Clay Shirky @ LSE

Clay Shirky at the LSE London
Originally uploaded by cubicgarden

Last night I went to see a presentation by Clay Shirky, the author of "Here Comes Everybody". Interesting stuff, but not as illuminating as I'd hoped.

He summarised his book as "Group action just got easier". (A similar statement is oft quoted on Gaping Void).


Here's a couple of thoughts that I noted from the talk:

1. Groups unite against an external threat

2. Successful groups act as platforms not as organisations

3. Groups no longer need a formal body to organise on their behalf - the workers could unite to disobey the union.

4. When your fans break your business model, you know you're in trouble (relating to fans posting content from newspapers).

5. Companies can no longer expect to break news on a busy news day to hide bad stories. Someone that cares will find it, republish it etc. etc.

6. A big question is one of legitimacy. This is linked to the fundamental flaws of democracy.

7. This is all about new tools being made available. It's not a change in human nature, it's a change in access and the ability to connect. The Invisible College in the 17th Century was a group of scientists sharing ideas for the greater good - group collaboration is not new behaviour.


One point that Clay made during the presentation was the speed with which events are now made public over the internet, exemplified by the Sechuan earthquake. Here's a few links to Clay's LSE talk being replayed on the internet, including a blog post from the chair of the evening, Charlie Beckett.

You can download audio from the presentation here.

Update: an official podcast of the event is here.

Update: Image credit to cubicgarden. Weirdly, the text placed in the post by Flickr crediting cubicgarden appears in draft format, but not when publised. Apologies cubicgarden for you not being credited initially.

Obama Mania Hits Eltham Library

Not even the children's section of Eltham library is safe from Obamania.

And with possibly the worst ever typography on the inspiring quote at the bottom.

adiZone: Marketing by Being Useful

Well done Adidas and whoever else has been responsible for the adiZones built in parks in some of the less well-off parts of London. From a tiny bit of Googling it looks like an initiative with London 2012 to create a meaningful legacy from the Olympics. I spotted this one near where I live in Charlton Park.


It's a place for young people to let off a bit of steam - robust outdoor gym equipment, a "street" style basketball court and a climbing wall.

Tremendous initiative adding value to the local communities. A genuinely useful addition. The only grumble I've got is that the launch wasn't that well promoted, so I missed seeing the All Blacks!

Mourning Morph

Isn't this just the saddest thing?


Thank you b3ta for this Tony Hart memorial.

Futurology: Richard Watson at the RSA

Check out the video here.

"When you think about the future, most people think in terms of new things that are going to be invented. Well, yes that's part of it, but it's equally about the things that are old and familiar that are going to vanish".

Lots of juicy thought-provoking stuff.

Still Not Getting It Automotive Style

After the much derided decision to turn up to Washington in private jets, it seems our American car industry friends still haven't got it. World Car Fans reports that Chrysler have used some of their money to fund an ad campaign to say thank you. Doh! Stop wasting money, even to say Thank You.

Proposition for Troubled Times

Hot on the heels of Flybe's "redundancy cancellation insurance" emails (see Herd for details), comes this from Hyundai - a no strings attached deal to hand back your car if you are made redundant.


Hat tip to World Car Fans.

Still Not Getting It

Warner is threatening YouTube again. Take down those videos of Warner artists or we'll get you! Yawn yawn yawn.

The below image is a screen grab of the wonderfully interesting Digital Bites (found via TIGS).

The quote, from a BBC interview with Chad Hurley (one of YouTube's founders) is:

"The people that they are trying to go after are their biggest fans".

Precisely.

Star Wars here we come!

"Airborne laser lets rip on first target" - here from New Scientist. Cool and scary at the same time.

Save Cranberry

Lovely Christmas campaign from CMW.

Save Cranberry the turkey from being cooked here, or don't.

Bonus link: my recent CMW blog post on Obama.

Innocent Newsletter (no planning cliches, I promise)

Think what you like about Innocent, but without question they get the need for being interesting. I subscribe to their newletter, not to learn about their new smoothies or latest kerazzeee marketing ideas, but for the links at the bottom.

Every week you get 5 or 6 links to weird and wonderful things on the internet. Here's this week's "And finally..."

And finally...

Squid with elbows.

Huge hula hoop.

Veg art.

Leaf mimic.

Whack-a-mouse

Whether to own-up or not?

A year and a half a ago, the wife and I purchased a Quinny Buzz for our first born. We were very happy with it and recommended it to a couple of friends who bought it too.

Now that our little one is a bit bigger and winter is drawing in - we noticed that the straps were getting very tight, without any visible means of lengthening them. A quick Google search found this link, and several others with the same story. There was a production error on the 2007 models meaning the straps were too short. Dorel, the UK importers of Quinny, were matter of fact when I called them and they've ordered some new parts for me. No trouble at all. (Call 01842 763 281 in the UK).

Now Dorel / Quinny must have sat around a table and decided what to do when they realised this problem. And in my opinion, they've picked less than wisely. Their options were:
1. Keep as quiet as possible, hope no-one notices and sort out those that do efficiently. (Which is what they've done)
2. Shout loudly that they've made a mistake and get all the products sorted.

Option 1 minimises the shock. The shock that sending out all those extra parts means to profit and resource. But it also alienates your tribe (visit Seth's blog for more on tribes). For those that find out, they tell the same friends as before and so the parts are still required, but you've lost some love and trust. Others will suffer in silence, ultimately not using their pushchair anymore and certainly not recommending it to friends.

Option 2 keeps your tribe of recommenders, keeps everyone happy, keeps the Buzz visible in all the smart London parks, keeps your business going in the future.

It seems to me that Quinny / Dorel forgot the Cluetrain. Forgot that their customers move a lot faster than they do, forgot that they can talk to each other (a lot).

Sun Headlines - A New Blog

Sun headlines capture the mood and consciousness of the nation. So I've started a new blog to showcase them. I'll be posting the headline of the day as well as some of the classics.

Here's the link to the blog.

New Faith In Humanity

I simply love it when the public is a bit naughty. It restores my belief in humanity - that people out there are fun loving and generally social rather than knife-wielding loonies.

Rick-rolling the MTV awards is a perfect example.

Similar to the "Jedi" as a religion meme in the British Census a few years back.

Keep on misbehaving people!

Just Testing...

...the Lifecast iPhone app.

Posted with LifeCast

Visualising Freetext Data

Faced with a mighty amount of freetext research data, I naturally wanted a short cut to understand what was there and then an interesting way of presenting it.

Then I remembered tag clouds - look down the right hand side of this blog for an example from Zoom Clouds. But my data was in Excel, not on a blog or website.

A spot of Googling and a dear colleague found Tag Crowd that makes a nice cloud from any data.

Here's a result from the question "What is the worst thing about France?"
It would have been a bit better if I'd filtered the results a little - you can do this easily in the Tag Crowd interface.

Happy Planner.

iPhone, iCal, Microsoft Outlook and the Sync Conundrum

A little bit different from my normal posts, but I've found a fix that's worth sharing.

So using iphone for multiple calendars...

[Note added later: the most effective method for this is to use MobileMe, but I'm way to cheap to pay for that. So using iphone for multiple calendars for free...]

I have a PC with the usual Microsoft stuff at work. And a Mac with iCal at home. Switching on the calendar element of the Microsoft Exchange stops exchange of data with ical and removes the iCal data. So how do I get both my calendars on my iphone?

This isn't perfect but it seems to work (NB I've not done steps 2 or 3 yet, that's a task for tonight!). The trick is to use an internet based calendar. I've gone for Google Calendar, but I've heard you can do similar things in Plaxo.

Step 1: Sync your Outlook with Google Calendar.
Nice easy instructions here.

Step 2: Take the feed from this Google Calendar and subscribe using iCal.
Instructions here. As noted above, I've not tried this yet, so fingers crossed for this (& particularly step 3!)

Step 3: Sync your iphone with your mac as normal
Fingers firmly crossed.

Not perfect especially as the Google Calendar to iCal sync is unilateral. But a good start nonetheless.

[Note added later: this all works just fine. Just a pity that iCal doesn't sync back to Google Calendar. You can buy this if you want to solve that problem]

Community and Antisocial Behaviour

The video in my previous post has got me thinking a bit on how the changing nature of community could be impacting on (antisocial) behaviour.

So here's another unsubstantiated hypothesis.

Community used to be defined by geography and the people contained within your personal catchment area. Now it's about who you're connected to via whatever means you have available. Geography is irrelevant.

As you're getting your sense of community and belonging from elsewhere, perhaps you care a bit less about your physical location and its populace. Because you're uber-connected to people and ideals that resonate strongly, you don't need the people and places whose only relevance to you is physical proximity.

Link this to a lack of emotional intelligence or mind-blindness, and you can explain quite a bit of what appears to be antisocial behaviour.

Anthropology of You Tube

Find an hour and watch this.



From the guy who bought you this piece of wonderfulness.

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Check out these handy time-saving tips

(OK, so it's part of an ad campaign, but it's still funny).