Doing Words

Interviewed on E-Marketing Insights podcast

// August 2nd, 2010 // 0 Comments // As featured in..., Content, Industry, My work, platform, Social Media

This week I was interviewed by Owen of the E-Marketing Insights Podcast. Listen in for a little background history of Doing Words, as well as my perspective on what happened in the early days internet content publishing, how the Web 1.0 bubble grew and burst, why social media has changed the content publishing industry irrevocably, the continuing democratisation of content, and which brands I believe are best-equipped to succeed in future content markets.

Surgeon-General’s Warning: I hadn’t taken my brevity medication before the interview so you may find I rattle on for quite some time.

You know what’s great about this podcast episode? It’s only episode four of a brand-new podcast. It was recorded on a portable digital recorder, in my car, and the total post-production probably took Owen only an hour, from importing, editing and through to hosting on Soundcloud.

Despite the market-dominating power of iTunes and News Corporation and Facebook, more unique new content is being published every year by the people who would have been considered “the audience” twenty years ago.

Check out Owen’s E-Marketing Insights podcast, it’s early days yet but shows great promise, and that’s the best kind of content there is.

Some thoughts on product management

// July 18th, 2010 // 0 Comments // My work, Products

Just realised I never shared this presentation I gave at product management consultancy Brainmates. It was a while ago but many of the points I made are as valid (or invalid) now as they were then, including:

• Product management is mostly about translation
• Managing product development teams is easier if you can rephrase business requirements as interesting, challenging puzzles
• Good product managers are top-level guys, but with a detailed subfloor

Hmmm… some of that may make more sense if you view the presentation below. Let me know what you think…

Last tickets: Lower North Shore Coffee Morning tomorrow

// June 8th, 2010 // 0 Comments // My work, Other news, people

What do you do when you know you should be attending a weekly industry meetup but just can’t seem to get there, week after week?

As the crow flies, the nearest industry meetup to my home is North Shore Coffee Morning (#nscm) held each Thursday morning in Mosman, on Sydney’s leafy lower north shore.

It’s a great meetup: small, interesting, diverse group of people, good coffee, and great networking. According to Google Maps it ought to take me about 14mins to drive there, but I find Google Maps is rarely right about trip durations in Sydney, and typically it takes me between 20-30mins to get there, find a park and lob on in. Since I can only afford to spend an hour at #nscm, I’m taking two hours out of my highly productive morning and spending as much time on the road as I am networking with the regulars.

What to do? Why not create my own ‘lower North Shore coffee morning’ instead? I have a spacious living area with a lovely outlook, a great Italian coffee machine, good coffee beans, and enough cups and seats for about twelve people. I enjoy playing barista. Ticketing can be done quickly and easily in the cloud for next to nothing these days (see Amiando, Eventbrite and Eventarc for starters) and I can use a cheap ticket to (a) cover the cost of coffee, milk and muffins; and (b) give people some motivation to actually attend rather than (as I do) say they’ll try to make it. Any money left-over after consumables will be donated to Oxfam via my Trailwalker Sydney 2010 team. Maybe I can have the industry networking event come straight to me.

So tomorrow, in my home, Lower North Shore Coffee Morning will have its debut. If it goes well and people enjoy themselves, it might make a monthly reappearance. Tickets for this first iteration are limited to 12 and as I write this, there are only three tickets remaining.

If you’d like to come, it’s not too late — just use the order form below.

If you come, please bring passion, enthusiasm, good humour and curiosity. Also, please bring either a book, an artwork or some music to lend/give to someone else. Use of the WiFi, fireplace, comfy chairs, garden, huggy old dog and rope swing are included in the ticket price. The Twitter hashtag is #lnscm.

Our house is 10mins walk from St Leonards station, 3mins walk from the 273 and 274 bus route stops at Naremburn shops, and all-day street parking is available in Dargan St and surrounding streets.

Hope to see you there!

- alan (@bigyahu)

Online Event Registration with amiando

Twitter101: be yourself, don’t be your brand

// May 28th, 2010 // 0 Comments // Customer relationships, My work, Social Media

alan jones (@bigyahu) 27/05/10 4:47 PM Hey, sorry for the extra step but click the link and I’ll know you aren’t a bot. Please follow this link to validate your profile. http://truetwit.com/vy30301516 Thanks

MobileMojo (@phonesandplans) 27/05/10 10:57 PM Thanks for the follow. For free unbiased comparison of over 100 phones and 300 plans from 13 carriers visit http://www.phonesandplans.com.au

alan jones (@bigyahu) 27/05/10 11:05 PM Euw. That tweet felt just like an ad. #fail. Try not to do that again, yeah?

MobileMojo (@phonesandplans) 27/05/10 11:15 PM Thanks for the tip . I’m new around here, still on the steeper side of the learning curve.

alan jones (@bigyahu) 27/05/10 11:20 PM Great, that’s better already. On Twitter, be you, not your brand. Do the right thing by your brand, but be a person. Cheers!

MobileMojo (@phonesandplans) 27/05/10 11:34 PM True. But you’ve got to admit its easier to hide behind the anonymity of a brand.

alan jones (@bigyahu) 27/05/10 11:46 PM Might seem so but no. Twitter users more forgiving of people than brands. They love beating up on brands.

alan jones (@bigyahu) 27/05/10 11:49 PM Twitter often medium for community revenge on brands and marketers. On Twitter the power rlnship btween brand and audience flips.

If you’re a geek, be proud of being a geek

// May 12th, 2010 // 0 Comments // Branding, Communication, Fun, people, Social Media, Social Media, Video

Why add polish when in today’s society, being so geeky is so credible? I love this intro video for Diaspora. Now it needs to be mashed-up into a music video for some yet-to-break indie band. Call it “OK Go Make A Social Network”.

The thought for today: when branding, be true to who you are. Customers have a seventh sense for these things.

The best camera to have is the one with apps on it

// May 10th, 2010 // 0 Comments // Mobile, My life

They say the best camera to have is the one you have with you. Never more true than this evening when the universe hit me with a stunning sunset as I crossed the shared cycle path across the Warringah Freeway at Neutral Bay. I certainly wouldn’t have thought to take my DSLR out with me to pickup tomatoes from the shops.

Very little trickery used here, just the iPhone in my pocket with the apps Darkroom (for minimising blurring in low light) and Tiltshiftgen (for a touch of blur, saturation and brightness).

Check my Flickr feed and you’ll see a significant percentage of my photography in the past year has been low-resolution because I’ve been taking more shots on my iPhone than my DSLR.

It’s certainly not the quality of the lens or the performance of the shutter and sensor that make the iPhone my camera of choice; it’s the programmable power of the apps I’ve installed, the fact that I can post photos direct to Flickr, Facebook and Twitter. Most importantly it’s the way the iPhone is always in my pocket, on the arm of my chair, in the glovebox of my car, and since it became my alarm clock, on the side of my bed.

If I were a futurist I’d predict in the next five years, the photography industry will be dominated by devices that have lenses and sensors, but also have SIM cards, 3G and WIFI radios, address books, calendars and browsers. Quality of lens and sensor will still matter, but quality of OS and apps on your ‘camera’ will increasingly matter more than the lens and sensor.

It may be tough for a phone maker to make good cameras, but it’s well-nigh impossible for a camera maker to make good phones. Unless you’re a premium professional brand like Leica or Hasselblad, better merge or seek to be acquired by a Samsung or Nokia. Yes, Nikon and Canon, I’m looking at you.

The future of photography is not about what happens in the process of capturing the image, it’s about whether there was a camera present at all, and about what happens to the image after it’s been taken.

When all the world seems made of pixels

// April 14th, 2010 // 0 Comments // My work, Video

I’ve been working on a video project for a few months. First I worked on the strategy that led to brand development, which led to the scriptwriting and direction. The product will be launched in a couple of weeks and then I can show you the video.

But first, how to explain a product that doesn’t exist, in a video? You can’t show people the product.

Well, the product is used to help people collaborate on ideas. People in groups are easy to shoot, but how do you convey the development of ideas without a big special effects budget?

The solution: a visual metaphor. We came up with groups of people building ideas out of Lego-style bricks.

Then the brainstorming got a little out of hand and we agreed we’d try and build the brand-name using the bricks and feature them in the climax of the launch video.

Oh boy. For a week I struggled with designing the brand name in letters large enough to be legible in a wide shot writ small on a YouTube-sized video, while using a brand of bricks that really didn’t stick together in shapes much bigger than 30-40 blocks. Forget good typography, this was survival-of-the-fittest-letter-shape.

In the end it took a lot of silicone adhesive to keep some of the more unstable letters (like ‘R’ and ‘S’) together. We got the shot done, but for a few days afterwards I was left seeing my surroundings re-imagined as Lego bricks. ‘If I had to build that car/building/person out of bricks, how would I do it?’ was all I could think of.

Here’s some stills from the shoot:
Can we pull this off?
Pause for further direction
Cast member on monitor
Collaborating on an idea
Shooting the CEO in a lift scene
Cast holding the letters

Here’s a much more impressive video project using pixelated shapes. I wish I’d had half the special effects budget and a tenth of the creativity of this team!

Train in the rain, can you alleviate the pain?

// April 4th, 2010 // 0 Comments // My life

Through the heavy showers of an Easter Sunday morning I set out with Nadya, Tim and Roger at 6:30am to complete a quick morning training walk down the Lane Cove river catchment from Thornleigh back home to Naremburn, a distance of about 25km.

Here’s the first half of our route (captured before my iPhone battery died) and our 10-12 mins/km pace is good, although it was largely downhill (following a river towards the sea is like that).

It was raining heavily at times and I was soaking wet but warm with the exercise and a moderately warm morning. Nothing makes wet shoes and socks fun, however. The rain meant I was unable to snag any photos, sorry.

It’s very cool to live in a big urbanised city like Sydney and still walk from the outskirts to the interior almost entirely in the bush for 20 of our 25kms.

It’s cooler still to finish a training walk right on your front door. Most endurance training events involve a lengthy train or car journey at either end, and there’s generally nothing worse than spending an hour or more, wet, muddy and tired, in a car or train waiting to get home before you can slip into a bath.

Next weekend I’m visiting friends in Melbourne but the team will be out there training again, and I’ll have to catch up during the week. Spare a thought for them, and spare a dollar or two if you can to sponsor us — we still have more than $1,000 to raise in donations before the event, in less than a month. Ruh-roh!

Here’s the online donation page.

What are you made of? It takes something special to be in the bush by 7am on a rainy Sunday.

Great tagline: “When you care enough to hit send”

// April 3rd, 2010 // 0 Comments // Branding, Fun

Someecards.com is a provider of ‘ecards’ — the things Hallmark and Facebook make a fortune out of these days. Unlike the boring twats at Hallmark and Facebook, the ecards on Someecards have a particular dry satirical tone I love. It extends to their killer tagline, which neatly summarises what Someecards does and how important their product really is — “When you care enough to hit send”.

Great stuff!

Someecards - when you care enough to hit send

Fear of the blank page

// March 31st, 2010 // 0 Comments // Fun, Writing

I suppose I suffer from fear of the blank page as often as any other writer — that is to say, often. I feel it all the time, unless I’m writing in anger or I’m drunk, neither of which happens often enough that I could count on it to earn a living as a writer.

In this animated short, George Metaxas confronts the demon of the blank sheet of paper and comes off second-best. It’s an amazing animation, constructed entirely of paper, cardboard and blu-tack, and it took over his bedroom for the four months it took him to complete it. What a creative way to avoid writing for almost half a year! Congratulations to you, George.

You can read a brief interview with George here. Otherwise, enjoy this short film. I know I will be — I have a blank sheet of paper and a deadline to avoid!

the Blank Page from George Metaxas on Vimeo.