Steve Ellis

SXSW and that's over and out - day three

Steve — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 19:17:00 GMT

Today I lucked out. Every session has been great.

I sat in on:

The Web of Things workshop explained one scenario for building the web of things using internet protocols and standards, and featured seven demos connecting and controlling 'things' of various sorts all live over the web. Surprisingly where demos are concerned, they all worked. Sparked lots of ideas, especially that the topic of sensors will become much more mainstream. The team report on their talk and share their deck at the Web of Things site.

Clay Shirky discussed the impact of abundance as a factor behind radical change because, as he explained, abundance is far harder for us to manage than scarcity. When something is scarce familiar pricing models get applied, when something becomes abundantly available everything changes. He also touched upon sharing and that there are three different notions of sharing - sharing goods, sharing services and sharing information - and how our behaviours are different around each type of sharing.

Dan Ariely spoke engagingly about the irrationality of our decision making processes using a variety of anecdotal stories and illustrative examples of experiments. He touched upon herding, reward substitution, the entrenched nature of our intuitive assumptions, and our need for developing smarter self control mechanisms.

Unfortunately, that means a premature departure from SXSW 2010. We are heading to the airport and MIX 2010 in Vegas. Good to end on a high note.

SXSW interactive (but not online?) - day two

Steve — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 12:45:00 GMT

Ok getting it a bit better now. Randomness is part the deal.

Yesterday's personal highlights were:

Robert Fabricant of Frog Design talking about his notion of Augmented Mindfulness as a tool for engineering better behaviours in healthcare. Resonated with what we understand is happening in healthcare UX (and interoperability).

The keynote from Danah Boyd of Microsoft Research on the changing interpretation of privacy and publicity was, of course, great. Thought provoking.

Surprise package was the BBC's Digital Planet session, I was expecting a worthy panel discussion but got to participate in a News Quiz for Geeks recording. It'll be edited and posted to the Digital Planet site. Hope it's still good listening, even after the added bonus swearing is edited out. Shame this session was a distance from the main conference, I'm sure it'd pull a bigger crowd without the hike.

Annoyed I missed the Data is Money session - but you can't get to everything.

Which begs the question, how much of SXSW is put online after the event? I suspect most of the audience is very used to this with tech conferences but I haven't seen any reference or links yet. Maybe I need to look a bit harder.

Soundbites from the Social Business Summit 2010

Steve — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 14:01:00 GMT

I was invited along to the Dachis Group's Social Business Summit 2010 held in Austin on the eve of SXSW. Jeff Dachis had gathered a great ensemble of speakers - including both visionaries and practitioners from consulting and corporate backgrounds - and Peter Kim did a good job as Chairman. Actually in the spirit of the event that should probably be @jeffdachis and @peterkim...

Like most things in life, the 80/20 rule also applies to conferences. You have to endure 80% of average, to get to the 20% of the wisdom that makes any conference worthwhile. SBS 2010 turned that ratio on its head. Which is why I can't hope to do the event justice by adequately summarising in detail all the insights shared by all the speakers.

Instead, here is my arbitrary collection of wisdom, they are lifted from within longer, thoughful presentations. They are just snippets but they resonated for me, and I'd hope to anyone seriously involved in the area. They aren't quite verbatim quotes, so I didn't use speech marks, but I'm pretty sure are accurate in spirit.

Here goes...

Charlene Li, Altimeter Group: Get executive skin in the game. Don't just rely on the Groundswell. Align social initiatives to the business' objectives. Choose the one objective where you can have the biggest impact.

Jaime Punishill, AskCiti: You will need to evangelize. Expect to spend 25% of your time giving the same 12 slides, over and over, and over again.

Jackie Huba, Ant's Eye View: Social initiatives aren't just campaigns, they are a corporate commitment.

Kate Niederhoffer, Dachis Group: Lack of empathy with the customer's viewpoint is the biggest problem in customer support.

Frank Eliason, Comcast: Social media will drive culture change. Don't try and change culture to enable social media. It won't happen.

Frank again: Metrics won't get you anywhere. Take the customer's story and stick it in the face of your executives.

and more Frank: Most companies have a customer culture at the bottom of the organization, and often at the top too, but generally not in the middle.

Dion Hinchcliffe, Hinchcliffe & Co: Being social exposes the true state of things inside the organization. Things that are hidden from view at present.

Sam Decker, Bazaarvoice: To get attention you have to use the language of business. Ask yourself, will the CEO understand what you are talking about?

Rick Maynard, KFC: A single global social media strategy doesn't work. It has to be local.

Lane Becker, Get Satisfaction: Companies that adapt to the network, thrive on the network.

more Lane: Advertising on the web fails because it tries to send you away from what you came to see.

and again: Iteration is another word for failure. [my personal favorite]

John Hagel, Deloitte Centre for Innovation: Knowledge is created through friction not consensus.

and John again: Organizations crave predictability and are at odds with serendipity. Serendipity creates knowledge. You need a serendipity strategy.

Christine Morrison, Intuit: It's about the customers not the platform. I wouldn't be on Twitter if my customers weren't there.

Lee Bryant, Headshift: Trust is cheaper than control.

and Lee again: Corporate IT has codified a series of backward business behaviours.

Hopefully by giving an example of the insights shared I haven't reduced the value of their whole presentations to an arbitrary soundbite, but have given a flavour of the value within. Certainly, I'm hoping Jeff invites me back. SBS2010 delivered lots of value, lots of insight in a single eight hour package.

Why the rabbit? Well, you had to be there...

Joking aside, if you weren't there - use #SBS2010 for commentary, links to attendees and some of the decks that were posted publicly. If Dachis Group share a roundup location, I'll add it later.

Tags: Social Business

SXSW so far - day one

Steve — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 13:14:00 GMT

I'm just another badged up newbie at SXSW 2010.

So, day one learnings for me were:

The keynote sessions were best value. Doug Rushkoff was excellent, thoughtprovoking, just what I was looking for. At the end of the day the pugilistic Cuban vs Ronen session was just warming up nicely when the fire alarm sent us out into the warm Austin sunlight. The power of daylight vs aircon meant I never quite got back to it.

The sessions with practical titles, that I thought might be 'good' for me to sit in on, were surprisingly 101 level and massively oversubscribed. The romance of sitting on the floor wears thin after 15 minutes.

And in the evening? Well we undertook interactive field research somewhere on 6th.

So, today's strategy is to ignore the obvious session themes and to hunt down the random grains of wisdom hiding off the beaten track - for me at least, that means taking a look inside The Greater Good, Emerging, or Love & Goodness streams.

Tags: SXSW

Because Avatars need communities too

Steve — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 08:10:00 GMT

Who let the human in the building?

In a slightly mind bending move Linden Labs, who built and run Second Life, acquired the Swedish company behind Avatars United, an online community for avatars, or more precisely, a community for the real world humans who create avatars to role play for them in various MMORPGs and virtual worlds, including Second Life.

In a quote within this post, Mark Kingdon, CEO of Second Life says:

"When we talk to the users who sign up but then decide not to stay, they say they left, in part, because they had a hard time finding people to hang out with. Either their friends weren't there, or they have a hard time meeting new ones inworld, or sometimes both."

Personally I'm not that excited by Second life (yet) but I do like a good community building strategy, especially with a developer program thrown in.

Acquiring an online community which enables the real people behind the avatars to connect and share via social networking tools and mechanisms, seems a logical way of fuelling new participants to Second Life and encouraging deeper engagement, it might even broaden the appeal to people who like their communities to have a human dimension.

Tags: Second Life, Avatars United, virtual worlds, communities,

Ever seen a microsite full of interactivity & video inside a 55k banner ad?

Steve — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:05:00 GMT

Want to see a whole microsite experience squeezed into a teeny tiny banner ad? The Mass Effect 2 launch campaign is now live at MSN UK Gaming.

What's all this about? See the previous post. World's first interactive and expandable banner ad (we reckon)

Mel Carson at Microsoft Advertising has posted on the banner here.

Correction: I'm told after opimisation the banner is only a tidy 41k

World's first interactive and expandable Silverlight banner ad (we reckon)

Steve — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:41:00 GMT

Normally I'd shy away from ever claiming a 'world's first' - someone, somewhere must surely have got there first? But in this instance we think we are on solid ground.

Working with the team at Mediacom we have been busy putting the finishing touches to a digital advertising campaign to launch Electronic Arts' next big title: Mass Effect 2. The campaign launches next week.

The brief was screaming out for the use of special effects to create a compelling in-game style of experience. Microsoft's Silverlight was perfect for the task. Deep Zoom and Smooth Streaming offered our creative team angles for creating a game experience effectively within the digital banner (that's a static image taken from the banner experience above - and another below. I'll post a link when the campaign is live next week).

Everyone including the client loved the concepts and creative solution. Just one small problem. When we came to discuss the opportunity with Microsoft Advertising, none of the usual suspect ad serving companies were capable of serving expandable and truly interactive Silverlight banners.

Undaunted we spoke with Ad Dynamo, the South African HQed ad serving marketplace. Ad Dynamo were up for it. Together we have spent a couple of months planning and building the world's first genuinely interactive Silverlight ad serving capability as a collaboration with Ad Dynamo, ourselves and the folk at Microsoft Advertising.

So when the Mass Effect 2 campaign launches on MSN next week, it'll feature the world's first ad served expandable Silverlight banner. The campaign is getting broad exposure on the MSN homepage, amongst other locations, so it'll be seen by millions of visitors.

Our Silverlight team - and the client - are all excited by the creative experience achieved. But being a restless bunch, they have already moved on to explore what other creative effects are now possible to deliver within digital advertising formats that can be enabled by Silverlight ad serving.

And, obviously, Microsoft is pleased to open up the world opportunity offered by Silverlight's capabilities to advertisers and creative teams. I suspect it is an area many creative agencies aren't currently equipped to explore. If creative agencies want to know more about the project, or need some help in using Silverlight to create rich experiences, get in touch.

Update: the Microsoft Silverlight product team have posted on this project here. Thanks chaps.

My blogging penance

Steve — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 09:14:00 GMT

The price of not blogging for three months (blame it on the end of financial year; Christmas; snow on the keyboard, whatever) is to have to sit and delete 52 pages of spam comments.

Still some of them are noble attempts at English as a foreign language.

Two favourites:

"I think the post is decorous and on point. This send indeed helped me in my assignment."

"Superbly I suppose that this enter is something which necessary more distinction of your readers."

More decorous and on point enters and sends for the distinction of readers to follow.

Tyranny of Twitter: herd instinct prevails

Steve — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:20:00 GMT

There have been various pieces of analysis put forward to debunk the view that the web increases diversity, and to put forward the contrary view that it limits choice by fostering the herd instinct.

Now, e-Marketer has a post - Twitter Power Users Solidify Dominance - suggesting that Twitter is dominated by a small number of A-list tweeters, and that this domination is self-perpetuating.

Apparently the top 0.1% of Twitterers grew their followers by 275%, the top 1% grew by 146% and the top 10% grew by 126%.

Data driven design? Analytics vs aesthetics?

Steve — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 20:17:00 GMT

Something else for marketers and especially designers to embrace - data driven design.

James Governor has a great analysis of the drivers behind Adobe's Omniture acquisition - Adobe Omniture: Data meets design. Here comes Google! if you are a marketer or a designer read it and understand how our world is changing.

US Govt announces its own AppStore

Steve — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:39:00 GMT

Looks like everyone needs a healthy developer ecosystem these days (except Skype). Yesterday, Vivek Kundra, CIO of the US Govt announced their very own AppStore for government cloud services, called Apps.gov.

Coverage here in the New York Times, and in Mr Kundra's own blog post.

Reminded me of a developer program we had specified and costed for the UK Govt. in considerable detail quite some years ago. We'd even started to feel optimistic about it proceeding, but then the government chose to invade Iraq and overnight all discretionary budget was redirected to bullets and bombs, not software.

Skype closes its developer program. What?

Steve — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:11:00 GMT

GigaOm reports Skype has closed its developer program: Skype Kills Extras and its Developer Ecosystem. Strange indeed.

We haven't needed to look closely at Skype's program but the comments with the story suggest it wasn't a happy place before this news.

We are seeing and meeting more and more technology companies, and increasingly also traditional media and retail organizations, who are getting the point about developer programs, something that tech companies have known for years. As I speak we are working on designing or running programs involving operating systems, mobile devices and enterprise apps.

Steve Ballmer said (probably at about 100 decibels) its: "developers, developers, developers". And if you don't like hearing it from Microsoft, then just ask Facebook or Apple.

As Skype exit the world of developer ecosystems, there is every likelihood they will be trampled underfoot by the crowd of companies rushing headlong into that arena.

Social networks. Virtual goods. But real cash

Steve — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:10:00 GMT

On Wednesday the New York Times had a piece on the unlikely but multi-billion dollar market for purchasing virtual goods for real cash - Asian Social Networking Sites Profit from Virtual Money.

Yesterday the Guardian's Victor Keegan had a post - Is Virtual Boom our Industrial Revolution? - on the same subject.

Clearly, if the real economy is still scraping along the bottom of the curve, it may be best to look online for virtual salvation.

Twitter continues to generate friction (still)

Steve — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:45:00 GMT

Venerable UK journalistic institution, John Humphrys caused a kerfuffle around making his first tweet today - here on the BBC web site.

UK Govt got slammed (wrongly) for reportedly appointing a Twitter Tzar - here the story put to rights by Charles Arthur.

My favourite comment about Twitter, recalled from memory, was from Stephen Fry, something along the lines of: 'its called Twitter, not Meaningful Debate'. The name and the 140 character limit, should give everyone some clues.

Elsewhere Milo at TechCrunch Europe highlights the curious leadership of the UK in Twitter use and early adoption. Why is that? There's something counter intuitive about supposedly buttoned up Brits tweeting day and night. Anyone have a theory?