Social Hallucinations

Social connection

Social experts are keep on multiplying. Clients asking more for social media in briefs. Agencies race for making frameworks, models, products to sell to the clients...but everyone seems to forget one essential thing:

"You need a social profile to engage with other people and the world - but you need to be doing other stuff, constantly, to feed it. To be successful in social spaces, you need to be active in the world." (Faris)

 Neither people nor brands exist in social vaccum. What makes us social is our stories we tell, our experiences we share. Social doesn't fit frameworks and models cause it is unpredictable, cause it is people and interactions among them. Ideas, interesting stories, shared experiences are what connects people....not Facebook fan pages.

The 6 types of ideas

via Tom Fisburne 

Good morning Alice

Great idea promotion for the upcoming movie Alice in Wonderland but not so cool executed after all...Shame but I am still looking forward to seeing the movie cause it looks magic :)

Give People Something to Copy

...and you will be able to trigger the change of behavior. Old and funny video demonstrating the power of group influence on individuals. In fact, there is nothing to laugh at but adopt this elevator psychology into communication efforts.

 

 Hat tip to  Simon

Visualize People's Thoughts

It is such a great tool to play around with - Web Seer - and visualize what's going on in people's minds when they google and explore differences and similitude, stereotypes, ideas by comparing 'Google Suggest' results. Plenty of interesting insights to dig for. I love how info-graphics democratizes data and make them more understanding-friendly. 

 

 

"We try harder"

Excellent 

  

via Stan Lee

Do We Really Have to Meet?

Meetings are nice but are all they really necessary? It is very valid question on Monday morning and calender full of meetings. Sitting in meetings is often a nice time - waster, break from work where you sit and...nothing really happens except of talking. 

How to change the meeting culture and cut down the unproductive hours of just sitting and talking. Here are a few tips from Seth Godin

1. Understand that all problems are not the same. So why are your meetings? Does every issue deserve an hour? Why is there a default length?

Schedule meetings in increments of five minutes. Require that the meeting organizer have a truly great reason to need more than four increments of real-time face time.

Require preparation. Give people things to read or do before the meeting, and if they don't, kick them out.

Remove all the chairs from the conference room. I'm serious.

If someone is more than two minutes later than the last person to the meeting, they have to pay a fine of $10 to the coffee fund.

Bring an egg timer to the meeting. When it goes off, you're done. Not your fault, it's the timer's.

The organizer of the meeting is required to send a short email summary, with action items, to every attendee within ten minutes of the end of the meeting.

Create a public space (either a big piece of poster board or a simple online page) that allows attendees to rate meetings and their organizers on a scale of 1 to 5 in terms of usefulness. Just a simple box where everyone can write a number. Watch what happens.

If you're not adding value to a meeting, leave. You can always read the summary later.

It is a good way to start the new year at work, the year that is about doing the meaningful things. 

via Tom Fishburne

We shall not flag or fail. We shall slow down in the office, and on the roads.

In times where politicians and different arts of gurus tell us we need to work harder, run faster and just give everything out of ourselves, The International Institute of Not Doing Much seems like an uplifting and fresh initiative. Running fast all the time will not bring the fruits we expect as we simply get tired and our performance will be weaken. Like every machine, humans need to take a break for servicing and refueling. On the website of The International Institute of Not Doing Much you can learn a lot about slowing down and not doing too much. What I liked the most is the advice to cultivate dreams not aspirations. 

 

Here is 10 tips on how to slow down:

1. Drink a cup of tea, put your feet up and stare idly out of the window. Warning: Do not attempt this while driving.

2. Do one thing at a time. Remember multitasking is a moral weakness (except for women who have superior brain function.)

3. Do not be pushed into answering questions. A response is not the same as an answer. Ponder, take your time.

4. Learn our Slow Manifesto.

5. Yawn often. Medical studies have shown lots of things, and possibly that yawning may be good for you.

6. Spend more time in bed. You have a better chance of cultivating your dreams (not your aspirations.)

7. Read the slow stories.

8. Spend more time in the bathtub. (See letter from Major Smythe-Blunder.)

9. Practice doing nothing. (Yes this is the difficult one.)

10. Avoid too much seriousness. Laugh, because you're live on earth for a limited time only.

via Crackunit

The Obama Disconnect

"...when two million people are in motion in favor of something, because they put themselves in motion, we know what that feels like. It's called a movement. It started to happen in 2007-08, and it hasn't happened since."

Micah L. Sifry on the Obama disconnect after election. very insightful analysis on political myth that hit reality and never turned out to be true.

How to Live Well in 2010

This the source of good inspiration. No resolution. No predictions. Just the words of ancient Greek philosophers who inspire us to focus on what really counts. 

My favorite advice is

Talk to a stranger. There is a source of knowledge and insight all around us, and yet we barely notice it’s there. It’s not Google. It’s the strangers with whom share our world. Socrates realized this, and so started to ask people questions as he walked the streets of Athens – what is friendship, what is happiness, what is love? It was an extraordinary thing to do, and led to nothing less than the invention of philosophy.

Read more here on The School of Life website: How to live well in 2010. 

(via Johnnie Moore)