Archive for January, 2010

Blog, Innovation, Social Media

Tweeting From The Front Line

Date January 22 2010
Posted by Sharmila
Tagged with

No one can have escaped the total devastation that has afflicted Haiti over the past week. It is a situation that is almost too hard for the majority of people around the world to comprehend. It has become readily apparent that people on the ground are in dire need of key resources, as well as exposure in order to help find the thousands of missing people in Port-au-Prince and beyond. With the majority of formal lines of communication down, social media has had a significant role to play in facilitating donations and giving a voice to people on the ground. CNN’s iReport platform is currently putting together a database to help connect people with loved ones in Haiti by calling upon people to post names and upload photos of people who may be missing. Similarly, the twitter hashtag #rescuemehaiti is being used to direct rescue efforts to where trapped survivors have been located. The Haiti Earthquake Support Center has also created a crowd sourcing app to “harness the power of the crowd to help locate and identify missing persons with just a few minutes of your time”.

These are all powerful examples of how social media can be harnessed in ways that can have a positive effect and, potentially, save lives. The past year has been punctuated by similar examples where social media has had a role to play in giving people a voice and bringing about some form of action – from student protests in Iran, to the PCC investigating Jan Moir’s article about Stephen Gately in The Daily Mail. With all these examples in mind, it begs the question: is social media coming of age as a force for good?

A key criticism that has been levelled at social media is that, whilst it allows people to easily show their support for a variety of causes or social issues, this does not often lead to tangible action. What does pledging your support for a cause on Facebook really mean in actual terms? Is this a viable alternative to good old-fashioned physical collectives of people? Moreover, does this ultimately lead to people doing less than they would before, with digital support becoming a replacement for physical action? These have all been valid criticisms of the role of social media in political and social causes and crises.

However, are we now seeing the first signs of how social media content can translate into tangible positive action? The proliferation of tech startups focused on social innovation would indicate this is the case. A key example of this is Ushahidi, a simple website mashup using user generated reports and Google Maps to gather citizen-generated information. It has already proved invaluable in mapping reports of violence and peace efforts in Kenya, reporting activity in Gaza for Al Jazeera and monitoring the voting system in India. Ushahidi exemplifies the benefits that the real-time and flexible nature of social media can deliver in emergency and conflict situations.

For now, this is still probably a question of watch this space, but hopefully this heralds the dawn of the positive role that social media can play in such situations.

Co-Creation, Crowd Sourcing, Innovation, Research Communities

The Open 100

Date January 21 2010
Posted by Nathan
Tagged with

The guys over at http://www.openbusiness.cc are running a competition that allows you to nominate your top open companies/organizations/platforms in the world. The Open 100 celebrates the power of openness and mass collaboration. The competition was born out of the UK’s National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA) search for the world’s top 100 open innovation organizations. Now it is being opened up to you to find who the world’s best open innovators really are. You can nominate those companies you think are the best deserving to appear on the list of the best and most interesting open businesses at http://www.openbusiness.cc/category/directory/.

You might wonder what we actually mean what we mean by open organizations? While there is no clear-cut definition of ‘openness’ there is undeniably a trend to democratize and de-centralize previously closed business processes as the lines between consumers and producers blur. Increasingly companies are opening up their innovation and production processes. Some are formed from the start around communities as with Face, while others are opening up their intellectual property to share with others. This promises better, faster and more efficient innovation.

Lego, hoping to be part of The Open 100

Roland Harwood of NESTA responded to the idea that open innovation is bandied around as a phrase too much, suggesting that the techniques will eventually just drop the word ‘open’ as it becomes more the norm. “It’s over-hyped and has been used and misused but the trends that underpin it are only going to increase. Open innovation is being prioritized at a senior level in organizations. Leaders like its promise of creating value quicker, cheaper, faster,” said Harwood to Businessweek. “But it’s the middle managers and heads of departments who have the responsibility for implementing this. They’re struggling for the right processes and business models and they don’t know where to start. That’s where the gap is. The strategic argument has been won; now it’s a pragmatic challenge.” The practice is always so much more difficult than the theory.

A month into the competition and there are a varied mixture of organizations and platforms nominated. Major telecommunications companies like BT, Nokia and Orange are nominated for their open innovation approach. Collaboratively made films like Faintheart,and El Cosmonauta as well as a Creative Commons based film production company are also nominated. Household name web startups like Firefox, Twitter, Flickr, Google, Ebay and Facebook have been put forward as well as the smaller but equally important web services that focus on the environment like Akvo and Pachube.

International megabrands such as Lego, Virgin Atlantic, Tesco, IBM and Dell are also in the running with open innovation and openhardware communitites like Harkopen and Openp2pdesign.org. There are also 3 nominations for the band Nine Inch Nails for their pioneering transparent and co-created approach (nomination 1, 2, 3).

Nine Inch Nails released their album, The Slip, online last year as a free download

In 2009 Nine Inch Nails released their album, The Slip, as a free download

Nominated companies for ‘The Open 100’ can fall into the following categories:

Open Innovation│ Crowdsourcing │ Co-creation │ Open Source Software │Open Hardware│ Open Business (includes web 2.0)

And they will need to do some of the following…

∟ innovate products or services through communities

∟ share information for free using alternative ‘open copyright models’

∟ give substantial parts of a product or service away for free

∟ operate organizationally like open source software production, but translate the model to services

∟ lowering the costs of market entry by providing tools or services, that ‘open’ up traditional business boundaries

Public nomination will close on the 12th of February and the panel of judges will then choose the winner from each category. The panel of judges includes: Vic Keegan (technology correspondent Guardian), Marc Surman (director Mozilla Foundation), Roland Harwood (director Open Innovation at NESTA), David Simoes-Brown (head of Corporate Open Innovation at NESTA) and Andrew Gaule (found of the H-I Network and leader of the Network for Innovation and Strategic Growth). The winners will be announced on the 24^th of February at the ‘Open 4 Business’ conference at NESTA and at http://www.openbusiness.cc/. The winners will have the privilege of being published through NESTA and The Guardian Open Platform in the ultimate collection of open organizations; ‘The Open100’. Help celebrate the benefits of openness by nominating your favourite organizations or platforms at:

http://www.openbusiness.cc/category/directory/

Follow The Open 100 on Twitter at:

http://twitter.com/TheOpen100

Check out Face’s entry to The Open 100:

http://www.openbusiness.cc/2010/01/21/face/

Blog, Books, Gaming

Fun Inc. Why Games Are The 21st Century's Most Serious Business

Date January 18 2010
Posted by Matt
Tagged with

Last week 6 of the Face team headed down to the RSA to listen to Tom Chatfield talk about his new book, Fun Inc. Why Games Are The 21^st Century’s Most Serious Business. Chatfield, a literature critic for Prospect Magazine and massive gaming enthusiast, talked about the fact that, in today’s society, computer games have worked their way into every part of life. He split video games influence into three sections, 1) Play Instinct, 2) Games as Technology and 3) The Power of Virtuality.

Although the adolescent male market is still big business for video game world, gaming has spread its wings wide and now covers a whole load of new audiences/purposes. From kids playing games to learn the fundamentals of life all the way to Soldiers using war simulators to learn how to kill; computer games are now an intrinsic part of life that are not going to go away.

Nick Getting Stuck into Fun Inc.

So how do we, as a society, manage the world’s fastest growing industry? Where do we pigeon hole computer games? And who is responsible for how the industry is governed and monitored?

Well if it was up to Shadow Culture Secretary Ed Vaizey, who shared the stage with Chatfield, there would be a governing body that looks after, protects and projects the UK gaming industry; potentially giving it the same level of security that the film and music industries have. Vaizey, who freely admits he is not a gamer, was clearly a bit out of his depth when speaking about games, but just his mere presence shows how far the gaming industry has come.

Chatfield’s book, which is available here, looks at all elements of the commercial gaming world, its progression and its future potential. In the words of The Guardian, Fun Inc. ‘is a compelling defence of the much maligned but fantastically successful computer game [industry]’, and it would be hard not to disagree. Video games, much like music and film, have their fair share of negative attention but now as the first real video gaming generation find themselves in positions of authority, it surely is just a matter of time until games are not only accepted but celebrated as a form of entertainment and culture.

Blog, Co-Creation, Crowd Sourcing

'We're Still Not Taking Consumers Seriously Enough'

Date January 14 2010
Posted by Matt
Tagged with

It is always nice to see someone from the advertising world stepping out and talking about involving consumers in their processes. It is even nicer when they work in the same building as us! Owen Lee, Founder & Creative Chairman of Farm (our office mates), had a letter published in the latest edition of Campaign Magazine titled ‘We’re Still Not Taking Consumers Seriously Enough’.

Owen stresses the point that agencies & brands need to listen to, and collaborate with their audience as today’s empowered consumers ‘have the power to make or break brands in an instance’. He goes on to say that in today’s 24/7 online world there is a need to make big changes and ‘move away from campaign bursts’ exchanging them for ‘a continuous engagement model’.

You can read Owen’s letter in full below… Click on the image to enlarge!