You Can Change your Life?

After the last week I know this is possible. After leaving my job (almost a year ago) to follow my passions and figuring out what that looks like. In one week my new life as an<a href=”http://marshallshore.com/”> Information Curator™</a> came to fruition. The Second Thursday of Feb, I began hosting a <a href=”http://foundphx.com”>Marshall Shore: Phoenix Retro Spectacular</a>, check out foundphx.com for more info. It was a huge success, had a blast curating and presenting to a 50 + crowd at <a href=”www.phoenixmetroretro.com”>Phoenix Metro Retro</a>. Two days later Paul and I hosted our Annual Mardi Gras that raised $135 for CASS. If that was not enough, a few days later presented<a href=”http://infopeople.org/training/webcasts/webcast_data/334/”> Off the Shelf: Looking Beyond Libraries for Inspiration</a> for Infopeople. Life is amazing and I could never have dream I would be here writing these words. Best advice just do it!

Off the shelf: looking beyond libraries for inspiration and innovation

Slides from the Infopeople webinar from 2/16/10.  The webinar can be found here:

http://infopeople.org/training/webcasts/webcast_data/334/index.html

Handout

8 Lessons From the Creativity and Technology Conference

From Fiat’s Eco:Drive to Layar, How Marketers are Focusing on Useful Products Instead of Advertisements

by Kunur Patel and Emma Hall
Published: November 20, 2009

LONDON (AdAge.com) — Some 300 attendees gathered at the Saatchi Gallery last week for Ad Age sibling Creativity’s technology conference, Creativity and Technology, were treated to musings on bleeding-edge digital communication from Europe’s top talent in advertising, technology and design. Speakers ranged from agency creatives and technologists to writers such as Adam Greenfield, author of “Everyware” and head of design direction at Nokia.

Here are a eight takeaways from the conference if you missed it.

Curation is key
In a world of too many choices, both online and off, use your expertise to give consumers a small set of options in order to manage expectations. Choice is not always healthy, said Marko Balabanovic, head of innovation at Last Minute Labs, the exploration arm of travel site LastMinute.com. For the travel category, disappointment is inevitable in a digital, searchable world with too many choices — every selection could result in a consumer asking, “Could I have made a better decision?” But, if you don’t have overwhelming choice, you can’t regret making the wrong one.

That’s why companies like Last Minute substitute endless choice with careful curation and promote “self-binding behaviors” such as filter options that trim search queries. Mr. Balabanovic pointed to companies like Red Box DVD rentals, vegetable-box delivery services and even cheese clubs — all services with a smaller, pre-determined set of selections — that help manage disappointment for consumers with limited choices. This week, Last Minute launched the Topsee augmented reality app, which trades in the search function for a very limited number of insider suggestions for what to eat, drink, see, do and buy, according to location. It even goes as far as recommending individual dishes in specific restaurants to set expectations.

Re-imagine digital as product development
James Hilton, co-founder and chief creative officer at AKQA, discussed awards darling Fiat’s Eco:Drive, the web-based tool that turned driving data into recommendations for consumers to save money and reduce their carbon footprints. The insight behind the campaign, which won best in show at One Show Interactive this year, was thinking of the “campaign” as a product. Interactive efforts need to grow beyond the microsite lifespan of a few weeks to long-lasting platforms that provide consumers value indefinitely.

“We are not in the business of advertising anymore,” said Mr. Hilton. “Brands are interested in making products, whether you call it ‘products’ or ‘platforms.’”

On a lighter note, Mr. Hilton shared a lesson in national driving habits. According to the application’s data stores, Italians are the worst drivers in the world, followed by the French, the British and the Germans. The British were the quickest to learn and improve from Eco:Drive’s recommendations, followed by Germans, the French and then Italians.

Sit close to technologists
Technologists — “the artists formerly known as IT guys,” according to moderator and Ad Age events manager Nick Parish — are essential in making interactive products like Eco:Drive, so familiarize yourself with technology and its restraints to inform your role in the idea-generating process. Also, bring tech-heads into creative conversations early to color communication ideas with what’s possible in web development. “We are now inventors,” said Matt Ross, head creative, Tribal DDB. “We bring creativity and technology together.”

Plus, for creatives, understanding technology could be a matter of survival in the near future. “If you are a creative and don’t know about technology, you’ll be out of a job soon,” said panelist Yates Buckley, technical director at digital production company Unit 9.

Making technology easy, isn’t
There are a lot of tools available to digital creatives and technologists today, so the real challenge is distilling the highly technical into an intuitive consumer experience. To make the graphs- and data-saturated Eco:Drive palatable to consumers, Mr. Hilton shared AKQA’s guiding principles for work: useful, usable, delightful.

He also coined a term for using available tools like Flash excessively just because they are available. To the consumer, the experience is what matters, not how much digital skill went into constructing brand communication. “Flashterbation, no,” he said. “Simplicity, yes.”

Look beyond short-burn ROI
AKQA’s Mr. Hilton cited his client’s long-term perspective as a key component to creating a platform with staying power. While only brands like the Toyota Prius were getting credit for environmental awareness, this campaign aimed to influence driving habits to reduce carbon emissions and align Fiat with that eco-consciousness. But to build that brand personality, it takes time.

“It’s not about banging out a quick campaign,” he said. “The most important metric for brands is return on long-term investment, rather than short term ROI.”

Learn how to design data
The influx of data collection and cataloging will only continue, which means creatives need to become adept in designing data to be digestible for consumers. Usman Haque, director of his self-titled design studio, introduced the platform Pachube, a web system designed to connect any space to any space, or any device to any device to share contextual data. While the technologies to support digital readings of the time, temperature or other atmospheric data of a physical space are not widely available today, “the internet of things” is not far off.

Similarly, Nokia’s Mr. Greenfield discussed the concept of a network city, where data — might it be bureaucratic, health or traffic — harvested from urban systems can be fed back to change things like traffic patterns or building conditions in real-time.

“We need to stop thinking of the city as bricks that don’t communicate,” he said. “In the computer revolution, every constant in the world becomes a variable; everything around us is scriptable, which makes everything deeply interactive.”

Content will soon be tagged to the real world
How will your brand overlay the real world with bits of digital content? With smartphone video cameras, GPS and internal compasses; technology that started as a cool way to interact with 3D graphics online has evolved into a way to project bits of information over video of real-life locations. Markus Tripp, business development manager for wireless developer Mobilizy, introduced the concept of a “content ecosystem,” where the real world is tagged with digital content or graphics and users can access that information with their mobile phones.

He demonstrated Wikitude 4, an upcoming application from the developer that tags user-generated content to real-life locations. Claire Boonstra, co-founder of augmented reality app Layar, demonstrated her open-source tool, which brands or publishers can leverage to create their own “layers” of content to be projected on the world.

Think outside the box
Smartphones have the potential to re-imagine the package. How would your product’s package design change if users could access additional information by snapping a photo of your barcode? Bringing the idea of “the internet of things” to consumer package goods, Mr. Haque discussed how smartphones could make it possible to trade in busy, graphics-heavy packaging for digital content retrieved by snapping a photo of a barcode with a smartphone. “All the things we’ve been trying to communicate with graphics can now be delegated to informatics,” he said.

Libraries as public 3rd places

Libraries as public 3rd places

Libraries as public 3rd places

Seth Godin and CEOs for Cities raised the issue of what do to with public libraries in the 21st century.  Over time, all books will be available on the internet, which will mean fewer people checking out the hard-cover, hard copy versions.

Seth thinks they should “train people to take intellectual initiative.”  Not a bad goal, but we have universities for that and increasingly they are reaching out to the broader community.

So what to do with all these small and large public places dotted around a city that belong to the taxpayers.  Why not make them into “third places” that are free as well as community resource points.  Currently, small business people and others wanting to network or discuss an idea need to spend money to “rent” a table at Starbucks or another wireless cafe.

What if libraries offered comfortable spaces for people to meet and chat, as well as spaces for silent reading or working –free wireless, of course, plus the ability to borrow a computer while you’re there.  Maybe for a small fee (or free), small meeting rooms could be reserved complete with technology like projectors.  Maybe local groups including meetup ones would have a free place to meet: a novel writing support group or political campaigners.

What if these existing places could also become community resource points staffed by volunteers.   Tourist and travel information in one corner, help with your resume in another, tax advice in a third place and maybe legal help at certain times in another area.

At certain hours childrens’s programing (typically available now) would continue– story time, song time, etc.

All the books libraries currently own would still be available and people would still come to read them.  Children love the magic of books with bright colours, fun pictures and pages they can “turn by self”and this won’t change when it’s possible to download the same books.

Rooms to watch classic movies and documentaries could exist for those who prefer to watch them in a group and discuss the content afterward with fellow aficionados.

What do you think? Would this work?

Topics: urban history |

Seth Godin on the future of libraries

Seth Godin on the future of the library

What should libraries do to become relevant in the digital age?

They can’t survive as community-funded repositories for books that individuals don’t want to own (or for reference books we can’t afford to own.) More librarians are telling me (unhappily) that the number one thing they deliver to their patrons is free DVD rentals. That’s not a long-term strategy, nor is it particularly an uplifting use of our tax dollars.

Here’s my proposal: train people to take intellectual initiative.

Once again, the net turns things upside down. The information is free now. No need to pool tax money to buy reference books. What we need to spend the money on are leaders, sherpas and teachers who will push everyone from kids to seniors to get very aggressive in finding and using information and in connecting with and leading others.

What role will digital content curation play in the future of PR?

What role will digital content curation play in the future of PR?.

via Communications Conversations by arikhanson on 1/5/10

Content is no longer the issue for organizations. Not in this 24/7 news cycle world. Not in an era where the average consumer takes in as many as 3,000 marketing messages per day, according to Fast Company.

No, the real issue is filtering through all the garbage to get to the nuggets. The information that will help you get smarter or be more efficient.

For years, the mainstream media (MSM) has served this role well. CNN, USA Today, CBS News, your local newspaper. They’re all responsible for filtering through the junk and relaying to you the relevant stories that impact your lives. And, from a PR perspective, they’ve been valuable conduits and tools for us to share our messages with key audiences.

Fast forward to today. Content has moved online. It’s also mobile with the advent of the smart phone. And, nearly everyone has access to the tools to create their own content. As we all know, it’s been quite the shift.

OK, cut to the chase: What does digital content curation mean for your organization?

The old rules no longer apply–well, at least not as much as they did a few years ago. MSM are still relevant gatekeepers. More than 2 million people still subscribe to the Wall Street Journal. More than 1.9 million still read the USA Today. And more than 14 million visit the NY Times Web site each month (hat tip to Rachel Kay for the info). But, the key point here is the flattening that’s happened the last few years. Organizations now have an opportunity to filter and curate digital content for their customers.

Bottom line: Your company has a chance to BE the media. Relevant to your own corner of the world, of course.

For example, you’re an accounting firm. You make your living counting other organization’s money. Consulting. And knowing your client’s business inside out. Wouldn’t you have an outstanding opportunity to be a relevant source of industry and financial stories for your clients?

Instead of just focusing on your ideas, you’d also pull in stories from industry blogs, trade publications and other relevant Web sources. You could even separate it out by industry niche. Have one “channel” on your site devoted to health care. Another to construction/real estate. Yet another to not-for-profits. You’d be the Web destination for your clients for all things tax, accounting and consulting. Eventually, wouldn’t they see you as an expert? A thought leader? An organization that’s given them so much free and insightful digital content over the months that they actually felt compelled to do business with you?

That’s the idea anyway. The challenge for organizations initially is finding the right mix. As we know, the MSM aren’t going anywhere. They’re still very relevant gatekeepers of important information–and fantastic storytelling portals for your brand. However, the mix is shifting. What’s the right balance? I think companies are still trying to figure that out.

There’s also the talent and staffing piece of the equation. Organizations will not only have to figure out how much time to devote to digital content creation and curation, they will also have to find the type of skill set and people who would flourish in a role like this. You don’t even see that job description floating around too widely yet. It’s a whole new job category just waiting to expand.

What are your thoughts? Where do you see this going in the next 2-5 years? How will organizations embrace it? What are the staffing/talent challenges ahead?

Information Curator TM

Marshall Shore, MLS  is now an Information Curator TM

Why? To pull my passion for information, gathering, and dissemination of a wide variety of information under one term: Information Curator

When: The term was developed after PodCamp AZ ’09 There was a discussion led by Francine Hardaway about the impact of realtime information. The simple utterance that I was a library received accolades/ condolence from some attendees.  Later at a cafe FH and I where talking about information and curating it and viola the term was birthed.

Why this Blog: To spark discussion and to warehousing information of interest about curating information.