Doing Words » Relationships

Bandcamp Defender and brand personality

alan jones — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 15:40:18 +0000

I may have passed Physics I and Mathematics I and gone on to complete a science degree if it weren’t for Donkey Kong, Asteroids and my favourite University coffee-shop distraction, Defender. Defender was insanely fast compared to other games of the time, and one slip of the greasy, warm joystick or buttons could send you flying into a lunar mountain, crashing into an alien spacecraft or wiping out whole crowds of innocent civilians (I wonder if it was the first example of a graphically violent video game?)

With clients I’m often talking about the importance of sprinkling a little personality into all things you offer customers. Many new brand owners are too worried about harming their brand equity and won’t add any personality. Please! Unless you really want to establish yours as a brand without any personality, best to get started experimenting early, when you have relatively few customers and less to risk.

Too much personality can be bad thing, but no personality at all is always worse.

Below is a beautiful example of a nugget of personality added to a brand experience without risking any damage to the brand. Online music publishing platform Bandcamp offers some great reports and charts that’ll show you how many people have viewed, listened to and purchased music from the artists you manage on Bandcamp. For a bit of personality in an otherwise dry series of reports and graphs, if you click the right link, you get to play Defender instead. Here’s a video I prepared earlier.

Bandcamp Defender from bigyahu on Vimeo.

You stay within the Bandcamp website while playing Defender, so there’s no risk of losing the user. And these days, there’s no longer any risk of upsetting people if you manage to slide your attacking spaceship into a crowd of tiny, 8bit outlines of people. To reward the early-adopter users who discover Defender for themselves, Bandcamp deliberately didn’t make a big deal of this in a blog post or a news release.

A little bit of personality goes a long way!

My wish for 2010: a little bit of Shhh please

alan jones — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 23:32:21 +0000

I’m back from a longer summer break than I had planned, due partly to the irresistably seductive charms of a particular beach house but also because my wife Melissa being diagnosed with breast cancer. Elsewhere in the world, as the Copenhagen climate conference showed how self-interest and greed still drive humanity on a global scale, James Cameron’s Avatar3D inspired me to renew my determination to fight it as individuals, whether or not we think we can win.

In other words, it has been a time of mixed blessings.

Thanks to everyone who’s expressed their well-wishes and support. I never realised that it’s not just about being polite — it really does help. Thanks, and I will repay those favours. We’re walking in a bubble of love created by friends and family. It’s a wonderful thing to be reminded how lucky we are to know you.

Melissa and Boy8 ham it up at New Years Eve, Byron Bay

On to other news.

Regular readers may remember Miles Campbell from our co-presentation at last year’s Interesting South conference in Sydney. Borrowing from the iconic Australian film The Castle, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Miles is an Ideas Man. His latest idea is a real corker, inspired by his frustration with organised religion vs spirituality, and by the increasingly cluttered lives we find ourselves drawn into.

Miles’ idea is beautifully simple, memorable and in my experience, useful for anyone who seeks peace, clarity and balance in their lives. It’s called ‘Shhh’ and after participating in a few pilot sessions last year, I’m looking forward to seeing Shhh go public and grow in 2010.

I had offered to help Miles with explaining Shhh, but really, he’s done such a good job on the following description, I have very little to offer. Instead, please enjoy Miles’ explanation, since it’s clear, interesting, and strikes just the right balance between proscriptive and flexible, formal and casual, serious and funny:

What is Shhh?

Shhh is born from the belief that there is meaningful experience to be discovered when a group of people share a space and are still and silent.

Many people miss out on meaningful reflective times that are created in silent ceremonies, due to the fact that they don’t share the history, beliefs, culture or practices that are part and parcel of established ritual. You can’t really participate in these times without ‘buying in’ at some level with the expressed tradition that is hosting the event.

By choosing a name which can’t be mistaken for being the expression of any particular belief system, and by banning the writing or speaking of any words during the official gathering, the ceremony is protected from any particular personality, culture, religion, belief, ego or agenda.

Anyone from any background can happily come and share the silent space with others, and be confident that they will not be expected to listen to, judge or defend anyone’s views or beliefs.

The drink and chat afterwards provides the opportunity for those who wish to enjoy the company of the friends or strangers that they have just been silent with. Some will likely discuss what the experience meant to them. This is fine, but it isn’t a part of the Shhh ceremony, it is just people talking.

Rules:

1. Be silent (that is kind of the point)
2. Be still (so you don’t distract or annoy others)
3. No kids for the time being (see 1, and 2)
4. Don’t take it too seriously, it’s just a bunch of people not talking

So, that’s Shhh — the most minimalist and individual ceremonial expression of spirituality I’ve ever seen. Interested in learning more about Shhh and how you can get involved? For the time-being Shhh invitations are limited to like-minded friends of those who attended the pilot sessions last year, because it would be better to keep learning and growing Shhh in a controlled manner for a little while longer.

So, if you’re a like-minded friend of mine, and you’d like to come along to the next Shhh, let me know — you already know how to reach me.

Me and Boy8 getting some Shhh in the Himalayas in 2007

The Errol Flynn Skill Set

alan — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:13:55 +0000

Gavin Heaton and Mark Pollard are curating A Perfect Gift For A Man — a book about manhood arising from the blogosphere’s contributions to Reach Out and Triple J’s Man Week project. There’s #manweek on Twitter too.

UPDATE: there’s now an ebook and a printed book (AUD$44.95) available through Blurb. The following contribution didn’t make the book but that’s because the stories in the book are even better. Go buy it now (and by “now” I mean as soon as you’ve read the following…

They’re calling for submissions, so here’s mine…

I’ve been in manhood training all my life, though I was never really conscious of it until my wife gave birth to our son, who remains our only child.

When my son was born, I was no longer just the son of my father. I was now a point on a line that ran from my son, through me, through my dad, and on, in a chain of fathers and sons stretching back into time. A lot of important stuff had travelled down that line to me — stuff about how to be a good son, a good man, a good father, a good friend and a good partner. Such an incredible legacy, and I’d just been dabbling in it, never really thinking about how important it had been, how it had broadened and moulded me and influenced the life I lead.

It was my weighty responsibility to pass on as much of this as I could, so my son could grow to be a good and happy man. I also felt the need to make sure these skills survived a few more generations intact.

Dads only rarely teach you these things actively and explicitly. Most of these lessons are given in a kind of passive radiative way, as a son watches his father and a father tries to be a good role model for his son. Much of the time I’d been a half-hearted student at best. I wasn’t paying attention in my teens, and there was a big chunk of my early twenties when I just couldn’t stand my father’s easy competence with so many things I found hard to master.

So I haven’t learned how to weld and cut with an oxy-acetylene torch, how to lay tiles, or repair a diesel engine. Some of those opportunities are gone forever. I’m certainly not about to try any electrical stuff again, not after the incident with the DIY guitar amplifier, when I ended up half way across the room with my hair smouldering and my arm feeling like it had been pulled out of its socket by an angry bull elephant.

I needed a strategy.

I decided the best way forward was to begin listing the important manhood skills, then continue adding-to and whittling-back my list, deciding which are essential and which are merely nice-to-haves. I also decided to name the list after that most famous of Australian men, Errol Flynn, rather than my father, who was my original inspiration, and who can do all the things on the list and more. He’s just turned 70 and could still whip me at most of them.

However the “Things My Dad Taught Me That I Need To Pass On To My Son List” doesn’t exactly roll of the tongue, whereas when I invoke the name of Errol Flynn, everybody understands this is about manhood skills.

The Errol Flynn skill set is a list-in-progress — it’s been both longer and shorter than it is now. My dad knows how to do all these things and many more, but some of them are no longer relevant for the world my son will live in when he’s a man. As he’s only seven as I write this, I haven’t taught him everything on the list yet, but we’re already making progress.

I’ve sought feedback from mates over a beer before, but this is the first public debut for the Errol Flynn Skill Set so I’m interested in your input: what am I missing? What should I leave out?

The Errol Flynn Skill Set

How to shake hands.
How to ride a bicycle and maintain it because it will be a long time before you can afford a car.
How to walk with purpose and confidence. How to run faster than you thought you could, for longer than you thought you could.
How to swim, how to dive and how to swim underwater.
How to throw, kick, catch, bowl, bat, volley and serve.
How to tie some basic knots: the granny, the reef, the figure eight, the hitch and half hitch, the bowline and the trucker’s hitch.
How to light and maintain a cooking fire and how to find and prepare firewood and kindling. How to fight a fire.
How to try your hardest, lose gracefully, and try your hardest again. How to recognise that losing can be good for you sometimes.
Basic navigation by the sun, the stars and by compass. How to ask for directions (theoretically).
How to paddle a kayak, row a dinghy, sail a dinghy, and pilot a tinny.
How to change a light bulb. How to change a fuse. How and when to light candles.
How to ride a horse, how to control a dog, how to make friends with a cat, how to talk to girls.
How to catch, kill, skin, gut and still feel OK enough to cook and eat a fish.
How to use a hammer, a saw, a screwdriver and a wrench without injuring you or anyone else.
How to tell a joke so that everybody laughs at the joke and not at you.
How to pitch a tent. How to pitch it in the dark. How to pitch it in the rain. How to know when to give up and get a motel room.
Basic car maintenance: tires, oil, water and washing the damn thing.
Basic car driving skills. How to do an emergency stop. How to reverse with a trailer on the back. How to overtake a caravan safely.
How to drink and use drugs without harming yourself, without looking like a dick, and without it being a means of rebellion because hey, guess what? grownups drink, smoke and take drugs too, so how could it possibly make you look any cooler?).
How to pour a beer, open and pour a glass of wine, mix a few essential cocktails, but more importantly, how to listen actively and make conversation without pretending you’re somebody else.
How to argue your case while respecting the opinion of others. How to admit you were wrong with grace and charm.
How to hold a woman. How to let a woman go. How to be a whole person if she doesn’t come back.
How to defuse a violent situation, and when and how to run.
How to be a mate. How to be a best mate. How to be a whole person without a best mate. How to say hello to another man whose name you’ve forgotten by addressing them as “mate”.
How to let your anger, your fear, your sorrow and your love out, constructively, at a time of your choosing and in the company of others.

Sword fighting. Not fencing. Proper sword fighting with jumping on tables, swinging from boarding grapples and diving from staircases into a mob of henchmen. Seriously. Why doesn’t anybody do that anymore?

Me and my Dad. Like Errol Flynn, without the woman trouble.