2009 November | Face, The Co-Creation Planning Agency

Archive for November, 2009

Around the World in 5 Co-Creation Lunches

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

Well we have all been busy bees over the last couple of months, jetting off abroad quite a lot & taking our co-creation ethos to numerous different countries.

Now I could write something super intelligent and pithy about how the methodology and style of co-creation needs to flex via country (and in fact I’m sure I will indeed do that in the near future) but for now I wanted to write about something that was even closer to my heart…..

Lunch.

Aside from the need to flex approach, style and expectations from co-creation by market, the thing that most struck me was the need to flex what you eat, when you eat it and for how long.

Yes, honestly.

So I thought I’d share what we have found out about lunch from doing co-creations across the world over the last couple of months. Here is what we have learned from the UK, Germany, Holland, Argentina and Russia.

A 3 course lunch is of course preferable, but honestly, the humble brits are happy as Larry with a sandwich, a can of coke and something sweet and yummy. 30 minutes will do us fine, but if the pressure is on (which it sometimes is), and the energy & enthusiasm is up (which it always is) then we’re more than happy and willing to keep on working while we eat. Work horses to the last we’re only happy when we’re on the fly.

For Germans it’s not the size of the boat, it’s the motion of the ocean. Well not really, but to use a slightly cryptic metaphor what I mean is, what you have for lunch is less important than how long you have for lunch. Which is not that important actually, what is important is sticking to whatever you have said in terms of time – not a minute more or less will be tolerated without significant question and discussion.

In Holland it is less about what you eat for lunch (soup, rolls (lots of cheese) and salad in case you are wondering), more how you eat and how often! Lunch is just the start – a “formal” sit down affair, and it’s very important that everyone starts eating at the same time – grabbing an sandwich and wandering about is definitely off the menu. But ideally there should be a “second lunch” around 3.30pm which consists of some snacks of the same overall amount as lunch – 1 bowl of nuts and some Kettle Chips it is not.

Argentine's don't mess when it comes to meat.

Lunch in Argentina is THE BIG ONE, the main meal, after all it has to sustain you until about 9pm when it’s time for dinner. It is sacrosanct and a deliciously slow and relaxed affair. Don’t even bother asking if anyone is a vegetarian, they won’t be (looks of horror abound if you dare to suggest you might be a veggie), and wine is totally acceptable. Set aside at least 2 hours for a sit down, preferably 3 course lunch, though if you could make it 3 and all go home in between that would be heavenly.

Russia is all about BIG hearty fayre, a proper 3 course lunch for at least an hour with compulsory smoking between courses. For all.

So there you go – a quick whistlestop tour through the interesting eating habits and customs we have seen and learnt in the last couple of months.

Hungry anyone?

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Do Brands Really Need Agencies?

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

Do Brands Need Agencies? | Face Forum, Nov 09

View more documents from Facegroup.

Following on from the success of our Web 2.0 Women forum earlier this year we thought it was about time we opened up another hot topic for debate. The last Face Forum revolved around the key question ‘Do Brands Need Agencies?’ On the 18th of November we have been joined by friends, experts and clients at the Groucho club to discuss what it takes to stay relevant and true to your consumers, how to engage the crowds in research innovation and planning and what are some of the tech trends for 2010 and beyond. Here’s a quick summary:

Relevance
The real-time social web has changed the way we communicate giving us the tools to get and share information at a pace we have not experienced before. This has made the web the richest insight field we have ever had. How can you harness the power of the world wide wave for research, brand planning and brand engagement? What are real-time research and adaptive brand planning? And how can they help your brand stay relevant?

Crowds
Barely a day goes by without a website, campaign or competition cropping up, promising to harness the collective wisdom of crowds for the benefit of brands. Peperami even ditched Lowe to ask the crowds. But is bottom-up really enough? When did crowdsourcing cease to be a means to an end and become an end in itself? Join us to discuss a hybrid model where crowd-sourcing and co-creation are used as complementary methodologies.

Trends
We asked 3000 19 to 25 years old young adults about their consumption habits, media and tech diet. The Forum will be the place where we present our latest Techtribe report, uncovering youth trends that will soon start migrating to other audiences

It was a great night! Here’s the presentation that kick-started the discussion, join in and tell us what you think

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VENUE UPDATE!! November Espresso Briefing: how to use real-time WOM analysis for adaptive brand planning

Sunday, November 22nd, 2009

wom uk espresso briefing @face

Brands are increasingly realising the importance of integrating word of mouth into everything they do. They get that it’s essential for nurturing consumer relationships. They understand that referrals are key to ROI. They’ve heard exciting examples of companies who’ve built their success on conversational strategies. But how on earth do they fit WOM into their existing marketing mix?

On 8.30am, Tuesday 24th November, we will present on‘Monitoring and analysing WOM in real time to enable adaptive brand planning’.

CEO and Founding Partner Andrew Needham, and Head of Social Media and Planning Francesco D’Orazio, will look at how to:

- Measure and monitor online conversations about brands to assess brand influence and brand visibility
- Apply qualitative analysis to determine research parameters and add meaning to quantitative findings
- Identify conversation hubs and influencers across a wide range of channels
- Use crowdsourcing and co-creation methodologies to achieve research, innovation and planning objectives
- Build iterative models for feeding real-time insights and consumer inputs into the existing marketing process

As always, the briefing will be totally FREE and kick off with half an hour for coffee, breakfast and networking at 8.30am with the talk starting at 9am and questions and discussions afterwards until 10.30am, all at INSIGHT RESEARCH GROUP offices, 11-13 Charterhouse Buildings, London
EC1M 7AP. Last month’s presentation from Matt Morrison was a big hit so be sure to register for this one now via julian.ferguson@womuk.org – members get priority booking.

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Review: RiP: A Remix Manifesto

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

The premier of Brett Gaylor’s film RiP: A Remix Manifesto took place last week at London media club Frontline. The director was present at the screening introducing and taking questions about his film, which addresses the tension that has emerged since downloading music and infringing copyright laws has become mainstream, through Napster.

At Face Youth Lab we’ve already explored how this mainstream download culture created a demand for accessible music, and how brands should aim to discourage it by embracing the technological innovation with attractive, legal alternatives, rather than attempts to shut down the technology itself. This is reiterated in the film by Lawrence Lessig, whom Gaylor’s narration calls “the coolest lawyer on the planet”. Lessig states that the technology providing this copyright infringement “will not go away” and cannot be truly destroyed, and that attempts to stamp it out criminalize the youth of today. Cory Doctorow emphasizes the scale that Napster had in 2001 when it was shut down; it had more users than there were voters in the 2000 U.S. presidential election. He further notes that within its short lifetime Napster’s users had created the biggest library ever known to man, all for free.

Here in lies the main tension of the film. The major creative industries claim that making this copyrighted music freely accessible is detrimental and inherently stifles creativity through not providing a living for budding musicians. Yet the film, with its mashup editing style suggests that a healthy public domain only encourages creativity through access to different culture and ideas. The aesthetic centre-piece of the film is mashup musician Girl Talk, he creates wholly new compositions through cutting up famous hip-hop and pop-songs. Girl Talk embodies this young generation’s desire, now that they have the tools through the technology of the internet, to become producers not merely consumers. Brett Gaylor’s narrations states that if Girl Talk had to pay to use the samples he would have to pay over $45million for a 16 song album running under an hour. The frenzied ecstasy of the concert footage (which itself was crowd-sourced for the film over the internet via concert goers) is testament enough that there is demand for this remix culture. Furthermore, Brett Gaylor noted in the Q&A that neither his film, nor Girl Talk’s albums, had been actually sued yet; the potential of bad publicity has been enough of a deterrent to the authorities thus far. Gaylor mentioned that a third of all the content that youth see currently is created by their friends, a huge statistic when considering how top-down old forms of media were decades ago.

The philosophical centre of the film is the aforementioned Lawrence Lessig who has founded a logical alternative to copyright. Creative Commons, allows a participant to use a work of art which is attributed with a Creative Commons license, freely so long as this use is not for commercial gain. This allows the sharing of culture similarly to how folk art was shared before recorded music was created. The primary manifesto that this rests upon is the note that “culture always builds upon the past”. Walt Disney is referred to as one of the first mashup artists as most, if not all, the films made in his lifetime were updated versions of stories in the public domain, and yet they have become Disney’s classics. This philosophical argument suggests that a large public domain encourages creativity, as “nothing is created in a vacuum”. When Walt Disney died the Disney Corporation were the main lobbyists to extend the copyright laws up to 75 years after the death of the intellectual responsible.

Girl Talk - Mash Up Messiah

While there are some clear arguments suggesting that the stringent nature of current copyright law needs to loosen, Gaylor himself could not answer the question of how budding musicians would make a living, although he did suggest some kind of internet licensing fee with the money then being redistributed directly to the artists. Yet Girl Talk has sold his albums on his website for a ‘pay what you want fee’. A further example of stringent intellectual copyright and patent failings was given. Brazil chose to forgo American copyright laws imposed upon them to make their own cheap versions of AIDS drugs, replacing the expensive versions American patents were forcing. Surely intellectual copyright and patent laws shouldn’t prevent cheap medical drugs from being distributed to the poorest countries in the world? While there is a question of whether medial drugs companies will still create product if they don’t make enough money, this salient example emphasizes the question of whether the time is right to rethink how copyright law is enacted.

The open collaboration that the film embodies is fully enacted by the mashup montage aesthetic that the film has. There was a rotoscoped-animated section, which a group of students who downloaded the rushes of the film from http://www.ripremix.com/ then edited and created themselves. The director noted that there were already 3 or 4 versions of the film already and that the version we had seen would be only be viewed then and there. All of this and the encouragement given to us to remix our own versions of the film at http://www.opensourcecinema.org is indicative of the burgeoning 2-way creative, open collaboration that internet technology is instilling in young people today.

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Co-Creation Will Create a New Breed of Agency

Monday, November 16th, 2009

Following my blog Co-Creation is Driving Change in the Way We Work here are my thoughts on how co-creation is creating a new breed of agency where the disciplines of research, innovation, social media and advertising/communications are coming together in a more seamless way under one roof.

Co-creation and its underlying philosophy whereby consumers want to have things done with them rather than at them will ultimately usher in a new breed of agency. There are several reasons for this:-

1) Consumers have replaced trust in advertising with trust in individuals: in particular, friends, family, and colleagues. Turning to communities and away from mass media, consumers are increasingly making traditional advertising more irrelevant. They have learned to block the ads they don’t want, and gate-keeping is becoming more sophisticated and widespread: according to Forrester Research DVR ownership in North America, which features ad-skipping, will grow from 19% of households in 2006 to 55% in 2011. More than half of UK consumers using the Internet at home utilize spam and popup blockers to filter unwanted messages from their online experiences, and countries like the Netherlands, France, and Germany are not far behind.

2) Consumers want to be more involved with the brands and products they consume: this applies also to the way they are communicated to them through advertising. Doritos is the most famous example in the UK whereby consumers were invited via a competition to create the next TV campaign. More recently Unilever’s Peperami have dropped Lowe to Crowdsource their next ad campaign with consumers. Noam Buchalter marketing manager at Peperami says: “We believe Peperami is a brand that deserves radical creative solutions and are confident taking our brief out to thousands rather than a small team of “creatives” will provide us with the best possible idea and take our advertising to the next level.”

3) Consumers are showing in increasing numbers that they prefer pull to push: almost all consumers own a PC and mobile phone, and they spend almost half of their media time with interactive channels. Use of RSS and podcasts has increased to 10% and 14%, respectively, from virtually nothing in 2003. Mark Earls author of Herd, says that it is no longer about what your brand does to the consumer but what consumers are doing to and with your brand. Putting it another way, James Murdoch in his Marketing Society Annual Lecture said ‘Ubiquitous connectivity means fundamentally that the individual becomes the agent of everything…we’ve learnt through experience what difference the new empowered world means for our relationship with customers. This is not a question of scale. It is a different way of existing’.

4) Different ways of existing means there is more fragmentation: which in turn is driving more complexity. The number of media channels available to marketers, agencies, and consumers has exploded. Proliferation of choice offers marketers new opportunities, such as social networks, mobile, and branded entertainment. Social media, in which consumers become publishers and media outlets drives media buyers crazy; there are more than 59 million videos in YouTube today, and they can’t cut deals with every blogger.

5) A new marketing funnel is required. The current one which sits at the heart of most current advertising and media buying agencies is out of date. “Integrated” or “360” marketing is still an excuse to sell campaign ideas as brand ideas so that they can produce a TV commercial and shoe horn other channels in afterwards. Consumers need to be at the heart of a new marketing model so that we can move away from channel marketing to “continuous brand engagement” marketing.

6) A new definition of “mass media” is emerging: More and more consumers are creating their own content and are coming together to form communities around it. Personal profiles on sites like Myspace, Bebo and Facebook don’t simply state vital statistics, they allow marketers access to preferences, allegiances, recommendations and conversations they could not have dreamed of even five years ago. And there are communities for every niche, so the same data richness can be experienced for every specific brand, sector or topic. It is always up to date being spontaneously added to by consumers. The new mass media is made up of a collection of communities. As more consumers become involved in social media, these platforms will grow and eclipse today’s mainstream media.

7) Traditional advertising can’t deliver a captive audience in this new consumer landscape: Nearly a quarter of marketers polled by Ipsos Mori for the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s latest Marketing Trends survey said advertising, excluding online, gave the worst return on investment. Almost a quarter of marketers rated CRM as the best, with PR activities coming in second highest in terms of ROI.

In the New Breed of Agency:

Consumers will be treated in a fundamentally different way: They will be given more responsibility and will be more involved throughout the brand marketing process. Co-creating with consumers as direct and active equals to deliver a range of marketing outputs will be part of its core philosophy.

Consumer communities will reign: The focus on the 30 second TV spot will give way to the content and conversations that are being generated by consumers and between consumers around the brand. This will in turn produce different segmentation models where brands see consumers not just as potential customers who want to buy something from them but as people who want to have a relationship with them.

New social media tools will help brands to be on 24/7: this is part of what we call at Face “the socialisation of brands” where campaign and channel marketing gives way to “continuous brand engagement marketing”. The environment the brand lives and breathes in is always on and is always changing so brands need to be listening to and observing their consumers not just in communities but also on the web as well as involving them on a continuous basis in everything they do.

Engaging and managing brand fan bases will be key: Developing creative ways for engaging and managing fan bases will be critical to the New Breed proposition. As Marmite and Peperami have shown involving consumers through co-creation and crowdsourcing respectively in what a brand says and does is a great way of driving brand engagement with important fan bases.

The arrival of research 3.0: new social media tools and web 2.0 are helping brands to research consumers in more exciting and different ways through mass collaboration and intimate co-creation. Combined with new ways of accumulating robust qualitative data which we can make sense of from the web, then research has an exciting future ahead of it. It will herald a new era – Research 3.0.

Ideas can come from anywhere: a new model which combines the creativity of experts with the creativity of consumers so that more ideas of better quality can be produced is on its way. In the New Breed Agency, experts have an even bigger role to play than ever before. The researchers, the designers, the marketers, the copywriters, the art directors, the account men, the planners will become facilitators, analysts, curators, editors, creative directors and publishers. Their role is critical to ensuring that the overall creative output is polished and of an extremely high standard.

A mix of old and new: the new breed of agency will exist both in a virtual capacity and the real world – consumers will not only feel comfortable hanging out in the agency as part of continuous co-creation programmes but their content will also be streamed live onto TV screens. The processes and methodologies of this new agency will also reflect a combination of the old and new. This will be done not just for the sake of it but because it delivers better ROI.

Talent resides in and outside the company: the new breed of agency will be less worried with employing everybody they work with. It recognises that the best talent can come from both inside and outside the company. This will also be reflected in more collaborative and flexible working practices.

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Co-creation in the USA Part 1: When Daniel Met Barack & Ann.

Friday, November 13th, 2009

Obama upstaged by a Nose!

As Sean, Lucy & I headed in Chicago for a co-creation project last week there wasn’t much sign of Mr President in his home town; but it didn’t take long for him to rear his head in the workshop. During the introductions, Daniel, a true all American guy told us that he had come face to face with the new president following the election night celebrations. Now that was pretty exciting, and Daniel was still buzzing over it a year later.

But that excitement was superceeded by the excitement he felt in coming face to face in the workshop with Ann Gottlieb, Fragrance Queen & creator of CK One, who was there in the workshop to stimulate and engage with a bunch of straight up Chicago guys talking about deodorans & fragrances. You wouldn’t expect Daniel to know or even care what Ann had to say about fragrance (or vice versa), but something in the experience really got him excited (”wow, I never thought I would be in the room with an actual real life ‘nose’”) and got the whole workshop going! Such are the joys of co-creation, and an important lesson learnt; that creativity and creation is really & truly stimulated by the mingling & collaboration of many different people and perspectives – often completely different in background, experience & perspective.

There is no one guaranteed recipe for co-created innovation success, but how about this for starters. Take one Daniel (all American guy), add one Ann (world-renowned fragrance expert), mix together thoroughly, sprinkle in some brand magic and serve over Chicago ice. Just perfect. Who needs Mr Obama?

Next up on my travels – San Francisco, say tuned!!

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General Mills to ‘Move as Much Qualitative Research Online as Possible’

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

In a recent issue of Research World, Surinder Siama noted T.S Eliot in reference to the need for qualitative research to evolve beyond it’s tentative steps with digital – “only those who will risk going too far will find out how far one can go”. Saima’s perspective is that “broadly speaking, digital solutions will eventually beat analogue ones due to commercial imperatives. Digital solutions are faster, cheaper and more scalable” suggesting that qualitative research is yet to really urgently innovate effectively using digital.

Yet there are rumblings of realization that such innovation is necessary because of how people are interacting with digital in the modern age. The digital universe is set to expand tenfold in the next five years, suggesting that online qualitative research will become further essential to brands.

Ned Winsborough has spotted this transition on the horizon, and so it is a sign of the times that manager of consumer networks General Mills has decided on a “mandate at General Mills to move as much of our qualitative research online as possible in the coming months and years”.

Noting that General Mills have done 22 community projects since last spring Winsborough acknowledges that there is now a “scaling” process for their online communities. There is an agreement with Siama that these communities “allow you innovate with consumers better, faster and cheaper” because these participants are able to interface with these communities within the busy movements of their own lives. On-demand in some respect. Winsborough speaks of a 2-way innovation and communication that is almost a metaphor of the internet itself and it’s 2-way democratization – “We listen, we build, we listen, we tweak”. Winsborough also notes the condensing that online communities allows, in doing six months of work in six weeks, especially when “the incremental cost of extra weeks, [and] extra moderation is very low” in comparison to other qualitative methodologies.

As a result of the success of their 22 projects General Mills have made changes to their online research community approach. Firstly there is a is a Focus on Discovery, where previously the General Mills model for innovation would build and launch quickly after discovery, the new model’s focus on the discovery phase allows for a greater breadth of ideas rather than a fast mode of dispersion. Secondly the new approach involves a move towards Smaller Communities, with the older communities producing too much information too quickly to analyze effectively. Thirdly, General Mills has moved to more Project-Based Communities which last from six to eight weeks rather than “creating one ongoing community” which is perhaps not cost effective, as Winsborough states “it is rare [with ongoing communities] that we have things we need to do every week” providing the cost incentive to move to more condensed communities. Larger Incentives are also offered to participants in these condense project based communities, giving a bigger push for effective ideas in a shorter time span. Finally, these online communities are now Geographically Centered “so that we can do face-to-face research” with the participants once they have gathered some initial ideation, perhaps further enhancing the effectiveness and understanding of the participants ideas.

This final point suggests, as Ned does that “the truth [about traditional research being dead] is in the middle,” suggesting that the most effective research will take the most salient methods from online communities and face-to-face research. The movement of brands as large as General Mills towards more online qualitative research is powerful backing for the way that research is heading in general. Winsborough notes finally that these new digital technologies have “powerful potential to transform qualitative research as we know it.”

This powerful potential is being brought into fruition by our online community work at Face. See below for some of our own online community case studies:

Tango: Project Save Tango

Surf: Project Bubbles

Coca Cola: Project Plan

Google: Project Intooit

Doritos: Project Steer

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Co-Creating In The (Not So) Windy City

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

My View From The Top Of The Sears Tower

There are a few reasons why I enjoy my job; firstly I get to work with lots of different brands on a daily basis, secondly I get to be part of the co-creation process, seeing concepts evolve and finally, (of course least importantly) I get to work in some fabulous locations. My latest excursion was off to the Windy City of Chicago, which was actually very still!

I was lucky enough that my flights meant I had a day to explore the city and I had been told “the one thing you have to do is go up Sears Tower” so off I went! Sears Tower, now known as Willis Tower, was completed in 1973 and at that time it was the tallest building in the world. Now it is the fifth tallest in the world and tallest in the USA which is still pretty impressive. Before I went up the tower I knew nothing about Chicago but after experiencing the museum, film and tour I came out an expert. Also going up 108 flights of stairs and standing 442 metres in the air makes you get your bearings of a city pretty quickly. It was a great experience topped off by standing on the ledge, a glass box sticking out of the side of the building with 1 ½ inch thick glass floor!

Aside from the sightseeing I had travelled across the Atlantic for a very important co-creation. It involved 16 strapping men and it was all about deodorant, as a 5”6 women I was a little out of my depth however once people deciphered my Geordie accent it all went brilliantly!

It was a flying visit and I wish I’d had more time to fully explore the city and I hope one day I get to return!

Lucy

In The Words Of Gordon Ramsey - Chicago, Done.

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Saul Parker Joins Face as Research Director

Monday, November 9th, 2009

We are very happy to welcome our newest recruit to the Face fold, Saul Parker. Saul joins us from Flamingo, where he played a leading role in the agency’s digital and ethnographic initiatives.

Saul brings to Face a wealth of industry and academic experience, from his two Masters degrees in Anthropology from Oxford and UCL, and a rich career history in comms strategy and research, including stints as Senior Strategist at Naked Communications and in Planning at Saatchi X as well as his role as Associate Director at Flamingo.

Saul tells us, “One thing that really excites me about coming to Face is the chance to work in a research environment that starts from the point of view of revised brand-consumer relationships and the digital age, taking a contemporary and evolved perspective on communications and innovation. It allows us to innovate readily and continually push the research industry agenda forward with new tools and approaches. Face represents a huge opportunity for me to continue the trends and digital research and strategy work I have championed at Flamingo, whilst contributing to the innovation, insight and social media strategy projects that Face already excels in.”

For Face, Saul’s appointment as Research Director will give us a chance to build on the fantastic growth we have experienced in 2009 and help shape our progress for the year ahead. There are lots of exciting developments in the pipeline, and we look forward to having Saul’s involvement in these initiatives and doubtless many others!

We are very happy to welcome our newest recruit to the Face fold, Saul Parker. Saul joins us from Flamingo, where he played a lead role in the agency’s digital and ethnographic initiatives.

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Face Nominated for 3 MRS Awards

Friday, November 6th, 2009

Face have been nominated for our ground breaking on-line qualitative and co-creation research work.

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Face Forum – Do Brands Need Agencies?: 18th November 2009

Friday, November 6th, 2009

Following on from the success of our Web 2.0 Women forum earlier this year we thought it was about time we opened up another hot topic for debate. The next Face Forum will revolve around the key question ‘Do Brands Need Agencies?’ On the 18th of November we will be joined by friends, experts and clients at the Groucho club to discuss the following topics…

We hope you can join us on the 18th November, If you are interested in attending please email daniel@facegroup.co.uk for further info and details.

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Face shortlisted for Research Breakthrough Award!

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

Each year the research industry sees new developments and initiatives which have the potential to redefine the way we work.

The MRS Research Breakthrough Award is intended to single out the individual, the company, the product or the process which has led to the most significant recent breakthrough in the research industry.
(more…)

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What’s Happening? Face Youth Lab

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

It’s has been an interesting few months over at Face Youth Lab, as well as releasing our Tech Tribe findings, we have also been jumping straight into the heart of the issues that are defining youth and the world around them. Below are 5 recent blog posts and tweets that have kicked up some interesting conversation in and out of the office. To get your regular fix of youth news and views, head over to Face Youth Lab.

5 From The Blog…

1) Young People Hacking Themselves Down The Stream

There has been lots of recent conversation in the UK about internet disconnection for those who repeatedly downloading content illegally. As we’ve already noted most young people opt not to pay for content online with 77% of 19-25 year-olds never paying to watch film…

2) Youth & The Internet Are Rewriting Literacy

There has been much discussion on the effect that digital is having upon handwriting and literacy as a generation grow up using keyboards and touch-screens instead of pens and pencils. We’ve already touched on the fact that young people are choosing to read online over print by quite a margin…

3) TECH TRIBE – Zesty Attitudes To work

It is fair to say that youth in the UK aren’t exactly having the best of times when it comes to work. However this doesn’t mean they are down and out, oh no no no. Face’s recent Tech Tribe survey has revealed that even though work may not be easy to come by, young people are still up for it and their attitude towards work cannot be questioned…

4) Vice Squeezes The Cool Juice Out Of Dell

In what seems like a blatant appeal to boost its street-cred and cool factor, home computer company Dell has enlisted lifestyle magazine-come-advertising agency Vice, they of Do’s and Don’ts, to create a new news site/user-created blog/cool injection called Motherboard.tv.

5) Straight Edge Resurgence?

This article appeared in the Metro a couple of week ago, heralding the resurgence in the Straight Edge movement amongst the youth of the UK. Originally inspired by the lyrics of 1980s US punks Minor Threat, followers of the Straight Edge lifestyle abstain from drinking alcohol, smoking, taking drugs and promiscuous sex.

5 From Twitter (@faceyouthlab)

1) 42% of 11-16 year old girls dieting – 50% would consider cosmetic surgery – http://bit.ly/3bwjt4

2) RT @DowningStreet – UK Cabinet looking for #youth ideas on #climatechange, crime &careers: http://www.bebo.com/bigthink

3) RT @BBHlabs a multi-layered mashup: City Secrets – Jay-Z x Driving Simulator x Google Maps = What’s Next? http://bit.ly/2bdt9O @michaelhb

4) Google CEO – teenagers are the model of how the web will work in five years – they jump from app to app seamlessly. http://bit.ly/1VxH6N

5) http://www.kickstarter.com – crowdsourcing funding platform for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, explorers

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Bottom Up Is Not Enough: co-creation and crowd-sourcing for research, innovation and planning

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

Bottom Up Is Not Enough: co-creation and crowd-sourcing for research, innovation and planning

View more documents from Francesco D’Orazio.

Posted via web from abc3d’s posterous

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What The Web Will Look Like in 5 Years Time

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

Google CEO Eric Schmidt took time out of his busy schedule to talk about how he sees the web in looking in 5 years time. When Schmidt talks, people listen and his vision of the net is definitely something to take stock of. Check out the highlights below, you can view the entire 45 minute video here!

Via ReadWriteWeb:

The Main Highlights Included:

Five years from now the internet will be dominated by Chinese-language content.

Today’s teenagers are the model of how the web will work in five years – they jump from app to app to app seamlessly.

Five years is a factor of ten in Moore’s Law, meaning that computers will be capable of far more by that time than they are today.

Within five years there will be broadband well above 100MB in performance – and distribution distinctions between TV, radio and the web will go away.

“We’re starting to make significant money off of Youtube”, content will move towards more video.

“Real time information is just as valuable as all the other information, we want it included in our search results.”

There are many companies beyond Twitter and Facebook doing real time.

“We can index real-time info now – but how do we rank it?”

It’s because of this fundamental shift towards user-generated information that people will listen more to other people than to traditional sources. Learning how to rank that “is the great challenge of the age.” Schmidt believes Google can solve that problem.