Digital Divide Simulator

clipped from mediacology.com Ever wanted to know what it’s like to drive in the Information Highway’s slow lane? The International Centre for Physics has created one so you can see how it feels to be in the losing spectrum of the digital media revolution. Try it out at ICTP Digital Divide Simulator.

The Digital Divide

From: FastCompany.com | December 2007 | By: Linda Tischler

clipped from www.fastcompany.com Why is it so hard for marketers to fully embrace the digital revolution? Old habits die hard, says Kevin Roberts, Saatchi & Saatchi's worldwide CEO. And there's foot-dragging in all quarters. Here's what to watch out for: Scaredy-cat clients. Clients -- from brand managers to CMOs -- are the most risk-averse animals the world has ever seen Cunning Old Media. The old folks -- TV, radio, print -- already have all their metrics in place. Geek-o-phobia. Agencies have done a lousy job of integrating digital people into creative departments. Finance Department Fascists. Because we have a research industry that can't measure or predict emotional involvement, we just fall back on conventional measures of ROI We need a metric that captures the many nuances of involvement a consumer has for a brand. Nothing warms the cockles of a CFO's heart like an expanding pie chart, or a trend arrow pointing at the heavens. Until we get that, we're stuck trying to quantify thing like "passion" and "love."

Innovation Conversations

As designers and facilitators of rich conversations, we serve a valuable role in innovation.

As facilitators, we can create the "safe container" for authentic (and often times emotional or caustic) conversations to occur, and for subtle, deep cultural shifts in thinking to begin.

As designers, we can give shape to the results of those conversations. We produce a thing--sometimes called a "work product" or "knowledge object" or "communication tool" or [insert corporatespeak term here].

These work products can take the form of a static model, a complex information graphic, a magazine article, a schematic diagram, a fully interactive website, a private wiki, an unedited blog post, or an airport lobby-sized installation art piece. The form is chosen for the target audience (and.. ah yes, the budget) in question.

Whatever the output, the real heart and soul of the innovation process seems to remain the conversation.

The network members of Social Media Today are playing in the emerging space of new ways to have those conversations.

clipped from www.socialmediatoday.com The McKinsey Quarterly recent edition says “Innovation has become a primary force in determining company growth, performance, and valuation. Unfortunately, a wide gap exists between executives’ aspirations to innovate and their ability to execute.” Piers Gibbon writes about “The Innovative Conversation” The title was inspired by the researchers who have shown that “rich conversations”¹ have more value in business than “dehydrated, ritualized”¹ presentations. That “Connections and Conversations … provide the fuel for innovation” ² and companies need “to create a climate … where everyone feels the responsibility and desire to contribute to the organizations innovation performance.” In economics, business and government policy,- something new - must be substantially different, not an insignificant change. In economics the change must increase value, customer value, or producer value. The term innovation may refer to both radical and incremental changes to products, processes or services.

MindMap WebApp: Bubbl.us

From LifeHack's 11 Top New Web Apps of 2007:

bubbl.us: Flash-based mindmap creator bubbl.us allows you to quickly and easily make effective, attractive mindmaps that can be exported as images or as HTML outlines, or shared with others who can add new items or draw new connections between existing ones. Sometimes clunky if your connection is slow or if the mindmaps get too large. But a fantastic Flash-enabled tool!

Cherry Blossoms: Mapping the City of Bombs

Discovered via the post "You Don't Understand Our Audience" by Dateline reporter John Hockenberry on http://www.technologyreview.com/

clipped from web.media.mit.edu Cherry Blossoms is a backpack that uses a small microcontroller and a GPS unit. Recent news of bombings in Iraq are downloaded to the unit every night, and their relative location to the center of the city are superimposed on a map of Boston. If the wearer walks in a space in Boston that correlates to a site of violence in Baghdad, the backpack detonates and releases a compressed air cloud of confetti, looking for all the world like smoke and shrapnel. Each piece of confetti is inscribed with the name of a civilian who died in the war, and the circumstances of their death. Alyssa Wright began working on Cherry Blossoms last semester, wondering how to think about — and feel about — the civilian war deaths in Baghdad. Alyssa’s genius was in sacrificing herself. After all, it’s not an easy piece to perform. You don’t know when it’s going to blow. It’s shocking and loud, and one has no sense of how others will react. Of course, she won’t get hurt by the compressed air, but she might well be confused for a suicide bomber (or, more appropriately, a mooninite) and arrested.

Alphachimp at Manpower's employment summit

Photo: Julie Fanselow

The international staffing service and employment company, Manpower, moved its headquarters from suburban Milwaukee to the Harambee-Brewers Hill neighborhood in September 2007, and it recently launched an initiative called Accelerate Employment Circles to help people in the immediate area talk about finding “A Place for Everyone in the World of Work.”

Addressing the December 17 gathering, Manpower CEO Jeff Joerres explained how – while the company is helping solve thorny staffing issues in China, India, France, and Mexico – unemployment remains high right in its own back yard. “We want to take the good things happening in this neighborhood, see if we can accelerate them, and take time and thoughtfulness to do so,” he said.

About 100 people attended the mid-December summit, and about 60 people – including a dozen or so members of the city-sanctioned Workforce Investment Board – spent three hours talking about what it would mean if everyone in the neighborhood had meaningful work. Using a guide developed by Manpower with the help of the Study Circles Resource Center (soon to be renamed Everyday Democracy), participants were asked to imagine a backpack containing the most important things people would need “to help them choose, prepare for, and obtain the right job for their talents and interests.” Items mentioned included opportunity, education, knowledge, self-awareness, trust, support, financial skills, and time-management skills. In one dialogue, participants noted the lack of a safety net of help with childcare, transportation, or simply the ability to take time off for an emergency.

As the circles worked, facilitators made written lists of ideas and observations, and graphic facilitator Jim Nuttle from Alphachimp Studio Inc. rendered the conversations into words and pictures. People spoke of barriers including racism, inadequate public transit, inflexible employers, the need for a living wage (working at or near the minimum wage is hardly worth it, some said), and the lack of gathering places where diverse people can meet and network. But they also spoke of assets including schools, the Milwaukee Area Technical College (whose president took part in a dialogue), non-profit organizations, and forward-thinking businesses.

After the dialogues ended, participants gathered to prioritize the action items proposed using keypad technology provided by Padgett Communications.

Rating the best social networks

Which social networking sites have the best balance of ease-of-use vs. available features? The British consumer magazine Computing Which? has ranked Bebo as the best social networks, ahead of rivals Facebook and MySpace. The Guardian writes:

Bebo and Facebook achieved the highest scores of 79% and 74% respectively, and were rated easier to use than MySpace and best for socialising. Bebo, which is used predominantly by the 13- to 24-year-old age group, is praised for working hard to encourage responsible networking. "Users can restrict who sees their information, and block users, and there's plenty of advice on security risks and how to avoid these," says the magazine.

Details that matter to new users include: ease of sign-up, length of process, ease of use, features, navigation, and speed of page loads. Of course, one of the major drivers is the number of friends the new user already has on the service!

Visit Bebonation >>

New Year's Contemplation

Thanks to David Christie, cheers to all.

Surprise form the Street: Art!

Few artists can walk past an empty lot, deserted building or blank wall without dreaming of the possibilities afforded by all that open space. Here is a flavor of some "artoneers" who are claiming urban blight as free range gallery space.

Article by Bill McGraw | December 18, 2007

clipped from www.freep.com CREATION OF COLOR: With an artistic storefront, the artist known as Dabl attracts customers to his store, Dabl's African Bead Gallery, at Vinewood and Grand River. He sells thousands of African beads, some more than 300 years old, he says. (ERIC SEALS/DFP) Aaron Timlin, CAID's executive director, added: "There's a pioneering attitude. There are so many things artists can do in Detroit because it is so spread out. Throw up a sculpture on a vacant lot. Performance art. Detroit is a big empty canvas." The spiritual godfather of the grassroots art scene is Tyree Guyton, whose internationally known installation around Heidelberg Street on the near East Side attracts visitors every day. Guyton's artwork deals with how abandonment affects a neighborhood -- and decay is central to the work of a number of artists. In Detroit, there are people who draw attention to abandonment by painting gutted homes orange or attaching orange traffic cones to them. There is Larry Zelenski, who produces greeting cards with lovingly enhanced photos of abandoned houses. And there is Kevin Joy, who paints cartoons, Mayan-style hieroglyphics and other wacky images on abandoned houses and in the windows of vacant downtown buildings.