Patents: Based on a description of an idea.

One is music, art and film etc The other pharmaceuticals, tech, software etc

Given the confusing international legislation going on you might as well admit that one equals the other equals a law suit.

So could Kraftwerk ‘patent’ the inspiration they gave or owe JG Ballard coin?

Could band x argue that even though Band Y sound nothing like each other that the other was inspired by the idea of having, well, a band.

Somebody invented Ketchup. Now any tomato based condiment is fucked,

The world of copyright monopoly and patent monopoly are converging – rapidly.

#copatents

bad.

What isn’t often discussed is a nifty side effect of the tax.

Ever wonder how ‘Rogue traders’ can bring down banks? It’s not huge transactions going south anymore – but death by a thousand papercuts.

The modern stock market isn’t run by people – it isn’t the ‘wall street’ of the 80′s with folk running around saying ‘Buy! Sell!’, it’s largely automated. A nice system scraping teeny-weeny amounts of cash with each transaction. A fraction of a point up or down still makes money – if you do it often enough – millions of times a second. However margins on these kinds of trades is extremely low – often less than 0.005% of the total transaction!

Under the new tax it becomes economically unviable. The algorithms will need to change and the entire system will need to radically slow down to make it worth while.

Fewer more considered transactions with a level of diligence attached ironically mean more stable markets. This is a good thing.

Now apply the same thinking to SOPA

In the US ‘infringing content’ is flagged via the DMCA (digital millennium copyright act). Basically you notify a site that something is dodgy, they then have a short period of time to remove otherwise the host is liable which can cost potentially $150k per infringement. Motivation or what! This takedown process for most of the big content owners is largely automated – they no doubt use search engines to seek out apparently infringing content, index it, format it, approve it and fire it off.

This automated output is received by site x – the larger of which (google/YouTube etc) will have an automated process which indiscriminately takes the content down. This explains why there are so many false positives across the board.

However painful, the current process does actually require some human interaction as theoretically you can be fined for false claims.

Not ideal but at least it’s just taking individual bits of content down and not entire sites.

The whole raison d’être of the bill is to shift the administrative burden (of proof) from the content owner to everyone else. SOPA would remove barriers increasing the speed of transaction exponentially and of course the collateral damage associated with it.

The doomsday scenario is what happens when big content write their tool to aid their quest for a rogue-free Internet. Let’s just call it Skynet.

Skynet connects to internal content dbase
Skynet searches web
Skynet ‘identifies’ matches
Skynet emails site, ISP, Search engines, payment processors etc and flags site as ‘dedicated to infringing’
Site goes down
Repeat millions of times

Judgement day.

Maybe it’s time to slow down a bit!

Well I’ve had at attitude readjustment, I’m going to go with the flow and embrace what i just realised is the future of business models for the content world.

You see the the anti-SOPA lobby have assumed that the MPAA / RIAA (collectively known as the MAFIAA) weren’t willing to adapt and viewed folk like Anonymous as a threat. That sending letters to individuals a-la ACS-LAW wasn’t a viable strategy. Turns out we were wrong. They actually saw an opportunity. They watched, they learned and are proposing a new model even more impressive than the good old ‘Denial of Service’ attack the hackers use.

introducing…

D.o.S.H

(Denial of Safe Harbour)

This new ‘model’ is fantastic especially as you need virtually NO technical, creative or legal skills to play. It’s truly open and democratic.

Here’s how it works and how I plan to make millions! (so don’t tell anyone!)

STAGE 1 – A&R

1. Create some ‘music’. Highly recommend GarageBand autoplay instruments. Since a 4 year old can use it, it shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes to make a tune.
2. For a one time fee of $35 dollars register your opus with copyright.gov – you can do it online so no need to move off the couch/stool.
3. Go to Tunecore and get it popped on iTunes for 99c . Make sure you come up with a cool sounding name for your band and label – I’m going with ‘Cognitive Dissonance’ for the band and ‘RogueDoSHRecords’ – am thinking my first track will be ‘Legalise Extortion’ again please don’t steal it as I haven’t registered it yet.
4. Go to WordPress (if it still exists) and create your label site – to be honest you don’t have to do much more than say ‘welcome to… XX records home of YY’ and pop some copyright notices everywhere and a link to iTunes.
5. Have a cocktail – you are now in that elite group – the Content Owner!
6. Enlist some friends to help out and repeat 1-5 with them – I’m guessing 10 mates/labels would be enough for most situations – a mini Anonymous if you will.
7. At this point you *could* try and get folk to buy your tune but frankly it isn’t worth the effort instead each of you upload the others tracks to YouTube and/or create some torrents.
8. So far I reckon they should have taken about a day of ‘real’ time, some hangover recovery time plus however long it takes to get the copyright approved.

STAGE 2 – Exercise your Rights

1. All you have to do is find a bunch of blogs ( any site on any subject will do these days that allow comments) and get your mates to pop some links to your track on YouTube or to the torrent.
2. Send the site owner an email accusing them of being ‘Dedicated to infringement’ – and that you will NOT report them to their ISP, payment partner etc if they hand over I dunno – $1000 bucks sounds fair.
3. Now at this point you would expect the site owner to take it down, if they do just pop it up again ( or even better pop one of your mates tracks up to confuse them. )
4. After you’ve done this a few times you announce that you have got a some class-action from a bunch of legacy sounding labels including ‘Phonographic Memories’, ‘The Long Tail Players’, ’8 Track Marks ‘, ‘Tape me up, Tape me down’, ‘Cassette My Ass’ and of course the hip-hop label ‘MP3some’.
5. Give them one last chance to pay up (it’s going to cost them $5k now btw)
6. If they DO pay up – wait a couple of days /weeks and repeat with some new labels until they just give up and shut down
7. If they DON’T pay up shop them to their ISP and Payment partner who are so inundated with these claims that they’ll have no choice but to close the infringing scum down, just in case it’s legit. Don’t worry about needing legalese I’m sure you will be able to find a form letter online to help you out – no lawyers required!
8. Repeat on as many sites as you feel like, the smaller the better of course. I’m thinking of going for gardening blogs myself – the poor dears won’t know what hit them.

I imagine a motivated team of ten could manage a few dozen each a day while sitting in the pub. Even with a 10% conversion rate you’ll make a load of cash, secure in the knowledge that those who didn’t play ball won’t be able to make any money for themselves! Win Win!

You can of course do this with anything that can be copyrighted so feel free to make some films of you and your mates celebrating in the pub (Dogma movies are due for a resurgence anyway) and copyright them – go for it! You’ve even got the soundtracks ready made so you can pop a compilation out. Even Better! You are now ‘Multimedia Copyright Owner’ – diversification is everything in this day and age.

And there you have it – as far as I can tell under SOPA its totally legal – we as Copyright Owners and we are entitled to get paid without having to sell even ONE bit of content, attract ONE fan or play ONE gig. Superb. We truly have entered The Golden Age of Copyright.

If anybody says ‘Conspiracy to defraud’ just say ‘The left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing’ or better yet ‘the tea-boy is going to lose his job UNLESS we do it’.

Go on – try this at home!

D.o.S.H.

the business model for the post-modern creative!

And that’s why I’ve learned to stop worrying and love SOPA, it’s going to make things so much better.

Martin Bishop: Consequence: People start to withdraw their money.

Cosmo: Result: Pretty soon it is financially shaky.

Martin Bishop: Conclusion: You can make banks fail.

Cosmo: Bzzt. I’ve already done that. Maybe you’ve heard about a few? Think bigger.

Martin Bishop: Stock market?

Cosmo: Yes.

Martin Bishop: Currency market?

Cosmo: Yes.

Martin Bishop: Commodities market?

Cosmo: Yes.

Martin Bishop: Small countries? —

IMDb Quotes: Sneakers (1992)

I suspect lots of folk will be complaining that the site is broken – wouldn’t surprise me in the least – given how long we’ve had this current iteration has been more or less built in a few weeks and it probably shows. Having said that the content is right, the movies look great and it does what it says on the tin! (touch wood).

In case anyone was wondering PR cared we should have the embeddable sorted tomorrow ( wishful thinking perhaps)

I look back at the hundreds or pages of keynote presentations that I’ve done since project inception and it all amounts to a few pages of text, a few minutes of video and hopefully a signature and a share.

What you don’t see is all the effort to get every word and every frame and all the people it took who gave their time for free – not for any self serving purpose but because they believe in the cause and believe in the campaign

Before the proverbial hits the fan I just want to thank everyone who has committed time to this who aren’t necessarily credited but key – you know who you are!

Words fail – thanks

J

Of course nothing is finished yet but it’s good to have deadlines

Hard to believe but it’s actually going to happen, who would have thought chucking out one film would be so difficult.

Not sure when on the 27th the site etc will be public but will obviously be shouting about it.

We are getting closer and closer but in the last week a debate has manifest about the overall branding of the campaign i.e name.

‘Unwatchable’ which Marc Hawker came up with at the start has been the campaign name for almost a year the name which has been heavily utilised in Marie Claire near enough globally and basically the accounts, URL and all the social prep are branded such.

Unwatchable may accurately describe the film and what’s going on in the Congo but does it work as a campaign title? That is the question. Are we wedded to this now? Well to be honest if something better came along that worked on the web, google, facebook and twitter then I reckon we’d embrace it. That’s the thing about ideas, you’ve got to be able to chuck em away when they aren’t working.

There is currently an idea floating around the group that the name of the campaign needs to be more declarative and the proposal is simply ‘Make It Stop!’.

As an internal bit of communication I actually don’t mind it… you’ve watched or are watching something horrific – what do you want to do – well you obviously want to ‘Make it Stop!’ however am concerned about it’s salience and an overall external bit of comms.

The objective facts as I can see em.

In the Unwatchable corner:

1. The name has been around for more than six months
2. When you type the word ‘Unwatchable’ into google you find us on the first page
3. We ‘own’ @unwatchable and even today #unwatchable is often about us
4. If you type ‘unwatchable’ into facebook we are top of the list

In the Make It Stop corner
1. Domains are available (well they might not be after I post this)
2. It’s a generic term that isn’t owned – so with google you never know if you campaign around it it might get traction
3. @makeitstop is gone and #makeitstop is an existing twitterism so no joy there
4. There are at least a dozen groups simply called ‘make it stop’ on facebook already so therefore you would have to qualify the statement with words like ‘Rape’ & ‘Congo’ which means you might as well say ‘Make Rape in the Congo Stop’ which currently takes you to a whole bunch of NGO’s anyway.
5. the NSPCC have the line about child abuse Make it Stop, Full stop which surprisingly doesn’t actually rank that highly in google – largely because Childline is the ‘brand’

Neither mentions the actual subject matter and actually we all quite like the line ‘Is your phone rape free?’ . FYI – We can’t actually say ‘make your phone rape free’ because the whole point of the campaign is about the lack of transparency from the electronics manufacturers in their supply chain so they could sue us ironically.

Disclosure: Obviously I think a campaign name change at this point is foolish simply because of the global press we’ve had already but need some support from the cognoscente out there to support the case to not change it.

So here is the question. Yes to Unwatchable? Yes to Make it Stop? Yes to something completely different as its all up for grabs it would seem. I have a meeting on thursday to discuss so could *really* use some help / comments between now and then and please be blunt.

Assuming we get through this this week you may well end up seeing a campaign this side of 2012.

Also feel free to fire over any additional questions about the campaign if I haven’t already covered them here or elsewhere on the blog!

j

(If you have no idea what I’m on about read through the other Unwatchable posts to get the gist of it btw.)

Yep – it’s almost there – not just the film, but the accompanying campaign.

Definitely the most intense bit of work I’ve ever been involved with – ‘highlights’ include

How do you deal with Advanced NGOitis? (don’t ask)

Is it ok to put an amazing woman from the Congo who was the inspiration for the film front and centre and risk her being raped or worse again?

What do you ask the public to do knowing that ultimately there is no ‘silver bullet’ which sorts the situation?

How do you reduce the experience down to the essential without making it – well – fluffy?

We are sooo close to getting it right, and unlike many of the commercial projects I’ve worked on prior – this is *entirely* about getting it right. Even if it has meant taking a bit longer to get there.

I am under no illusion that our campaign is going to sort out all of the problems in the Congo – it’s a big place with problems going back hundreds of years.

However I am feeling much more confident that it will motivate many to help iteratively sort bits of it, at least the bits that we are complicit in anyway.

Only last week I got to see the film, now graded with a proper mix of David Arnold’s soundtrack. Made me cry – again.

@Foolscap and I spent two days last reducing the interactions and clutter to the absolute minimum whilst still maintaining the necessity for a soft shoulder and from initial feedback we seem to have done a good job. More on that in the next week or so.

As for a release date – our most recent aim was end of march – given a few things going on – for the good – I’m guessing mid april.

Anyway – that’s the update more soon.

She’d been pretty unwell both in body and mind for a few years so I’m not in pieces (yet) – it was inevitable and I think in many ways a release.

I am glad she got to meet Jake about 18 months ago, which even if she didn’t know exactly who I was anymore or who this little person was who was running around her place switching things on and off there were a few smiles and the I like to think the odd moment of clarity.

She would have been 90 this year and I was looking forward to introducing her to Juliette, not for her benefit, or Juliette’, neither would remember or even be conscious of the event.

But I would have.

She meant more to me then she could know.

She was journalist for over 50 years, one of the first accomplished women in the field actually. She made amazing spaghetti and meatballs. She watched too much sports IMHO. She complained about the general state of the world. She had some of the most awful bath robes to ever to grace this planet. She had friends, family and colleagues who loved her more than life itself.

She also had an amazing capacity to be ‘difficult’ – apparently.

The only argument I can remember was about whether or not Grand Theft Auto 3 was appropriate viewing for my then 13 year old cousin Kyle. I said ‘well he’ll play it anyway and all this scare mongering is right wing bullshit’ and she said ‘but I don’t have to pay for it’.

She won.

We just got on, I think it was because neither of us asked any more of each other than to just be ourselves – we just agreed or disagreed and that was that. No point scoring, no need to be right, just enjoying the discussion.

If my father and grandfather became the commercial influences on my life then my mother and grandmother provided the moral and ethical backbone.

I miss her, and have for a very long time but I am glad she went quietly in her sleep and doesn’t have to suffer anymore the confusion and fear that accompanies advanced dementia.

Wherever the remnants of her existence are now – I hope they are sitting at a kitchen table, listening to the New York Mets on an ancient analog radio, reading a newspaper eating a bagel and locks and grumbling a lot.

Created a facebook group and invited a bunch of folk only to be bang in the middle of a spamfest – which actually the group creator can’t control. Reminded me of the old days of mailing lists actually and whilst I may have been somewhat amused – many weren’t and for that I’m sorry.

Anyway – needs must so tomorrow will sort out a dull ‘i must put things where they are supposed to go’ facebook ‘page’ instead of the group.

I will of course i’ll keep the group open for us fanatical types to help invoke the new world wotsit

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_171107852933252&ap=1

j

When I started the crowd-sourcing exploration almost a year ago one of the options was ‘Make a film’. When chatting to Marc Hawker (dir: Unwatchable) he said ‘so what film do you want to make?’

Given my state of mind I said ‘It has to take place in an office, it has to be a comedy and have a serious bodycount’. Nothing like a bit of cathartic violence to soothe a troubled mind.

Anyway I immediately enlisted my long time collaborator Stuart Barr who took the notion *way* out there. We started trying to make a full treatment for a feature film but realised, with the advice of Joe Pavlo who I roped in to direct,  that we’d be still working on it in 2015 if we tried to overstretch, instead decided to make a short which essentially introduces the world and *could* be the first 10 or so minutes of the film.

We’ve gone through a number of script revisions and still have a couple more to do but we are getting close.

Joe noticed just before Christmas that PepsiMax were running a film making competition with a 30k prize so he quickly ran out, made a little skate film and entered it – judging by the quality of the other entries we reckon we’ve got a shot but the closing date for voting is Sunday.

So what we need people to do (grovel grovel) is vote:

http://bit.ly/gGyL0J

Five star of course! If we win the competition we’ll have Downsizer made by the spring and I promise you won’t be disappointed by the results!

For who have read the various bits and bobs in Marie Claire – the campaign is due to launch at the beginning of February 2011.

In the meantime I thought I’d share a little bit about the campaign and how it relates to the current 10:10 debacle.

The campaign centres around a film, god forbid viral in nature. Anybody who knows me knows I’m as cynical as they come about the whole viral mumble, but in this case I read the script and knew immediately it would spread – whether for the right reasons remains to be seen.

It’s actually an incredibly simple idea: “What if what was happening there was happening here – wouldn’t we do something about it?”

As such it’s a straight transposition of a terrifying number of true stories. In brief, an armed group turn up, rape and murder a family in the Cotswalds.

So now you don’t have to watch it.

It’s an incredibly strong film. It illustrates the humiliation, dehumanisation and desecration that is a part of daily life – if you live in the eastern provinces on the Congo.

Given that I myself have had some misgivings about the film I sent out a rough cut to some close friends and family to ask their opinion on whether the ‘line’ which we are dancing with had been crossed.

One of the ‘best’ was from the girlfriend of a mate, and hope she doesn’t mind me sharing this:

I have watched this as someone who knows little about the making of films, but i am a consumer, a rights lawyer, someone who lobbies for these very same issues and a woman. My first reaction was to be physically sick (and i was)- my second was to say ‘the world needs to see this’.

Public denial is a deeply rooted problem in the educated West – we turn the channel over when adverts show the homeless, the hungry, the dying, the tortured, the victims of political and economic unethical practice – people tune into Comic Relief for the funny stuff and make tea when the images of starving children take over the screen… unless you force it, ram it, into peoples lives there will never be the reaction necessary to provoke the awareness that true change needs… It is no longer acceptable to be sugar-coated by a mainstream approach to these issues – when we dress it up in rock concerts and wrist bands… it means nothing to the general population unless they actually see and feel and have a visceral experience … and in 6 long painful uncomfortable minutes Unwatchable achieves this.

The danger is that it is indeed such a controversial way of illustrating the problem that people will relate it merely to their own lives, and fear for their own wives and daughters instead of contextualize it into the ‘show and tell’ it actually is. If this happens the danger may be that the subject will be eclipsed by peoples own private fears and this be talked about and shared for the wrong reasons. it would indeed by tragic if the film was known for sensational value rather than the issues it seeks to expose… but my personal view, and from my experience of lobbying for change through ‘conventional’ methods (which seldom works in the face of media spin and red tape) is that nothing short of horrific, unthinkable, fear and pity inducing images can achieve this. Whether this film is shared with the world or not, the horror in the Congo continues – 200 times a day no less – why the hell shouldn’t we force people to sit uncomfortably for a while – on balance the change and awareness it will provoke will outweigh the shock value of those who are merely morbidly curious about such images.

be brave – someone has to be.

All the feedback has been incredibly useful, even from those who hated it. There was a common theme that if you are going to drag somebody into such a horrible place you need to have all the supporting information there – right there – when they watch it.

Tell me more they said, after they stopped crying or shouting.

I might sound flippant but given I can’t watch the film, or even talk about the reality, without bursting into tears I reckon somebody somewhere will forgive me.

Then along comes the ‘No Pressure’ campaign from 10:10, embedded here.

The campaign genuinely couldn’t have gone more wrong.

They made a film which wasn’t funny, with a message that was so easy to misinterpret, they blew up children for a giggle, then pulled the campaign and apologised inspiring both sides of the argument to denounce the whole thing.  You can see some of the feedback here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/green-living-blog/2010/oct/04/10-10-activism

Anyway this whole mess has had far reaching repercussions in the Charity/NGO world. Basically nobody is will to take risks now for fear of a major backlash.

Seems to me the trick is to be responsible about what exactly you are releasing so I’ve tried to put together a bit of a plan, outlined below, to avoid the 10:10 turbulence. This was written prior to the launch of their campaign and I guess the question is: Is there any more that we can do?

How do we prevent children from seeing it?

On the Internet it’s simply impossible to stop anybody from seeing anything.

However you can be responsible and there are steps that can be taken to limit exposure.

We are tagging the content as inappropriate for minors. Essentially we are voluntarily black listing it.

It means that it won’t appear in google (or other search engines) if ‘safe search’ is on.

It won’t turn up in any environment that has a ‘net nanny’ system, eg. every school, many work places and anybody who has opted-in at home.

We are creating a player to contain the film which will have age verification at the start (same as alcohol sites, etc). While this doesn’t really stop anyone it does make it perfectly clear what we are trying to.

How do we prevent people to whom it will cause serious upset from seeing it ‘accidentally’?

We want to include BBFC certification up front to make it clear it’s intended for mature audiences.

We have worked hard on the messaging included before the film to make sure that the viewer knows they are going to watch something deeply upsetting; We called the film ‘Unwatchable’ for a reason.

There will be NO mass email mail-outs. There are many lists which have demographic information attached so in theory we could filter out kids, however, what we don’t know is anything more specific about the individuals’ lives eg. The potential for the recipient to have been a victim of sexual violence, so therefore we will rely on a social distribution.

We are also working with a major NGO in the UK to make sure there is a help-line to support those who are affected by viewing.

How do we insure that they can ‘find out more’?

The main purpose of the interactive player is to be able to keep the facts about the Congo with the film at all times.

The extended content is a detailed FAQ about the background of the conflict in the Congo, Conflict Minerals, The Making of… (or more to the point: Why we made it), and ways that people can help and get involved.

We won’t be pushing out the film on its own.

How do we prevent people ‘mashing’ it up / editing out the context?

Realistically we can’t, however we can make it harder.

By embedding the film within our own player we can make it more difficult to get a full copy of the film out.

That being said, anybody who is technically minded will be able to extract it, but hopefully it will be enough to dissuade the casual masher.

However – forewarned is forearmed so if anybody reading this wants to take the film and abuse it so we can learn before launch. Please ping me and I’ll sort you out with a copy.

How do we respond to a backlash?

We are showing as many NGOs and relevant charities as possible, as well as journalists, prior to launch to make them aware and insure they don’t fuel any kind of media hysteria.  We want to pre-empt and respond as much as possible. We know there will be a backlash – we can but minimise the damage.

On the net the only thing you can really do is be absolutely open, honest and transparent. Unlike other campaigns there is no opposition here eg. Barring the crazies, nobody is going say that RAPE IS OK, and one would hope that the more rational voices on the net will challenge or simply ignore trolls.

However people will question our methods – the need to shock, the setting – and accuse us of sensationalism. As mentioned above, we have prepared an extensive FAQ (embedded with the film) which aims to address the most obvious lines of attack. The reality is we want to shock, challenge taboos, create noise, but we’re very much aware it is our responsibility to ensure anger, disgust, horror is channelled into useful action.

We will have twitter, facebook, linkedin, etc. manned to answer and discuss the issues and the film.

So have I missed anything? The campaign isn’t launching now till the new year so we have plenty of time to ‘get it right’. And we want to.

I’d really appreciate any and all suggestions of how we can behave as responsibly as possible with this.

Thorts?

My first ever gig was going to see them at the Glasgow SECC the day before my Maths Higher. It was my first experience of the tinnitus and might explain why I only got a B.

Around 1987 whilst working for my grandfather in Manhattan I tried to get an interview with them for our high school magazine ‘Auchmuty Speaks’. This was of course back in those pre-internet days when you had to look at the back of a record and use the phone book. About 10 calls later to about 10 different cities I I did actually manage to get through to their press agent – alas they had just finished their current tour and were on a break. The woman sensing my disappointment asked if I’d be interested in talking to Paul Weller instead – I declined.

The ringing in my ears has never gone away but I stopped actively listening to them around the time I went to university – they were getting a bit AOR for me at the time and I had moved on to Nine Inch Nails. So the irony was not lost that the opening shot of this incredible documentary is Trent Reznor gushing. In fact looking back to my first interview with Trent in 1991 I wonder if he himself could have ‘admitted’ being such a fan at that point.

Watching them today talk about their career was a genuine revelation – they really are gentle men. Considered, intelligent and all together nice guys, exactly as I always imagined. I walked away from the film with such a profound sense of validation, as I’m sure the millions of quiet ‘uncool’ fans out there will agree.

I haven’t bought a Rush album in almost 20 years, until now. Watch this film.

From Dreams with Sharp Teeth

Just saw this and it seemed appropriate

via The Collective Context

So here is your tip for the top primer on why you shouldn’t – and if you do how to make sure it’s recognised.

If anybody wants to volunteer to make a nice infographic of this they are more than welcome – I see this as a ‘living’ chart.

Why smart people do things for free when they shouldn't

I’ve been fortunate enough to have had an iPad for a month now and am so far amazed. I can’t remember the last time a bit of hardware has had a profound impact on my day-to-day life.

‘A Big iPhone’

Not. Anybody who says it’s just a big iphone/touch misses the point entirely -  it’s the other way around – the iPhone is a small and cramped iPad. You simply can’t dismiss the feel of it and the thought behind the gestural language that was seeded on the trackpads and phones but blooms on the glorious screen.

the ‘I’ Pad

One of the less reported traits of the iPad is that it redefines ‘Personal’ computing. The fact is – an unsullied iPad is literally a blank slate – pretty but dull – a soul less hunk of metal, glass and plastic. There is no way to talk about ones experiences of the iPad without living with it for a while and making it your own. The day it arrived my wife asked me “what are you going to do with it?” and to be honest I’m still not entirely sure but I’m going to share how I’m using it right now.

Video

The media side of the iPad was something I was extremely excited about – I’m geeky enough to want to a £500 portable telly and for my sins I got one. Using the wonderful Air Video I can connect to my network media drive and stream pretty much any video format with no waiting and no iTunes. It absolutely rocks. With the addition of Elgato’s Eyetv app (still not iPad native but works well enough) gives me live TV, wherever.  The elephant in the room with  video is the aspect ratio but I’d be happy if they simply let me choose how much I wanted to zoom because at the moment it’s either overly letter-boxed or cropped at least in Apples own video app. I imagine that would be fairly trivial to implement but what do I know!

News & Browsing

They really weren’t kidding when they talked about how great an experience browsing is – it’s just stunning and works. Everything just feels ‘solid’  and when browsing in portrait mode sites just look so much better than they do with ‘the landscape ‘fold’. I hadn’t actually noticed the ability to create bookmarks on the home screen on my iphone because frankly I didn’t browse very much but instead of waiting for linkedin and facebook to be updated to the ipad I’m perfectly happy just going to the sites themselves.  That said I still don’t actually surf that much, I prefer feeds and Newsrack is currently the best on the ipad and works a treat.

Kids

My two year old immediately picked it up and started playing. Not all together unexpected as he’s had a iPod Touch for about a year so it made perfect sense to him. The potential here for education is truly amazing. It’s here where you really feel the ‘personal’ bit tho’. On his touch I’ve simply removed all the other apps and left the kiddy stuff but now he has a million and one icons to navigate (and delete arbitrarily as is his want). I’m hoping that the folders in next version of the OS with help a little.

Work

From a day job perspective it was an exciting prospect. I work in planning and strategy and the key tools for me are sketching, organisation and presentation apps.  I’ve played around a fair bit with Omnigraffle which even though it’s very very much a version 1 it is fantastic for pulling together those little ‘planner charts’. This experience is extremely marred almost to the point of being useless by having to then plug in the iPad into Itunes to retrieve my sketches for further development. That’s not Omni’s fault – that’s Apple and to be fair something which I suspect will be addressed, across the board. Sooner the better. also worth noting is Sketchy -  a sweet little app for pulling together wireframes, doesn’t have anywhere near the flexibility of omnigraffle but if all you need to do is bosh out a few quickies in a meeting it does the trick.  The poster child for usability and portability is mega-todo list Things which wi-fi syncs between desktop, Ipad and Iphone absolutely seamlessly. Alas as I don’t have a U.S. iTunes account I haven’t been able to try out the iWork applications but in the mean time happy to be able to take notes, sketch and present as PDF’s pushed over from keynote on the mac.

Ipad & VNC

Thanks to iTeleport I can now remarkably easily remote control all the other machines I’ve got in my house. I used to screen share from my laptop into my media server and player respectively whenever I wanted to do anything more than changed the channel (which I do through my iphone). The ‘touch’ mode in iteleport works perfectly and the refresh rate is not so bad depending on atmospheric conditions in my home network. In fact I recently started helping out on a screenplay using Adobe Story – which of course is flash based and hence an Ipad no-no. However, I’ve been simply leaving the app open on a mac mini at home and vnc’ing to use, write and review – not quite as neat as a dedicated app but a nifty work around for now.

Jailbreaking & Ipad 3G

OK, I admit it- I did it. Didn’t have a good reason other than to check out what the ‘scene’ was up to and it’s now ridiculously easy with the ‘Spirit’ app. Yes I can now run apps in the background but have realised that Steve was largely right in that you generally don’t need it. I’m sure there will be some great apps out soon (especially looking forward to wi-fi sync working on the ipad which is imminent apparently). If you are brave it’s worth checking out Full-force – it forces native iPhone apps into iPad resolutions – didn’t work on most games I tried –  but on tardy apps it’s a workable stop gap – Ocado and the Guardian for instance.  However it’s actually the iphone/mywi setup which impresses – it simply allows me to tether my iphone to my ipad when I *really* need to get online. Which is rarely at it turns since all my mail, news and social stuff is being pushed to the iphone anyway. As such I genuinely haven’t missed having a 3g Ipad at all!

Designing for Ipad

From my experience so far I don’t actually see the necessity to design ‘specifically’ for the ipad -  but its definitely an opportunity. I can pretty much guarantee that if you make it look good on the ipad it’ll still look good on a desktop so there’s an argument that you might as well.

Orientation

It’s astonishing to see just how ‘traditionally’ well designed sites work on the ipad. If you stick to the current standards around navigation and page structure most things look great. The main consideration is that you now have multiple ‘folds’ depending on orientation. In Landscape mode is unsurprisingly near enough identical to a normal desktop or laptop – most sites are designed for 1024×768 anyway.  The gag is that you actually get back about 30 pixels due to the fact there are no menus and it’s not in an unsightly window.   It’s the addition of the portrait view which adds extra opportunities. In portrait it feels like and is almost double the viewable area. Obviously all they are doing simply scaling to the width of the screen so if you do the maths your fold will be at  (1024/768)*1024 = 1365.  Given this – If I was designing specifically for the ipad  and don’t need to scroll vertically it’s a logical place to ‘hard’ position a footer to frame a page and remove scrolling entirely and give the site itself much more of an ‘app’ feel.

Depth

Additionally there is a fantastic opportunity to design sites with ‘depth’. Since all you have to do is double tap to zoom you could cram in a huge amount of content – you simply would never do on a mouse based browser – and then simply zoom in and out to read.

Sideways

It occurred that since you are always swiping, that horizontal scrolling might be fun. I’ve had a play around with some sideways scrolling sites for a laugh and to be honest it doesn’t work terribly well. The ipad is optimised to condense and scroll vertically and whilst it’s obviously easier swiping than dragging mice around it’s slightly counter intuitive and clunky. I wouldn’t design like a shop for instance where you want to insure that folk actually see what you want them to see. There’s also the other fundamental problem of orientation if you designed something which was no doubt incredibly pretty at 1024×1365 to be viewed horizontally you’d of course be 4 ways scrolling in landscape mode (plus the ipad would probably get all confused about how to scale stuff although haven’t tried that yet)!

Navigation

One of the other considerations when designing for the ipad is navigation positioning – the tradition of the left hand nav is counter intuitive if you are holding the ipad in your left hand and using your right hand to navigate as your hand now covers the entire screen. (The lefties finally got one up on us!). It does beg the question for the future – do we need to start making the nav location entirely customisable?

Irritations

It’s heavy, it wants a camera and some of the interface elements haven’t been well enough thought through – but it’s version 1 so I forgive all of that. What I don’t forgive and what nobody seems to want to talk about is iTunes. It destroys an otherwise fantastic experience. It’s about time that Apple bit the bullet and ripped the bloody thing apart and rebuilt it from scratch. The iTunes store and anything to do with video or managing applications is just awful. I didn’t mind it so much with my iphone but then I wasn’t having to sync all the time. It’s slow, it’s buggy, it’s bloatware and it needs some major love.

The Game-Shifting Paradigm-Changer.

Being a 1.0 digital dude I miss that days we used to talk about paradigm shifts and I believe that this is one of those. Everything we knew or thought we knew about the relationship between a carbon and silicon based life forms is in flux and the iPad is the catalysing expression of a frustration with technology you didn’t know you had.

At least for me, you will probably think differently, but that’s the point.

So as of May 3rd, back out into the world

In the meantime doing a keynote at internet world next week about some of the discussion points here which should be interesting. At very least it’ll focus the mind. Will be popping up the presentation as soon as it’s written.

So on what is potentially the eve of kid 2.0 I feel, I think and I grok with fullness that which is my first born. Jake.

He’s the definition of a character. Those of you who have met him will testify. He is, in short, a dude.

He ain’t perfect tho’.  He’s overly obsessed with technology. A flickering switch, an LCD,an LED. A signal to touch, poke, twiddle. Who knows where he learned that from.

He doesn’t understand the word ‘Gentle’. In Jake terms ‘gentle’ is literally a smack in the face. A well meaning pummel, a poke in the  eye with a sharp stick. It isn’t malicious, he just doesn’t get the pain. He doesn’t understand the frustration. He’s just a 2 year old. Why would he?

I keep thinking -” ve must haf se discipline , ve must haf se order” – but why?

He’s happy – we’re happy – he gets tech – we get a smile

Am I a Bad Dad?

j

Work in progress - a way of thinking about yourself in the context of social media

Did this a while ago for a conference, never really got a round to ‘finishing’ it but thought i’d share – might be useful to somebody.

The idea was to (err) simply visual the kind of attributes that folk out there expect of a brand when the brand is playing in various area of social media.

i.e. if it takes forever for you to respond to a tweet, then you probably shouldn’t. Green is ‘go for it’, yellow is ‘well you could but think it through’, and red is ‘not for the risk averse’.

Obviously this is more for the less experience clients and isn’t supposed to be ‘scientific’ in anyway, just illustrative to get a conversation going.

Love to know what y’all think.

and no I don’t expect to win any awards for design here, it’s a spreadsheet innit

I should have a pithy one liner with outlines the problem but haven’t managed to work it out yet – perhaps some bright spark out there can summarise below

In brief and in no particular order and incomplete, questions I think which are worth addressing:

The Commoditisation of production

It is increasingly difficult to differentiate yourself in terms of production – most clients simply aren’t that discerning and so much of the world is being outsourced overseas by default. However there are many, genuine craftsfolk, pushing the boundaries in their respective medium who are marginalised due to size and lack of appreciation of the nuance of ‘good’. How can these people be harnessed?

Those who can’t do, teach

Ironically in the marketing universe it’s those who ‘teach’ who get paid the most. Basically the issue is one of translation, if you can speak marketing you are fine, if you can’t then you are screwed, regardless of talent or ideas. Is there a way to break down the  divides which jargon & status bring?

Marketing is generic

There is a basic assumption that if you understand the ‘disciplines’ of marketing that it can be applied to everything equally well. I simply don’t believe that, the more you understand the sector, the business, the audience not simply from a research POV but a point of participation, the more you are likely to come up with something ‘good’. How can you systematically engage at an extremely high level within a sector or passion area?

The power of hobbies

A hobby is something you do because you love it, because it engages you on an emotional and intellectual level, because you can do it with other people you like and respect or on your own, because you can always be better at it. Is it better to have a hobby or have a job?

Addressing ‘The Big Lie’

If you need to sell X to  Y regardless of whether they want or need it – then you aren’t a client partner. You are a salesman. That’s fine, just don’t lie about it. How do you become a genuine client partner – or perhaps – why have clients – just have partners?

Adding Value does not just mean Cash

Simply put companies, or more to the point large groups of companies only really live by one metric. The bottom line – everything is geared up for increase it. Alas that’s unlikely to change any time soon – however does that cash need to come from doing what the client says or could it come from origination of product in conjunction with the client?

Divided we stand stand

The bigger you are… and all that – for many small & decentralised has proven time and time again to be a stronger model than huge and encumbered. However, the majority of collectives collapse because they make the fundamentally incorrect assumption that everyone is in it for the group. The reality is that everyone is in it for themselves – hard as that may sound. Is there a way to forge a systems which doesn’t shun this behaviour but embraced and accommodate it?

A change is as good as a rest

Smart people know that finding other smart people is the holy grail. Unfortunately smart people have a tendency to get bored when confronted with repetitive tasks. Is there a way to let the smart people move around the eco-system to keep them around for longer?

Trust obviously needs to be earned but can it be spent?

How can I trust people I don’t know? What is the mechanism to (try) to insure that the long term gain through participation is more attractive than the short term gain of shafting somebody? Wouldn’t it be great if you had an internal economy which rewarded positive actions – random acts of kindness if you will – but that these rewards, these ‘trust points’  can be traded for goods & services or just plain cash?

Bit of a mess but going to post this now but will come back to it soon. Comments welcome.

www.obsolete.com/convulsion/

Anyway adding working with Trent to my list – donating 6 months of my time to him

Pro’s- Well he still aint done nuffink wrong yet could probably still use bright folk like me I hope.

Con’s-Limited access to New York cos of the kidlings

j

It’s full of extremely memorable rants and has been sampled to death. However there is one scene that has been running through my head over the last few weeks which seemed to parallel my current state of mind and I thought i’d share – below is an excerpt from the script written by Paddy Chayefsky (full script found here: http://sfy.ru/?script=network)

btw you can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Network-Two-Disc-Special-Faye-Dunaway/dp/B000CNESU8

If you can’t deal with reading It’s on youtube here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmm2GWYi8i0&feature=PlayList&p=16B9F17F5C8F4E77&index=0&playnext=1

The show monitor, which has been showing color patterns,

now suddenly flicks on to show HOWARD BEALE as he looks

up from the sheaf of papers on his desk and says:

HOWARD (ON MONITOR)

Good evening.  Today is Wednesday,

September the twenty-fourth, and

this is my last broadcast.  Yesterday,

I announced on this program that I

would commit public suicide, admittedly

an act of madness.  Well, I’ll tell

you what happened — I just ran out

of bullshit –

HARRY HUNTER

All right, cut him off.

The MONITOR SCREEN goes black.

MAX

(from the back wall)

Leave him on –

HOWARD’s image promptly flicks back on –

HOWARD (ON MONITOR)

(looking O.S.)

Am I still on the air?

Everybody in the control room looks to MAX –

MAX

If this is how he wants to go out,

this is how he goes out.

HOWARD (ON MONITOR)

I don’t know any other way to say

it except I just ran out of bull-

shit …

The PHONE RINGS.  HUNTER picks it up.  ANOTHER PHONE

RINGS.  HUNTER’S SECRETARY picks it up.

HUNTER

(on first phone)

Look, Mr. Schumacher’s right here,

do you want to talk to him?

(extends the phone to MAX)

HOWARD (ON MONITOR)

Bullshit is all the reasons we give

for living, and, if we can’t think

up any reasons of our own, we always

have the God bullshit –

HUNTER’S SECRETARY

(awe)

Holy Mary Mother of Christ –

MAX

(on phone)

Yeah, what is it, Tom? –

HOWARD (ON MONITOR)

We don’t know why the hell we’re

going through all this pointless

pain, humiliation and decay, so

there better be someone somewhere

who does know; that’s the God

bullshit –

MAX

(on phone)

He’s saying life is bullshit,

and it is, so what’re you

screaming about? –

He hangs up.  The PHONE promptly RINGS again.  HUNTER’S

SECRETARY picks it up.  (HUNTER is on the phone that

rang before.)

HOWARD (ON MONITOR)

If you don’t like the God bullshit,

how about the man bullshit? Man

is a noble creature who can order

his own world, who needs God?

HUNTER’S SECRETARY

(to MAX)

Mr. Amundsen for you, Mr. Schumacher.

MAX

I’m not taking calls.

HOWARD (ON MONITOR)

Well, if there’s anybody out there

who can look around this demented

slaughterhouse of a world we live

in and tell me man is a noble

creature, that man is full of

bullshit –

DIRECTOR

(staring in awe at

HOWARD on the screen)

I know he’s sober, so he’s got to

be just plain nuts –

(starts to giggle)

HARRY HUNTER

(screaming)

What’s so goddam funny?

DIRECTOR

I can’t help it, Harry, it’s funny –

HOWARD (ON MONITOR)

I don’t have any kids –

A PHONE RINGS.  HUNTER’S SECRETARY picks it up.

HARRY HUNTER

Max, this is going out live to

sixty-seven affiliates –

MAX

Leave him on.

HOWARD (ON MONITOR)

– and I was married for thirty-

three years of shrill, shrieking

fraud –

A breathless and distraught YOUNG WOMAN bursts into

the control room.

YOUNG WOMAN

Mr. Hackett’s trying to get through

to you –

MAX

Tell Mr. Hackett to go fuck himself –

47.   INT. DIANA’S OFFICE

DIANA, sitting alone in her office, watching HOWARD

BEALE on her office console –

HOWARD (ON CONSOLE)

I don’t have any bullshit left.

I just ran out of it, you see –

48.   INT. CONTROL ROOM – NETWORK NEWS SHOW

–  as FRANK HACKETT and his assistant, TOM CABELL,

wrench the door open and stride in –

HACKETT

(roaring)

Get him off!  Are you people nuts?!

The TECHNICAL DIRECTOR taps a button, and the SCREEN

mercifully goes black.

I had the honour of attending an absolutely fantastic dinner last week hosted by Robin from Adobe to get feedback on how Flash is doing and how it can be best used by UK digital agencies. Attending were a bunch of well known industry miscreants from Lightmaker, Kerb, Hi-Res, Lbi, Underwired, Us two & Iris Digital plus my unemployed self.

It was a great opportunity to think and discuss the role of Flash in 2010 and I thought I’d share!

Disclosure: 1) I use a Mac and 2) I installed click2flash some time ago and my laptop battery has thanked me for it.

There has been much discussion about Flash in recent weeks around Apple & Adobe’s relationship – I’m not terribly interested in that, to be honest it’s more about dollars and cents than providing a better user experience, so I’m not going to add to the muck slinging.

As I see it and what I find interesting is that Flash is entering a stage of it’s development that isn’t dissimilar to where Director was a decade ago.

Whilst the technology is mature and well adopted it’s not clear exactly what its purpose is anymore. Lets think about what it currently is used for:

In Browser

Banners / Overlays – Face it, folk hate overlays and their effectiveness is plummeting plus ad blocking is now common place so that’s not a future.

Flash Sites – It’s been a very very long time since a client turned round to me and requested a big bloated multimedia experience – which is where Flash excelled. In fact in the last year I’ve had more clients express a preference as say that they didn’t want flash on the site which tells you something.

Flash Navigation – Accessibility and common sense did away with that, not going to miss it.

Flash Components on Sites – yep, they are everywhere but the vast majority of them (at least the sites I look at) are simply glorified news tickers which could be quickly and easily implemented is HTML these days

Flash Video – There were no alternatives, but now there are just look at Vimeo & youtube. Realistically video playback should be have been browser native for the last few years anyway.

Games – Ah – well here we go – there isn’t anything (with the exception of Silverlight) that allows you to make (certain types of) games well in browser – definitely scope there if you are into that kind of thing. Casual & Social gaming is peaking right now and Flash is a great tool for these kinds of things.

On Mobile (in Browser)

See above. The launch of 10.1 is nice if you want that ‘rich’ mobile experience but I’m happy with the stripped down gimme-the-fact’s and get rid of the bling efficiency that’s required when wandering down the street.

On Mobile (Applications)

Definitely something in this, whether it’s “Appstore” or the newly announced multi-provider “NotAppStoreHonest” there is no getting away from the fact that having a solid and familiar development environment to develop mobile applications is extremely compelling. I’m both excited and scared to see what the mobile output from CS5 is likely to be. Unfortunately, and this has absolutely nothing to do with Flash, the problem with Apps in general is the rapid commoditisation of the whole sector and general inability to find good ones.

Desktop Applications

As with mobile apps, Air apparently (not a developer) allows reasonably quick and painless cross platform development – at least for certain types of Apps.

Console (Browser)

The implementation of flash at the moment on all three platforms is a few steps behind the current ones I’m sure that’ll be addressed at some point but if you look back at the first point, all the same things apply plus you’ve got the 10 foot view to consider, not least it’s a pain in the arse navigating a flash site (or any sites for the most part) on a console

Console (Games)

Not applicable. Eh? So you can’t just simply port your lovely little casual game to Wiiware, XBLA or PSN? Missed opportunity or what – casual gaming is all the rage right now, surely you would want to continue the experience from playing at work to playing at home?

Anyway the point I’m trying to make is that Flash has reached a cross roads, it’s been all things to all people for a good decade. I have this feeling that Adobe should be focusing on where the strengths of the platform lie and what contexts are most appropriate. Is it a browser plugin or an app development environment?

Simply put what is Flash for these days?

Hence the identity crisis: I’m sure there are a few of you out there who have an opinion, bring it

j

Consulting: Have been approached by three different organisations so far interested in getting me in for various extremely interesting short term projects – nothing signed off yet but a very good start – basically the more I can consult the longer I can take to ‘work things out’.

Film: Working on a couple of initial treatments for feature films with Stuart Barr & Marc Hawker, one genre (which seems to be turning into a sci-fi, horror, comedy), one a bit more ‘grown up’ family drama. Very early days.

‘New Business Idea’: Lots of people interested in ‘playing’, working on defining it, structures, funding, organisational stuff – more on this very soon. If anybody out there knows a ‘friendly’ intellectual property lawyer  for whom I can buy lunch in exchange for a bit of advice please let me know.

New Digital Marketing Agency: Basically from the conversations I’ve had I could start a full service digital agency tomorrow and probably have a few new clients to inaugurate it. However, this can easily be rolled up into the ‘New Business Idea’ so it’s going on the back burner for a couple of weeks. However given that I’m potentially looking at the cluster model – i.e. decentralised, lots of partners and skill sets – am interested in hearing from anybody who might want to play, especially in ‘traditional creative concepting’, search &  media.

Music: Not a lot of activity yet, but have a few meetings set up in the next few weeks – and no I am not even remotely thinking about setting up a ‘label’ but there is an awful lot of other things in that space which are fun.

Job: Had my first job interview EVER. Wasn’t even for a specific one but seemed to go well – potentially two or three things they’ve got in mind – which I hate to say were actually quite interesting.

Dot Com: Couple of ideas kicking around, been a bit slow due to wanting to folk not being around but am sure will pick up momentum over the coming weeks.

Non-Execs: Having a few meetings this week – next week, more soon.

Games: Got a couple of folk in mind to have a bit of a brainstorm with but they are being a bit elusive – will nab him next week bwhahaha

Write a book: Err too busy right now to even write the blog so … pause.

Change Location: Realistically not likely to happen in the short term so might as well just pause it. Having said that lots of interest from Edinburgh & SF

Party: Having a ‘Life After Lateral’ party Tuesday 2nd March @ The Strongrooms in Shoreditch – looking to be much fun with the Lateral family new and old, near and far – if you didn’t get an invite and want to come sign up here (need to know the broad numbers):

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?invites&eid=338182684664

I just want to thank everyone who is participating in this little experiment, your words and support continue to absolutely blow me away.

j

I just thought I’d share a few observations and thoughts on the subject but with full disclosure that I am not a Harvard MBA, nor do I write self-help books (yet ). I just tell it as I see it.

Fear

Fear  a.k.a ‘blind panic’ triggers the old fight or flight mechanisms. This can lead to change for changes sake which tend to be accompanied by profound errors in judgment. Fear is a great motivator but often its simply the mind killer.

Blind panic

The emphasis is on blind. This can manifest as the inability to see the opportunities staring you in the face or to appreciate the inherent value of the assets surrounding you. Your typical social media strategist will bend your ear on the value of listening and making sense of the noise. This is good advice, however it’s one dimensional, taking this time to look at yourself, your organization, means looking beyond your peers but to those who are achieving success in other spaces, not just the obvious ones. If you just listen you’ll just hear what you want to hear – by looking and understanding you’ll hopefully see the big picture.

Fight

If you are blind it is really kind of difficult to work out who exactly you are supposed to be fighting. Often you simply end up lashing out at whoever is closest unaware of the dude with the sniper rifle a couple of miles away.

A friend of mine once told me to “fight the fights worth fighting for”  – words which have been incredibly useful over the years.  I never knew the origins of the phrase till recently.

“The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for somebody to win an important, major fight 100 years hence, a lot of other people have got to be willing – for the sheer fun and joy of it – to go right ahead and fight, knowing you’re going to lose. You mustn’t feel like a martyr. You’ve got to enjoy it.”

I.F. Stone

Sums up the last fifteen years pretty well, certainly in interesting take on “Fail Forward Fast”.

Flight – A surprisingly common story.

We’ve spotted an iceberg! Abandon ship! Man the lifeboats, before the ship can sink.  Run away from everything you have, everything you have built, all that knowledge and expertise is obsolete now. We must turn our back on our history our legacy to be able to move forward! Don’t worry about freezing to death in the water. It’ll be fine.

To mix metaphors even further, tearing down the house before you know what’s going to replace it is generally a bad move.

Change

Change is good, but doesn’t always have to be revolutionary, evolution gave us opposable thumbs and how useful are they when tapping away on your iphone. Change can come in many forms.

Change can be as simple as a change of words. Why use the word ‘digital’ at all? If you remove ‘digital’ from the equation you remove the barriers. In Adland you don’t have an outdoor creative director working with a print ad creative director being managed by the tv creative director.

Face it if you wanted to have a ‘dialogue’ with your customers would you call in the ‘digital dialogue dude’ or someone who was good at having a conversation?

Separate the thought from the channel and your options expand to encompass them all or in other words “free your mind and your assets will follow”

Don’t be afraid to try this at home.

j

• pro – would be cathartic
• pro – suspect I may have something interesting to say if I put my mind to it
• pro – suspect it could be done in parallel with other options
• pro – well connected to lots of folk in the publishing world so if I wanted to do it the ‘traditional’ way somebody might take it
• con – hmmm guess I would have to come up with an outline / ideas
• con – would probably be crap

• pro – might be more interesting
• pro – genuinely challenging – never done it
• pro – would get to beat up digital agencies
• con – hard to find a good one

By this I mean something with a title like Creative or Strategy Director type deal.

• pro – obviously lots of experience going back forever
• pro – in theory stable which would be nice given the family situation
• pro – get to meet a whole new bunch of folk, which I do genuinely enjoy
• pro – might be some interesting creative strategic work to be done without having to worry about the messy neccessities of running the ‘business’

So – ways you can help:

1. Check out the Blog (www.jonbains.com) and please don’t slag off my shoddy word press skills – i’ve only had a couple of days to pull this together.

2. Most of the posts are some of the options I’ve come up with so far, some of them commercial, some more creative, some geographic and some probably  just plain stupid. At the moment they are just big broad brush strokes but over the coming weeks – with your input – I’ll start fleshing them all out – what I’d like is yes / no / maybe’s additional pro’s & con’s, other ways to look at things. If your interested in ‘playing’ with me in trying to build ‘summat’ please let me know.

3. I’m also totally up for meeting up to discuss “stuff” i.e thoughts, projects, avatar, w’ever –  although I’m fairly limited at the moment to day-time hours due to family and all that. My brand new google calendar is here

3. I’d also really appreciate any recommendations you feel like putting on my linked in profile. (http://www.linkedin.com/in/jonbains), follow me on twitter (jonbains) as I’m probably going to decouple twitter from facebook updates soon, and feel free to harass me on aim (contact me for details)

All comments welcome! I have only one tiny request – please don’t ask questions about my exit from Tangent – I legally simply can’t answer them –  suffice to say that I was made redundant.

Family.

Family is a powerful thing. They help each other, support each other, fight but then make up, offer advice and provide the shoulder to cry on, they inspire, they build, and hopefully together they succeed. They make mistakes but in time are forgiven. They don’t do each other favours, they simply ‘do’.

It is often said that you don’t choose your family, usually in the negative, but the execution of this is simply not true – we choose all the time, whether to engage, whether to help, whether to call –  the relationships which we choose are the hardest to break even if the frequency of contact is limited. I see this as the most wonderful thing.

I may only have been a biological father for the last couple of years and I definitely don’t speak to the rest of my biological family enough –  but for  the last 15 years I’ve been  a dad, a brother, an uncle and even occasionally a mom. I believe I am one of the most fortunate people alive because I have not one but two families.

I have no idea what the future holds, what I am going to do, where I am going to go, but what I do know is that my family, both new and old will be there to help.

Jon Bains

Family Man

Much to do over the next few days. Going to be interesting.