Like many who have seen his TED talk, I’ve been incredibly inspired by Sir Ken Robinson. He’s shone a bright light on a huge problem we face as a nation: our education system and how it’s failing our next generation. We’ve lost creativity in our current systems. Other nations are leaping over us in creative thinking and expression (as this recent Newsweek article describes). States keep cutting and cutting, slashing programs from second languages to art to music (one of the early casualties), in lieu of a focus on learning how to take standardized tests. Huh?

I have the highest respect for teachers. They are the cornerstone of modern society. They are creating the next generation and the amazing teachers out there aren’t nearly compensated for all the work they do. The system has failed them (the good ones). Like too many things today, it’s become robotic and formulaic, which is in turn sucking the creative juices from our kids. Some argue that technology is pushing us there. That’s simply a cop out. As we’ve learned in Cognitive Surplus (Shirky’s awesome book), modern technology has given way to an excess in time and energy–alluding to MORE time for creation. Instead of focusing on how “silly and trite” LOLCats are (which they aren’t…what would we do without our cyber feline friends?), could we encourage our next gen to play with arduinos and learn how to create the next awesome gizmo instead? Be creatively productive?

Personally, I don’t think I could do what I do now without some awesome opportunities in the arts. I still remember my favorite class in elementary school,”Creative Expression”. It was a class of a brave teachers creation–loosely built on the traditional art class (which I also had) but focusing less on skills and more on making stuff you loved. A little crafty, a lot of freedom for a 10 year old. I undoubtedly believe it contributed to my appreciation for the arts now and helped lead me to my home in the creative industry.

We are so “skill centric” today that sometimes we miss the less overt learning that can occur in exploration and discovery. We all have a responsibility to cast a critical eye on our education system (if you have kids or not!) and support a higher order learning. Selfishly, I want the next generation to have ALL of the creative outlets as possible, if for nothing else, my own gain. Who will entertain? Who will innovate the next technology to save lives? Who will design the most amazingly beautiful structures? If the answer is no one, we’re in a whole lot of trouble…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Robinson’s book, The Element is a must-read for all. It’s not about the industry or even communication systems specifically. It advocates diversity in our education system to make a dynamic, innovative and inspired next generation. It also does an amazing job of demonstrating through sound examples of the GREAT stories of fostering creativity early on.

Image via Behance: http://www.behance.net/gallery/Creative-Truths/263281 Shirley-Ann Dick

Surrounded by boxes in mid-relocation– I have to write a few words to support Bud Caddell and his quest to write the book on the changing world of strategy. Bud has a phenomenal blog which I’ve followed for quite some time and admire his thinking tremendously. He decided to start a project and see how the “network” could help guide and shape the writing of a book. Awesome idea. I’m thrilled to say that he’s reached his first goal of $5K, but that’s just the beginning. I’ll get to the point–support him here to contribute whatever you can to his kickstarter project. You won’t be sorry.

So why am I supporting his project?

1)  I truly respect what Bud has been doing for ALL of us. He asks provocative questions. Invites us (the readers) to become involved, then allows us into his world and way of thinking. I loved the Web Video THUNDERDROME from sxsw he did with Mike Arauz (well, the presentation. I was lame and not at sxsw this year…). He’s given a lot of himself and for that I’m truly grateful. I know how much time, passion and heart this job takes, Bud’s doing this to the nth degree. It’s driving me to be better and want more from my own work. He’s “gifted” us for a long while, it’s time to show support.

2) To put a bit of my money where my mouth (and heart) is. This whole social world we live in has REAL, inherit value. There are still naysayers that still refuse to “get” it. This project and hundreds of projects like it, fly in the face of this. Collaborative creation is our future. Embrace it.

3) Camaraderie. This social world we live in has allowed me to connect and chat with amazing people.  Virtually meeting awesome folks (like minded and not-so like minded), chatting about the ways of the world, sharing struggles and victories in our day-to-day, there is a bit of an unspoken bond.

4) Becoming a little part of something I truly believe in to be awesome. And absolutely necessary.

Support him now. Please and thank you.

Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age is Clay Shirky’s latest and greatest. As I’m sure many of you know, he is one of the most forward thinkers on the internet revolution (if not you may want to check out his very popular TED Talks). His quotes find it into copious presentations, his influence is immense. His new book does not disappoint-my underlined, dog-eared, twice read copy is physical evidence of the awesomeness.

This book is filled with insightful provocations–there would be no way I would be able to touch on all of them in this post. His examples are designed to make you think, but it won’t tell you what we necessarily need to do with the issue at hand. While so many books on social media are filled with best practices and rules, this one takes a well needed step back and looks at the sociocultural context in which the internet revolution lives in. And Shirky (rightly) postulates that there is no magical “master strategy”, rather navigating “what works” in this new space will require several smaller experiments, few of which will be marvelous and successful, most which will be deemed “failures” by many.

The questions that Shirky works to answer are the biggies:

- Why is social media as important as it is to us? The notion of a “cognitive surplus” –a consequence of the postwar boom, the surplus of energy, intellect and time which was once nearly completely consumed by television– is detailed drawing on behavioral/motivation theory to support his thesis. (the cog sci in me was thrilled!) This surplus is now being aggregated in these new mediums at a low cost (both monetary and time).

- Why is there this aversion to accepting it as a new part of communicating? He uses a lovely reoccurring reference “Gutenberg economics” likening the advent of movable type of  as similar to that of social media today. The democratization of the written word is much like the democratization of ideas and the ability to SHARE freely (changing what “publishing” means across the board). His general answer:

- “Professional” versus “amateur” (Zagat vs Yelp, Youtube vs. Studios, etc). While he believes there’s a lot of cognitive surplus that’s not necessarily going to the BEST of use (perhaps those LOLCats could be something slightly more useful), he recognizes that there is an intrinsic motivation when an “amateur” creates something (he/she is doing it for the LOVE of the craft) versus a professional who does it for a living. Additionally, without the “bad” there would be no “good”…

Thank you Mr. Shirky, for giving readers the respect to illuminate issues with your examples/insight and putting the onus back on them to move forward and make decisions that will shape (all) our collective future.

READ IT! You’ll thank me later…

Image via: Cognections Blog

Are we born knowing how to play? In fact, yes. Humans are hardwired to “play” in their given environments. This was the gist of my thesis in college (I was a cog sci/child dev person–go figure, I work in advertising now…) and I remember spending copious hours in the lab (well, the sandbox) playing with kids, observing and piecing together the “whys” and “hows” of this thing called play and what it meant to their development into *awesome* adults.

Fast forward a few years to life in behavioural science as it relates to marketing and the topic still fascinates. But now I’m looking at “grown ups”–and our innate INability to play. Need proof? IKEA commissioned the world’s largest play study, PlayReport International some disturbing facts began to emerge out of the poll of 11,000 parents and kids…26% of parents are too stressed to play with their kids, 50% of parents want play to be educational, while the overwhelming majority of kids just want to have fun (big surprise, but hang onto this thought). And many parents say they’ve simply forgotten how to play.

So hold on a second. If we’re hardwired to play then why do we forget how to play by the time we’re grown up? Transactional nature of our lives. Actions require a hard outcome (hence, adults wanting kids ‘play’ to be educational), however what we’re actually wired for is the human interactions garnered through play. That’s the “reward”–learning how to play in the sandbox with others. Understanding the nuances of interaction is massively important and often overlooked, but as a creative person, we must understand each other (who else are we creating for?)  This is also why some of our very “adult” problems surface-not being able to play in that proverbial sandbox, as we’re expecting our “gains” out of every time we play. The reality is, sometimes we just require play to be a time to interact and (gasp) have fun.

As creative professionals, we can never lose that ability to play for playing’s sake. Of course we need to produce. Of course we have deadlines. But we also have to take the time to just interact with our friends, colleagues and creative teams–PLAY and see what happens, no strings attached. Chances are it’ll be something quite amazing.

Image Via: Alex Beltechi

Usually this blogspace is reserved for my meanderings on tech, design, adverts and the communications world. Today’s post is a bit more personal. Two weeks ago I decided to make a big change and for the first time, leap before I looked. So of course, the “why”…

In essence, I simply felt the need to freely practice what I preach. I realize it’s never going to be perfect, but my passion for social ideas/innovation/behaviors drive me towards something new and different. Recently I was confronted with the question: “why are you so ‘into’ this social media thing?” After a quick chuckle, roll of the eyes and rebellious “duh?” –I realized it may not be so clear. It comes down to something I’ve said many many times before. It’s not “social media” persay–I’m interested in ideas that are social: social networks, behaviours and activities and the technologies that facilitate it.

I’m searching for the deeper insights into human behavior (which isn’t so unusual for a “planner” type). Not necessarily just the “purchase intent behavior” but connected behaviors. How we connect to each other, to what we call “media” and of course those other things we call “brands.” I stumbled on this fantastic quote from the amazing Nick Christakis’ TED blog post:

Fundamentally, I suppose this topic sits well with my perception of humanity. We are, first of all, not solitary creatures and second of all, we are deeply embedded in the lives of others. It’s very easy to forget that and to engage in an atomistic fallacy — where we think that all we have to do is study the individual components of a system in order to understand the system. That’s clearly not the case when it comes to social systems. This realization was very much to my liking, intellectually and otherwise. We cannot understand our humanity just by studying individuals.

Well, all said, I’m out in the world determined to help make great social ideas come to life and become a part of culture. Inspired by my peers, driven to help create something awesome, I truly believe this is the most exciting time ever to be a part of this industry. There are incredible people in it, amazing ideas out there and technology to make your every whim come true if you really want it. Let’s see what we can create together…

Image: from my little camera under the gigantic “thinking tree” in Balboa park…

I am assuming you’ve become aware of the evolution of Facebook this past week. You may have even already joined the group “50 million signatures to stop Facebook from violating your privacy”. And the backlash is understandable to some degree. The opt-in function (or opt-out) isn’t intuitive at all, arguably down right sneaky, but it’s understandable why they didn’t have you “opt in”-because the unknown is scary! Just like how we all thought online banking was a weird and foreign concept up until a few years ago.

And while it is scary that all your “personal info” is out there and hyper connected via Facebook, it’s time to step back and think about just how awesome this could be. Technology is getting smarter now, helping you make decisions, which is part of the reason why we love technology so much. It’s this extra bit of personalization. Something so many of us love- almost like having a personal concierge at all times…

Who knows. Maybe this venture of Facebook’s will fail miserably-but judging by their track history, likely not. Regardless this shows the direction in which we are all headed. We are going to be connected even more than ever before. Great example is the Levi’s shopping integration. Finally that idea of “social shopping” becomes incredibly tangible. Hard to believe how MANY “likes” so many products had within hours of launching.

We are social creatures. What other people say/do/think matters to us more than we’d like to admit. It’s all a part of the idea of creating social heuristics–shortcuts. Knowing that someone else approves of a product/service (like a pair of jeans) gives us freedom from going through every step of decision making process. Eventually we may get exhausted of all the liking and tune it out like we tune out banner ads, but until such time get used to “liking” a lot.

Thankfully I believe we’ve finally gotten to a place where we’ve accepted digital social behaviours as far more than just a passing “trend” and in fact very pervasive communication tool (I’m virtually patting all on the back who are here with us).  The numbers are staggering and every day a new statistic is unveiled that validates what many of us believe so deeply. But there are still those naysayers who believe that social media is somehow tied to people being glued to their computers day in, day out, the fact that Foursquare grew by 100,000 users in 12 days points at the potential that social has extends WELL beyond the confines of the “computer” (why does that feel weird to even say? possibly because my laptop is attached to me at least 16 hours a day…). Enter mobile.

Now this is not earth shattering news. It has probably been the “year of mobile” for what, the past 5 years? This year however things are truly starting to flip. Mind whirling statistics like the one in this infographic from Digital Buzz Blog on mobile social use should knock your socks right off.

Now that you’re barefoot and fancy free, let’s talk about what this means to the creative industry. Since social behaviours are increasingly manifesting in mobile it means that now we are able to get that one little step closer to the PEOPLE we are trying to reach. Physicality of the mobile device itself is fascinating. Our relationships with our tools–like phones or jackhammers–is what drives many of our behaviours. If we are able to truly harness the power of connection to our devices, the potential for communications and in essence, meaningful art, is tremendous.

In theory, social shopping seems to be the wave of the future– location-based apps that show some promise, but have yet to really carry out “greatness”. Crowdsourcing and shopping however shows a lot more (immediate) possibility. From a strategic perspective (sorry, throwing “that face” on) crowdsourcing for RETAIL can be a great way to get consumers to feel a PART of the process. Ah, the democratisation of fashion.

Modcloth is a company that has taken on a nearly completely “social” model. From having consumers interact with “games” they set up through Facebook and Twitter (and no, there are no fancy apps involved, just good old fashioned interaction) to having consumers vote on their favorite pieces. A sample lives on the site for two weeks and consumers can “heart” it and at the end of the couple weeks, if there are enough votes, the piece becomes part of the collection. Simple ideas, but engaging and empowering. The empowerment aspect is something I feel is so often overlooked, particularly when speaking to young women. For some reason we are still stuck in the dark ages thinking that the only thing that motivates them are glossy images with loads of retouching and rail thin models. This kind of brand brings a realness to fashion. And it is NOT a dirty word.

Fashion is fun again. To young women who love the thrill of shopping (ahem), Modcloth is a fun, social space, where their voices are heard. Who needs that buyer? BE that buyer!

Visit Modcloth

Image via: Inc.com

It has been years of “being the year of mobile”, but finally 2010 seems to be shaping up to be THE year it lives up to the hype. As all the stars begin to align-devices and carriers as well as the exponential growth of mobile web browsing-more nifty applications are popping up that are changing the retail landscape.

It is so much more than mobile coupons or SMS campaigns (they are definitely a part of it, but not the end all) it’s about utility. From finding the store you’re looking for using an app like Fastmall which will speed you around your mall experience (thank god, because I can never find a directory when I need it) or utilizing technology as Norma Kamali is, where you can read tags on their displays that tell you all the details of the piece that you’re interested in. And you needn’t ask a fussy sales person or worry about not making it into the store on time.

Another part of the shopping puzzle is the social element of it all. We’ve talked about social shopping before on the blog, but none have really taken off the way that something like foursquare has. However, integrating location based technologies/gaming (like foursquare) with the sharing element of a facebook and great things could happen. Shopping to many is a innately social activity (OK, ladies, you’re with me here), and many of us find ourselves texting friends at sales, sending pictures from a store of a pair of shoes you’re just not sure of yet and need that second opinion…brands just need to find the right way into the story.

Another prediction: Concierge type services will proliferate, and shopping will be made even more dummy proof. We won’t know what it was like to be without (mark…my…words…) Will we buy more as a result? Retailers certainly hope so, but moreover the bar will be raised for consumer satisfaction. And oh it will be glorious.

Image via NY Times