a hundred avatars

A thin line indeed

Last week's Economist has an obituary of Sam Manekshaw, a prominent Indian general.

An interesting character, of whose career and accomplishments I don't pretend to know much or have a considered opinion.

I did like the following quote of his, however:

There is a thin line between being dismissed and becoming a field-marshal

.

That line of thinking and a great mustache will get you very far.

How the future was created and will be too

At risk of turning into a Kurt Anderson fanboy, I wanted to point out the recent segment on Bell Labs.

No new news there. But still...Our world was created at Bell Labs. (What is it about New Jersey, anyway?)

In any case, although perhaps past its prime, Bell Labs is fascinating (and well worth further investigation from those of us paid to generate ideas and create possiblities) as a case study in how to create an environment of trust and creativity.

Unlike Microsoft, these were guys who used their monopoly well to invest in pure research that transformed the world (OK, unfair, Microsoft has transformed the world, just not as elegantly as I would like) without having to worry about how it affected their quarterly P&L.

Some things I took away from the segment:

1. Open collaboration works.  Put enough smart people into a safe space where failure is encouraged and rewarded and you will be rewarded. Use this as a case study the next time someone says that creativity is a solitary act. Yes, people still say that.
2. Diversity breeds innovation. Diversity goes beyond racial/ethnic diversity (although that helps too). Mix up disciplines, get ceramicists working on semiconductor problems.  Planners don't need to call their ad the 'bad ad' anymore.  Creative really isn't just a department, although far too often it is and good ideas can only come from there. Except they don't always. So pay attention to the media guy. Invite software developers into the process at the beginning.
3. Create chance encounters.  The segment demonstrates how the value of people being invited to meetings that are on the face of them irrelevant to their core competence.  No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. (Albert Einstein, probably). Which leads to...
4. Design and architecture matter.  Space breeds or influences culture.  In the case of Bell Labs,  the lunch room became the petri dish for ideas and collaboration. Think about how the space in which you work affects behavior and inspires chance encounters.
5. Eliminate red tape. Hard to do in the era of Sarbanes-Oxley etc, but this fact makes the suits even more important than ever.  Just as good strategies clear a space in the mind, great business and client sense clear a space in the world for the miraculous.

It worked for Bell Labs...

Passport, please

Renny Gleeson mentioned to me today that he was very excited about the first inter-world transport of an avatar from one world to the other. From SecondLife to IBM's Open SIM, as it were. As he puts it, as we make it harder for people to go from country to country it gets easier to go from metaverse to metaverse.

He has a great perspective on what, on the face of it, is not an immediately relevant event for those of us living primarily in this universe, not various metaverses.

I'm particularly intrigued by the idea of setting up multi-metaverse way stations, like a Coke shop that connects World of Warcraft to SecondLife and what the implications for data transfer and visualization could be.

Check out the post here.

Jon Steel Jedi Mind Tricks

The title of this post is a total overpromise. Jon--with whom I was fortunate to work with at Berlin Cameron--should he ever see this, will be sorely disappointed in me.

But I've been meaning to point to this post from my former colleague Amelia Torode, where she lays down a few great pointers and ideas from our time working with Jon. Amelia spent a lot more time than I working with Jon on pitches and has done a bang up job keeping in touch it seems. Some highlights:

INSIGHTS: Get out face to face with your consumers, not behind a mirror.

We talk a lot in advertising and Planning about the importance of Insights, but ask people what exactly they mean by an "insight" and where exactly you find them and often you get a lot of waffle. Jon places a huge amount of importance on uncovering insights and doesn't think that a focus group in a typical research facility complete with fake mirrors etc is the way to go. ...

PITCHING: Collect "evidence" on your pitch journey

When you pitch with Jon there comes a point in the pitch process when you stop trying to find a better creative idea. .... Better to have a 70% idea that is sold brilliantly, than a 90% idea that no time has been given to the actual pitch. ...

THINKING: The best place to think is never at your desk

When you ask people the question, where do you do your best thinking - the answer is never "at my desk." ...

Oh, and Jon told me the fraternity of baldness created a distinct edge for us as planners. Really.

Spinoza's Clarity of Scope

Planners are fond of saying that the right (and clever) definition of a problem is often the first, best step towards the best (and most clever) solution.

To wit: I'm catching up on some reading and am enjoying The Courtier + The Heretic , which has been hanging out on my bookshelf waiting to be read since last year when I name checked Spinoza a few times at a few lectures I gave at NYU and FIU last fall on identifying and using consumer insights.

The book is enjoyable so far (even compared to the highly enjoyable Betraying Spinoza), and in it the author quotes a letter Spinoza wrote to Henry Oldenburg in 1665 where he laid out his his motivations to finally publish "a treatise on my views regarding scripture:"

1. The prejudices of the theologians. For I know that these are the main obstacles which prevent men from giving their minds to philosophy...
2. The opinion of me held by the common people, who constantly accuse me of atheism. I am driven to avert this accusation, too, as far as I can.
3. The freedom to philosophize and to say what we think. This I want to vindicate completely, for here it is in every way suppressed by the excessive authority and egotism of the preachers.

Prejudice,  reputation and freedom. Crystal clear...

Why is this relevant? Because a clear definition of what you want to resolve and how is the answer from the very beginning, and that's forgotten far too often.

Great creative and incisive minds perhaps have an aptitude for clear vision from the very beginning. The rest of us have to learn how to approximate that clarity. But we can learn how to set that powerful a foundation for ourselves.

Genius is too important to be left to the genius.

Excitement around 'Apple' iJam

Back around the holidays, you may have seen one of the most requested gifts out there. No,  not the Wii or the iPhone, but rather another fantastic product designed with only your pleasure in mind.  That's right, the iJam.

Although we're six months away from Xmas in either direction, apparently one iJam just made it from Spain to San Francisco, no surprise thanks to Spain's notoriously slow mail.  It was received by my friend Ezequiel Triviño, who I met through my friends and former colleagues at Sra. Rushmore, some of the best creative minds in Spain.

Ezequiel and a friend decided this iJam didn't meet their high standards and that they would return it to the Apple store in San Francisco. Hilarity ensues. Check out the video here:

Full disclosure: Ezequiel is a great creative mind, has won and forgotten about more creative awards than most see and the the founder of Wikreate, which is in its first six months as they describe it is:

Wikreate is a new model of a 360 advertising and communications agency structured as a social network of skilled professionals and partner agencies.

This founding principle is related to a lot of the thinking behind the title of this blog (a hundred avatars) and a model for the way the world has gone and continues to go: smart, well intentioned people coming together in new combinations to do things that have never been done before. New goals need new models, right?

I'm looking forward to seeing the work they do for clients with slightly larger budgets than the iJam. But if Spain wins on Thursday and Sunday for Euro 2008, I definitely want one.

Aim for 350

I came across www.350.org today, which apparently just launched.   No, it's not a sequel to 300.

As they put it:

350 is the number leading scientists say is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide--measured in "Parts Per Million" in our atmosphere. 350 PPM--it's the number humanity needs to get back to as soon as possible to avoid runaway climate change.

Their goal is to inspire and organize a movement to get that number down across the world (apparently right now it's at 387 ppm.

I'm posting about it for two reasons. One, it's clearly an important issue and I hope it gets traction.

Two, from a professional perspective I think they've done a great job simplifying (maybe even oversimplifying) a very complicated and contentious issue.  Rather than Global Climate Change (which is beyond the grasp of any one person) 350 is something I can wrap my head around.

A cause needs a specific outcome, or else it's just a lot of noise.

They're aiming for it to be a fully open source movement, which I think will be interesting.  My gut tells me that they need to create a few more tools to build greater specificity around just what people can do to help move us along to 350 ppm.  For example, should they partner with a device manufacturer like Oregon Scientific to add CO2 ppm to the weather monitor? The local news? Put up a measuring stick in Times Square so we know where we are? Add it to the New Years Eve Ball Drop across the world? Do they need a manual to get you there?

My (limited) understanding of open source is that the software being developed usually has a relatively understood functionality in mind; the open source community then crowdsources how to achieve that functionality. Here we have a goal that is clear, but not really an understanding (for me, a relative novice) about how to achieve that goal. 

Nice animation, too:

via MetaFilter

Be Useful + Accept Uncertainty

Be useful and accept uncertainty.

Good advice for life in general, but these are two of the nuggets from Neil Perkin's recently posted presentation on "how social media is changing the face of media forever."

Good stuff. I'm sure everyone's received the memo by now, but I'm still not sure everyone in the creative-production-marketing industrial complex has read it. Boy does creative thinking, process and execution have to change. Good thing some of us are on it.

via Renny and Dino, so I knew it would be good.

Sing, muse!

Wordle is my new favorite toy. A great tool. Drop in text and it creates a world cloud for you. Words with greater frequency are bigger. Even better, it gives you the tools to play with fonts, colors and layout.

A great way to see trends in large bodies of information in a simple, graphic way.

This is my word cloud of Butler's translation of the Iliad, courtesy of MIT's Internet Classics Archive.

via Infosthetics

It's Not About the Work: Five reasons process is better than pornography

The mantra in creative businesses is often "It's about the work." The reality of how creative work gets bought, made or moves beyond PowerPoint is quite different.

I'm ever more appreciative of the importance of selling not just our product, but our process, especially now that I'm working in a situation where the output is even more ephemeral and opaque ("just what do these PR people do anyway?"). It's not just what we do, it's how we do it that distinguishes us.

Which is why I was so inspired by this post from Leland Maschemeyer at Collins:: who pointed me to this post. Let's be honest, especially as planners, neither our parents nor most of our clients really know what it is that we do.  Even if they do, it's a bit difficult to put their finger on how we add value.  In the best of circumstances, it's like Justice Potter Stewart's definition of obscenity: 'I'll know it when I see it."

Most agencies are just so darn proud of their work that they just can't help talking about what they've done. Problem is, neither they nor their prospective clients are able to explain exactly how they're going to replicate that work on the new client's behalf. Copy it? Do something different? How? Why?

Process becomes a dirty word, the enemy of creativity when the opposite is true. Call it what you will then: approach, process, philosophy or filter.

No clear process means you're leaving it up to chance and going it alone. Continuous improvement requires focus, collaboration and energy. It's hard to let any of those three just meander and still expect good results.

Here are five reasons on why selling process matters:

1. Process inspires magic:  Description of what you're about to do helps people evaluate what you're going to do. If magicians didn't tell you what they were going to do, they couldn't surprise you.
2. Collaboration creates belief: This goes beyond buy-in and enters into the realm of faith. Religions make sure to put practice into the hands of the believer, not just the priest.  They learned thousands of years ago that participation in rituals breeds greater belief. In plain English: clients who feel a part of the work are more likely to buy it later.
3. Ritual elevates practice: Ritual separates the sacred from the profane. Entering into a defined process places the way things are normally done into a higher plane. Having an approach separates you from the ordinary, forces you to examine your actions and creates opportunities for the miraculous.
4. Practice makes perfect: Having an approach that fits your character reminds you how the output will be improved. You should neither get stuck into one form nor reject the classical for its own sake (yes, I just paraphrased Bruce Lee). Either way, it takes repetition and focus, not just time and energy.
5. Familiarity breeds contempt: Process gives you a defined means and space in time to live with the work product, be it PR, design or advertising. The more time you spend with it, the better it will be. To a point. Process also forces you to make decisions and be done with it.