A Social Media Starter's Kit

Last night, a group of local Twitter fans got together at Panera's. I was one of them. Social media has become the human face of technology. It's not slick. It's not weighed down by convention or burdened by rules. The conversations were more about lives than technology. And that's a good thing. Interested?

Here's an ABC guide to Social Media by Rob Williams of Orangejack.

http://orangejack.com/media/getting_started_with_social_media.pdf

Sing and Compose Instantly

Who says you can't carry a tune.? Now it weighs less than a pound. What if you could just sing and have a computer compose the music? Well, welcome to Comepose. The pen acts as a mic you sing into. When docked into the digital paper tablet, your vocal harmonies are automatically transcribed into a score. For the old schooler, you can write directly on the display. It also contains libraries for an entire orchestra so once your composition is finished, just sit back and enjoy or not.

Just click:

http://tinyurl.com/68e74f

What I learned from Hillman Curtis

I carried around Hillman Curtis's classic new media manifesto MTIV Process, Inspiration and Practice for the New Media designer for quite a while. It was published in 2002. Six years in the new media space is like dog years. It still good, but it has understandably lost its now. Hillman is still CCO of his own company and is now heavily engaged in short films.

But six years later, I remembered without re-reading two key ideas. The first was his bull's eye method of listening. He would meet with a client and create a bull's eye (3 concentric circles) and listen visually to hear repeated words, excited words, bon mots -- anything that would give him a key to solving the client's problem or wish. He called it the emotional epicenter.
Here's a sample.


The second was that "creativity feeds or restraints." The handcuffs of a small budget and even smaller schedule is a beast, but one you have to tame. It often leads to amazing simplicity and focus. Thanks Hillman. Click here to see his latest short film "Bridge." http://www.hillmancurtis.com/index.php?/film/watch/bridge/

A Virtual Wonderland from the British Library

Many years ago I had a good fortune to spend a few hours in the British Museum Manuscript room. I remember seeing an original handwritten manuscript of Alice in Wonderland with Lewis Carroll's own drawings. The book was originally called Alice's Adventures underground. Thanks to technology (Shockwave) you can read this actual manuscript and turn the pages. You can also look at Mozart's notebook and listen to musical adaptations while looking at his notes.

http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/ttpbooks.html

Jott This Down

This remarkable service is a high on the BakerBot list of productivity helpers. It's called Jott. Okay, you're driving down a freeway and you've got an idea or you want to send someone a message but don't want to call. Meet Jott.

Meet Jott, your personal transcription service. You sign up at Jott.com by providing your cell number and e-mail address. Put Jot on speed dial.

Call Jott and the conversation goes like this. "Who do you want to Jot?" "Myself." Then you leave a message "Idea for movie. Nuclear enlarged schools of Piranha attack Nantucket. It's Jaws to the 100th power." Jot then sends a full text message to your email. Or you can leave a email message to a person or a group. So far, the voice transcription has been letter perfect. And it's free for the standard program.

http://www.jott.com

Tamper with SCAMPER

Chuck Frey of Innovation Tools has a nice link to the classic SCAMPER technique. Luciano Passuello has a great introduction to this technique at http://litemind.com/scamper/. SCAMPER is an acronym which which helps expand your thinking about a problem. (S) Substitute (C) Combine (A) Adapt (M) Magnify/Modify (P) Put to other purposes (E) Eliminate and (R) Rearrange or Reverse.

The classic product for SCAMPER is baking soda. For example, it's a SUBSTITUTE for toothpaste and it (P) It's been put to dozens of other uses including refrigerator odor control.

Make Your Productivity Visible

If you're a freelancer or a firm that needs an easy way to track time spend on a project, there's a free app on the web that's incredible.

It's called Rachota and it allows you to track time for multiple projects and you can turn it on and off to get a sense of your ratio of time worked to time getting coffee or procrastinating. Check it out. A BakerBot Recommendation.

http://rachota.sourceforge.net/en/index.html

Become An Executioner

When I worked at Saatchi Los Angeles, I had a magazine headline taped to my door. It read "Like That, But Funny." I was probably the best job description I've ever had. Basically, it means you are executing someone's else's idea. For example, I could be sitting in my office and a creative director might drop by and say, "I just saw "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," could we make that into a 4Runner spot?"

Sure.

The first thing I do with an assignment like that is to take a piece of paper and divide it in half. I draw a blue flag on one side and a red flag on the other. Blue represents unbiased creativity. The red flag denotes problems. The key is to get clear what David Allen calls psychological RAM. It means I have to clear away the barriers no matter how valid in order to invest myself in solutions.

For example, my red flags would be 1) Toyota has invested in a brand without borders, do we want the re-emphasize the oriental? 2) Whether it's mechanical effects or digital effects, we're talking bucks. 3) Does the metaphor work or is it just visual pyrotechnics? Then, I have to table those doubts for later and think of it as a "doubtless" exercise. Doubt will slow you down. It will whisper in your ear every second. It will make you less productive.

The lesson here is that the ratio of ideas to executions is billions to one. Even if I am an idea person, there are times when I have to be an committed executioner no matter what my level of interest. If you want to read more about clearing your RAM, read David's great book Getting Things Done. http://www.davidco.com/

Ideacide. An owner's manual.

Ideas die everyday. Usually good ones. They haven't found a champion. The timing is bad. Or they can't find a foothold in that culture. (A cactus in swamp). Alan Parr and Karen Ansbaugh, cofounders of the openSky Consortium, have created a terrific Change This manifesto.

It's a guide to navigating your ideas through the rocky shores of any organization.

http://www.slideshare.net/inotivity/4205ideaicide-presentation

The 6 Valves of Creativity Flow

The 6 Valves of Creativity Flow

Last week, I listened to a fascinating webinar by Paul Deslauriers and Tom Monahan. Paul is the principal of NRG -- an organizational development and consulting firm. Tom was a founding partner of Leonard/Monahan, Providence, RI in 1978, and served as president and executive creative director for 15 years.

The conversation was about the six valves that block creativity in an advertising/branding firm or as Paul described it "an agency health scan." I will provide a link to the audio of the webinar at the end of this entry. What is so interesting about the subject is that Paul could have given the same talk 20 years ago and it would still fall on deaf ears.

He talks about one sticky valve. An agency process or traffic system. One agency had 168 handoffs for print to make its way through the system. Paul helped them reduce it to 22. My belief is that in an agency everyone should be in the creative department. Think about where your agency or firm is blocked. Sometimes it's at the top, sometimes it lies somewhere off the radar.

Listen like a plumber.

http://before-after.com/calls/6_creative_valves.html

BakerBots. Big information. Small portions.

Two questions. Two of the best shortcuts to the truth I know.

First one is from Kevin Murnane, Founder at Behtrics/Limitless Leadership Consulting and Northwestern Adjunct Professor. When you're thinking about goals, don't ask, "What I am willing to give up to reach my goal?" But ask "What am I not willing to give up to reach my goal?" It's the royal road to priorities.

Second one is from Marty Baker. Don't ask "How can I help you succeed?" Instead, ask "How can I help you fail today?" It gets right to the obstacles to achieving an objective. It short circuits the subconscious filters and allows people to get to the truth of what they really need. For details: http://tinyurl.com/5vhfao