Hoorayforeveryone!

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Tue, 06 Mar 2012 21:32:05 -0500

Meet Your Local Digital Program: Boulder Digital Works

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Recently, I’ve been kicking around the idea of going back to school. It’s a rather unfortunate, annoying urge that rears its ugly head every 5 years. And while I strongly believe that I’m better off making things than trying to find some messianic instructor, there are some great programs out there.

A while back I attended an executive workshop called ‘Making Digital Work’ facilitated by Boulder Digital Works (BDW), one of the few programs out there that is truly preparing the next crop of digital thinkers.

With presenters like Matt Howell, Alastair Green, Gareth Kay, Edward Boches, Scott Prindle and John Winsor, I have to admit I was expecting some Moses-type wisdom to hail down from the sky, clearing the mud from our eyes and leading us to some interactive promised land.

What I found was a refreshing, genuine and honest take on the status of our industry. The consensus? It’s absolutely bat-shit crazy and constantly in flux. But that’s ok, really. How we react to the chaos and change is the real question, and that reaction is entirely up to us. The reality is that, in the last three years, 50 years of advertising has literally been flipped on its head. Everyone is rushing to figure out what to do.

Not since Bill Bernbach and the Mad Men era has there been this much upheaval and change in the industry. Working in the post-digital era is an incredibly exciting time to take action, experiment and focus on what it means to provide real value to clients.

Here’s a little more about what I learned about the post-digital landscape:

Stop thinking in terms of campaigns and start thinking in terms of platforms. Creating new platforms to engage users is much more powerful and longer lasting than a campaign.
We have to be iterative, collaborative and try multiple ideas. Less than five percent of ideas actually work, and there’s no way of knowing what those are until we try them.
Fail early and often. The digital landscape (or seascape as it was referred to) actually allows for it as the monetary cost of failure can be relatively low when it comes to new media.
Digital is a type of idea, not a channel.
No matter which new media or channels come out, it will still always be about the idea. New platforms are a means of execution and only as strong as the original idea.
Stop communicating products and start making communication products. It’s not what we do that matters; it’s what people do to what we create that matters.
Focus on ideas that can be advertised, not advertising ideas.
Don’t be media agnostic, be media positive.

Embracing the certainty of inevitable uncertainty is the modus operandi. Share, make, be open and honest with others, and most importantly, with yourself.

A nice stinky old version of The Soft Machine. This will be...

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 18:26:30 -0500

A nice stinky old version of The Soft Machine. This will be read post haste. (Taken with instagram)

Make Things.

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 14:27:00 -0400

There’s a common misconception that there are those who make things and those who don’t, especially in the arts. Sometimes people who don’t draw view it as a mysterious practice that they ‘just don’t understand’. Likewise with music, people who don’t create music often see it as an activity that ‘they could never do’ when in reality, it’s just that they don’t. And if they did, and worked really hard at it as anyone who is an accomplished artist or musician does, they too would get better. That’s not to say that there aren’t talented people out there who pick things up more quickly; everyone is talented in their own ways, whether it’s the arts or anything else.

In an agency setting, the client management or production team is often viewed as ‘non-makers’. And while they shouldn’t necessarily be billing their time to hammering out comps or coding out a prototype, I would argue that anyone working in a digital environment would greatly benefit from making things. In these roles in particular, making things will help in communication, collaboration, cognitive empathy, and overall confidence. Most importantly however, making things helps you develop an approach to quick research, implementation and testing — the core principles that define all stages of interactive work. This change in thinking has long been explored by Tim Malbon and the other insightful folks at Boulder Digital Works and Made By Many.

Within the client management team, we’ve recently started discussing ways each of us can put this into practice. We each have our passions, whether they be volunteering at an animal shelter or playing in a band. So when we focus on things we are truly interested in, we tap into a powerful curiosity, that when paired with the right amount of effort, learning-as-you-go becomes much easier. These groups and organizations we are passionate about can most certainly benefit from utilizing digital solutions to achieve their objectives and goals. We do this every day for clients utilizing teams and process, but why not take a project into our own hands and formulate a quick strategy, roll up our sleeves and execute against it. As part of our development, each member of the client management team identifies two projects a year that they would initiate, develop and build out. Through this exercise, we dig more into the tools and applications our team utilizes regularly allowing us to see more intimately how the strategy works through the process, not only conceptually but tactically as well.

We talk a lot about being solutions-oriented problem-solvers, over-used, over-hyphenated and somewhat vacant terms, when you consider how difficult it is to find people with these qualities. And the only way to become good at that is to work really hard at it, just like an accomplished musician or artist does. Making things allows us to confront a number of little (and sometimes big) problems, come up with a solution, test it, and if it doesn’t work, then reframe the problem, come up with a solution and test it again. Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do”, so what better way to be problem-solvers than to make things.