Miscellany
The Virtual Choir
A truly impressive project. Eric Whitacre and his forming of a choir around hundreds and then thousands of virtual voices. Via TED.… more
Cuddles Proxy
My friend Aron is up to some mischief with his latest project: My After Sex Buddy doll. Be sure to check out the video.… more
Boundary Matrix
How to overcome the challenges inherent to cross-disciplinary collaboration: Creating a boundary matrix.
Work in the Conceptual Age
The three paragraphs on this page at gigaom offer a variety of links leading to some great posts touching on various aspects of generalism and work. As the intro lines state: “‘Big-picture thinking and inventiveness are going to be the key to professional success in a new “conceptual age.’ In a series of posts over at WebWorkerDaily, Imran Ali has been musing on the type of work that we might be doing in the future, the skills that will be required, and the type of teams we might be working in.” (Hat tip to augustdiva!)
Separate but related – work in the conceptual age – is this TED Talk by Dan Pink.… more
The Cove
The Cove. It’s a remarkably restrained film in that most of it describes the teamwork, planning, and logistics involved with covertly documenting one of the grisliest activities on earth: Japan’s slaughter of dolphins. Not much of the brutal footage is actually shown, and it’s obvious that the producers spared us the especially gory bits, but what is seen quite vividly shows the ugliest and cruelest of what humanity can unleash upon another sentient, self-aware mammal.
The Cove centres on an Oceans 11 type team of photographers, ex-military, free divers, props designers, and others assembled by Director Louie Psihoyos and OPS (Oceanic Preservation Society) and their efforts to expose the brutal round-up of dolphins each year in a tiny cove in Taiji, Japan.… more
Netflix Culture Manifesto
Apparently NetFlix has a rather enlightened approach to HR and company culture. Exhibit A: this internal 128-slide presentation.
No Respect for Marketing
An excellent Ad Age article by Al Reis on the often misunderstood key difference between marketing and advertising, and why GM doesn’t get it.
I think he’s wrong. Advertising at GM is not broken. Marketing is.
Marketing’s job is to coordinate all the various disciplines inside a corporation in order to develop the right product, the right price, the right position, the right distribution strategy and the right brand name.
Advertising’s job is to position that brand name in the minds of consumers.
Good marketing makes advertising relatively easy. Bad marketing makes advertising difficult, if not impossible.
(Thanks Dave)… more
Lookalikes
From the display tables to the “Guru Bar”, it’s hard not to page through the leaked Powerpoint describing design plans for Microsoft’s retail stores as highly imitative of Apple Stores.
Now, check out this excellent Adult Education (“a useless lecture series”) talk by Gaylord Fields called “Yeah Yeah … Uh, No: Exploring the Audiovisual Phenomenon of Beatles-Lookalike Long Playing Albums”.
… more