Some work I did for a recent BDW class. If you look closely you can see the man himself.
Napkin Labs visits Boulder Digital Works
During last Wednesday’s Idea Studio at Boulder Digital Works, Napkin Labs co-founders Warren Ng and Riley Gibson stopped by to talk about starting up their company and how its model is changing the way companies handle product design.
What does Napkin Labs do?
Napkin Labs is a collaborative community based new product development consultancy. We are blending the creative energy of the ‘crowd’ with disciplined design processes to rapidly generate consumer-centric new product concepts rooted in the strengths of our clients’ brands.
In other words, they curate a community of some the best young minds (from places like Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, and CU) and then set them loose on your project. They provide the structure throughout so everyone stays on track and incentivize participation by using an algorithm to measure how much each member contributed to the final output and paying out a reward accordingly.
Their approach goes beyond simple crowd-sourcing by: one, curating the people in their crowd and two, rewarding everyone based on participation rather than a winner-takes-all approach.
And then I was re-listening to this 2005 TED talk from Clay Shirky about institutions vs collaboration and I realized that Napkin Labs is essentially breaking down the institutional barriers he talks about here:
http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf
Shirky mentions how that as barriers to collaboration decrease (the web and web apps like Napkin Labs) people become more and more able to organize and collaborate in increasingly complex ways without the help traditionally needed from institutions. Shirky’s vision is brought to life in exactly how Napkin Labs operates.
By connecting big organizations directly to crowds and managing the crowds in a hands-off way, Napkin Labs brings the best of both the institutional and the unruly masses worlds together. As institutions become more comfortable with this approach I think this will mean a sea-change will take place in the R&D; world. Certainly, highly trained scientists and researches will never be replaced but think about the example Shirky uses above where a single Linux engineer contributes a single important patch and nothing else. He’s probably not worth having on the payroll, but aren’t you glad he contributed that one really important piece?
I believe the same sort of scenario will begin to play out across R&D; and product design. While dedicated teams in institutions won’t be replaced anytime soon, a lot of their work will begin to be offered out to Napkin Labs-esque organizations with excellent results.
It’s exciting to see this glimpse into the future happen so close to home. Keep your eyes peeled for how Napkin Labs will help shape the future with your help.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged boulder digital works, digital, napkin labs, new business models, product design 1 Comment
The Ungrateful Bastards Indeed
Look, I’m not into tearing people down. If you want to hear negativity you can surely find some on this great big series of tubes. I’m all about going for it and kicking ass and optimism and teddy bears and bubbles. But everyone has to make exceptions.
A little backstory: I’ve somehow made it onto the PR list for DiGennaro Communications in NY. I guess it’s because I run this here blog and they’ve decided the best way to reach out to bloggers is to crawl their emails rather than say hello. But at least it’s usually relevant and cool work I get. I don’t post it because that’s probably not why you read this blog and besides, you can view it all on other blogs like Agency Spy or Ads of the World etc that post the work all the time.
So they send me this email:
Today, Y&R; NY and VML launched a new website called “The Ungrateful Bastards.”
If you received a gift during the holidays that you don’t want (and who didn’t?), you can visit this site and trade for someone else’s unwanted gift.
Check out the site here: http://www.
theungratefulbastards.com
“Because one man’s stupid, unwanted holiday gift is another man’s treasure.”
CREDITS:
Agency: Y&R; NY and VML
Chief Creative Officers: Scott Vitrone, Ian Reichenthal
Creative Directors: Guillermo Vega, Icaro Doria
Managing Creative Director, VML: Jim Radosevic
Creative Director, VML: Mike Wente
Art Directors: Menno Kluin, Alex Nowak, Sandra Nicholas
Copywriters: Tiffani Lundeen
Illustrator: Peter Frendrik
Producer: Jo Kelly
Lead Developer: Frank Cefalu
Flash Developer: Marc Brown
Director of Technology: Martin Coady
And I follow the link to Ungrateful Bastards because it sounds like a fun, if unoriginal, idea.
And then I immediately regret doing so.
The site is, to put it mildly, underwhelming. And I’m not talking about the fact that there’s about a dozen items on the site (including a hat listed under gadgets, which actually made me chuckle a bit.) I’m talking about the fact that this is a site from a global ad agency (Young & Rubicam) and a full-service digital agency (VML) and, even though it’s obviously a fun side project, it looks like it was thrown together last night by the interns in a red-bull-induced-rave-state.
I’ll just be frank: the site is bad. Really, just poorly done. Honestly, how many of those 15 (Fifteen!!!) actually worked on the project? Would they all still want their names attached to it if they saw the final result?
The people involved are no doubt talented (several were involved in the amazing Skittles work of several years ago) but the end result is woefully uninspired.
So is it any wonder that people have been less than eager to get involved with the site? It amazes me that an agency so big (Y&R; claims 186 offices and 7,000 employees) and a self-proclaimed full service digital shop would ever let something like this out into the wild.
There are a few possibilities:
- They actually think this is good
- The interns did it and everyone else wanted credit (why?)
- They don’t care
- They tried to be bad on purpose (but weren’t bad enough to be funny-bad)
So how does it get better?
Let’s break it down:
The Idea
It’s been done, but hasn’t everything at this point? The key is to do it better than anyone else has before or add a unique twist. Neither were done here, so that’d be where I’d start.
The Execution
The end result is not the effort of the 15 people credited. It’s barely the effort of one skilled developer. People have a low tolerance for subpar design / usability these days when there is so much good design / usability being done. People also make judgments within seconds of visiting your site. Guess what people are thinking at first glance of the Ungrateful Bastards site. I think it’s also worth considering who the work is coming from. If there was a college freshman behind this site I’d hold it to a bit different standard than a global ad empire.
The Usability
Finally, users have to be able to use the site they’re at. Besides the aforementioned categorization confusion (which could have been
intentional) I found frustration in clicking the button like objects on the site that were not in fact clickable buttons but rather fancy containers for the text which was the actual link. I’d also question the use of flash on the site in a seemingly uneccesary way. I know agencies love flash, but many users do not. Could another technology have accomplished the same thing (a countdown and a animated fireplace?) Also, I’m assuming the crackling sound emitted from the fireplace is for the kitsch effect but it’s seriously annoying and cannot be disabled. If you’re going to go kitsch go 100% or don’t go at all.
The Bottom Line
I’m probably taking this whole thing too seriously but this is a symptom of a larger issue: how traditional agencies (and even digital ones) adjust to the new environment they operate in. If Y&R; / VML had thought about their users a little more would this whole thing have been a lot better? It’s hard to say what happened behind closed doors. If you’re listening out there Y&R; / VML, I think you know what I want to find in my inbox stocking next year.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged advertising, digital, shiny turds, ungrateful bastards, vml, young and rubicam Leave a comment
Why Lala took over iTunes
You may have read that Apple bought cloud music streaming service Lala. Well, in my little Justinverse the opposite happened, Lala took over iTunes.
I’ve been using Lala for a couple years now. Originally I just wanted an easy way to stream my iTunes library at work. Now I simply want a piece of music management software that works.
I have a lot of music. Just over 15,000 songs clocking in at around 80 GBs to be exact. Moving that kind of library around from old computer to new computer or even just to a new hard drive on the same computer is a serious pain in the ass through iTunes. I’ve tried using their preferred way of doing it and I’ve tried moving everything through Windows and then pointing iTunes back to the library and I’ve even tried storing it on an external drive to keep my laptop’s hard drive freed up. Every time iTunes can’t find songs or can’t find my library at all in the case of my laptop (despite my mapping of the drive to always show up as the same “letter.”)
While I can’t give up on iTunes for syncing my iPhone / iPod, I have given up on it for doing what it was originally supposed to do: play my goddamn music.
I’ve found a better solution through Lala. I’ve synced up all my purchases and uploaded any songs they didn’t have so now my whole collection resides in the cloud (a long process, but once it’s done, it’s done.) I can play it from any computer with an internet connection (if I could stream it from my phone it’d be perfect!)
So now that Apple has bought Lala I’m left wondering what the future of Lala’s service looks like. Reports seem to indicate that Apple wants access to Lala’s brilliant engineers more than their service. Here’s to hoping that the core service sticks around for a while, at least until Apple can play catch up in the very category it created.
This is the [year, day, month, moment] you’ve been waiting for
Every new year is filled with a lot of looking backward (see my own 10 best albums of the decade) and looking forward but not so much focus on the present. I guess the prevailing thought is that the best times are long gone or just ahead of us. Well, this won’t be the first (or last) time the prevailing thought is wrong.
Right now is the best time to [insert thing you've been wanting to do.]
Seth Godin decided that today was the best day back in 2007 when things actually seemed pretty good:
Here’s a question that you should clip out and tape to your bathroom mirror. It might save you some angst 15 years from now. The question is, What did you do back when interest rates were at their lowest in 50 years, crime was close to zero, great employees were looking for good jobs, computers made product development and marketing easier than ever, and there was almost no competition for good news about great ideas?Many people will have to answer that question by saying, “I spent my time waiting, whining, worrying, and wishing.” Because that’s what seems to be going around these days. Fortunately, though, not everyone will have to confess to having made such a bad choice. (read the original)
And he revisited that mentality today on his blog:
The oughts (the “uh-ohs”?) were a tough decade on a macro level. Front page news events will give the textbooks plenty to write about in the years to come.
But on a micro level, on a personal level, this was a decade filled with opportunity. The internet transformed our lives forever. Opportunities were created (and many were taken advantage of). And, like every decade, just about everyone missed it. Just about everyone hunkered down and did their job or did what they were told or did what they thought they were supposed to, and just about everyone got very little as a result. (read the original)
For those of you who like to take your information visually, here’s Hugh MacLeod’s cartoon in the same vein:
There will never be another time quite like now to launch a new company, quit your job, or be a part of something great. The time to do your life’s work is now.
This is it.
Fight like hell.
Happy New Year.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged deep thoughts, hugh macleod, justin mccammon, seth godin Leave a comment
RSS Feed fixed, you can now return to your regularly scheduled reading
I noticed my RSS feed got screwed up when I switch my blog over to its new home with new and improved look. It’s fixed now so you might see a bunch of stories pop up all at once.
Oh, and I’m changing this blog’s name to “ThisJustin” and changing the subtitle to more clearly reflect what I’m interested in–digital creativity. The focus, or lack thereof will remain the same. I like it, hopefully you do to. This should all be transparent to you, I’m keeping the site’s feed address the same to prevent you from having to do anything.
Thanks for reading and happy new year,
Justin
Justin’s Top 10 Albums of the Decade: 2000-2009
Sure there are a lot of top 10 lists floating around right now but (of course) I don’t think any of them got it quite right, so here goes. (think I’m way off? write your own damned list in the comments)
10. Old Ramon – Red House Painters (2001)
Ok, so I have a confession to make: this album was recorded in ’97-98 and then caught up in business bullshit until its 2001 release, so maybe it doesn’t qualify as a 00-09 decade release. But you know what? I only discovered it last year, so deal with it. Something about the repetitive rhythm of driving guitars spread out across eight-and-a-half minutes of Mark Kozelek’s beautifully direct lyrics on In Between Days put me right back in San Francisco; walking along the Embarcadero, cold, February rain sprinkling down, an ocean mist stinging my eyes and the girl I love right there next to me, neither of us concerned with anything but the present. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a few plane tickets to book…
9. Hissing Fauna, Are you the Destroyer? – Of Montreal (2007)
I wasn’t sure what to think the first time I heard Hissing Fauna. It felt too dance-pop and just not my style. But then I couldn’t stop listening to it. Slowly but surely I was drawn in. The hyper-pop-fuzz of songs like Suffer for Fashion, Cato as a Pun and Bunny ain’t no Kind of Rider were pure fun to listen to. Driving along I couldn’t but bob my head along with the beat. And then, after a few days of bouncing around in my car like a schoolgirl something else happened: I began to internalize the lyrics and the songs took on a wholly different meaning. Suddenly the epic ender The Past is a Grotesque Animal didn’t feel so out of place but rather the perfect ending to an album about so much more than it appears to be.
8. Funeral – Arcade Fire (2004)
When the wall of sound, fury and passion that is Funeral hit me the only thing I could think of was “How come I haven’t heard of these guys before?” The brilliant songwriting that mixes somewhat melancholy lyrics with driving, impassioned musical performances was love at first listen for me. When I heard Crown of Love on an early season episode of Rescue Me and saw how beautifully the music played against powerful scenes in the show and then built up into the pounding ending, my only thought was I have to see these guys live… something I’m still waiting to do.
7. The Ugly Organ – Cursive (2003)
Just before a cross-country trip to Maine, a friend had given me a copy of The Ugly Organ with instructions to simply “just listen.” Well, in the days before ubiquitous iPods and multi-CD changers, 36 hours roadtrips offered A LOT of time to “just listen” when you couldn’t reach the CD case and your co-pilot was asleep. I still remember, quite vividly, driving into Bangor, Maine at dusk when The Recluse came on–maybe for the 6 or 7th time. It stuck with me this time, as did most of the album, and solidified Tim Kasher in my mind as one of the most brilliant and underrated singer / songwriters of the decade.
6. Give Up – The Postal Service (2003)
Already well in love with Death Cab for Cutie’s incredible early work (as for their last two albums…) I quickly jumped at the chance to hear Ben Gibbard try something new on Give Up. It struck me as fun and infinitely listenable–a theory that would be tested over and over again in the next six years. During every party we hosted during college there was the inevitable party-playlist building session and every time it was decided “put the whole Postal Service album on.” And no one, not a single person, ever uttered “ugh, change the song” when The Postal Service played. Never. Dozens of parties and hundreds of people agree: everyone loves The Postal Service.
5. Figure 8 – Elliott Smith (2000)
If I’d written this list between 2002-04 it may very well have been all Elliott. Introduced to him via Good Will Hunting, I fell into a deep obsession with Smith’s darkly haunting, yet often hopeful songwriting. A string of failed relationships and my big “college breakup” helped fuel a need in me for the sort of cathartic listening that Smith’s music provided. I went so far as booking time in my school’s recording studio to produce my own version of a few of Smith’s songs (which will remain unreleased, btw.) Eventually I began to grow out of Smith’s songs–or rather–I became much more optimistic and happy but that fact remains that he still hits an emotional chord in me that few other musicians have ever managed to do.
4. Album of the Year (acoustic) – The Good Life (2004)
This album secures Tim Kasher’s spot as my vote for best songwriter of the decade. “The first time that I met her I wa
s throwing up in a ladies room stall / she asked me if I needed anything / I said I think I spilled my drink” begins the title track, which is a summary of the story the rest of the album tells about a failed relationship. “You never fell for me / you fell for how it felt / you fell for being held” begins Needy with Kasher’s “let me tell you a story just like it happened” style. A stark contrast to fellow Saddle Creek label-mate Conner Oberst’s often beautiful but much more metaphorical lyrical style.
3. Chutes too Narrow – The Shins (2003)
I remember the first time I heard Chutes too Narrow, my roommate freshman year of college brought it home and told me I needed to hear this. After the first few songs I said “Is this country?” and quickly dismissed it. Looking back I’m not sure what made me think that, other than at the time, nothing on my radar quite sounded like The Shins. There were stripped down and bare. No heavy guitars or crunching distortion–just straight ahead rock and roll fun. I finally came around and fell in love with them. The rest, as they say, is history.
2. Agaetis Byrjun – Sigur Ros (2000)
Shortly after I became obsessed with figuring out what the song is that play’s over the final scene in Vanilla Sky, a friend gave me this album to try out and everything clicked–Sigur Ros (the Vanilla Sky song is NjóSnavéLinin off their ( ) album.) There really isn’t anything or anyone who sounds quite like Sigur Ros. From their use of Icelandic and made-up Hopelandic lyrics to lead singer Jonsi’s use of a cello bow on his guitar, there just isn’t anyone else making music on the level that Sigur Ros is. I keep a CD in my car at all times that has the title track, Agaetis Byrjun on it. When the world seems a little too heavy and fast-paced and the stress is piling up I put the track on, take a deep breath and think, “You know what?, This is An Alright Beginning (Agaetis Byrjun translated) to a wonderful day.”
1. Come on Feel the Illinoise – Sufjan Stevens (2005)
You can’t help but feel it when listening to Illinoise: feel that Sufjan may be one of the most talented singer / songwriters ever to tell someone (or someplace) else’s stories. While no one is doubting the brilliance of tracks like Chicago and Jacksonville, I firmly believe that Casimir Pulaski Day may be the most beautifully tragic song ever recorded. My roadtrip several months ago to see him live reaffirmed my admiration to his talent and humble brilliance. Sure, he may never complete, or even add another album to, his 50 states project, but so long as he stays true to his goofy, banjo-playing, wing-wearing, completely original self, I’ll keep on feeling every bit of noise he puts out.
The Boulder Digital Works 12/10 Project
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlfM_jZxTZM]
Why would someone drop everything for more than a year to enroll in a completely untested program that vowed to teach the world of digital and interactive in a way never done before? The first class of 12 students in Boulder Digital Works’ (BDW) first 60 Weeks program answer that question in their new short film called The 1210 Project.
The 1210 Project is named after what will be the students’ final day of BDW 60 Weeks, December 10, 2010. The video explores the twelve students’ motivation for jumping onboard Boulder Digital Works’ 60 Weeks program inaugural voyage. Some of the students enrolled after hearing about the program with only weeks before its start. The film looks at what the students have learned, considers their hopes and plans for the program’s remaining 50 weeks and focuses on their dreams, goals and predictions.
These 12 students, who range in age from 22 to 48, have been exposed to some of the best of the best in digital and interactive over the past 10 weeks. Their brains are buzzing and the walls of BDW are bulging with possibility.
There is much work to do leading up to 12/10/10 and years of work after that, but there is no doubt there will never be a year quite like the one that lies directly ahead. Follow my fellow Boulder Digital Works students over the next year at http://bdw.colorado.edu/blogs/
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged 12/10 project, awesome stuff, boulder digital works, justin mccammon Leave a comment
Help Ad2 Denver’s Public Service Campaign
The poster to the left says it all, click to make it bigger and I’ll see you at Cactus!
It’s about to get crazy in here
I’ve been working on a site re-design as part of a project at Boulder Digital Works. I’m just about ready to push it live. That means I’m going to screw things up and learn along the way. So be ready for a disruption in the space time continuum. If the site never comes back up again know that I must have stumbled upon some new quirk in html5 that allows for the creation of black holes. Either that or I gave it all up to work on a small farm in Iowa. Either possibility is equally likely at this point.
Sufjan Stevens rocks Madison
Here’s a long overdue update from the Sufjan Steven’s concert last month.
Since Sufjan hasn’t toured much lately, a few friends and I decided to make the trek up to Madison, WI to see him play, the closest he would come to Denver. When it was all said and done we had a great time and the concert totally rocked our socks off. Here’s a sampling of what we saw: some old songs, some new, all awesome.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Srsk2oqTCZM]
I have a few general criteria for what makes a concert awesome to me and Sufjan hit almost all of them:
1- Be interesting – Sufjan made some great banter between songs. I hate it when the only thing a musician says is “thanks” and then keeps on playing.
2-Give me something unique – I’ve already bought the album, so mix it up a little bit and give me something I can’t get anywhere else. Sufjan certainly did by not only playing brand new songs but also re-arranging older ones to fit the band he was touring with.
3-Show some energy – Sufjan did a pretty good job of looking like he was into the music and enjoying himself up there. I like that.
4-Smash something – OK, maybe it’s a stretch, but I really want to see a musician smash an instrument after – or even during – a show. Sufjan didn’t smash anything but I guess I can forgive him.
Boulder Digital Works: 10 Months in 10 Sentences
It’s been roughly 10 months since I started as a student in the graduate program Boulder Digital Works. It’s been a crazy, wild ride to put it modestly. And I’ve neglected to keep up with this blog during most of that time because, well, I had A LOT of other things to do. So now, without further ado, is my clif notes version of the last ten months in ten sentences.
Special bonus!
11. My co-conspirators and I are nearing graduation and ready for jobs & internships. Learn more about us at morepeoplelikeus.com
Special double bonus note: watch this space for some re-designing in the coming weeks. I’m going to use this as a test space for new WordPress themes I’m developing so check back often and let me know what you think (and ignore the blank state the blog is currently in).