I’m not long out of giving a new talk this morning for the first time, at Squared in London to the bright young things who’re just starting out on a six week intensive learning experience.  It’s always a privilege to talk to the future leaders of an industry, and today was certainly no exception.  Find out more about Squared here.

I was nervous beforehand, given that so much of it was new thinking, and the rest was a different look at some older things I’ve written and talked about.  It seemed to go well though, and it started a good debate (which could have gone on longer, so I should try and shut up sooner next time perhaps).

More than ever, there’s a lot lost in just having slides here, rather than the full “sound & vision” experience.  But would love to know what you all think, as ever.

Thanks to Sarah & Jen for the invitation to talk, all the mystery folks who kept recommending me to them for a ‘talk on the social web’, and to Mark Earls for kindly giving it a quick sense check last night at some ungodly hour.

And finally, thanks to everyone who adds to the dialogic conversation around this stuff, by blogging, writing, sharing and chatting about it.  It makes putting the talks together so very interesting and enjoyable.

This week, I visited the Axminster Printing Co. with Tim Milne, to see where the Artefact Cards are made.  And to meet Keith Rockett, who runs the business, and whom I’ve only ever spoken with on the phone.

I took lots of photos, and then afterwards, Tim and I sat and had a chat about various things on a bench in the town Square in Axminster, for the ongoing Audioboo stuff for the 2013 Media Projects.

Anyway, it occurred that I could try something a wee bit different with the audio & visual; I’ve taken all the photos, in the order they were in (save for a three photo loop at the end), and used them as a visual accompaniment to the conversation.

Rather than spend hours editing the pictures with whatever was most appropriate in the conversation, I thought it would be interesting to see if telling two separate stories at once (the pictures of the day, and the wee interview about the day and other things) actually worked.  See what you think…

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It occurs that perhaps I could and should start adding a little context in text to these posts, as they appear on the site from Audioboo.  Partly because I think it’s an interesting approach; start with the audio, then follow-up with links, develop ideas and so on.  And partly because the Audioboo API seems to have decided that it likes posting things here, and whatever I try I can’t seem to make it stop.

Anyway, the above conversation took place between Tim Milne of Artomatic and I, sitting in the town square in Axminster after our visit to see Keith at the Axminster printing co.  Together, the three of us design, produce and manufacture the Artefact Cards of course.

It’s about the future of print, in a roundabout way.  Tim’s put an excellent, more precise version of his idea of the Future of Print up on Slideshare, as we mention, and you should have a read of that right now, I reckon… it’s already got about 27k views.  There must be something about using Artefact Cards in Slideshare presentations…

I’ve been meaning to properly read the “Digital Isn’t Working (Yet)” white paper by Ian Fitzpatrick & Erik Pelletier at Almighty in Boston, and found some proper time this afternoon to do it.

(I was honoured that they asked if they could reference MTPW > MPWT for it, and doubly so to be acting as source material along with the likes of Gareth, Neil & Faris.)

Now, the whole paper is an excellent read, and sets off many ideas as you go.  I could probably sit and write a 3,000 word companion piece just off the back of it, but that would distract you from actually reading it, which you can do by downloading it here.

I will say one thing about it though, which is a thought bridge to the excellent first episode in the second series of Black Mirror which was first screened* last Monday.

…SPOILER ALERTS….

If you’ve not seen it yet, but want to, maybe stop reading, go watch it, then come back…

…OK, all done?

So, to cut to the chase; there’s a dead boyfriend who is ‘brought back’ to life by his grieving girlfriend.  At first it’s as an email bot, then secondly as a voice on the other end of the phone, then finally as an actual fleshy android thing.

All of his thoughts and actions are based upon what he posted to the web during his life.  But of course, it’s not him, as the girl points out…

“You aren’t you, are you?
You’re just a few ripples of you,
there’s no history to you,
you’re just a performance of stuff
that he performed without thinking,
and it’s not enough…”

Now, back to the white paper:

“What we’ve heard consistently over the last year – from clients, colleagues, audiences at events and conferences – is that mobile still just feels like another place to put ads (and hard-to-click ads at that), data is impossible to integrate across the organization and social is ongoing and yet difficult to relate to the organisation’s goals.  Somewhere along the path to complexity and the resulting focus on channels and platforms, organizations lost track of the very people they were trying to reach”

I can’t help but think that a lot of marketers and agencies have lost track of the people because they are becoming beholden to the “performance of stuff” which characterises a lot of social media.

It’s pretty much impossible to peer through a data dashboard and see the people behind it.

And yet… data is great, because it’s really easy to point to, if you’re a marketer, and show your CEO (who’s more and more likely to be a numbers guy) that you’re acting ‘responsibly’.  And it’s great if you’re an agency, because data can look seductive and difficult and important, and therefore must be something worth paying for.

But it’s not really your customers, is it?  It’s just a few ripples of them, there’s no history to them, they’re just a performance of stuff that they perform without thinking.

And it’s not enough…

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Read “Digital Isn’t Working (Yet)”

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*it doesn’t really matter anymore when things were ‘first screened, really, does it?  Or does it?

There is something grimly fascinating about the creation of electronic cigarette products & brands. They seem to veer from the ‘make it look like a cigarette as much as possible’, to the ‘what would they smoke in Tron?’ brigade.