Designed To Be Addictive
People loved watching a reality TV shows about people singing and dancing their way to fame.
Then we got Glee. People loved books and movies about vampires, werewolves, and a chick. Then we got True Blood.TV isn’t always creative, but at the same time it can still be very successful. I don’t watch any of any of these shows, but what made these shows successful after copying the general theme, was that they copied the emotion pull of what made their predecessor successful, then they cranked it emotionally. Glee isn’t a show that reflects the experience of learning to sing and dance, it’s a show that makes an emotional connection between the audience with the unexpected stars who cover almost all the high school archetypes. After that, everything is a sensory overload of sight, sound, and emotion, and sex. If you've read Brave New World, maybe you'll recognize how this is similar to the Feelies from that story, “...an entertainment form with an incredible level of sensation but with minimal substance.” - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feelie Sounds a lot like junk food. And you know what the problem with junk food is? It’s designed to be addictive. After you do get addicted, you lose your appetite for anything else.
Something Routine
After browsing through the free classic available on the Kobo ebook store, I downloaded about 30 different books that I’ve always known about, but that I’ve never made an effort to read. Now on my Kobo I have among others: Treasure Island, Crime and Punishment, War and Peace, A Tale of Two Cities, The Republic, The Metamorphosis, and The Prince.
If I get through half of those in the next year I’ll be happy.
On the creative side I bought Autodesk Sketchbook Pro both for the iPhone and the iPad, and I also downloaded the free Adobe Ideas app.
It was easy to get apps these onto my device, and it’s also easy to launch the apps to either start reading or to start drawing. With these non-wastes of time being just as easy to launch as games, social networks, or email, I’m thinking a bit about what could be the final effect? Laptops and wifi first made the mobile office possible. People changed their work behaviours, leaving the office to work in their environments of choice like in cafes, or during trips on trains and planes. But it the tools didn't make it easy to do digital art on the go, and it wasn’t as easy to access a mobile digital library, or to buy books on demand. What happens to our society as the price for these devices and applications drop, as this sort of computing becomes the norm in work and schools, and as easily accessible let reading and designing become normal, or common activities. This is the same thing that was probably asked ten years ago, but the timeline was much longer. Then, they were looking into the next decade, with the technology only being an idea. Now the tools are already in people's hands, and their effects are close coming. When the same device that's delivering people television and games is the same one used to read and to draw, what will be the effects if everyone starts to do those activities a few hours a week. Think on the same scale to how massive the change would be for people if they also exercised for 15 minutes a day. Nothing substantial, but something noticeably routine.iPad Apps For School
After seeing apps like this, I'm instantly jealous of people who are still in school.
Best to Wait on Ebooks
After thinking about some comments Steve Jobs made on ebooks, and because of the fact that iBooks hasn't really entered Canada yet, I think the best decision is probably to wait on making a lot of purchases on ebooks for at least the next 6 months, or until a few things happens.
Virtual Bookshelves Are a Pain
The Better Tech Conference Survey
I've taken my notes from the mind-map posted yesterday, and come up with a set of questions for my report on better tech conferences.
I've tried to keep the survey (and the amount of work I have to do) short, so the survey is only 25 multiple choice questions. Two areas I kept out of the questioning to keep things short were questions about conference content and theme. You can look back to my last post on the conference mind-map to see what ideas were organized within those to top level branches.
Also, the survey results are all public.
Since this is only a class on writing reports, and not a class on how to run a good survey, I'm not asking any personal or demographic information (age, income, profession).
(After you hit submit, the iFrame will turn grey, scroll back up to see the confirmation message.)
Better Tech Conference Report: The Mindmap
One of my two final courses in my undergraduate degree I'm taking this summer is a course on business report writing. It's super fun.
The main assignment for the course is a informative report on a topic of our choosing, and thanks to some other things I was involved with at the start of the course, I chose to write a report to analyze the qualities that people like and dislike in technology conferences they attend. My main method for going about this is to try and break down different topics and themes that come up in the comments, blog posts, summaries, and mind-dumps, that are written about tech conferences either in general, or right after they happen. Some of the blog posts I've been reading for example were a lot of the post-SXSW 2010 coverage, which some people brought up themes such as super crowded and hard to get into sessions, and the rise of a VIP social situation. Right now I'm coming up with a questionnaire that I'll need your help to fill. For now, I'll share with you the mind-map that I've put together which the questions will be based on.
EVE Online
I'm in class now as I write this. And a student just called this image
out as not being possible. "There can only be one y value for each x value... I don't think there
are imaginary numbers in learning curves" Thank god I'm only a month away from leaving this school... Along with
100s of other people like this who will have the same degree as me.
#Drumbeat and Project Orange
A couple years ago was a huge Linux user. I followed almost everything happening in the open source world online. That time proved well in its ability to give me the ideas I'm now sharing that we can use for Mozilla Drumbeat. This idea in particular is a bit maverick, because goes against how Drumbeat is already organized.
What Drumbeat is, to play off the imagery, is the drumming of many different people working on many different projects, all contributing to the open web. It's all modeled in this diagram that Mark Surman posted to his blog last week.
Many different practical open web ideas turn into projects, the more active projects are highlighted on the website and at local events, with the best of these projects being funded.
But what if there was only one project.
The model used in Project Orange by the Blender Foundation in 2005, was that they brought together 6 talents from the Blender user and developer communities to Amsterdam. By using only open source tools, their small team would create a movie. The first movie was titled Elephants Dream, and the second was Big Buck Bunny.
From the creative concept to final production, the small team made their movie. They then released it under creative commons, as well as providing the source files to the public. This one project got the attention of the entire Blender user and development community, and the many new features developed during the course of the movie pushing the application ahead. If the tool didn't have a function they'd need for the movie, they made it.
The beautiful thing about this whole process is the focus. When people talked about Project Orange, they were talking about Elephants Dream. The top people all invested time into the same project. For Tom, the creator of Blender, Project Orange became a day-to-day concern for him, and he gave direct input. At then end when the project was completed, the Blender team rested, then in a few months they started again on something else.
Drumbeat is taking the many model, and Project Orange was the one model.
Is there something in Project Orange that Drumbeat can learn from and adopt into it's own processes?
What are the other projects and accomplishments of the open source world that Drumbeat can learn from?
#Drumbeat The Open Web Lens
I just finished reading On Writing Well by William Zinsser which had one chapter on writing humour. Here is a quote from that chapter:
You've been jolted by humor into looking with a fresh eye at something bizarre in our daily environment that was previously taken for granted.
... The columns I wrote for Life made people laugh. But they had a serious purpose, which was to say: "Something grotesque is going on here-some erosion in the quality of life, or some threat to life itself, and yet everyone assumes it's normal." Today the outlandish becomes routine overnight. The humorist is trying to say that it's still outlandish.
That got me thinking about the Open Web. If Drumbeat wants to make the case that the web should remain open, and that there are "many who see this as a threat, and would neuter or dumb down the net." Then maybe we should use the Open Web as a lens to take a fresh look at the parts of the web that are closed, and as a lens to look at the openness of government, education, or the arts.
This may be both a great way to identify new opportunities for Drumbeat projects, and to discuss the open web in a way that relates to the audiences we're trying to reach: Artists, lawyers, teachers, designers, and filmmakers.
We are saying that the open web will affect you, and that how it evolves will be important to your field, but then we are asking people to come out and discus the open web with us, or get involved in our projects. Why not take a more proactive approach and go to where these people live.
What would happen if instead of seeing where ask a musician can contribute to an open web, we first use the open web as a lens to identify closed parts of the music industry that are affecting the musician? We would identify a real issue that is affecting people, and we would uncover an issue for us to focus our efforts to develop a project that can help the musician plus others.
This way, the open web community will be able to focus on solving a real problem, that effects a group of people, then solve that problem with a project. It's a good bet that those musicians we helped through our efforts will then be more committed to our efforts, maybe even becoming ambassadors.
It's a bit of a give before you receive situation.
I'll see you at Drumbeat Toronto on April 24th: drumbeattoronto.eventbrite.com/
#Drumbeat Will The Internet of Things be Open?
Will the "Internet of Things" be open? If so, will it take any extra work?
Is there a gap to be filled with work that we need to get started on now?
When drumbeat asks "Will the internet still be open in 50 years?" A vision of what the Internet will look like in 50 years helps. Knowing by that time more than 2 billion people will be online helps. And knowing that there will be more information than people helps. If we work backwards from this vision of the internet to today, we should be able to identify Mozilla Drumbeat projects that need to be started. That we need to start. One other point from this video that I think we should take a look at is this Data Triangle, and how the open web can enable:
- Open Data
- Open Information
- Open Knowledge
- Open Wisdom
I like this because it's a very clear way of showing growth and maturity. Why is the Open web important? Because having open data is important; turning that into open information is more important; turning that into open knowledge is even more important; turning that into open wisdom would, presumably, be the ultimate success.
This is one of a few ideas I'm thinking about in preparation for Drumbeat Toronto on April 24th.
They Don't Care About The Details
...When it comes to preparing a final exam for my 4th year IT Consulting Skills course beyond finding a case they like in a textbook (from 1998) and throwing it on the photo-copier.
The idea that 40 people have to read this photocopied, light-grey on white, garbage PDF file, is perfectly alright. To quote Steve Jobs, this "Really sucks."#Drumbeat Models for Discussion on the Open Web
Mozilla Drumbeat is about coming together to create, and volunteer on projects that support the open web. A consequence of working on open web projects is that we'll be forced to have many more discussions about the open web. Some projects will discuss open video, some projects open content and privacy, creative commons, etc..
If this is the case, then how can we make sure that the 100s or 1,000s of Drumbeat Projects are leading to discussions that are as productive in moving the web forward.
In the book Business Model Generation, Alexander Osterwalder presents the business model canvas as a visual tool to have better discussions about business models. I think we can do the same thing for the Open Web.
A model could help us identify open web applications from closed ones, it could help us cement the components of the various Drumbeat models, and it could break down successful open web business. Most importantly however is that it would provide a starting point for better open web discussions.
This is one of a few ideas I'm thinking about in preparation for Drumbeat Toronto on April 24th.
Someone's Noticed This Right?
This "More Recommended Blogs" page on Posterous has been like this for as long as I can remember.
The truth is though, this page isn't really useful and the small column of blogs on the Subscriptions page under the header "Recommended for me" have always shown me blogs by people that I know, and that I've been more prone to subscribe to.
Incredibox mix
I had too much fun with this.
http://www.incredibox.fr/
Uniqlo for iPhone
They just updated their screensaver as well to support 10.6, so I'm very happy.
