Designing the Swoon, and Chillaxin' with Inventors

In the process of researching professional conferences to attend, two types have caught my eye: those that instruct attendees on how to fill the need for better information design, and those that declare the need for more thorough infusions between media and technology.

First, most people know about information design, thanks to Edward Tufte; we just usually call them "charts and graphs." Or a visual representation of the data you could've read in body copy, if you're a reader first. An effective chart has the power to embed itself deeper into our subconsious and memory, and believe it or not, can actually create appreciable value, according to one paper on Information Design. *As a slight aside, zero visuals or graphs/charts on the organization's website? Hmmm .... do as I say, ....

While Tufte's San Francisco conference in December looks interesting, I'm going to have to keep searching for something a little more germaine to my visual preferences (and skill set!).

AIGA has a terrific newsletter called Transitions that helps people make the switch from novice to student to professional designer. I think most editors who are serious about creating value in their publications and professions should park it here for a spell and learn how to appreciate--and ideally create--the work designers do that makes us all swoon.

Secondly, fewer people know about--or understand--the future of how intertwined information/content/media will be with its technological tools/applications/systems bearers. I discovered that there is an actual acronym for Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and these guys plan new communications business models around communications networks and devices. And unless you're Albert Bell and William Randolph Hearst, chances are you will rely on the next inventor and his/her invention to deliver your message.


The Economist, interestingly, is hosting a similar conference in October this year, but this time, they're gathering the techies, the editors and the marketers to find out how to make sure companies are at that intersection, just waiting to nab the next surge of consumer traffic. Marketers are positioning themselves to meet the commerce where it will be. Pretty smart, huh?

So why don't writers, editors and publishers get strategic about where to meet their audiences? Could it be we've spent too long ruminating over the importance of our own messages that we've failed to see the inventors and their tools just waiting to help us get to the intersection? And guess who's at the intersection? Our audiences, who by the way, happen to be our customers, buyers of media. Buyers of content. Maybe if we spent a little more time with the inventor crowd, we'd be positioned to capture the next wave of paid-content consumers ...

Experience, Report, but Filter ...

Sometimes the best thing to say online is not the first.

ABA Journal reminds us as content creators that sometimes the editorial process includes not just fact-checking, but gut-checking, before posting our news, information or editorials.

It also reminds me that while I experience the world and get ready to report my findings, it's good to leave the catharsis to things like the yoga studio, instead of L'Éléfont, n'est-ce pas?

ISTJ, Take Two??

Unbelievable.

Once again, an ISTJ rating for me. Although actually, it's an ISTJ rating for this blog. I tested its language at Typealyzer, a tool developed to analyze the personality type conveyed in your blog. I can't say I'm stoked about this rating, but what can I say? It's been a hard week. This is what happens to me (see earlier "93 Percent More Agreeable Than Me" post) in trying times.

Additionally, now Typealyzer has ArcheTypealyzer, a tool that shows you what personality archetype your blog conveys. Mine said:

Motivation: Belonging
Desire to be yourself and find out about the world.

OK, now that? I can live with.

Museums of the Future: Counterpoint

And yet, even as I post the "update" vision below, it strikes me that static text is somewhat staid, grand and soothing. There certainly is a place for the fixed word in our ever-changing dialogue, but it impresses upon me the greater weight that those fixed words must now hold if they want to anchor our histories of great people, places and things with real conviction.

I think I was hoping for better quality and depth of writing on the placards at the de Young. Guess I could've just stated that upfront, but leave it to me to see an opportunity to use a different media model.

Museums of the Future: Updating the Art-Content Interplay

Recently, I went to the de Young Museum in San Francisco to see the Yves Saint Laurent and Andy Warhol exhibits. I don't think it struck me until days afterward that the two shows were devoted to artists who mainly plied their best crafts through the 1950s through 1970s. It's interesting to think of the 20th century as "modern" in terms of an art museum, when the 21st century has already brought us more information and imagery than we know what to do with.






The actual costumes and posters were soothing to see in real life; their tangibility reinforcing the wall placard's descriptions alongside. But something about the placards themselves drove me nuts: static text? I don't know. I guess had we never been introduced to the Information Age, static text would suit me just fine.

I guess my point was that I couldn't believe how dated the content (or placards) seemed, in light of our culture of information instantaneousness. One cool thing to see if they would do it, would be touchscreen placards that you could flip though to see different critics' takes on the same piece of art or artist.

Part of me started to think about current artists and authors who reign supreme in real time. I'm not sure how this would work, but I began to think about how they could display actual art that is being created as we speak, perhaps on Screen #1, then have actual critics writing the biographies and summaries of the artists and their work, perhaps on Screen #2. It would almost be a wing of the museum where you'd never see the same thing twice, and curators would be responsible for going out in the field and "gathering" these artists and writers, and then assembling their feedback into a living, updating art-content interplay.

I would be highly inspired by this real-time art assembly.

de Young, holla if you hear me.

Fix Your Own Business Model!

I don't know about you, but occasionally I get annoyed with the unrealistic idealism in which journalists frame their stories. Recently, they reproached Wells Fargo for holding a sales and service conference to reward its top sellers from the previous year, citing the company's acceptance of TARP money as proof that the trip was a "junket" at the taxpayers' expense.

First of all, this is blatantly misleading, as these conferences happen every year for every company that has every sold anything in the history of capitalism. Secondly, the company has a recognition department that has its own existing budget, and I can tell you for a fact that this budget gets absolutely zero windfall from government assistance, especially TARP. Thirdly, the costs of cancelling said conference, which the company did under public scrutiny, costs just about as much as it does to go forward with it. Ask the staff at The Wynn or Encore how they feel about that cancelled trip.

Now I don't know about you, but I'm firmly unapologetic for defending those who are rewarding salespeople right about now. Anyone who's making money (as long as it's being made honestly) in this economy should be rewarded for their hard work, not punished. Their capital-raising is helping lift the rest of us out of the current economic $hit heap we'll all die in if we don't mobilize out of soon. I wouldn't want to be on the front line for sales right now, would you?

And of course, neither would the journalists. Which is why they write for AP, instead of selling its ad space. IT'S EASIER.

And from this big, fat easy chair, journalists continue to criticize media business models, without coming up with any marketable reasons people should pay for their content. Truthfully, they're not sure why either, but they're too proud to tell you that. In fact, if journalists ran the world, these would be the rules:

1. Any business that makes money must be demonized. Mainly, this is because journalists themselves don't make money, and their publishers are lax in solving the publishing business model in the era of information instantaneousness.
2. No business can have benefits or a retirement plan. Reason: See number one.
3. No business can have time off, especially not paid time off, nor paid conferences. Reason: See number one.
4. No businessman or businesswoman can have a family or a life. Reason: See number one. Plus, journalists themselves are overworked and underpaid. Thus, the field day they have with supposed "junket" stories.
5. When faced with facts that don't fit your theory, throw the facts aside.

I seriously know of about five things AP could've mentioned in their story to balance the coverage of the supposed "junket" story, including: Wells paying dividends back to Treasury within months of being forced to accept TARP money -- and here's the article about banks being strongarmed into accepting Treasury's TARP money; Wells making more loan commitments to Main Street than mostly any big bank out there, Wells Fargo working with the HOPE Now alliance, which works with homeowners to keep them in their homes and the idea that Americans aren't being rewarded for their productivity.

Instead of criticizing the business model of a company that works (even when the government tries to intervene with forced liquidity), why doesn't the media get back to trying to fix their own business model? After a paltry victory with the writers' strike of 2007-2008 that awarded digital revenue, a metaphorical "nose in the tent" ceased the discussion? Whatever happened to dwelling in that tent, expanding the tent or, better yet, putting up a brand new tent?

27 Blogging Secrets ...

... a terrific article on improved blogging and readership rates, courtesy of Chris Brogan.

www.toothpastefordinner.com