aspire to enquire

Innocent Prize

I sent a picture to @innocentdrinks the other week which resulted in my getting a small prize. It was a picture of the Age Concern Hats which had just started going out in Sainsburys Central on Queen Street. 

I've started getting into a bit more of this kind of thing - it's fun, and also interesting seeing how these kinds of things run. Hopefully it will give me more idea of digital campaign stuff without me really noticing. I'm going to have a go at Live Guy on Tuesday too.

My picture was rubbish though, definitely not up to Innocent standards.

And it got featured on the Innocent Blog, which is always fun times.

And look what (I'm presuming) Mr Dan Germain sent in return! ...

Thanks Innocent! The brand book will actually be really useful for my dissertation, which WILL be at first draft stage by the end of this week, so muchly appreciated.

I'll try harder on the picture next time.

Festival of Ideas

In more Cambridge related news, if you're in the town between now and November 2nd, you should definitely try to get along to some of the events of the Cambridge festival of Ideas. It's an opportunity 'to understand more about the world we live in, on a global and local scale - from politics to the study of different cultures to the stories behind paintings, hidden trails around the city of Cambridge and beyond. There will be talks, performances and discussions to get you thinking.'

Well worth a look!

Talking blogs against a sea of troubles

!!! Huge mis-informed generalisation alert !!!

There's a debate this Tuesday in the Welsh Assembly entitled 'to blog or not to blog', it's a 'debate on the value of political blogging'. It seems to be raising a lot of questions and debate even before it actually takes place, I guess mainly because part of the title implies that there will be people arguing that there is no value in political blogging.

I'm going to go along, but I'm suspecting advance that one of the key questions that will keep coming up will be 'what is a blog?' and 'what is it for?'…

What is a blog?

Obviously we all know that a blog is a web page maintained by a small number of people which more often than not contains opinion or observational texts. But I think the real question will be on categorising the different kinds of blogs. Broadly speaking, I think there are three:

Spout(rant) Blog. (My site is generally one of these) In most posts on a Spout Blog, people just post up their comments on a particular issue without any real constructive attempt at dialogue. These posts may also be highly personal. These are often negative posts that don't engage with much more than one side of one issue, assuming that the reader is aware of the other sides. The comments usually simply agree or give longwinded disagreements. The frequency of posts is medium to high and they usually rely mostly on text.

Supply Blog. You see these a lot in the cultural sphere, posts here are usually aggregators of other online resources, posting up nice images, videos, etc. The frequency of posts is high. Comments usually along the lines of 'nice' or 'thanks for posting'

Discussion Blog. (My site aspires to be one of these) Where a post will contain an interesting application of a theory or opinion to a particular event or ongoing discussion. Perhaps it will identify a new area for discussion. Offering opportunities for further reading, the post draws in references from other people's blog posts on similar subjects, and will itself be referenced in future. The comments section is usually vibrant and thoughtful. The frequency of posts is medium and they will usually contain a mixture of text and supporting imagery.

Now I'll be honest here and say that I haven't read a lot of political blogging in my time. But a look through the blogroll of one prominent Welsh blog site seems to place most of the content in the spout category: Observations on current day's political developments, predictions on upward (or downward) movements of politicians, scandal and so on. In short, a lot of issues that are, most of the time of great interest to those working in or very engaged with politics, but not really of much consequence to those outside that realm. Which brings me to the next question:

What is it for?

It might just be coincidence that this debate is taking place whilst we are seeing the execution of one the biggest and most convincing case studies in favour of social media to date, over the Atlantic, in Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign. His campaign has harnessed the power of blogs, online social networks, user-generated content, viral, and resulted in unprecedented fund-raising thanks to a completely new model based on small contributions from a much wider community than in the past.

There are always the questions of unedited, un-journalistic, sometimes anonymous posts that qualified political commentators will always take issue with, and I can see a lot of their points. After all, political commentary has been done for years, better. But what Obama has proved is that it's about something a lot more than that. People with a much better grasp of these things than me have been saying this repeatedly. It's about the Conversation.

More of this, please. © me 2008

Instead of making short, snide criticisms of nothing much in particular, why not use your blog in a way that will actually extend outside 'politics' per se. 

If Government powers and lobbyists are serious about engaging with younger voters, just 'blogging' isn't going to help anyone. This is going to sound terribly middle aged, but they need to be where the young people (or whoever their target audience is) are: 

Why not set up a twitter search feed on a particular issue that your party or organisation is campaigning on. Whenever someone mentions it via twitter, you can reply and get a Conversation started. 

Why not engage with musicians with political standpoints by inviting them for a pint and filming the discussion? Start making friends with the band's friends on myspace and posting the video in a bulletin.

Why not ask new designers and art students to interpret briefs that are relevant to both you and them? 

And by all means, post the results on a blog. You start to bring a community together that might transcend the four classifications of online communities. But my opinion would be that at no point in this process to you specifically campaign on your issue. 

For me, blogging has been about finding common ground. Party Political alignment, or support for your cause, will come naturally when the time comes, if you have already been engaging and constructive in your dialogue.

So I guess the real question isn't 'to blog or not to blog', but 'why blog'. 

If you'll be in the area, there are details of the event listed at the Bevan Foundation's website.

Simplicity, intelligently applied

Those in the UK may have seen this spot recently for Audi Quattro..

.. I think it's brilliant. It's the kind of communication I'll aspire to use someday when at some point I have an idea worth pushing for. 

They could have said "we have 4 computers each making individual calculations as to the weight/rotation* ratio of each wheel which can help the car grip more effectively", but they didn't need to. All that thinking goes on with the viewer, after having a very easy to grasp (hehe) concept introduced. It's intuitive, rooted in universal experience and doesn't use any fancy jargon.

I wish I could come up with something like that for my dissertation this week. Even something like this would be awesome.

Perhaps I should speak to this young lady.

* I'll freely admit to knowing nothing about cars. Does that dilute my point a little?

Current TV

... it's good, isn't it?

We make the news, they put it on television. It sounds like some crazy Lily Allen and Friends 24 hour nightmare, but it actually works out ok. I sat down yesterday and watched some genuinely interesting programming (I think those in the know call them 'pods') on subjects that I would never hear about on other channels.

So as long as it can build audience share somehow (I think it's only on Sky in the UK?) this could be a medium worth keeping an eye on. Not just for left-leaning creative twentysomethings, who seem to make all the shows as well as be the main audience, but it could be really interesting for PR and advertising. 

Most commercial spots are already custom-made for the channel - think guy with video camera talking about how much he loves his toyota prius - but in the future I would have thought that it wouldn't be inconceivable for someone to develop the right story about their client and report on it for Current. Selection for 'traditional' broadcast is based on user votes, so it could be a really effective means of reaching quite a discerning demographic.

It's spreading...

I received this rather lovely postcard with my rather lovely t-shirt this morning...

I paused.

It felt nice to pause.

I turned it over;

I would have preferred triangles, but still. Good news. 

Here's to getting things done.

Interesting 2008

I will not be going to interesting 2008. Having not checked my rss feeds for 16 hours between Thursday and Friday, I completely missed the advance warning of the imminent release of the tickets, the release of the tickets, and their subsequent selling out.

Admittedly there was a warning a few weeks ago, but how is one meant to remember that in fast-paced blog land? Fail to plan, etc...

Really, really gutted, I was wanting to go rather a lot.

This is conclusive proof that I don't spend enough time wandering through blogs.

Triangles

I thought I would share my little way of remembering to do things.

I learned it at a bar I worked at when I was 19 and have pretty much used it (when I've had a diary) ever since.

They had and 88-point checklist. I don't have an 88-point checklist, but I do generally leave things too late and forget about the 'smaller' things that are still important.

So when I have to do something, I write it down in the day I have to do it, with a triangle next to it.

Once I've done the thing, I fill the triangle in. This gives one a great sense of pleasure and achievement.

If the thing is not done, I make a new triangle on the next day, and put a line through the unfilled triangle on the original day. This is not so satisfying, but that way you can be sure you haven't forgotten to do something.

Lots of triangles today.

Creative Ways

I saw this on the cover of House and Garden this month. It struck a chord with me for two reasons, the first being that I have been thinking of displaying some photographs, and I have been unsure of the best way of displaying them. The second reason was the use of the word 'creative'.

It's a word that's been haunting me recently as I try to put into concise thoughts what I actually think I have a talent and interest for. It seems like there's this huge focus at uni on 'being creative' whilst we drink our machine coffees from a cardboard cup sitting on standard issue office canteen furniture. We're all meant to have amazingly creative ideas that think outside the box and all of that, so that we can land our dream job in the creative industries. There are 20,000 people in wales working in the creative industries - do they all have these amazing ideas that we're told are out there? It's pretty rubbish knowing that I don't have that skill.

Anyway I digress. My point was about whether you were being creative if you copied a magazine. It kind of reminds me of Anthea Smiley making 'art' in Changing Rooms.