Social Hallucinations

The 6 types of ideas

via Tom Fisburne 

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

Models are Problematic

Image by ~jjjohn~ via FlickrPeople love models, especially when they’re big, complex and quantitative. Models make us feel safe. They take the uncertainty of the future and break it down into neat, bite-sized equations. But here’s the problem with models, which is really a problem with the human mind. We become so focused on the predictions of the model - be it the cod population, or the risk of mortgage derivatives - that we stop questioning the basic assumptions of the model. (Instead, the confirmation bias seeps in and we devote way too much mental energy to proving the model true.) It’s not just about black swans or random outliers. After all, there was no black swan event that triggered this most recent financial mess. There was simply an exquisite model, churning out extremely profitable predictions, that happened to be based on a false premise.
- Jonah Lehrer in Dangerous Models

Unscrew America

No plans for the weekend? Get some work done and help to unscrew America. Great and funny website.

sustainability, ecology, unscrew America

100% Green and Social Fitness

The new fitness centre was opened in Copenhagen - Hello Fitness. It is 100% green - the training takes place in nature. It sounds enough appealing to me! Sports should be exercised outdoors. There is nothing worse than smelly and dampy gym. The Hello Fitness combines the nature with the community. The idea is to create the feeling of support between participants extendend to online community. There is always someone you can exercise with, there is always someone to support you in your efforts. Fabulous idea and the it costs only ca. $20 monthly, which equals one pizza and DVD. The choice is yours :-)

You can also become fan of Hello Fitness on Facebook (it is in Danish only)

Emotions in social advertising

There is no recipe how to create the effective social campaigns. Measuring of social campaign effectiveness is also difficult and rare. Social advertising is too important to be left out to chance.  Measuring recall isn’t enough. Effectiveness of social advertising should be measured on three levels: motivation, engagement and recall.  The higher is the motivation and engagement; the better is effectiveness of advertising in terms of generating the change.

Attention is scarce, Sex is wanted

Today, social advertising shares the same problematic as the commercial advertising:  dull sensitivity, immunity to advertising messages, scarce attention, increasing clutter and choices. Advertisers are forced to use nontraditional and sometimes controversial means in order to get through with their messages.

There are more social advertising that uses humor and sex in the fight for viewers attention. 

Read more on emotions and social advertising in my column on Talentzoo.com

Tags: social advertising, emotions, public service advertising, social ads

Happy Easter - The Abundance of Links

The Wisdom of Steve Jobs

35 Ways to Stream Your Life
If Facebook and Twitter aren't enough...

The Future Revolutions
The end of consumers service, self service takes over and other changes. Btw thinking of self service brings McDonalds into my mind. I do still believe good service is something that is crucial in any business.

Save the Earth
Set your alarm and wake up!

Leadership vs. management
How to win with good leadership? Turn your values into preferred behaviors.

Future Trends in Advertising by Ben Hourahine from Leo Burnett in London



Great commercial from Schweppes - slow motion creates pretty arty effect.



Amy Winehouse is fantastic singer and no matter what how descent bourgois gets incensed by her lifestyle, Amy seems to become a significant fashion icon loved by teenagers and designer like Fendi and LV.











HAPPY EASTER!

Interesting Links & Ads and a Quote

The Advertiser Addictionary
Learn what SINK is. Funny and creative definitions of marketing jargon.

Social Media Super List
For overview and inspiration

The Ultimate Guide To Networking With Bloggers
How to make a great impression, and create an amazing relationship with a blogger. My idea would be to never forget that bloggers are people.

Promoting Gmail in Russia - advertising
It gives quite a feeling of what beta is.



Google Hot Trends
An hourly update of the most Googled terms.

Forget PowerPoint: 13 Online Presentation Apps
Don't need to add anything

And great quote for this week:
"Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most" (Mark Twain)

Tags: links, advertising, trends, google, social media, bloggers

Do the Green Thing!

I feel like staying green this week. Green makes me happy and I'd love to make you and Earth happy too :-) All you have to do is join Green Thing website. It's just an easy, monthly thing, it is a community that makes it easy and enjoyable to be a bit greener. Every month you'll get a different Green Thing to do. All you have to do is do it. This is exactly the micro change I wrote about yesterday. There are lots of cool videos, you can make friends with people who think green like you. You can see how much CO2 savings you made.

October's Green Thing is Walk Once and in order to make your walk even more enjoyable, you can download cool  walking tunes and walking words written by a talented musicians and writers. You put it on your iPod and listen to as you walk...and you can't stop smiling!

Tags: green, environment, micro change, green thing

Weekend Stuff

Here is some pretty interesting and funny links for relaxing weekend with laptop and good Internet connection with a cup of warm tea, good music and warm blanket.

RedFruit farm is looking for manager :-). Great website, especially the movie introducing you to the job.

Talking about jobs. Meet some very innovative engineers.

Dontclick.it. Interesting and addictive project.

Most influential gadgets in the history.

And a bunch of cool ads from YouTube

Great presentation of Nissan Rouge. Roughly speaking, I know what this car can on the road. Besides good creative execution.

I  love "The Science of Sleep" movie for it is dreamness. Watching this movie is like being in a dream. Now, Michel Gondry used his expertise in science of sleep for Motorola and made a Razr commercial.

Sensual advertising from Korean Airlines. Beuatifully done. It expresses softness, sensuality and makes you feel safe.

This is not a commercial. This is the piece from the real life. Tony Blair should be thankful and happy to get so much love.

Tags: links, advertising, dontclic.it, gadgets

Living your Dream

One of my friends - Morten has lately decided to follow his passion and open a small company where he takes people for diving trips to Greenland. I guess I will never join him on one of his diving trips (the cold is the biggest punishment to me), I love listening to his stories and seeing pictures from such a far-away land, where you imagine ice only to exist.  In fact Greenland is beautiful and gives lots of pleasures to your eyes, both over- and underwater. I'd love to visit the place during the warm season, of course. Morten enjoys and explores Greenland and gives others the opportunity to discover the wild nature, and open spaces that has never been touched by western civilization.

I admire him not only for being passionate about something as extreme as arctic diving, but also for following his dream. Feeling the passion in others is uplifting and inspiring. Without passion, dedication and engagement life would seem empty.

If you feel like taking a deep dive into Greenland's nature and sea visit Arctic Dive website, order the trip or just watch stunning photo gallery.

Don't forget to spread the word :-) and help people to fulfill their dreams.

Tags: passion, diving, arctic diving, Greenland

Interesting Links for the Weekend

It is raining outside and it feels like fall but weekend is just round the corner. I am looking forward to quite evening with book, cup of tea and warm blanket. Cosy and relaxing. But before I will find my sofa I would like to share with you a couple great links, sites worth to check out during the weekend. The picture should keep the sunny days in your mind forever. Let the sun be with you!

Fantastic initiative from Grey in US. Their name may be grey but they definitely want to be green. I hope others will join Grey in Green.

Great campaign for Bob Dylan's greatest hits album using the concept from one his old videos. Good one. Btw I've been to his concert some time ago. He is definitely in a good how, but I must admit I enjoy his music better at home.

I wish I could join Polygamous Marriage. Unfortunately I can do it only mentally. Very good planner initiative to go back to the roots and compile Media, Account Planning and Creative (I would also add PR). This is the most reasonable thing to do if you want to survive in the liquid reality.

Interesting article on the new beauty which is ugly. The New Ugly rules in design.

SlideFlickr will help you create and embed Flickr slideshows in less than 10 seconds, in case you are out of time or don't know what to do with your time :-)

And if there will come any sunshine in Denmark this weekend and you decide to celebrate it on beach, contact Sommergrill (summer grill) - they will provide you with delicious food.

After Saturday's night fever you may feel like visiting the church. If you hesitate, may those signs convince you.

Tags: links, green-forward, grey, polygamous marriage, Flickr, bob Dylan, church advertising

The Employee of the Month - Synthesizer

Great post from David Armano about Synthesizers. The more complex world becomes the more specialized functions we create. We have online planners, TV buyers, account managers, account directors, media planners buyers, strategic planners, I could keep on listing the titles we have on our business cards. Lots of people with pieces of knowledge, but so few with the overview and understanding of the whole picture. There is increasing need for synthesizers, who "... help take the inputs, distill them into something meaningful and articulate and output them in compelling, meaningful ways.", Armano says. This is the type of person agencies should invest nowadays in, if they want to embrace the increasingly complex reality.

I am a huge fan of holistic approach which is often overseen and definitely needed in our business. We deal not only with media, we deal with people, culture and technology. It is necessary to understand the interaction between them and come up with some useful conclusions for other specialists to work on. For me synthesizer is a kind of renaissance man who lives after the sentence: "omo sum et nihil humanum a me alienum esse puto". She/he is a person that opens the new door, is curious, isn't afraid, is hungry for wisdom and is able to compile the knowledge.

Who are you?

Tags: Armano, synthesizer, employee, renaissance man

Shoppers Act Irrationally

Economist are using the data behind millions of eBay's auctions to understand the shoppers behavior. They've found out that we act very irrationally. You can read more here

Tags: eBay, shoppers, economy

Back to the Office

I am back to work after short and rainy holidays. I am pretty relaxed and I've managed to go through the hell of unread mails. Mission accomplished. As most of the people have holidays in Denmark, it is quite and very productive time for me. Not too many mails, not too many phone calls. It is quiet and not too many people I can talk too. All in all, more productive time.

This graph pictures it in a way. You can definitely produce more work when not sitting in a meetings. It is logical. The meeting that doesn't produce anything, let it be solution, problem to solve, idea, etc. or has no clearly defined direction, is just a waste of time.

I like also this one. Too much work doesn't ignite creativity, rather stress. I think this is the problem which seems to be overseen - not enough people, huge amount of work and endless deadlines race.

I am going to enjoy the summer time and no meetings, lesser amount of work and lots of inspiration and great ideas :-)

Visit Crappy Graphs for more cool and crappy graphs.

Tags: work, productivity, inspiration, crappy graphs