By this fella, Robbie Whiting, Dir of Creative Tech & Production, Duncan/Channon.
Firstly it was about how in their culture, everyone is a maker. That is, everyone makes actual things on a regular basis, and that helps creativity, and understanding of the making process. Everyone at Duncan/Channon makes things. One is a successful writer, one makes knives, one is a keyboard player. It's not news that a creative agency should have people that makes things, but it's good to hear it repeated. Interestingly, he also said they like to employ people that have never made an ad in their lives for their fresh perspective.
Secondly he talked about making products, either for the agency itself or for clients. Again, it's not new, but something a lot of agencies are starting to do and something we talk about a lot. The main product Duncan/Channon have created is a record label, Tip records.
He said it was messy and difficult and very rewarding. I'm not sure if they make a huge amount of money from it, but that's not the point. They've learnt a lot, and they can put that knowledge to good use on other, client based projects. Most of all I would think that it helps to see the clients perspective, actually making a thing and trying to sell it must focus the mind.
Then there's approaching client work like a startup would approach making a product. It's interesting to contrast the way the digital ad industry creates small digital products in a one-off big bang kind of way, when everyone else makes digital products iteratively. Releasing something early, listening to users, modifying goals, realeasing new features, all possible with Agile, not just in the development process, but from the ground up with the client involved. It' an approach that's gaining popularity at least.
Here's some industry stuff he mentioned:
Making Chalkbot came from Deep Local's making culture.
Venebles, Bell & Partners give office space to entrepreneurs for $10 per year.
This was a panel with three neuroscientists, Daniel Wetmore, Megan Miller, Michael Scanlon and a man called Dave Asprey.
They all talked a bit about how we're about to see a lot more mental and physical enhancement. Like making ourselves more clever, or stronger etc. The main reason being that a few technologies are starting to converge to make it easier.
We've got improved sensors for things like pulse rate and EEG that enable us to get feedback on what we've done to ourselves, so we can test efficacy. We've got mobile apps that can follow us around all the time collecting data. We've got social networking that allows data from millions of people to be collated. Not to mention to actual drugs and devices that can modify us. They were all in agreement that we are all about to get a lot more control over our own brains.
It really got interesting when Dave Asprey got talking. He showed us how we went from being and awkward overweight teenager with Asbergers Syndrome to a charismatic multi-millionaire by hacking his own brain. Seriously, he matter-of-factly told us point by point how he had spent $250k on becoming his kind of ultra-cool guy. Here's his site: http://www.bulletproofexec.com/.
Most treatments seemed to be about creating consistant alpha waves, as opposed to fluctuating activity, he showed some graphs about this, I believe him. To find out if your brain hacking is working, get a full brain scan for about $2500, or you can get a kit online for a few hundred dollars. Then start hacking.
First mentioned was a game called Dual N Back. He said it's really annoying, but can raise your IQ by 12 points. The thing it does is called "Focused Creative Attention Training" apparently.
Here are some things he mentioned:
Breathing. 5 seconds in, 5 seconds out 10 minutes a day.
Use a Galvanic Skin Response meter to train yourself to relax.
90% of communication between brain and heart comes from heart. So train your heart. You need high HRV (heart rate variability), not constant heartbeat. He had a little machine you out your thumb on.
EEG feedback is the number one best way to train your brain. Can get you 12 IQ points, 50% creativity increase
Use one of these, http://www.myzeo.com/sleep/
Electrocute your brain to change it's behaviour. You might want to research this a bit first. He suggested this $99 kit.
So, if all this works, great, we can all do it, as long as we can afford it, and therein lies the rub. I've got a feeling we're about to enter a time when the rich have yet more ability to put distance between themselves and the poor. Well we'll see wont we.
Today saw the release of Flush of Fortune. A game inspired by the human centipede, giving people potentially a chance to win £1000 - the only way to achieve that target is to get more people involved. Feeling Flush? Click on the picture below.
When i first found out i was going to Austin Texas i’ll admit to being a tad ill informed about the area (I know, Essex Boy in cultural ignorance shocker). I’d heard that Texans were all right wing, gun-toting nut jobs so It was to my surprise and delight that i was proven wrong.
Austin has some of the nicest, easy going people i’ve ever met, yeah some of them smell funny and some walk down the street wearing nothing but a Stetson and a smile, but they’re liberal, open-minded, music-loving folk.
One morning we were on the bus, all frantically checking our phones for the day’s schedule using the SXSW app (lifesaver). Suddenly a dishevelled looking man screamed at us:
“I used to have a job tellin y’all where to go!... now y’all just look at your phones.” :-(
The human cost of tech i guess. We slowly slid our phones back in our pockets and listened to him, he turned out to be a lovely guy called Freddie who just wanted to talk. We figured out our schedule later and Freddie talked on everything from Rodeos to Racism. He spoke with passion and positivity. Maybe that day’s #Keynote was on the number 10 bus...
