Experience Manifesto

WIRED NEXTFEST

I'll be over at the Wired Nextfest tomorrow and really looking forward to it! I'm traveling over the weekend, but I'll try to get some first impressions up before I leave.

Link: WIRED NEXTFEST.

Mavericks at Work Blog

I attended the launch party for Mavericks at Work and met both Bill & Polly. Loved what they did for the event! In addition to doing a presentation about how the book came about, they had many of the Maverick's in attendance! I had a great conversation with Vernon Hill from Commerce Bank and even met Elliott Spitzer! I'll be posting more from the book shortly!

"We desperately need concrete, compelling, uplifting examples of new varieties of Excellence to guide us forward. You'll find them by the bushel in Mavericks at Work. Bill Taylor and Polly LaBarre are brilliant raconteurs and analysts who more than fulfill their promise to let us be 'eyewitnesses to the future.' I didn't read this book, I devoured it." —Tom Peters, author of In Search of Excellence

Link: Mavericks at Work Blog.

Link: USNews.com: Mavericks at work .

Link: 800 CEO Read.com - Mavericks at Work By William Taylor, Polly LaBarre.

Link: Leading Questions: Lessons from the Rule Breakers - Mavericks at Work in US News.

Link: Mavericks at Work -- Financial Times review

The Future of Fun

I'm in the final session of the Inspiration Festival entitled the Future of Fun. Jacques Marcotte, the special events head for Cirque du Soleil, has just shown us a 6 minute video of special events at Cirque. If you want to be inspired about creating something incredible, just watch Cirque in action!

A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.

During the video, Jacques ran a series of quotes and one that really caught my eye was:

Only consider the guests well being.

He also talked about provoking, evoking and invoking as guiding principals to his work. A great presentation!

September 25, 2006 -EXPERIENTIAL A LA CARTE: Latest data, cool reads, fun stuff

Always nice when a company you admire has something nice to say about what you're doing! And I have to tell you, they must get some pretty good traffic to their site, judging by how many referrals they're sending our way! And if you don’t know Jack Morton, they are one of the best companies in the experience field! I mean, you’re talking about a company that has done work like the opening and closing ceremonies of the Athens Olympics! So, thanks for the shout out!

Think tank Brand Experience Lab has one of the best blogs so far on experiences and marketing—plus links to terrific resources (like Jack Morton’s own 360 Newsletter) and recommended reading lists on experiential marketing.

Link: September 25, 2006 -EXPERIENTIAL A LA CARTE: Latest data, cool reads, fun stuff.

Inspiration Festival Afternoon Sessions

Laurie Meadoff led off the afternoon with a presentation on her work with Chat the Planet. She's doing truly great work trying to connect teens from around the world. Check out her work at www.chattheplanet.com.

Next up was Jonathan Askin with Pulver Media. He fired a warning shot across the bow of emerging tech folks to warn us that government will soon be concerned about what is being done and will soon step in the regulate us. He asked us to be aware of this issue. This led to a lively debate about online communities and the issues of safety/security for children. Being a parent of a 5 year old, I can really see both sides of this argument.

Katherine Von Jan was the third speaker for the afternoon and her work involves how technology impacts society. That the new technology allows for self-actualization. We're aware of what we're choosing. Her phrase for consumers is now becomers. Then companies go from producers to enablers. She used a lot of BEL languauge in talking about being authentic and creating excellent products.

More From the Inspiration Festival

Chris Kenton did the last session before lunch with a brief discussion on the history of advertising/marketing.

Marketing has always had a close relationship with technology. In the late 1800's, the technology was used to help distribution. You had a very distant relationship with the product and company. Today, you can have a much deeper relationship with the product and/or company.

Advertising/brands are how we tell our stories today? They are replacing the stories that we used to tell through literature. What is the impact of that changing relationship of advertising?

There is no guiding philosphy about what marketing is supposed to achieve both within a company and in the larger framework of industries, etc.

He wrote the Marketing Manifesto and I'll see if I can get a link to that later.

Steve Barnett made an interesting comment that people either need to love a brand or loathe it and that's OK.

David Andre also talked about technologies ability to let people engage each other and the world around them.

Time for lunch, so more after the break.

Inspiration Festival, Session 2

David Andre started the next session with a theater exercise about but and and. How do those words make us change our thinking.

The second speaker is JC Herz, who wrote a book a few years back called Joystick Nation. Today, she's discussing a project that dealt with disaster planning. Angel 3 was a planning scenario in Southern California where during a pandemic, terrorists launch a cyberattack. What happens when all of your networks fail and you can't get the information you need. Interesting presentation about how we can connect the information about people and what they know and can do. Technology allows you to connect to people that you may not know.

Barnes & Noble Help Desk

I'm at the local Barnes & Noble while getting some work done on our car and thought I would check to see if they have received any copies of Living Brands by Raymond Nadeau. I wrote a chapter for it almost a year ago and wanted to see if I made the final cut. So, I wait on line behind three other people while the one person working there is running around helping another guest. And I can't help but wonder -- as everyone on line with me does -- why they don't have screens set up so I can check the information myself? I hear this complaint everytime I go to Barnes & Noble and everyone I talk to says the same thing! Barnes & Noble, are you listening? When will you allow your consumers to gather information for themselves? Please???

Inspiration Festival

Steve Barnett is the first speaker, an anthropologist who has worked in business and advertising.

Discussed how symbols became the distinctions that people make between each other. Early symbols were around nature and today we're further removed from that classification. Post WWII, we had one success ladder and today we have multiple success ladders. Recently, that's broken down. Today, we can take the symbols on & off, depending upon what we want to do at that specific moment.

Really see this in auto advertising, where the symbols are all the same, no matter what the car is.

Challenges of symbols:

We're now facing a symbol of shortage

Mass symbols are no longer as effective as they once were.

We can now take mass symbols apart.

Symbols are now becoming political.

Is human creativity becoming old fashioned? Are we now looking at machine creativity?

Astro Teller was the second speaker of the morning session and he started his presentati'on with a discussion about the loss of airplanes during the early days of WWII.

Armour plating along the bottom of the planes would be the ideal answer, but it made the planes too heavy to fly. The British Air Force soon decided the problem was unsolvable. They brought in a mathmetician who went to work. He went to work and came back, apolog'ized for taking a week to come up with a thought. His solution? Put the armour plating in the places where the planes didn't get shot? His theory -- all of the planes that came back safely were not shot in tese areas, so that's where you should put the armour plating. Maybe that would bring the other planes back safely.

The lessons of this:

Nothing is impossible.

Try something new. Tough part of this is not trying something, but to change your perspective.

You don't have to be an expert to solve a problem that experts have failed to solve.

Let the world solve your problems for you.

When in doubt, count. Computers are only good for two things, remembering and counting. We tend to try to solve problems by being more creative, rather then counting the information we already have.

Liked Astro's opening comments a geat deal. Interesting to see how these ideas would be taken by the advertising community!

Inspiration Festival

Sitting in on the opening session for the Inspiration Festival here in New York. They have some interesting sessions planned over the three days, all around the idea of how creativity will change in the future. Since I'm going to try and get the posts up right away, there may be some typos, etc., but I'll try to get them cleaned up later this week. Let the inspiration begin!