Spatial Fix - A new geographic order

It is been a while sense my last post.  I took a blogging sabbatical due to joining a start up.  Now that I have my bearings again, I am re-engaging on the right brain in a left brain world tact that I started back in January.

One of my favorite author finds a few years back is Richard Florida.  Richard is Professor of Business and Creativity at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto and has authored several books on the “Creative Class”. His approach is based on a unique analysis of creative types by their geographic clustering and how that phenomenon shapes cities and associated communities across the globe. I am now reading his new book - Who’s Your City and am thinking about my own life and where I ultimately want to end up.

As we are all experiencing the ill effects of gas price shock, not to mention other inflationary impacts, I have been paying attention to the re-emergence of urban renewal. As the population ages, you can see empty nester’s returning to city life as a way to re-live easily accessible night life, restaurants, performances and the like. You can sense the return to “local food sources”, the desire to clean up our environment and the idea of riding your bike can be good on many levels.

Richard’s recent post on Spatial Fix, struck me as a strong correlation to the kinds of things that I am focused on with Spatial Shift.

A quote from The New Spatial Fix…

We are now passing through the early development of a wholly new geographic order – what geographers call “the spatial fix” – of which the move back toward the city is just one part.

Suburbanization was the spatial fix for the industrial age – the geographic expression of mass production. Low-cost mortgages, massive highway systems and suburban infrastructure projects fuelled the industrial engine of postwar capitalism, propelling demand for cars, appliances and all sorts of industrial goods.

The creative economy is giving rise to a new spatial fix and a very different geography – the contours of which are only now emerging.

As someone who lived in the city, had a family and moved to the burbs, my wife and I yearn to go back to the city. My new job requires that I drive 50 miles each way every day. Quite the transition from my 22 minute bart ride with my previous company. I am living the conflicted nature of missing the city vibe, pouring cash into my tank every week and wondering what will become of the next few years.

I believe the observations behind The New Spatial Fix is only the beginning of a transformation that will ultimately begin reshaping the way we live and conduct business. One only needs to look at the emergence of Dubai as the hot destination for innovation, new forms of education (lead by American universities and professorial talent) to see that new city-states are forming, ready to take a seat at the global table.

Talent, community and infrastructure will ultimately make the notion of commuting a by-gone verb of yesterday. We are witnessing a rapid shift before our very eyes on multiple fronts. A very exciting time, as long as you embrace change.

Right Brain or Left Brain: TED | Talks | Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight (video)

I have an idea…to create a website for Spatial Shift that will feature a front door that looks like a brain. Chose right and you get the right brain approach to the world. Chose left and you get the left brain approach to the world. I bought the url for Spatial Shift and I wasn’t sure what to do with it. Upon watching this video and thinking back to the kinds of books and interests that I gravitated towards throughout my years, I think I have the creative outline for what can be. Now I just need some help to architect it and execute against it.

I would love your feedback on this concept…spend a moment on this video from TED.com featuring Jill Bolte Taylor who lives through a stroke and shares the insights that she witnessed…then help me create this journey…

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from www.ted.com posted with vodpod

The Reward of Teaching and discovering Serendipity

In my last post, I sited going back to Michigan State to teach a course on digital media. It is now one week after the fact and I am thrilled I got the opportunity to share my insights. It is humbling to think that a generation has passed since I embarked on my career ambitions from those hallowed grounds 25 years ago. It was extremely rewarding to “give back” and participate in educating tomorrow’s would be heroes. My presentation went over very well. The course I constructed created a firestorm of energy and creativity. A connection was made with the students. They were grateful for learning a subject matter in a digital context verses their current analog process. That discovery is another blog post to come.

When I created the Spatial Shift blog, it was part of my new years resolution to begin a new chapter in my life. I was inspired by a blog post by Christine Kane who prompted me to create a new years resolution around one word. The word chosen was “serendipity” . The goal being to filter everything for the year around that word. I really didn’t fully understand the word, but threw it around a lot in my conversations. Serendipity seemed to fit the mindset that I was about to embark on. I knew I needed to open up in new ways and to become more receptive to whatever came along. I also knew that I had to create the energy necessary to foster serendipity.

So, I am back from teaching and reflecting on what I learned. I got involved with the MSU opportunity because I reached out on something completely different and was offered a tenure that I had never considered before. I said yes. Serendipity to a “T”. While at Michigan State, I also ran into two other professors who happened to be working on several projects that are likely to overlap with some of my current efforts. Yet, another form of serendipity yet to come.

Sparked by my educational adventure, I thought I would dig down a little deeper for the true context of “Serendipity”. I found some very interesting things. One being a young adult female in Mexico who also discovered Serendipity and decided to spend a year writing a book about it - while a teenager. The book is called Discovering Serendipity and she has made it free on the web. Another find was the following quote and accompanying video:

Serendipity is when you find things you weren’t looking for because finding what you are looking for is so damn difficult. —Erin McKean, speech at TED

Serendipity has its roots in science, social science, anthropology and literature. The core underpinnings point to the significance of “discovery” as the core meaning of the word. In the paper “Three Priniciples of Serendipity: Insight, Chance and Discovery in Qualitative Research”, by Gary Fine and James Deegan - the authors define Serendipity as: “the interactive outcome of unique and contingent mixes of insight coupled with chance”.

The biggest lesson I learned this last week is the one that was taught to me 25 years ago by a wise old Michigan State professor - “You need to learn how to learn, because you will be learning the rest of your life”. Add to that Serendipity and I think you have the makings of a Spatial Shift.

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Looking Back to Go Forward

Next week I get to play a new role in my career. I will teach for the first time as a visiting professional at my Alma mater Michigan State in their Advertising program. In prepping for what will be my 25th anniversary since participating as a student, I have had the chance to really dig into macro level data and step back to a 30,000 feet level. When telescoping out, you really get to see an amazing view of change, the most significant of which is the speed by which creative destruction is occurring.

The Spatial Shift view is becoming more and more relevant. The analytics piece of the equation is now bubbling to the surface as Omniture hosted its first analytic summit around the significance of metrics. This article by Jason Burby sums up the arrival of analytics as a prominent piece of the marketing puzzle. I have been fortunate to meet with a lot of companies and executives over the last 90 days. The conversations I am having around the topic of analytics is usually front and center and ironically an admitted weakness. In fact, it is usually the “differentiator” when looking at true strategic advantages of the company. Those that have a grip on their analytics, are forging ahead. Those that don’t are scratching their heads against the swift currents that are impacting their business today.

The EU approval of the Google Doubleclick deal continues the sea shift for the advertising business in more ways than people know. The ability to see data flow, click flow and build ever optimizing algorithmic solutions against those insights is going to continue to drive business away from the traditional media companies towards the technology driven media companies of tomorrow. By academic standards - a “paradigm shift” that appears to be accelerating.

Click fraud and click quality are now becoming a new force of measurements as recessionary pressures cause every company to scrutinize its inefficiencies. A whole new wave of data driven “supercrunching” companies are emerging on the fringes and quietly creating a counter-balance to the Google juggernaut. With fraud and or click quality widely quoted to be between 17 - 30% (pending the source), there is a lot of room to squeeze better efficiencies out of the digital space.

On the creative/design side of the house, I met with Greg Wilson, founder of RedBallTiger this week. Red Ball Tiger is a creative analytics company. The mission of Red Ball Tiger is to create a new ROI currency for the art of storytelling - “Return on Involvement”. Greg is creating a new business model based on rewarding time spent viewing creative content (be it commercials, infomericals, branded entertainment, etc) on a second by second basis. The premise being - if you watch 1:50 of a 2:00 commercial, shouldn’t you be rewarded greater than someone watching :05 of a :30 effort? A new way to think about pay per view - from the creative side of the house. Will be interesting to see who is willing to break from historical models to play in this new risk/reward proposition.

This point of view will only become more relevant as broadcast goes completely digital on February 17, 2009. On this date, the idea of viewing something with the ability to track it, optimize it and activate it all becomes a reality. It will be interesting to see what the Advertising graduating class of 2008, 09 and 10 at Michigan State will have to say about what these observations.

A new generation of fresh minds meets an adaptive mind who is having to “unlearn as fast as I can, in order to relearn” the new way of living in a digital world on warp speed.

T

Every Device is a broadcasting Station: Meet Myxer

Yesterday I posted about how every desktop and device is now a printing press or broadcast station. I would like to introduce Myxer - an emerging mobile company that is quickly becoming “the content on the phone” broadcasting station of choice among the 18-24 year old set.

Myxer just blew through the 5,000,000 user mark, which in my mind is a critical milestone towards acceptance in the eyes of a marketer. More importantly at 12,000,000 downloads a month, the word is spreading among its user base - and you or I didn’t even know it. 12M is ~6x the size of USA Today or 18x the number of 18-34 who viewed ESPN (07-08 season to date average). The site offers a complete ease of use in down and uploading content…which meets the “design” criteria of Spatial Shift (a pillar) for creating differentiation and a reason to be embraced.

The thing I like the most about Myxer is the uploading capacity for allowing the “myxologist” to create or author their own ringtones via “myxertags“. I am aware of GarageBand and few other web offerings that allow for this kind of creation, but not in a mobile context. Now anybody can become Moby or Sasha.

Speaking of music mixologists and serendipity, I met a gentleman on the plane awhile back - Malcolm Kirby Jr. . Malcolm was literally creating/mixing a movie score for a forthcoming Mike Myers movie on his Mac at 30,000 ft. Being an ex-nightclub dj (vinyl days), I was fascinated by what he was doing. Malcolm as it turns out is a Jazz musician, composer and “riff” maker. I now listen to his riff’s on my desktop.

I introduced Malcolm to Myxer and now can’t wait to see what he develops as a ringtone. Bringing Jazz riffs to a whole ‘nother level - I hope. Perhaps this concept could lead to a cure for what ails Katrina torn New Orleans. A serendipitious blend of musician, social entrepreneur, a new broadcast station (your phone) meets the way to sample and expand the joys of “jamming” for a good cause. Which is another blog post I will bring to life shortly…

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Every desktop and device is a printing press or a broadcast station

It has been a while since the last post. I have been focused on pursuing my personal “what’s next” and that has led me down many paths with many people. I have had the pleasure of meeting with over 100 people in last 45 days. That has translated into start ups (founders and senior executives), VC’s, corporate executives, people recruiters, financial analysts, educational scholars and industry peers. I also attended a conference on “visual thinking” (www.vizthink.com) that opened my eyes to a more robust way to think and present. In addition, I have also been observing, reading, listening and surfing the web like I first did when I discovered the “Louve” in Paris from my office desktop in LA - back in 1993. The “ah ha” of that moment is alive and back in a new way.

I believe this personal sabbatical has allowed me the time to scan the landscape in a manner I could never do while employed full-time. Hence, in my next gig, I will push for a corporate policy to allow sabbaticals after four years. Life is moving too fast, to not stop and take notice. And, you need to do that with a clear lens. We are indeed in a period of accelerated creative destruction to borrow from Joseph Schumpeter.

What have I learned? That in a period of creative destruction, I believe decision making needs to be swift and supported with as many analytics as you can muster - pull trigger and fix later. Shoot, aim and fire is now a venn diagram that is inter-dependent and no longer sequential. Sequential thinking is too calculated and too slow in today’s pace of play. Risk is as much not making as making a decision.

The other big “ah ha” for me is that every desktop and device is now a Printing Press and a Broadcasting Station. We are the media, the storytellers, the conversationalists and we are designing the communication the way we want to receive it and disperse it. All this being enabled by technology, access and speed - at a cost of burger. Not rocket science by any means, just that the atoms of change are all around us. The collision of those atoms are the creative destruction. The outcome of the collision is witnessed in the Microsoft-Yahoo merger scenario. Google has bypassed both and is the youngest of the bunch. Old models yield dependencies and legacies. New models are unencumbered. Who has more risk?

I have more questions now than answers. What is IP? Who owns it? Who cares? Advertising as a model is broken from a traditional sense. Twenty-five years of experience and learning will now have to be “unlearned” and shifted. Every start up I meet views advertising as an “open flowing spicket” to support their concept, when the truth be told - advertising is not growing as a whole. Shifting yes, growing no. Social media is significant in size and scope. Advertising modes of “yester-year” are not a fit with social graphs. A new model is begging to be developed. The chase begins.

Discovery engines and Supercrunching is another door open to me. As someone who slowed down on discovering due to time constraints and likely age (as in who needs it), I learned that curiosity is what makes us tick. You can never stop being curious. As creative destruction moves forward, our need for constant discovery is more necessary today than ever before. How do you discover new stuff? A problem for a solution waiting to happen. Pandora, Netflix and StumbleUpon are great examples as a piece of the solution. How does one embrace and share these discoveries beyond a Facebook module or app in a multi-generational way? A small percentage of us leverage or know about these kinds of services.

So who wins going forward? Media titans dig in to protect. Technology continues to enable and accelerate individual voices. The coveted curators of the media past are now a blur in today’s blogosphere opinions. New companies emerge by the hour, but struggle to get traction. Established companies creep into/onto each others turf and lose focus.

A recent Andy Grove article sited his letters written to large corporate chieftains asking them to think about solving several world problems, even though it adjunct to their sweet spot. (e.g. Walmart - Healthcare and GE - Electric Automobiles). Apple has already gone down this path (iPod and iPhone) through elegant design and simple ergonomics. An interesting plea to leverage assets in a manner that has no legacy hurdles or rules, yet with resources that can be deployed to achieve scale and impact.

The attached video by MakiProductions produced over one year ago and recently updated (mashed up) with a music overlay was conceived and executed by a 20 year old student in Canada and delivered on YouTube. He figured out how to simplify a very complex set of metrics into an elegant message that stops to make you think. Something that today’s politicians try to achieve through double talk and rhetoric. Perhaps hiring the 20 year old as a speech writer becomes a game changer?

The axiom of “good ideas can come from anywhere” has never been more true than today. Are we equipped to receive them, embrace them and embellish them in today’s new world order of “everybody is media”? User generated sites run amok. Big media is blending UGC within Curated content. Start pages have shifted. Hyper personalization and customization is becoming a reality, yet fraught with privacy concerns.

We are entering a new paradigm and I for one am excited by the prospects. I mean, isn’t this why we get up in the morning?

Breathing Earth - Click and Watch

If you have not witnessed this spectacular website, please click on it and watch in amazement. This is a very cool site and great representation of the power of simple storytelling with great design.

Breathing Earth

t

Everything’s a Marketplace (Juno Edition)

I was thinking about the movie Juno recently while driving down the highway. I was trying to understand why, despite the fact that it looks like a great movie, with a good cast, good soundtrack and is getting recognized for all sorts of awards, I still had no interest in rushing out and seeing it. Suddenly it occurred to me. It was because the movie feels a bit forced in it’s independence.

Obviously, this is no revelation for those who follow the movie industry as pitch meetings generally use successful historical references to sell a new movie (It’s Die Hard meets Spaceballs!) but for me, personally, there was something a bit off about this “wes anderson meets garden state” movie. Everything from the manicured approach, to the hyper-realistic dialogue to the perfect coiffed indie approved soundtrack seemed a bit forced. I may completely be in the minority, but there you are.

Suddenly it occurred to me what I was really bemoaning. It wasn’t this particular movie, I’m sure it’s actually great. It was the fact that what once seemed genuine, now felt a bit forced. That the realistic indie movie with a great soundtrack had now become a formula, a a marketplace unto itself with rules and guidelines and success metrics.

Bringing this back to the concept of spatial shifting, for companies who develop products in this day and age, it seems even more difficult to be second to market because of a perceived stigma associated with being a follower. Just take a look at the brands around you right now. Apple iPod? While not first to market it certainly revolutionized the game. Digg? One of the first of its ilk to gain mass appeal.

Not every product is unique, many new products are simply improvements based upon existing designs. The trick is in how you communicate that to the end user in a way that shifts their existing perception of the product category. There’s innovations - better gas milage, low fat variations on existing options - and then there are revolutionary improvements to existing product categories that change the game forever - iPhone.

Everything has become a marketplace, a unique ecosystem in the mind and wallet of the consumer, even if they don’t realize it on a conscious level. The developer challenge is how to message those developments and innovations to the target audience without simply entering the echo chamber and dissapearing forever.

r

A Macro View, Going Micro

As I mentioned in my original post, I was really impacted by my trip to Laos and Cambodia in November. That trip continues to shape my thinking, like a deep seed that wants to sprout into something. How can I help to create this experience into a spatial shift of some kind?

When I flash back to mid-2006, I had been reading about microlending and microfinancing as part of a research effort for a company I wanted to create based on Sustainability. I became fascinated with the work of Chittagong University professor Muhammad Yunus and his efforts leading to the development of microfinance. He ultimately won the Noble Peace Prize for his work and it has since inspired many people to act. I also remembered back to my 1.0 start up experience with Alladvantage.com in 2000. We had tried to create a global payment solution for our members across the world. Paypal was just getting off the ground at that time and global ACH wiring did not exist. I distinctly remember meeting a group from South Africa that ran foreign casino money through a secured wire service as the only solution at that time. It was Isle of Man or rethink the whole concept. The meltdown of April 2000 solved that dilemma for us.

Zoom forward to December 2007 and I found kiva.org. A lot has been written about Kiva to date. A great read in Stanford Magazine as well as several blog posts by Guy Kawaski and Read/Write Web tell the story well. So, I decided to give it a try. I asked my twin daughters to help me figure out who we should invest in and we chose two families trying to make a go of it. We funded one family from Cambodia (tried to find more, but had limited options on that day) who is trying to raise money to improve their farm. The second funding is going to a group of women who are building a general store in Peru. (We chose Peru, because we have Machu Pichu on our 1,000 places to visit before we die list and wanted to add yet another reason to go see that part of the world).

Today, I received my emails telling me we had funded the families and that I would get my journal updates from the people we lent the money to. I shared this with my girls and we all had a big smile. To think that I can do something like this with my daughters is a very powerful education on many levels. I get to teach them about giving. About how financing works. About how global this world really is. About the impact the internet is having on many fronts, not just as a Facebook entry, an addictive game or a chat with their friends.

I believe Spatial Shift will take on many different forms and meanings and the kind that Kiva.org is enabling goes beyond the email or letter to a pen pal. It literally has the power to transform the have not’s into somebody(s) while allowing the givers - in this case my daughters and I to share a special act between us as we get to watch our efforts blossom into something meaningful.

From this point on, we have decided to save our change in a jar and when it gets to $25 we are going to fund another hopeful candidate on Kiva. That alone, in a household of teenage girls is a spatial shift!

Internet Trends for 08

Catching up on RSS feeds, I noticed this post from Guy Kawasaki regarding Merrill Lynch’s new Internet trends report for 2008. Apart from the good news regarding the bump in Internet ad spending and the obvious push towards mobile initiatives, the most important news for many players in this market are the improvements in display advertising targeting techniques and how they will affect spend in the new year. This is especially evident with the major portal players as the shift from portal visitation to social networks and other niche content sites becomes larger in the coming year. Focusing on spatial shifts, it’s more important than ever for the major portals to be smart in their build/buy decisions, and speed to market is paramount as competition increases. Niche sites continue to gain relevance, steal share and personnel from the portals. Will it be death by 1,000 cuts or will the market balance to accommodate all players? It will be interesting to see what happens. Feel free to let us know what you think in the comments.

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