Social media success - all we have to do is BARF!

There are as many recipes for success in the sphere of social media as there are bloggers and tweeple out there. I personally think the only thing we need to do to be successful with social media is to BARF!

B. - Be creative and original, be knowledgeable and interesting
A. - Accept other's views and opinions, without necessarily backing down on your own
R. - Read between the lines, and find new lines to read, search for what you want to know and for new people you want to get to know
F. - Fear not! You are original, you are creative. You have your knowledge and you are interesting. But never stop learning!! And never stop teaching that which you now.

/rant :)

The Space Trainees

A trailer of our language training cross media game show for kids, The Space Trainees. It's a bit neat.

The social media currency

One thing I've been thinking about. Comments appreciated. I think this is pretty naive, in a way. Would like to ponder more, and discuss.

In today’s social media world, there is only one currency that matters. That currency is Time. The Time your followers devote to reading and ReTweeting your tweets on Twitter. The Time your Fans give you on your Facebook Fan Page, the Time they spend commenting on your stuff, reading your messages, interacting with you, watching your videos and sharing everything onwards.

Money will come and go. That Time is something no one will ever get back.

Now you might say that “so what? They’d be spending that time on something else instead, probably something a lot worse or, *shock horror*, something my rivals have produced.”

That might very well be true. But these people have actually chosen to give a certain amount of their Time to you, for some reason. It could be because of who you are, it could be because of the message you’re conveying. This Time should be treated with respect.

This Time is the one thing that you can sell onwards, to sponsors, brands, ad agencies etc. In the end, this Time is what will make some bigger company buy your start-up or some bigger company come in for you as a consultant or hire you right away. New amounts of Time can be given again, and again. But they will not be given, if the earlier amounts of Time have been squandered in one way or another.

Treat the Time given you with respect, and never take it for granted. After all, it’s Time that you’ll never get back, either.

SIRI - what's next??

Well, I am dying to try this out, although I suspect that living in Finland will sort of lessen the experience compared to if I was situated in New York or anywhere else in the US.

I mean, it looks and sounds and feels like an app that actually does what it promises to do, and work as an interpreter, interface and personal secretary for you. And to think what this could mean for social gaming and social networking in general... Geo-caching using some of the features of Siri? Being able to unlock "secrets" by getting clues and finding out secret phrases that will make Siri do some funky stuff in connection to a certain happening or a venue - say that Green Day's web site will give you the clues to roam the Internet to find the correct 10 words that make up a sentence that, when spoken into Siri, will give you two ring-side tickets at the next Green Day gig in your hometown? Goddamit but we could have fun with this app!!

Anyone need ideas, you know where to find me :)

Siri - The Personal Assistant in your Phone from Tom Gruber on Vimeo.

Mediespråk 2010 kommentar 1

Mediespråk 2010 går under underrubriken "...Ut med språket", första talare är Marit av Björkesten från Hufvudstadsbladet. En kommentar, att papperstidningen står för fördjupningen och bakgrunden, tror jag inte riktigt på.

Papperstidningen förnyas varje dag och den gamla går i papperskorgen. På nätet finns artiklarna för alltid, och en ny artikel kan hänvisa tillbaka till en gammal artikel eller tidigare statistik osv osv, på ett sätt som papperstidningen inte klarar av. Över tid kanske alltså onlineartiklarna står för betydligt mer fördjupning och bakgrund.

Happy new year 2010

Been a while - decidedly more active on Twitter at the moment, and on the MediaCity Posterous blog (if I find something interesting to share...)

Still, a happy new year 2010 to everyone! I can't help but think that this will be the year when we see massive upheaval somewhere in the world - what with Spain, Greece, Iceland, Vietnam, Japan etc on the brink of disaster, with the US markets spiraling out of control along the massive amounts of debt they are accumulating, what with terrorism on the rise, what with new currencies challenging the dollar, what with unemployment reaching record levels around the globe... something will have to give. And I don't think it will be pretty.

I would think/hope that Finland is far away enough not to be drawn into anything that will occur. Still, it will affect us, of course. And if it's big enough, there's no avoiding it.

And yet - lots of people, most people in fact, are busy living their lives, creating marvellous stuff, laughing with friends and raising their children. Why can't it continue like that? We would need to eradicate greed from the face of the earth....

My New Years resolution will be just that. I will not be greedy, not ONCE, during 2010. I will give. Simply because giving enriches you in ways taking never can.

Have a good year. Let's all hope for the best.

It's not what we do, it's who we are.

...or, "My take on social media, pt II".

See, it occured me the other day, that people have been for a very very long time defined by what they do. Sure, there have been royalties and icons, celebrities and famous people, who have reached a pinnacle where what they did didn't really matter anymore, just THAT they did it, whatever it was.

Most other people were, to a large extent, defined by what they did. Not to their family and friends, of course, who knew them intimately, but to any stranger they met on the street, at a convention, at a party or wherever. "Hi, I'm a manager at the Bank of XYZ!" "Oh, ok, I'm actually one of the janitors at Bank of XYZ".

Or "Hi, I develop cross media formats!" "Yeah, me too!".

I think you can see where the discussion would flourish and where it would probably end with a quick "cheers!" and parted ways.

I know, I'm being a bit stereotypical, just bare with me for a second... :)

But now, eh? Twitter being the most obvious example at the moment. What got me thinking was that the other day I commented on a friend of mine doing a speech at a conference. He referred to a policy of an online web shop service, saying it gave bad experiences. I tweeted that, with the name of the service. A couple of hours later, the CEO of that service tweets me, asking about what had been said. In this particular case it didn't matter what profession I had, not at all. Same goes for most of my followers at the moment. Some follow 'cause they are friends. Some follow because I've followed them. Most follow because of who I am - someone who likes to fish, someone who's interested in media, someone who tweets silly links every now and then, someone who goes to conferences once in a while and tweets eagerly from them, some follow because we all like writing... Yes, some follow because I've got "format developer" as a job title, but to me that's more of an interest than a profession.

Can I draw a conclusion here? I'll try. See - anyone has the opportunity to be themselves online. They can even be the better parts of themselves, should they wish to. There's no need to define oneself along the lines of ones profession, if one does not want to. So now, finally, people can be interested in YOU. Or not interested, which also might be the case. Just don't take it personally :)

PS. I should also add that the "what we do"-tag, when it comes to social media, is a lot more about how we use different social media, than what we have as a profession. For instance, someone who just uses Facebook gives a different initial impression of him-/herself than someone who is on Twitter exclusively. Or a Blogger/Waver (if Google Wave can be called a social media? I'd argue yes) is a totally different person than a Twitterer/Beboer. I'll delve into that argument later on. DS.

Conference AHOY!

The Eyes on UX conference will kick off tomorrow in Vasa, Finland, with quite a renowned lineup of speaker (including your humble servant, myself that is). Read more about it at the conference pages.

Dr Jeffrey Cole promises to be quite interesting tomorrow morning. Looking forward to that.

Not only will I do a small presentation (and unless you're already using Prezi to make your presentations, you should start NOW), I'll also be mr DJ at the dinner party! Been a while, let's see if I still got it... :)

NaNoWriMo

With all things going on in economics, with the world ending in 2012 or so... it's good to do something completely different once in a while. Spurred on by how fun it was to do the #BBCAWDIO writing thing on Twitter, I decided to try my hand at NaNoWriMo, the annual writing effort where you win if you create a 50.000 word novel during the month of November. Doesn't matter how well you write, doesn't matter what you write... that you put down that many words, that's the key.

So, I'm now 2000+ words into my novel, and I'm happily following the main character - Adam - on his trip to... well, wherever he's going. I have a slight inkling of where it might be, but really, I do not know yet.

Here are the first two paragraph of the story:

He could never quite shake the feeling that there was something wrong with him. Something that was a bit odd, an out-of-the-way, not-really-as-it-should-be kind of thing.

It didn’t matter if he was riding his bike to work – and it sure was not his bike’s fault, even though it was an age-old bike, a pre-historical bike with wide tires and a weight like a full-grown buffalo, a precious bike inherited from his grandfather who had ridden it during the War – or painting his part of the fence at home, or preparing what would pass for dinner when it was his turn to cook the food… it didn’t matter what he did, he always had the feeling that people passing him or people that he passed looked at him much like you would look at an unfortunate flamingo without any sense for balance, or a recent, fairly harmless car crash. Like he was… not really proper.

So, we'll see what happens! :)

BBCAWDIO thoughts

(Another slightly off topic post)

#BBCAWDIO musings

What if…

What we are seeing is a power struggle in another universe, the mirror world. The key to the power struggle – which could be between a) the Queen, the Prince and their cohorts and b) the Resistance, fronted by Finnegan, perhaps the original Puppet, perhaps Pinman etc – is one person from our world, i.e. Sam.

The struggle begun ages ago when the siblings – toymaker sister and prince brother, who incidentally were not nice persons at all – found out that they were, in fact, siblings. This they found out when she was commissioned to make him a puppet.

Through magic means (I think the magpie is sort of the fairy of this tale, granting wishes or making things happen) the toymaker is given the opportunity to bring the puppet to life. Still, bad person as she is, she tries to trick the magic. She ends up in the Mirror World, and finds that some of the things she has brought there – items and skills – give her power over the things residing there. At last she has a chance to be a queen in her own right! Eager to bring her brother along and rule this domain together, she struggles to find a way to do so. She realizes the only way is to bring him through the mirror, which she manages to do.

The original people of the mirror world take up the fight against the Queen, who manufactures armies. But the longer she’s in the other world, the more diminished her powers become. What she would need to finish the fight is the powers of one special person in the real world – Sam.

The Queen tries to ensnare her by her love of her brother. But, even though she made the promise, Sam recoils and runs from the fate she sees beckoning. The Queen is furious and traps her unfortunate Brother in the body of a magpie, but doing it so clumsily she left parts of him out, like the voice Pinman now has – perhaps mocking the original magpie, perhaps “on top of” the original magpie’s personality? – until she’ll get a chance to get her hands on Sam again.

Now, the Resistance is in trouble, as the Queens armies are overwhelming them. They see that the only way to get to the queen is through Sam, so they arrange, through the first puppet and through Finnegan, to have her transported into the mirror world. One last throw of the dice, so to speak. The mirror-Sam is a doll who became alive when she entered the real world. She’s not evil per say, just to keep Sam on the right track, worrying about her family.

Incidentally, I think Badger is the one who will turn out to be a traitor in the Resistance. Never quite trusted that fellow, much too quiet.

So – evil people are the Queen, the Prince and their cohorts. Good people are Finnegan, Pinman, the original Puppet, the magpie, mirror-Sam. I think the whispering voice could be the original Puppet, driving her along, trying to get her on the right track.

So now, just get rid of the evil people, get Sam back, wrap things up?

BBCAWDIO loose threads

(first of all, this is a kind of off topic post, since I'm involved in the #bbcawdio venture on Twitter - look it up, it's great fun! This is just a place to put loose threads and I'll delete this and coming posts later. You probably won't make much of what is written here unless you're involved, so feel free to ignore)


Here we go, the loose threads for the first four chapters, at least the ones I found. Could be that some were tied up later on, let me know! (my comments are in italic)

Scene One

"You've been a disappointment to us, Sam. We always thought you were the one." via (paulcrilley) (“The one” meaning what exactly?)

The woman looking across the divide certainly resembled her, yet the lines of her face told a far older story (so Sam in the mirror is much older? How come? Is it a future Sam?)

"It's our turn. You promised." (said by the Sam in the mirror – what promise was this? The same as is referred to later?)

(then, her brother “went away”, “they had taken him” and she “begged to follow” and “had promised”)

Scene Two

Where Sam sees her mirror-self, “the imposter”, cuddling with her mother.
“remember your promise”, the mirror-Sam says, again referring to the promise.

(Upon meeting the puppet) The puppet raised its hand and twitched a finger. As it did so, Sam was horrified to feel her own arm respond. (how come? Does someone have that power over here in this mirror world? And will this puppet make a comeback? Perhaps Sam will falter in her resolve later on, NOT annihilating the Queen, but the puppet appears and takes control over her limbs, making her do it?)

Scene Three

Sam stared at the city that seemed to be made out of wood and wax. (made of wax? Why? Perhaps it’ll melt at some point?)

(Someone started to sing the “heart of stone” song, after which..) "Shut up!" Sam screamed and she started to run towards the city, hoping to leave the whispering voice behind (so, who was singing that song? It’s been coming back a lot, that invisible singer should be back at some point methinks)

Scene Four

(introducing Finnegan, who has this line) "Her Most Excellent Collector of Things requires a trinket from all that attend," he said as he stepped from the carriage. (so, a Collector of Things? Does she collect any which ever things? Like hearts, brothers etc?)

(Sam finds the egg in her pocket when asked for a trinket) Where had that come from, Sam wondered. (yes, where HAD it come from? Was it the same mysterious voice? Was it the first puppet that put it there to get her on her way?)

(a bit of a strange line from Finnegan to Sam) Aye. You're not more than two hundred, if that." Finnegan replied. "And didn't I tell you to say nothing?" (now, why would he think she’s 200 years old? Is this an old world? A slow world? Or does he need new glasses?)

(Also: ) "She collects all sorts of things. Doors too, and memories, and dropped intentions." He sighed. "This is all I can do." (so she is really a Collector, right? How can we weave this into the equation?)

When developing cross media content...

....remember that the story that is being told is the single most important ingredient in the whole of the project. It MUST be compelling, nice, engaging, entertaining... and suitable for 360 exploitation.

Now "exploitation" is not a nice word in itself, but exploitation is exactly what a cross media concept needs to be just that - cross media, engaging, entertaining etc. Just as long as the exploitation is done in the right way!

THe story told must in and of itself be strong enough to withstand the tear and wear of different storylines or parts of the story pulling it towards different platforms - be it television, the Internet, social media or whatever.

If the story turns out to not be strong enough, it is perhaps kindest to just put it out of its misery right away.

Mu two cents for the day.

Required reading, and some other stuff

With a lot of people going on about "GREEN SHOTS" and a recovery in the financial industry, please read the following article by Karl Denninger which pretty much sums up the situation.

If you can't be bothered to read it, please just take this advice - exit the stock market you're in, NOW. There's no point playing in a rigged game.

On a side note, this might be one of the funniest things I've seen in a while:


until next time, be well

If you read anything today...

...read this, required reading for anyone interested in a) the economical collapse, b) their own strategies for the future and c) getting themselves fired up with righteous anger a little bit. Read Karl Denningers ticker from yesterday here.

Hedge your positions, plan for the future. Be safe.

Not the easiest of times for a format developer...

...seeing as I was, before vacation, wondering why Distraction Formats hadn't returned any of my previous mails. The last exchange was them explaining how we could proceed, with them distributing some of our formats - especially a football quiz show, GAME ON, that some of their clients were interested in.

I had replied and was awaiting a response with a more concrete offer, when the news broke, in late June, that Distraction had gone bust. Shocking news, as they had always been extremely present at the MIPTV:s and MIPCOM:s etc, giving a very solid impression.

Well, best of luck to all the people formerly of Distraction. I am pretty convinced that I'll see them again in the not to distant future, in some fairly similar capacity...

Back from vacation + Miniwebs new effort

So, back at the desk then, quite a lot of projects in the air at the moment (and one of them going to be ON air as well, next month, more about that one when I have some links to post).

Trying to get to grips with how the economy is affecting the tv and media industries at the moment. It's quite clear that revenues are way down. Still, channels and broadcasters must fill the schedules with SOMETHING. Some shows are being extended (Dancing with stars nowadays 2h show for instance, in the US that is), also reruns, and non-scripted (cheap) formats. The latter category is where we fit in, I believe.

Just read a bit about Miniweb and their partnership with Metrological, bringing yet another new effort in the field of interactive television to the market. What differs this time around is the fact that their effort is looking pretty good... :) TO quote their press release:

"The combination of the Miniweb platform, Metrological’s middleware and hardware platform with the Intel CE 3100 provides, for the first time, an end-to-end platform for the delivery of a fully converged high-quality broadband and broadcast experience. This platform will be as equally attractive to Internet Service Providers looking to converge broadcast content with their existing broadband offering as it will be with cable, satellite and DTV operators that want to combine broadband enabled OTT video with their existing broadcast services. This platform includes support for web-style interaction; centralized video search & recommendations, community functionality as well as advertising and payments services. The platform is now integrated and ready to order now on a 2 month delivery."

The key might be that this works, looks good, is (hopefully) easy to use and possible to produce for. I'd dearly like to try it out, so any Miniwebpeople out there, gimme a shout :)

Humanity and social media

These thoughts have been in my head for a while now. I thought it best to write them down, before they disappear :)


Humanity and social media

When I was ten years old I, for a brief moment, regained my faith in Santa Claus. See, it’d been a Christmas Eve like all others, with family and dinner and pestering siblings and watching traditional Christmas shows on TV, when there came a knock on the door. In stepped Santa – well, it was a neighbor in a Santa costume, but I did not pay any notice. My eyes were glued to the big Christmas present jutting up from the bag slung over his shoulder. As the presents were being handed out, I could barely contain myself. When the turn came to me, I tugged it from the hands of the Santa-wannabe and frenetically began to tear the paper wrapping off. Finally, there it was.

64K of raw processing power, a CPU of a stunning 1MHz, three (3!) channels of sound, it was the ultimate computer. This Commodore 64 would be my entrance to the world of computers. I wanted to shout my joy to the rooftops… or at least to my closest friends. I did not, however, call them on my iPhone. Nor did I send an sms via a battered Nokia. I didn’t open Skype or MSN Messenger or Gmail chat or even an IRC channel. I had no way of letting the humanverse know my excitement through Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, MySpace, Bebo or any other forum. I couldn’t take a picture of the shiny new toy with my mobile phone and upload it to Flickr. What did I do? I ran over to my friend and asked him to come over, of course.

Now, 25 years later, it is hard to grasp just what changes have happened during a quarter of a century. The birth and growth of the Internet, the development of faster-than-fast processors, graphic cards and hard drives, a quality we couldn’t dream of back then… Not to mention all the programs, all the social media and the goatxe hype, for instance.

A question that is constantly raised as humanity becomes more and more of an online race and less and less of a face-to-face race, is a simple one. Is it good or bad? Many have pointed out the obvious – with less “real” interaction, there is less of that which makes us human involved; touch, smell, facial expressions, closeness, social interaction. Others, on the other hand, point out the equally obvious; we now have possibilities previously unheard of, to connect with people around the globe who share the same interests, beliefs or goals as we ourselves.

So, it’s good in some ways, and bad in some ways. As life in general is, I’d argue.
One of the fastest rising social media forums, Facebook, has allowed us to get in touch with old friends, has let us be constantly updated with info, photos, thoughts and silly links, keeping us in contact with our friends (yes, and also our “friends” of course), which in most ways is a good thing. Another social media, Twitter, brings the matter even closer. Within a space of 140 characters anyone, from Britney Spears to a 12-year old in Kuala Lumpur can say whatever they want to say, to anyone who cares to listen.

As I’ve been following and engaging in Twitter, and gotten in touch with wonderful ideas like Twistori, I’ve started to lean more and more towards this being a good thing. No, it’s not good that people communicate only via computers and mobile platforms. No, it’s not good that there is so much noise that the few clear notes are hard to hear. No, it’s not good that anonymity gives spiteful and angry people the chance to spew venom at unfortunate victims. But there are upsides as well.

See, I believe that Twitter, in all its’ simplicity, is the first step towards the great equalization of the species. Twitter is the first media that lets everyone compete on next-to equal terms, where ideas and thoughts, art and prose, genius and creativity is given the exact same amount of space to thrive, and via ReTweets find bigger and bigger audiences.

Agreed, a simple Tweet is a scream for recognition in a sea of screams. But at least all the screams are 140 characters long, and in the same font and layout!
Furthermore, I believe that Twitter is a great possibility to promote understanding between nations, people, genders, religion and races. For every spiteful xenophobic, there are thousands of normal, loving, caring people. For every rash thought and provocative comment, there are many more thoughtful and considerate tweets. And when you look at any given hot Twitter topic, what strikes me the most is how similar we all are. We’re all the same, at least when constricted to 140 characters.

Such a realization can only be a good thing. Right now, I’m looking forward to seeing what the next step will be. I sincerely hope for a step in an even more equal and thought-provoking direction. I hope my hopes won’t be dashed.

Have a good summer everyone, see you in Twitterverse – or somewhere else!

Workshop at EuroITV 2009

Talking about experiences the whole day, which is interesting. No matter if you're a designer, a developer, a researcher or a producer, what you are aiming for and looking to research into is a desired experience amongst the users.

To put it briefly, what we've come up with so far is that you have a content accessible via an interface. Accessing this is an action that causes a reaction in or even an interaction from the viewer / user. This reaction or interaction is then influenced by all the personal aspects - preferences, gender, needs etc. All in all, this generates the experience - good, bad or neutral. Then we also of course have all the external factors, from the world around. And the key question, at least for us as developers, would then be how to make money (or rather a viable business / revenue plan) from all of this.

Let's see what the afternoon brings :)

Meanwhile, in Germany...

...visiting my sister in a small village in western Germany called Dornholzhausen. Funny, the village has some 1000-1500 inhabitants, but there is absolutely NOTHING here. Well, a local butcher, and someone repairing computers. That's it. Anything else, you have to get your car out and drive to the next village (which admittedly is only a few kilometers away, but still). And absolutely NO ONE uses a bicycle around these parts. Small differences, but still.

Thought I was going to have a day off, but alas, no. Hours of work still to be done, I think. Phew.

EuroITV 2009 on wednesday, which should be interesting.

Google Wave, looks promising

Check out this presentation of Google Wave. It looks like it will be something really nice... Looking forward to testing it!



Also, another interesting projekt is MyHandle. Have a look!