or financial costs of change, forgetting that it is often the emotional or psychological costs which are the most difficult to overcome but frequently overlooked. Loss aversion can mean that the sacrifice of losing the old feels more real, and is more visible, than the apparent benefit of the new. So the latter has to be both obvious and significant.

Networked models are disrupting existing models all over the place. The trouble with this new environment is that the changes required are significant (sometimes transformational) but the benefits are often not immediately obvious. All of which means that understanding this is one thing, but acting on it requires vision, courage, willingness to experiment, a singleminded but collaborative approach. In short, entrepreneurialism.

Related links:
John Gourville
Andy Groves 10x
Switching barriers

Difficult Second Album Syndrome

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First post after a break and it's feeling a bit like Difficult Second Album Syndrome (ie. not exactly flowing) but hey, here goes anyway. Whilst I was away I heard Bill Bryson (of all people) on the radio talking about how beautiful the English countryside is. Away in Cornwall for the last week I've been constantly reminded of this, and reminded too of how easy it is to forget it.  "An acre in Middlesex is better than a principality in Utopia" said Lord Macauley. I don't know about Middlesex but in it's own way Cornwall seemed about as idyllic a place in the world as anywhere possibly could be.

Gone Fishing

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I'm away for a week so normal service will be resumed very soon. Have a great week.