“I think advertising is poison gas.”

“It should choke you up; hit you in the face”.

These are the word of George Lois, well known for Esquire Magazine, Tommy Hilfiger and his biting and intense presence.

Lois was one of a dozen advertising giants featured Friday night at the Portland premiere of Art & Copy, a new film that told the story of the ad industry and some of its most prominent innovators. The film was precise, well-cut, and very entertaining. There wasn’t a dull moment. It was also very familiar, as there was quite a bit of footage from Portland’s Wieden+Kennedy, as well as interviews with founders Dan and Dave.

Opening

David Kennedy opened the film and introduced the audience to a video of Dan Wieden, who apologized for not being able to be there. He told us we were in for a great surprise, and we were. Kennedy was also there after the film to answer questions from the audience.

Advertising’s Beginnings

The story of Bill Bernbach started with an overview of the ad industry before and after he became involved in it. It was explained that advertising was saturated with ingrown mediocrity. Only those from the right school with the right connections could participate, and Art Directors has no input in the creative process. But he had a tremendous way of understanding how to cut right through the tradition in the way of a product selling. He put Art Directors together with the Copywriters and changed everything.

Mary Wells and Branff Airlines

Highlights of the film included interviews with Mary Wells, a copywriter for McCann Erickson. Her advertising campaign, “The End of the Plain Plane” for Branff International Airways was a turning point in the airline’s success. She explained that her origins in theatre largely contributed to how she approached advertising.

The End of the Plain Plane - Branff International Airways

Lee Clow

Viewers were introduced to Lee Clow of TBWA\Worldwide, whose biography was covered via scenes of sun, surfers and sand. His entrance into the world of advertising seemed like a vibrant color in a mess of gray soup. A smell that woke up the senses. It also marked him as a ‘dangerous person’ within the confines of the agency he originally worked for.

“I think fear is a very great depressant. It is okay for ideas to get killed. Ideas are supposed to be killed. But it is important to be in an environment where one has a community where they can get help in picking themselves off the floor”.

-Mary Wells

Hal Riney, The Image-Maker

Hal Riney’s interview and work left the audience completely absorbed and silent, especially after viewing “Morning in America”, Ronald Reagan’s 1984 Presidential re-election campaign.

Morning in America

The Birth of “Just Do It”

Dan Wieden talked about some of the more interesting effects of the “Just Do It” campaign, especially those that extended beyond sports. Some of them included

Goodby, Silverstein & Partners

Rich Silverstein was a stark and minimalist contrast to Jeff Goodby, who was interviewed in what looked like the agency’s server closet. They talked about the “Got Milk” campaign as the camera cut between Silverstein’s almost neurotic antics and Goodby’s relaxed creative messiness.

George Lois

No character was as extreme as George Lois, who shocked the audience again and again in ways that are much better explained through the screen.

Expect a pleasant and enlightening journey through some of the most successful ad campaigns in history.

Watch for:

-The real history of the phrase “Just Do It”.
-The great Greek guy from New York.
-A great quote from Dan Wieden at the end.
-David Kennedy explaining the Totem Pole in the middle of the W+K atrium.
-An introspection into the secret lives of billboard rotators.
-TBWA\Chiat\Day and the story behind Apple’s ad campaigns

Featured:

Dan Wieden, Dave Kennedy, Lee Clow, Rich Silverstein, Jeff Goodby, Bill Bernbach, George Lois, Mary Wells, Hal Riney and others.

Missed the Film?

You can see it at one of Art&Copy’s various showings.

Art&Copy Trailer

—

About

Amber Case is a cyborg anthropologist, consultant, writer, and analyst from Portland, Oregon. You can contact her at caseorganic at gmail.com, or on Twitter at @caseorganic.

What’s happening with the business of advertising? What will the post-consumer economy look like? What is going on in sustainability?

Jelly Helm is the first to admit that he doesn’t know. But that doesn’t stop him from speculating about it in public, especially to audiences of excited listeners.

Last night, Jelly treated a number of us to a great presentation was full of existentialist introspection, personal narrative, and show-stopping poetry. He also gave us a sneak peek of the new work he’s done with the Oregon Council for the Humanities, and shared his excitement for Wikipedia, his newest client.

It was a fun-filled tour de force that could’ve lasted for a few hours more.

About this Transcript

If you were unfortunate enough to be sitting near me, you probably heard me typing very furiously, first in the audience, and then respectfully (hopefully) off to the side. Transcripts are important because they allow something amazing to be shared with a larger audience, but the resolution of experience decays as one abstracts the essence of the event through a digital means. I hope that this account preserves something of the excellent speech that was given last night.

I’m sorry there are not many images. I didn’t have a camera with me. Undoubtedly, there will be a thousand errors in punctuation and grammar. If it is something you enjoy doing, please feel free to point out any and all of them in the comments below.

Location

The event was held in the Cleaners at the Ace Hotel, a space often reserved for events such as this. Eric Hillerns, of Pinch. A Design Office., organized the event as part of AIGA’s Designspeaks.

“The Design Speaks series was developed as a voice for the creative community”, he began, “It was basically established to be a series of small talks intended to inform and inspire”.

How Eric met Jelly

Eric Hillerns met Jelly after his presentation at the 2008 Creative Conference.

“I knew that he was a high profile guy with arguably the best agency in the world”, said Hillerns, “Though our chat was brief, we had some common realationhips - and we left it at that”.

But later, while vying for the same buisness pitch - Jelly won it. Hillerns wasn’t pleased, of course.

“But I understood,” he admitted, “after all, Jelly was one of the more creartive strategists in the business”.

So Hillerns sent an E-mail.

“And at the end of the E-mail, I said - ‘We’re interested in watchng the brand evolve. We’re rooting for them, we’re rooting for you - don’t fuck it up’ .”

There was laughter from the aduience.

“Needless to say,” continued Hillerns, “he certantly hasn’t fucked up. I’m inspired by his approach to problems. He approaches them in a reverent manner”.

About Jelly Helm

Hillerns explained that Jelly Helm was a writer, designer, film director, creative director, and teacher. His clients include Imperial Woodpecker, Oregon Humanities, Infectious Diseases Research Institute and Wikipedia. He was formerly an executive creative director at Wieden + Kennedy, and founder of W+K 12, an experimental school inside the agency.

Jelly’s Presentation

Jelly Helm arrived at the podium. Behind him was the beginning of a PowerPoint screen that held an image of the word “Story” in a typewritten font. It looked like Jelly had typewritten his PowerPoint and scanned in each slide.

Jelly: Well, that certaintly was pleasant. I’m glad you all came. I didn’t expect you all to come, but thanks.

For me, all of my work, whether in design, writing, film directing, ect. — has been about the narrative; about story.

I left Wieden+Kennedy to take a sabbatical with no clue as to what would happen next. I took six months at first and then took one year because it was good to sit and think about why I do what I do for a living.

Tonight, before I got up here to give this speech, I saw Dave Allen. He said, “are you prepared?” And I said, of course, ‘this is my script’. This is me.

Jelly then tried to turn the slide, but it doesn’t work — it’s stuck.

Jelly: I hope you like this slide.

*laughter*

So, while they’re getting that, are there any questions you’d like to ask?

Audience: Where are you teaching at right now?

Jelly: I’m not teaching right now. I taught in two places, and then started a school at Wieden+Kennedy called 12.

*changes slides*

David Kennedy, who is kind of a crazy guy, has all of these little papers, which he cuts up and carries around with him. I used to be confused about why he did this, but now I’m doing it.

“This slide shows the time humans have been on Earth compared to how long the Universe has existed. It’s taken 12 billion years from the beginning of the Universe, and 5 billion since the beginning of the Sun. And then a tiny dash at the end shows us. Here we are, barely begun - the race of humans.

He showed the next slide, which was a picture of the Earth with the acronym “wtf” typewritten above it.

The Birth of the Story

The beginning of human life is inexplicable. There’s animals chasing you; you’re living in the cold without any clothes; picking foods that occasionally posion you….

And around 30,000 years ago we started doing something. We started telling stories. And people linked this up with the birth of the human spirit.

The reason we told these stories was to understand what was going on.

–

Karen Armstrong writes:

“We are meaning-seeking creatures.
Dogs, as far as we know,
do not agonise about the canine condition,
worry about the plight of dogs in other parts of the world,
or try to see their lives from a different perspective.

But human beings fall easily into despair,
and from the very beginning we invented stories that enabled us to place our lives in a larger setting,
that revealed an underlying pattern,
and gave us a sense that,
against all the depressing and chaotic evidence to the contrary,
life had meaning and value”.

–

We still use stories to make sense of the world, to:

-Create order
-To find our place
-To discover meaning
-To determine actions

“I think story is the operating system of being a human being.”

So…

Story.
Story.
Story.

I can’t remember what slide is next.

*click*

The slide changes to read “I am a storyist”.

So I’m a storyist.

I’ve played in a rock band, I’ve been an actor…

[But] underneath it all is a passion for telling stories and how they shape us and what they mean to us.

I Read Poetry

If any of you were at the Creative Conference you know I use poems. I use this particular poem to understnad my role - because, like you, I have the same chaotic experience.

This is the same poem that Willy Wonka quoted from. It is from the time of the Civil War.

—

We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams.
World-losers and world-forsakers,
Upon whom the pale moon gleams;
Yet we are the movers and shakers,
Of the world forever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world’s great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire’s glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song’s measure
Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o’erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world’s worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.

– Arthur O’Shaughnessy (1884-1881)

—

Jelly’s recitation of the poem left a sort of stunned atmosphere in the audience.

“You don’t explain poems, right?” he finally said, “That’s the rule?”

“But sometimes I need help,” he continued, “I think it describes what it is like to experience the endless cycle of us as the leading edge of the universe.

The story that holds togehter for me is the story of growth - unfolding and exploding. And I think that’s what the world is about - unfolding and exploding and exploring new growth.

—

Spiral Dynamics Model - The Theory of Human Development

This graph shows a more analytical way to describe what Arthur said in his poem. This model was created by taking every model and puting them on top of each other. Maslow, and Jung, ect. Is there any pattern to them? This is mappnig human development over time?

At the bottom there is there is this tan area - this is pure terror - this is waking up as humans and having this rude self-awareness. And the next layer is purple. It is the idea that, ‘I exist and you exist - and if we cooperate, we can do things together’.

Red is our development of our sense of power an dominance. The idea that there are others our there and we have to kill them.

The blue layer is order and not letting violence be the top level of culture.

And then the next layer is the layer of science.

Then there’s green - what you think of as green sustainability - we need to protect the least of us. It is about relativism.

And beyond that is yellow. We’re entering this emergent culture and we’ll talk about more of that momentarily.

Sustainability

I’d like to talk about this word and what it stands for. It’s not enough.

The idea that my grandkids are buying the same sustainable couches as me makes me want to gag. I think we can aspire to more than that.

What would more than that look like? Yes-we can understand those values of sustainability.

The emergent culture is the green meme is a little suspicious of technology.

There’s an entire chart here of emergent culture, where multicultural/fairness/equity, technology/science, heirarchy/order, competition/power/ego, and trival/local — they’re all at odds with each other.

So right now we’re merging into this yellow culture which will embrace all of these values.

That’s kind of the typical thing that hppens.

I think we have our first emergent culture that’s happened right now.

*applause*

That’s an easy applause line. But it’s true. We see it here in Portland.

The Zoroastrians’ Visions

So I was watching Rick Steves on PBS a while ago. It was one of those travel episodes where he was in Iran. The first thing he says was, “they’re not Iraqis — they’re Persians!! They don’t speak Arabic, they speak Persian!” Like it was obvious.

I though that was interesting, and I wanted to learn more, so I went to Wikipedia, which is what everyone does now when they don’t know soemthing. There was a link to an article on Zoroastrianism, the oldest religious community of Iran.

Apparently the Zoroastrians had predected that the future of civilization would be so spiritual that humans would not even cast a shadow.

And this is not about IKEA making everything sustainable. It’s about soemthing else.

And it’s a great thing to say. People usually say ‘woah!’, when they hear this. But if you say it too much you begin to sound crazy.

So we seek out, in branding - the things that expand our own stories. The brands I who are successful are the brands who align with who we are and the story of the world.

I don’t know what to call them. People-powered brands. Because they’re not controlled by an agency. Emergent brands. Because they’re not controlled by a style guide. Post-consumer brands. Because many brands are based on a consumer way of happiness while not being actually okay for the earth.

Emergent Brands

-Apple
-Google
-Wikipedia

They allow us to experience our full humanity. Our full creativtiy.

Emergent Brands?

-McDonalds
-PhilipMorris

Are these Emergent Brands? McDonalds’ Stock keeps going up right now. I don’t really go into McDonanlds and I don’t get eat there, but those times when I go into McDonald’s, I find that the menus are a hundred times healthier than they were before. I can go in there and my kid can get celery sticks, a grilled cheese sandwich and an apple juice.

I also hear that they’re the number one distributor of apples in the country. Is this true?

(Someone in the audience confirms).

If you’re working with a company who can’t answe rhte question of ‘Who are you?’ and ‘Why are you here?’, then run far, far away.

Value vs. Profit, Abudance vs. Scaricity

It will never work if a company extracts more than it takes.

I think that successful post-consumer brands create value before they reap it, which is much better than abudance vs. scarcity - which is the opposite process - where a brand decides to reap value before creating it.

See “Conspiracy of Science - Earth is in Fact Growing” on YouTube. It’s a really hilarious video where a guy says, “these continents can’t be moving around over time! What are they moving on? The only solution is that the Earth must be expanding! Check it out. You should really watch this video.

—

There’s kind of a folly of being a human being.

Where do you create value — where is your abundance?

Where is your joy?

I’ll leave that thought with a poem. It’s a Robert Frost — one he wrote towards the end of his life.

This last one was sort of him throwing up his hands at the progression of humans.

“Yet for all this help of head and brain,
How happily instinctive we remain.
Our best guide upward further to the light,
Passionate preference such as love at sight.”

I was so suspicious of Bill Gates in the beginning.

His comment was “when I’m ready to give away money, “you’ll know about it”.

He was really a good person in the world. And he’s really pulled his mind to it.

My frame is growth.

We expand - and we’re an endless source of growth.

We’re all abundant, whether in storytelling or elsewhere.

The key is going to it from that frame of thought. Thinking, ‘Where am I abundant? Where am I good?’

Usually it is the opposite. One asks the self, ‘why am I not like other people? I need to do things like they do!’

This is why I had Philip Morris next to the McDonald’s logo in that earlier slide. When they bought a bunch of food compainies - I said, “good job, Philip Morris - I’d rather you be selling food than cigarettes…”

Large soft drink companies are having a difficult time selling that brown (explicative) any more — becuase it is posion — you drink that shit and you die.

You must instead ask, what is the prupose of your brand?

And if it is to continue lining the pockets of shareholders — then it is not the right purpose.

Audience: Who is your favorite philosopher?

I didn’t do school - so I don’t know many philosophers. I heard Bertrand Russell was pretty cool. I have a lot of people tell me that, so he’s probably great.

I like people who tell the truth and tell a good story so I can read about it.

I like anything that tells me a story that quiets my mind and opens my heart.

So I like Mad magaizine.

Audience: What makes you mad?

I didn’t feel very good today so I felt mad.

I’m not as good at being mad as I used to be.

Audience: What is it you push against?

Jelly: Nothing. I mean - it’s great - what is there to push agaisnt?

Audience: Will there be anything to be angry push agaisnt when we no longer cast a shadow?

Audience: It’s that the Myans that think it is the end of history.

Jelly: It’s hard to look at that slide of 13 billion years and think anything it intense or unordinary. Anything can happen. We haven’t been here for very long.

Growth is natural. How do you connect to it? You just have a good itme.

You know Danial Payne wrote that book Collective Intelligence. He wrote about how incentives dont’t work in this new work. I totally agre. You cannot invent a world voice. It is so counterintuitive. I think joy might be the solution.

Jelly: I dont know if anyone feel a little bit ripped off about ho tey were raised.

So story is how we connect our culture, for sure.

I think of the stories I grew up with. We’ve had 50 stories that have been carved in granite for 150 years and now they’ve all crumbled. I think, ‘these are bad stories!’.

Audience: When was the last time you had your hair blown back?

Jelly: Well, Obama, right? I feel bad about going on about Obama - but it is an amazing story.

Also, I’m a fan of Joseph Campbell. Joseph Campbell’s stories can be overlapped and they become a pretty good story. They’re about peopel falling down and getin back up…which is what all of humanity is about.

Are you laughing at me or with me?

The Infectious Disease Research Institute

Let me show you some work. I’m working with some organizations right now. One of them is this Infectious Disease Research Institute, which is a really bad name.

But it is a really neat story. Basically it is this guy name Steve Reed in Seattle who made this non-profit institute to prevent disease.

Then there’s a non-profit Biotech. There are some great people. Chris Hornbecker. These scinetists who are great.
And then there’s this company. (shows an image of the Wikipedia logo) And this is it - I cant beleive I’m working with this company.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is written by 150,00 volunteers in the world. They have now assembled the lastest amount of material in the world. Jimmy Wales just wanted to start an online encyclopedia that anyone could write. It was called Newpedia.

He recounted his experience at Wikimania, a conference for wiki users. It sounded like a wonderful time.

“Did you know that inventor of the Wiki lives in Oregon?”, asked Jelly.

Some of the audience shook their head.

“His name is escaping my mind right now. It was…”

“Ward Cunningham!” I shouted from the audience. (Not only does the inventor of the wiki live in Portland, but he’s an extremely kind person too. Wickedly intelligent, approachable, and very involved in the local tech community).

Yes! Ward Cunningham. And Pete Forsyth, another Portland resident, is also a very dedicated contributor too.

Oregon Humanities

Here’s how I got involved with Oregon Humanities. They called me up one day and the first thing I thought was, “woah, did I forget to turn in an essay or something?” But instead they started telling me about what they do.

For instance, they told me about a series they have called “Think and Drink”, and I said, “uhh…”. So they were like, well ‘we’d like to talk to you about what the humanities are’. Humanities are no longer concerned with a white haired dude at the front of the auditorium telling us what to do.

So Jelly worked on the name. It got shortened to O. Hm, which is the sound of leanring a new idea. Oh! Hmm! or, O. Hm. Oregon Humanities. That’s part of the campaign. There’s more. Lots more. If you live in the Portland area, there’s no doubt that you’ll see more of it.

Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam

We were there, and working on a campaign to get people to drink (a certain soft drink which will not be named here) during the holiday. Someone said, ‘how about we associate it with a holiday? Have people opening that drink and enjyoing it during the holidays’. And that campaign was so successful that they said, ‘next year we want to own Ramadan and Passover’. Own! Especially when one reads Joseph Campbell and gets to understand how important these traditional holidays are to the cultures they’re associated with. No one talks about the purpose of the buisness. They just want to make moeny.

I just guessed I looked under a rock a few too many times.

Early on, there seems to be an overview of the aesthetics of what we did visually, but not the purpose of it.
But,

when I work with clients who have a purpose — I LOVE it.

Like Timberland. If it is a good story to tell, I still want to tell it.

Audience: A year ago, at Cre8con, you were really down on Chompsky — and I didn’t read him becuase of that.

Helm: You can read him — I just dont think you’ll enjoy it.

Audience (Crystal Beasley): What do people most often get wrong about story?

Jelly: I don’t know.

What do you think?

I think about it when I watch a movie and they don’t have the heart piece right.

Audience: Some people don’t have a point to their story. In the end there’s nothnig to gain from it.

Jelly wrapped up his speech after that and got a lot of applause. It had been an excellent evening.

There was also some nice wine and beer. Thanks to those who served the crowd, 52Ltd, AIGA, Designspeaks, and everyone who attended.
—-

About the Transcriber

Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthropologist and new media strategist living in Portland, Oregon. She currently works at Wieden + Kennedy and tries to participate in as many tech and design events as possible. Her clients range from small to large companies, and she can be contacted through Twitter at @caseorganic, or through E-mail at caseorganic [at] gmail [dot] com.

About 52 Ltd.

52 Ltd. is Portland’s homegrown matchmaker of talent and employers in the arena of creative services. They received recognition in the 2008 and 2009 lists of Fastest-Growing Private 100 Companies by Portland Business Journal.

52 Limited provides contract freelance employees, full-time placement and custom project teams to a diverse client roster which includes: advertising agencies, design houses, interactive firms, brand marketers, health care organizations and others. For more information on how 52 Limited can help you find work or find talent, please visit
http://www.52ltd.com

About Designspeaks

The Designspeaks series, developed by Portland AIGA and in partnership with 52 Limited, showcases the most intriguing designers in the Pacific Northwest. Some of our guest speakers in this quarterly series will be stars and some will have mana
ged to maintain a lower profile, but we can assure you; all will challenge you to think a bit differently about design and its impact on community. We’re continually tweaking this series as an intimate venue for the creative community to connect to others, to see what they are doing and how they’re doing it. There is no specific format for Designspeaks. Basically, it’s a series of small talks gathering intended to inform, inspire and engage.

—–
Thanks much. Please leave comments below if desired.

Last night, around 6 pm, an event at Substance brought together many members of the Portland design/creative/new media/innovative community. Those tags do not describe the types of people there, no do they describe how it was to be at the event. Why? Because I wasn’t able to make it.

I’m going to review the event anyway (or at least provide information for others who couldn’t make it), as well as use some great pictures taken by Haley Lovett. I’m including them here, so you can understand some semblance of the event.

Okay, so what is The New Communicators about?

According to a post on the Substance website, “New Communicators are compelled to engage in conversation. They stand taller and stride farther when traversing the current media landscape. They are a mixture of digital and analog. Their message is everything interactive. Everything transmissive. Communicating is a give-and-take, speaking-and-listening, and New Communicators utilize a mixture of new and traditional tools to share their point-of-view with the world. Evolving conversation, they share their ideas, their truths, their lives”.

The New Communicators Video

If you missed it, here’s a Q&A in digital video!

The New Communicators Q&A - September 1, 2009 from The New Communicators on Vimeo.

The gathering was “about the evolution of conversation: exploring the pathways through which an originator interacts with a receiver. These connections can be fulfilling and triumphant; the failures potentially tragic and illuminating. Regardless of the outcome, these experiences are relevant, useful and inspirational. They should be open, discussed and analyzed in the interest of understanding what it means to be a New Communicator”.

What Next?

From Wednesday, October 28th to Friday, October 30th, you’re invited to hold an event around the theme of Evolving Conversation and explore what it means to be a New Communicator. The intent is to curate events for specific time slots in the mornings (8am to 10am), afternoons (4pm to 6pm) and evenings (7pm to 9pm) across the city. However, if those time slots become filled and you still want to hold an event, we got you covered. Any individual, group or company who wants to be a part of the convergence is welcome to do so and we will promote your events on our web site. Although, get those ideas in early if you want top billing and mentions in press content.

Event Response:

There was a lot of buzz about The New Communicators on Twitter. Some of my favorites:

hillerns: I learned something important this evening. When you invite folks to engage, you begin by asking, “What do you think?” #thenewcom

momothemonster: Great conversations at #thenewcom meetup tonight. Consider my fires officially stoked.

ephanypdx: 2nd thing I learned at #thenewcom: exchanging contact info is so 2004. Now we just follow each other.

Needless to say, I’m looking forward to hosting a session. Although I’m not sure on what yet. You can help me if you want by commenting below.

If that’s not enough for you, here’s a quick Q&A:

Who are you?

We are a group of like-minded individuals who believe the nature of conversation is evolving. It is our mission to illuminate this evolution, educate on how to traverse the new media landscape and inspire others to initiate conversations of their own.

What do you mean by “Conversations”?

Conversations are any kind of engagement in which thoughts are shared, ideas are exchanged and lives are changed. A Conversation is a dissemination of a point-of-view, a connection with an audience and a reciprocation to the originator. It is how we learn and grow.

What is a New Communicator?

Anyone who is compelled to engage in conversation by utilizing a mixture of new and traditional tools to share their point-of-view with the world.

Why are you doing this?

We want to seek out and share the stories of those who have found a way to break through to their audience in an authentic way using any medium, digital or otherwise. Too much emphasis is placed on the technology behind interaction, when it is the content and quality of the conversation that matters most.

How do you intend to make this happen?

We see our role as gracious facilitators providing an online space for participants to promote their gatherings, connect with collaborators and venues, and use our connections in the community to provide a context to share their experiences and promote their ideas.

Where is Substance Located?

Looking for 1551 SE Poplar? Here’s what it looks like from outside: http://twitpic.com/g5705

How Can I Participate?

Simply visit The New Communicators, or follow them on Twitter at @thenewcom, and the hashtag #thenewcom.

On Thursday, June 4th, 2009, members of the Portland Advertising, Tech, PR and Social Media community gathered to watch a panel event called “Who Killed Social Media?”. It was moderated by Marshall Kirkpatrick @marshallk, VP of Read Write Web, and one of the most prolific and RSS-informed people in the technosocial universe. The panel was a partnership between Portland’s Nemo Design (who graciously provided beer and a nice meeting space), and Group Y Network.

Marshall started off the panel by saying that terms are strange, for instance, “social media tends to be a little bit more broadcast and marketed, vs. the social web, which is a little more a way of life”.
–

Social Media Panelists

James Todd - @jwtodd

Software Engineer - Worked at Sun for over 50 years. Involved with Twine.

Lee Crane - @leecrane

Action Sports Media Veteran (Does that mean he’s wounded?), and proud blogger.

Matt Savarino - @Ridertech

K2, worked with the XGames.

Tony Welch - @frostola

Leads the Social Media strategy at HP, does the social media strategy for the laptop division.

Dave Allen - @pampelmoose

Community Manager, Director of Insights, Nemo Design

—

Who Killed Social Media? - The Panel Begins

Marshall Kirkpatrick: Just like when you open a fortune cookie and add “in bed” to the end, we add the “how will it make money”, “how will we market it” to the end of each social media question.

First question was for Tony,

Tony Welch: The alpha geeks validate our technologies. There is someone you go to when you want to know about computers. They validate what HP is doing. From there, hopefully you can use that relationship to bridge down to the rest of the mass audience.

James Todd told everyone go to Twine.com, and said this name multiple times throughout the panel. But by the end, it was apparent that he truly believed in twine and how it is a true filter for information streams, be it social or not.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: Twine is like a social bookmarking tool that automatically grabs material from the content of web pages and places in a tagged, semantically linked structure. Last month, Twine surpassed Delicious for number of unique visitors. Some people love Twine, but there’s also ample people who follow them around and criticize them.
–

The Semantic Web

James Todd: Semantics have been around for many ears. It’s pretty easy to screenscrape and provide APIs to that data, which Twitter does really well (it’s API). Down the road, consumers actualy have the ability to be in the driver’s seat.

The semantic space has really been driven by academics. While it is easy to talk the talk, you also have to walk the walk. Providing a list of distributed databases to provide access and crosslinking to those databases allows you to be able to know your customers much more.

The bar was set high; as Marshall said, he lives 5 years in the future and sometimes comes back to visit us. We hadn’t quite delivered some of the API features that we wanted to. Some of those future features. We use a lot of Open Source. A lot of it which only works on White Boards.

Let me just be really candid here — there’s been a lot of sidebar discussions. If you have a social application, you really have to have engagement. The promise has not really been delivered yet, but it is on the way. We’ve been a little bit burned by the alpha users in our experiences. We syndicate with Twitter now, and we’re getting a lot of people to use that. Really, we just want to average person to use it.

Marshall Kirkpatrick:
So, realizing that some of your critics have financial interests, realizing your shortcomings and working them out. But what James really wanted to talk about is the future and what’s coming down the night.

Not sure how many of you have heard of the new product Google Wave, but James has been following that particularly close, and if that’s one of the visions of the far-out future and how it can work…then.
–

Social Collaboration

James Todd: I have a problem with formal names, such as the Social Web. To me, I think the social web is just allowing people to communicate — bidirectional- back and forth. I think that what the Wave is going to allow collaboration. Allowing the average person to casually use applications. Google Wave allows people to do things on top of those applications naturally. It’s built on XMPP Jabber, which is the technology that instant messaging is built on. I think the consumer will be in the driver’s seat on which services will be allowed to integrate with each other.

I envision a point where pople will be able to choose which services to interoperate.

I used to work on a JUXTA project at SUN (where he worked for about 15 years), which we put XMPP on top of. This stuff can be small group oriented, which I really like better than large group orientated. I think that communication/collaboration is going to be the next bit thing.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: So the future will be a bunch if little groups talking with robots coming in giving updates on the snow conditions on the slop that the small group is going to go snowboarding on later.

So lets talk with Lee on the transition that we’re going to be going through in the transition from analog to digital media. He’s been in the television industry, but he’s also a blogger as well, so I think he has an understanding of this space really well.

The Transition from Traditional Media to Social Media

Lee Crane: When the cotton gin came, it actually made people’s jobs a lot easier. But now people want to be able to communicate 24 hours a day, so the marketer has to be available at all times. Traditionally, a marketer would make segments and send out some marketing, and set back and say “cool”. Now people know when they’d not doing a good job because no one is responding to it.

The difference is today that it is no longer the marketers that are doing the communicating — It’s the customers that are doing the communicating, and they’re doing it would your consent.

The difference being that it is…more difficult.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: Is it fair to say, lets not do push marketing media type stuff and instead communicate with our users, or…

Lee Crane: The media landscape is so fragmented now that people are being so bombarded with little bits of information that our job becomes bombarding them with lots of relevant information. The game becomes and instantaneous battle of having relevant information every minute of the day.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: While maintaining authenticity.

Dave Allen: Yes.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: So lets say someone was crazy enough to want to get into that, what do you think a good way to get into that would be?

Lee Crane: Well, it’s that if people are saying you have to Twitter, you HAVE to Twitter. When they say you have to Blog, you have to Blog. And the problem is that to understand it, you have to blog for a while.

There was a conference — and Ev was asked, “why is it that 50% of Twitter users don’t don’t Twitter after signup”.

When I first signed up, I didn’t have anyone to talk to, so there was no real point in updating.

That’s kind of what is happening, “there’s this Twitter thing going o, so we should have to Twitter. So can someone just say something that just happened in the Office?”.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: Let’s talk to Matt Savarino next. He has a lot of experience with Extreme sports, has long been interested in geolocation, and has a substantial Facebook presence.

The big question I have for you is, are all these freaky things you’ve been interested in finally picking up speed with the general market?

Matt Savarino: Basically, the question of who you know and where you’re at is becoming commonplace. I bet most brands here don’t have a mobile website, and they should. In the future, I think it is important that sites have one to prove that they are not subpar.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: We discussed youth marketing in general. Do you think that’s important now for people under the age of 25?

Youth Marketing

Matt Savarino: In my experience, kids don’t have the iPhone. They generally have ht free flip-phone, ect. Parents generally don’t invest in something that, if dropped once, will be broken (I don’t agree with this. I’ve seen 13 year olds with iPhones, the middle class market, definitely). But when I look at middle school kids now getting out from school, all of them have their heads down, texting.

–

Social Media Decision-making in a Multi-Channeled World

Marshall Kirkpatrick: We’re making decisions like that- do we do a mobile site, do we do a web app? It is difficult to have the conversations without first discussing ROI.

Matt Savarino: There is a large problem with having g the data be tracked, ROI tracked. The people who know and see and use these things, and the people who don’t. Justifying to them that if 30 people Tweet the post to their friends, that that has value, even if they didn’t buy a ticket. And with apps, I have to prove to them that I am giving them engagement, when they want me to give them traffic. But the problem is that these brands have traffic already, they just don’t have the engagement.

You can choose NOT to do it, but your competitor will. Burton snowboards doesn’t capitalize on Twitter, which is a tremendous opportunity for us to prove that we have something they don’t. Because they’re one of the biggest brands out there, and they’re not doing something important.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: Would you like to share your insurance analogy?
–

Social Media Insurance and the Case of Emusic.com

Dave Allen: It is difficult to convince executives to pay someone $55,000 a year to scrape the web. So I tell them, put that $55K into insurance. Because if your brand doesn’t own the message, the message owns the brand.

A company that did not share in this idea was Emusic, who was smashed this week.

833 people on Emusic’s blog said “Goodbye”, and Emusic did not respond.

One of the people who should’ve responded said, “I’m going to go on vacation for 2 weeks”, and, as you know, 2 weeks in Internet time is infinity.

What they ought to have done is completely pool their subscription base, 400,000 people, and say “hey, we’re thinking of acquiring the Sony music collection - are you interested?”. And I be you that 98% of those subscribers would’ve said, “no thank you”, and then set up a tiered system so that the 2% that is interested would pay for this additional music collection so that the rest of the subscriber base could’ve been grandfathered in and still had access to the independent music that they’d been so supportive of for the past 10 years.

They need to get the CEO onto Youtube to say, “I’m sorry, we blew it, really, really badly — and then apologize profusely to the subscriber base”.

Now that we have access 24/7 to spread our thoughts across the web, then

If you’re the manager of a brand, you have the ability to control the message - to jump in and interact with it, help shape it.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: (Sarcastic) Are you sure it wouldn’t just be a good idea to just be really nice, and just tell everyone about your products?

Dave Allen: Why should we do that?

Marshall Kirkpatrick: Because that’s what’s made money for the majority of people in this industry since the industry began.

Dave Allen: Well, that’s not how I make my living.

So, is Social Media Dead?

Rod Pitman (audience): Well, I have a question. Is social media dead? Isn’t that the name of this panel? And if not, why? I think that, if you don’t have a story, you’re dead.

Dave Allen: I agree. A story is necessary. But there is the name of the panel, which I am responsible for, and the question behind that is what is behind social media, and to also start a discussion.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: Would anyone else like to speak about push marketing pushed over social media tools, vs. the opposite, which is engagement?

Matt Saravino: Social media is by no means dead. I think that over time, your intent becomes obvious. So if your intent is that you’re going to constantly tell me that your products are 20% off, I’m going to realize that. To be genuine, and to realize that people can see right through you.

If you’re trying to broadcast deals, then call your Twitter account “BrandDeals” or something, so then people at least know what to expect.

Lee Crane: Social Media is not dead, it’s actually the other way around. The Social is killing the “media.”

Watch What You Predict

Tony Welch: How many of you do SEO or SEM? SEO and SEM will be dead as you know it within 6 months. Google is going to take into account now much more about what’s happening. Now, when people talk in your name, people will see social conversations about your company showing up in Google results, from Facebook, Twitter, Flickr. It’s now about brand management vs. SEO.

Dave Allen: Great, so you can take all that money you put into SEO and SEM and put it into community management. And you should not retain your assets but spread them as far and as wide as possible.

If we are moving away from SEO/SEM and into community and reputation, then it is of tremendous importance to protect and monitor communities and reputations.

Tony Welch: Anyone know what the second largest search engine is? Facebook. Twitter is coming next. People are spending a lot more on relationship analysis.

Self-Censoring and Social Media

Marcus Miller (audience): I guess that Dave has no self censoring problems. Tony you speak to - the idea that when you do any Twittering, then it is you. What degree do you find yourself self-censoring?

Tony Welch: There are some things I would love to Tweet about, but as I do work at HP, there are some constraints: for instance, I can’t just post anything because I’m also representing part of HP, and what I say can reflect on the brand.

Lee Crane: I use pseudonyms. I use fictional constructs, which also blog for me.

Dave Allen: Do you pay them well?

Lee Crane: I do. Very well.

Dave Allen: I’m not as wide-open as you think. I have a 30 second rule, and if it still reads well after that, I post it. I also don’t do anything online after 11 O’clock. Because I drink a glass a glass of wine. That’s a new rule I’ve decided to follow.

Technological Adoption and Social Class

Carri Bugbee (audience): brings up a questions about kids having flip phones, but per danah boyd’s research, social class plays a bit role in having iPhones or not. The man from New York who sent this question says, “all my kids have iPhones”.

Matt Savarino: That sounds like a very nice family to be in. But the majority of kids don’t have these technologies.

(break)

Lee Crane:Right now, it seems like there’s so much volume of information out there that we can ignore everything.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: Some people who tweet as many as 5 times a day feel like they’re flooding the world with too much information. I prefer to get RSS feeds from people and companies so I can keep track of all the the updates in an organized manner.

Community Management - Tracking the Social Web. Monitoring, then Participating

Tony Welch: We use a social media tracking program called Radian6 to track what’s happening on the social web. I’m not actually participating in conversations but am watching them happen.

Dave Allen: That’s classic community manager. Monitoring the network is the first step to maintaining reputation. You should not start right away by saying ‘We’re such-and-such a shoe brand”, or we have to jump in and get a Twitter or Facebook page, ect. If you don’t have a plan for that, it’s going got be a bit of a nightmare. There’s always this expectation or practice built around it. I wish there were such a way that I could get across to these companies about the need or them to have an insurance policy.

Tony Welch: One time, when I was looking at what people were saying about the community, and this one guy said, “I hate HP so much that it hurts when I pee”.

(Laughter)

Tony Welch: And so I think, what am I supposed to do what that? Do I engage? How do I engage?

Lee Crane: Well, he’s probably not using the product correctly.

(More laughter)

Nicole (audience): It’s not going to be who killed social media, but who killed the companies, because they didn’t participate? How, if you’re in one of these companies and have them understand the insurance principle, or the stupidity of companies?

Tony Welch: You pull up Google and pull up their name, you go to Twitter and pull up their name, you go to Facebook and pull up their name — and you say, “look at all of these people having conversations about your brand without you participating.

Panel Conclusions

The battery on my laptop died just before the end of the panel, but Ed Borasky (@znmeb) came up to the mike and asked a very potent question.

“Some people got in on the ground floor of Twitter,” said Ed, “but it’s too late to do that now. My question is what is the next service to get in on the ground floor of. For instance, there’s no way to be Scoble, or Oprah, now that it’s been done”.

I’m not sure who it was that responded, but a number of the panelists did, and the response was along the lines of personal branding. “There’s always opportunity to develop a brand. And there’s never been a chance to be Oprah,” they said.

Nate DiNiro (@unclenate“) also asked if social media was going to backlash, because now “aren’t we all just looking at screens?”. He wondered if there was a point when we wouldn’t be able to take the inflow of information anymore - when we would just ’snap’.

Dave Allen: I don’t think so. I’ve had a greater ability to meet people through Tweetups and get to know them in real life more than if I didn’t have the technology. In many ways, looking at a screen has made me more social.

The panel ended on a high note, with Dave Allen saying something really awesome, and the networking continued into the night, moving from Nemo to various bars and pubs. Thanks to everyone who helped up the event on, including Nemo Design, GroupY, and the panelists, and special thanks to Marshall Kirkpatrick, who did an excellent job of moderating.

Who Killed Social Media Recorded Livestream

If you missed the event, or want to make fun of the lousy job I did of trying to type way too quickly during it, then you can watch the saved livestream of Who Killed Social Media at USTREAM.

-

Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthropologist and social media consultant living and working in Portland, Oregon. You can follow her on Twitter @caseorganic. She has a background in qualitative and quantitative analysis and is available for short-term projects involving new media, online presence, digital branding, data aggregation and event coverage. If you’re not on Twitter, reach her at caseorganic [at] gmail [dot] com.

This morning I met with Brooks Gilley, Partner and Managing Director of 52ltd Portland’s only locally owned and operated full-service staffing resource for the creative industry. We had a great discussion on how marketing is changing, and how some companies really ‘get it’, or at least attempt to experiment with this strange new medium, while others are left behind.

We were meeting to talk about a creative event that will be occuring on May 27th at Univeristy of Oregon’s White Stag Building in downtown Portland. The event will feature four panelists from fields ranging from advertising, social media and sociology/anthropology. I’ll be on a panel discussing cyborg anthropology, new media frameworks, and changes in marketing in the digital era.

Panelists

I’ll be speaking with a variety of others, including an executive from Crispin Porter + Bogusky (the agency that worked on the infamous Facebook Burger King Whopper Sacrifice campaign).

Other panelists will include the Directory of Interactive Media for the Portland Trailblazers (whose community engagement strategy has been quite impressive), as well the possibility of a professor of Sociology from Portalnd State University, but I am unsure of his name yet. All told, the event should be a great chance for all of us to share different perspectives and strategies with each other and an audience of creatives, freelancers, and marketers.

More Information

I’ll post more details as the event nears, but it should begin at around 6:15 Pm at the White Stag Building on NW Couch street. There will be ample time for networking, so if you’re excited to meet new people, come on out. It is a free event too, so you’ve got nothing to lose. Check the 52ltd website for details as May 27th approaches, and if you’re looking to hire a creative or looking for a creative gig, consider making an appointment with them.

If you have any questions you’d like us to cover on the panel, feel free to E-mail me at caseorganic [at] gmail [dot] com, or simply reply to me at @caseorganic on Twitter.

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It was about 1:30 Pm when Paige and I arrived at PNCA+FIVE Idea Studios at Pacific Northwest College of Art.

Dr. Saul Ostrow sat at the front of the room and began reading from a small stack of paper in front of him. He had a pleasant, descriptive voice, and his face was illuminated by a small lamp.

Behind him was a projection screen displaying a series of disconnected abstract black and white scenes. Sometimes these scenes had muted scenes of people giving speeches. When Saul spoke, it sometimes looked like these ancient philosophers was coming back to life.

While he spoke, I attempted to write down every thing I could, but some of what he said may be unclear or missing. Please excuse this.

Transcript:

“Before I begin my speech on Models of Critical Production, one of the things that I tend to do is that I need definitions.

We all tend to say — even in the titling of this — we say ‘oh, I know what that means”

I need to clarify what I mean by it.

To model is to give form to or to display.

Critical is a moment of importance.

Practice is to perform with proficiency, or to exercise in order to gain proficiency.

To train in a systematic matter to a given end.

Therefore, what I am going to speak about gives form in a systematic manner to judgment.

System — a number of elements working together in concert, in an ordered manner, to create a whole, or to accomplish a task.

Obviously, we are talking not about something singular, but a complex network of interrelated relationships.

What does one need to make a judgment or to take a position? A position is something that one uses to locate themselves relative to another thing or person.

What are some of the terms of valuation -so that they may be a guide to one’s practice — to one’s performance. What are the standards, values and criteria are to be employed –and how might these come to be.

Standards and criteria are comparable and therefore quantitative .

Values are qualitative and therefore relative.

Criteria — the terms of evaluation or appraisal.
Desirability, or comparative quality. Obviously, these reflect a system.

Ideology –a series of imagined set of relationships that guide one’s actions and guides one’s subjectivity. A sense of self, or identity.

To model a critical practice is to give form or to display one’s sense of self, but what is this sense of self?

A sense of self is how we as individuals understand our individuality and collectivity. How we collectively and individually compare ourselves to each other

It is this self that is the emergent subject that enables us to act as well as inhibiting ourselves.

———–

Let us first clarify the notion of the emergent subject -that which moves under or moves something away

The emergent subject is one who acts, or orders.

One is not fixed. Our actions in the world move us .

We possess the ability to act in an ever new and reflexive way. In other ways we are always manifesting and an ever evolving awareness of ourselves.

It is our awareness that allows us to act, and consequently, the modeling of a critical practice is the display of the awareness by which you experience the world. And how the world might be ordered to the evolving self.

The experience of the self is always for the self and the position of advancing the self — both individually and collectively –

Relative to the subject with this talk — at this point, I’ll remind you — I cannot tell you the whole of this with any certainty — because based on the position I have announced here — I do not know the whole of it.

What I do know that there is more to it.

There are three elements of this model of the self

• Self criticality.
• Ethicality
• The Aesthetic.

Neither a priority or inherent, self criticality is a fail safe as we cannot extract ourselves from our world view.

We cannot understand ourselves except for that which is done in the way of value.

That we invest in ourselves tin that that effort will render up an additional value — in that one believes one needs, or one believes the world needs.

This “putting” into the world requires an aesthetic. We must think of it as an inclusive -as well as a means by which we do things. Ourselves in the world - it is the terms by which we represent our terms of self and the ability to progress. It is the means by which the emergent sel.

The content of such a practice is always political — these politics being the economy of social power.

To revise or transform how it has come to understand. Essential to advancing its position within the world is an affirmation or a means of introduction.

—————-

Thinking of Objects Rather than Systems

This desire to categorize art as object rather than critical discourse

one ends up worrying about the market rather than the cultural effect of the things that are produced.

Art is free. It is in our galleries. We can see it.

If we choose to posses it then we worry about markets. And possessing an object rather than the art.

If all of those fields are the creation of distinctly different things, then how do these ever interact?

Answer: there is never (not any interaction - it’s omnipresent) it is the material conditions of our lives. We are born into this — there is no undoing of it?

Is there value in that? There is only value we subscribe to.

We have common projects — some of us participate in those projects and some of choose not to
And we’ve determined that some of s participate in these things that we deem ed best to me in that collective.
Tom Summer: How is the possibility of communication between this intersubjective space possible? It is by consensus forming one contour of collectivity.

What does it mean to “take care of yourself”?

The fixity of the subject is not attached as an image- - is a restless activity (reminds me of Erving Goffman’s seminal book on the understanding of human existence, ”
If one presents new terms - if one is constantly seeking to unfix something - that is illicit. Once it becomes fixed - put in its place- it ceases to become a critical practice. Constantly offering up new propositions. If that worked, will this work?

Do artists ever fall prey to being licit without knowing it?

Not every artist is involved critical practice — the constant reinvention and rexamination of one’s own thoughts, ideologies, self-presence (except perhaps maybe online?).

Very often we talk of things as a singularity –as an art–as a thing- a singular thing. rather than the notion that there are artists that have little or no interest in criticality, but still culturally produce.
Not any singular practice –

the question of dialogue and intersubjectivity . the clash of these practices makes culture still dynamic.

Entering into the same aesthetic and same assumptions we would have a very structured culture, in which the practices would all be subscribed. There are some of us that unsubscribe — for instance, to say, “Oh I know that position, and I’m not interested in believing that anymore”.

Critical practice is always for something; it is not against something.

If I do away with evil - good will remain.

Theory always moves towards practice. they are interrelated.

Practice without some grounding is habit. if it has no self reflexivity. if it has no affirmation -being informed - we end up engaging in something that is habitual . the notion of theory is that I put things into the world as proposition. even the objects that one makes are always grounded in some sort of theoretical position.

You construct a theory of intuition. theory is the propositions that guide us.

The notion of artificiality - as it is with objects it is with us. They are tremendously unstable objects.

A critical practice is always illicit, but never negative.
—

A theory , in a sense -

Do not pick a meaning inappropriate to the subject.
There are just some things you can’t make a painting out of.
Which need is stronger—to make a painting about that subject or to be a painter?

A person decides to paint a picture of mars and Venus. And so they must learn everything they can about Mars and Venus—the whole story—so they can find the perfect moment in which to it.

in depth research - and understanding of relationships - self reflexivity.

Then it becomes how to represent that appropriate moment.

When models of existing practices should exceed existing structures.

Thomas Zummer: We’re always negotiating conflict.

A system network is constantly in negotiation. Constantly in practice. Constantly informing who and where we are in our positions in the world.

On Human Expiration

Productivity is dependent on death and destruction.

Some argue that what makes our human is the knowledge of our mortality.

In that we attempt to constructs things to leave behind.
The fear of death - drives us to produce the social -drives us to produce civilization.

Death is not destruction. I don’t see death as destructive! You’re talking about violence and I see violence as something else.

—————–

@paigedestroy will be going on a two week retreat with Tom Summers and Saul Ostrow. I’m letting her borrow my tape recorder who can by in multiple places at once.

A formal ind of decay or destruction to be subdued in the destruction is to be consumed in that productively is to be consumed in those forms the the transstion or production of those forms.

Those frameworks are always producing or always creating those decays.

We are dying every moment.

What I Took Away from the Lecture

Bordieu - that we are always reterritorializing things —-moving the boundaries of things. We only see it online because it is newer there – and disconnected. –
at one time you could not frame this with a new body

it is just more mechanical online, the reinvention of self — it does not mean that we do not do it in real life. the distance between spaces in which we do it online is just larger more granular — less resolution. we do not notice it in real life because it is so smooth and there are so many more systems at play — the granularity, the smoothness and the complexity of the system in real life compared to the systems online is so much more that we notice things more easily online. It is not “liquid” modernity” it is not fast and continual flux. it is slower online. much slower.

Moreover, as sociologist Emelie Durkheim said, as society matures and progresses, they flow from mechanical to organic.

We exist in space for a prolonged period and we call that time.
I’m more include to talk about entropy than decay.
These negotiations of certain processes. Things moving to a steady state.

I think its a society looking for its values and world view to be expressed and that it goes back to — reception. Those things we call artists are the agents by which we express something.

——-

I don’t believe in a Zeitgeist -because I don’t know when that time is.
if I could predict what would touch those million people. For instance, I could say, ‘what people really need right now is hope’ — but I don’t really know what hope looks like.

At the end, he pointed out something along the lines of the time cost of painting, adding “It’s better to work in film”.

And in similar vein of Artists are force carriers of culture.

—-

About PNCA+FIVE Idea Studio

————————
This lecture series was part of the PNCA + FIVE Idea Studio: Models of Critical Production
Saul Ostrow will be at Pacific Northwest College of Art from October 13–16.

————————

Event Schedule

Models of Critical Production
October 13 – 16
PNCA Campus
Free and open to the public

October 13
Tom Zummer workshop | Commons | 4 – 5:30 pm

October 14
Saul Ostrow lecture | Commons | 12:30 – 1:30pm
Tom Zummer workshop | Commons | 4 – 5:30pm

October 15
Tom Zummer lecture | Commons | 12:30 – 1:30pm

October 16
Saul Ostrow lecture | Commons | 12:30 – 1:30pm

More at PNCA Lectures occurring this week.

Today at 2Pm, all of the members of Portland Advertising Federation’s Colaboratory program presented their final marketing plan to Sameunderneath, a local sustainable clothing company.

Team Lattice showed a 5 minute video about their experiences before delving into the presentation.

The Lattice Presentation

• Research and Strategy
• Digital Brand Experience
• In-Store Branding
• Spreading Awareness
• Experiental

The Types of Sameunderneath Buyers

• Change Agents
• Enlightened Rebels
• Movers and Shakers
• Established Pioneers

Some of the brilliant ideas they came up with were as follows:

• Consumer Education: hangtags with information about the company’s values and the clothing ingredients and creation process. This will allow the consumer to really interact with the history of each piece of clothing.
• Stickers that can be written upon, to generate content for ideas — to spread the sameunderneath brand. Biodegrade nontoxic stickers.
• Chalk wall poetry can then be put on the walls of buildings with the sameunderneath.com logo at bottom - generated from Stickers #colab
• Projecting comments from a live Twitter feed about the Sameunderneath product on the catwalk of a Sameunderneath fashion show in LA. Sponsored and attended by socially-conscious, high-profile musicians.
• Branding on the inside of the clothing, so that wearers can lift their shirts to show, indeed, that they are wearing Sameunderneath. (Serves as an advertisement for photo opportunities, and a chance to show off nicely toned Yoga-abs?).
  • Flyers
  • Website relaunch
  • Outdoor wallscapes
  • Magazine
  • Documetnary Series
  • Sameunderneath Film Festival
  • 30 second Promotion
  • T-Shirt Challenge
  • Banner Ads
  • Pioneer Square Gallery

The Sameunderneath Target Market:

“People who give a Damn”
And for people who love music——>Advertising on Pandora.com”

Audience Interaction

Lattice team members ended by handing out stickers to everyone in the audience, saying, “Please, finish the statements on these “biodegradable, non-toxic stickers” and place them in locations that are poinigiant (and

Ryan Christensen, Founder of Sameunderneath said, “this idea is genius…(holds up the stickers with fill-in blanks) …when I first began Sameundenerath

An LA Resident Responds to the Sticker Idea

I was live blogging the Colaboratory Presentation as it happened, and I received a reponse to the stickers from @willtorres from Los Angeles, California.

@willtorres: “@caseorganic yeah, i love the stickers idea a lot. i was going to imitate a project i found with stickers throughout the city.”

Looks like their idea will be a great success.

—————–

Team Kiwi Presents

Luke Rolka:
Sameundeneath started as an educational curriculum…an idea. Now it has transformed into this business model. This socially responsible business.

“What we want to do is take this and make it big — move it national”.

“We want to take Saemunderneath and turn it into a model of super awesome success”.

Bryan Davidson: Even as Samunderneath grows, there are certain values that must stay the same.

Bryan Davidson’s words were, true, charismatic, thoughtful and provocative, which mirrored exactly the bullet points on the screen.

“You’re not just selling clothes, you’re selling a value system.”

“It is important to keep things small while thinking large. So we propose a new role of Community Director, because the world needs more Ryans.”

Luke Rolka: Consumers these days are really looking for ways to engage in a brand.The director is taking the Sameunderneath values and living and breathing them…becoming the representation of the brand. here in Portland. Then they can take that knowledge and adapt it to a city that they’re going to be running, and see how they can do it there.

Christine Vo: Sameunderneath is known very well in portland right now, but we want to take that internationally.

The T-Shirt Challenge

A way for designers to really get their name out there and show off their work.

Film Festivals, Lecture Series, Art Shows, and a Magazine

This was a decidedly different take then the music /urban street appelation basis of the Team Lattice presentation.

Founding of a Corporate Magazine, each zine with region focus, showing what each of those locations are doing with their local community and the Sameunderneath brand.

Then Unveiled a New Website: in which each of the pages have great design, Documentary Series, Philosophy, Community. “Get Involved” tab.

“What would you say to the world if you had 30 seconds to speak your mind?”
Rebels are encouraged to speak their minds on any subject and submit the video to the Sameunderneath website.

Flyers Embedded with Seeds

In order for you to grow, you have to engage with the customer. How better than by growing pieces of paper? Flyers embedded with Wildflower seeds. They can be buried in the backyard and have the words, “grow your paper and your ideas”.

“Each city’s flyer will have a different skyline, and we will try to get local artists to do the images for them. At every point, it is important to get local artists to do things for the compay…all these things create sustainable organic growth frr your company.

Then at the end presented a marketing plan roundup which included:

~.——————–

Now Ryan has to choose. It is a very intense decision. He leaves to use the restroom.

Sameunderneath had a 1.5 million growth revenue last year. The company is interested in affordable and efficient marketing methods for growth.

It all comes down to the customer base. Are they artsy and into film? Are they into music? The marketing plans seem to target slightly different demographics. Lattice presents an urban grassroots music-base, and Kiwi defines the demographic as a more thoughtful, artsy, film-loving creature.

The success of either marketing plan all comes down to what best fits the true demographic of Sameunderneath consumers.

To Team Lattice: One of your best points was the paper; that pamphlet that has the story that goes into the stores to educate the people. Something that each floor sales staff can read to better understand the product.

To Team Kiwi: We’ve been doing flyers since the beginning of the company, but now we’re starting to do personal invitations. It’s a way to say, we don’t want to waste your time with pieces of paper. With a private invite, people have to go out of their way to ask their friends to attend an event, and it is more word of mouth than objective and detached.

Ryan: This is a really difficult decision. They’re two different plans.

I really liked the fact that Team Lattice had the fill-in sticker that told the story of the brand. At the end of the day, it’s a new version of “hello my name is” Things like that are so personal and so engaged with community. It could go anywhere and be filled in with the culture of that community, that space.

To Team Lattice: I thought you ladies did a great job and restrained it to what really matterned.

In addition, your presentation’s marketing recommendations started small and then went big, just like how Sameunderneath should be growing. If you had shown me the magazine in the beginning, I would’ve discounted it right from the start. Do you have any idea how much it costs to publish something like that?

To Team Kiwi:What I really liked a lot was Bryan. You were kind of the leader of the pack. It wasn’t a presentation—you were being you.

The Decision

Ryan buys enough time to think, and then makes his decision. It is Team Lattice. But he points out that he doesn’t want to make a decision at all, because both teams came up with exceptional ideas.

“I would like each and every one of you to E-mail me,” he says, “and each of you to come to visit my creative team. I want both teams to be there to put in opinions and voice their two cents.”

The Colaboratory Sameunderneath Discount

Ryan added that, “Between now and the end of the month—everything in the store is $20 from now until the end of the month. Just let the store staff know that you’re a member of Colab and this discount will be available to you”.

Final Thoughts

According to Malcolm McCullough, author of Digital Ground, “Design is the Product”. Design is what people experience, what they see…all text, all seen and unseen material. It is that Psychology of space that design induces that makes a person feel positively or negatively about a space or thing. Online voluntary communities need a base under which to interact. They cannot be forced into acting voluntarily. They must weave themselves into the brand’s story.

I believe Team Lattice did this the best, because they created three distinct and affordable ways in which consumers could weave themselves into the brand’s story while helping to tell that story. The hang tags describing each piece of clothing and the company’s philosophy, the fill-in stickers, and the concert were all integrating factors that weaved the brand into the lives of the consumers.

It has been an amazing experience watching the #Colab members interact with each other and their agencies. I can’t wait to watch how they develop in the future. I’ve never seen such a dedicated and intelligent group of designers work so hard on a project before. Kudos to everyone. Team Lattice and Team Kiwi will go incredibly far, and soon.

~.—————————————

About the Colaboratory Internship Project

Sponsored by the Portland Ad Federation, the COLAB project believes that “Interning at 1 agency is so pre-millennial”, and takes a different route in inspiring the creativity and professional education of its interns.

From the Colaboratory website: “COLABORATORY takes place over 6 weeks in Portland, Oregon. 10 participants are selected and individually paired with 3 of the 11 agencies based on their strengths and interests. Interns spend 2 intensely focused weeks at each agency learning from all disciplines”.

Interns:

• Allison McKeever
• Bryan Davidson
• Christene  Vo
• Heather Schwartz
• Kim Karalekas
• Luke Rolka
• Melissa Casillas
• Mary McPherson
• Megan Nuttall
• Whitney Bard

Agencies:

• Ascentium
• eROI
• Anvil Media
• Fish Marketing
• the|new|group
• Grady Britton
• CMD
• Asterix Group
• HMH
• Livengood|Nowack.

Also check out the Team Lattice business card: It grows with their ideas.



Hazelnut Tech Talk is proud to play a part in reporting the COLAB experience, and is dedicated to connecting COLAB members with local networks, people and events that are moving and shaking the design world.

All of the members of COLABORATORY have been blogging about their adventures since their first day. Bram Pitoyo built a way to follow all of the action at once. It also checks the latest Twitter conversation that’s hastagged #COLAB, so you do none of the work and get all the results. Check out Bram Pitoyo’s COLAB Feed Aggregator from Yahoo! Pipes.

 

 Hazelnut Tech Talk Episode 6 [25:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (382)

Click to Subscribe

Hazelnut Tech Talk is a collaboration between Amber Case and Bram Pitoyo.

Our sixth episode features Megan Nuttall and Allison McKeever, two members of the COLABORATORY program from the team Lattice.

An interview with two members from the opposing team, Kiwi, was aired two weeks ago.

This episode covers James Rice, websites that scroll horizontally, lost dog poster that may or may not masquerade as an invitation to an underground rave party, Triscuits, best Portland agencies to work with, laptops with 17-inch screens, relative durability of the MacBook keyboard, Urban Grind, James Rice (you heard it right) and SEO bombing.

Here are links to Allison McKeever and Megan Nuttall’s blogs.

About COLABORATORY

“COLABORATORY takes place over 6 weeks in Portland, Oregon. 10 participants are selected and individually paired with 3 of the 11 agencies based on their strengths and interests. Interns spend 2 intensely focused weeks at each agency learning from all disciplines.”

Interns:

• Allison McKeever
• Bryan Davidson
• Christene Vo
• Heather Schwartz
• Kim Karalekas
• Luke Rolka
• Melissa Casillas
• Mary McPheerson
• Megan Nuttall
• Whitney Bard
• Brain Davidson

Agencies:

• Ascentium
• eROI
• Anvil Media
• Fish Marketing
• the|new|group
• Grady Britton
• CMD
• Asterix Group
• HMH
• Livengood|Nowack.

Hazelnut Tech Talk is proud to report the COLAB experience, and wants to connect its members with local networks, people and events.

To follow all their blogs and Twitter actions, check out Bram’s COLAB Feed Aggregator from Yahoo! Pipes.

A Colaboratory Visit

Today, Bram Pitoyo and I visited CoatesKokes to see what the Portland Colaboratory members were up to. The two Colaboratory teams were hard at work on their final PR and Marketing pitch for Sameunderneath. We watched them interview some CoatesKokes employees about what the Sameunderneath brand stood for. After about an hour of this, James Rice made a visit and let the team in on some strategic presentation advice.

James’ advice came at the right time — both teams have only seven days left before their final presentation to Sameunderneath. With only a week left in the program, he aimed to give them strategic advice on creating engaging and successful Marketing/PR plans.

James Rice is the Digital Brand Strategy Director at Ascentium, an agency specializing in interactive media. He has an intense track record. During his 15 years of agency experience, he’s only lost 5 clients. Compare this to baseball, golf, or the Olympics.

———————————————————–

James Rice Begins

James Rice: One of the things that most people forget, especially at your age, is that the concept of a team is very important. Never lose sight of that.

Collaborate

photo credit: Capra Royale

One thing we pride ourselves on is that everyone feels like they can work together to execute to that client’s expectations.

For instance (he pointed to Colab member Christine Vo, who was sitting to his left) if Christine and I were presenting to a client, a sort of conversation could go on between the two of us. It wouldn’t be like divisional, like assigning one person slides 3 and 5, or dividing up the work.

If you have the appropriate discussions in front of customers, that will speak volumes for people wanting to hire you.

———————————————————–

On the Errors of Big Agencies

There are some errors that most BDA (Big Dumb Agencies) make in presenting to potential clients. One of them is that they are used to pitching the team. CoatesKokes doesn’t do this.

It’s not about the people, or the history of whatever. Introduce your like this: “This is Joe, and he’s the account planner, and Sarah is the copywriter”. That way, the client sees what the agency is going to do, not what its people did in the past.

In case the agencies are listening, the idea of a BDA is not mine. George Parker coined the term on his blog AdScam.
He lived in Boise Idaho, and is a kind of blogger pundit. I highly suggest reading his work, as well as Marktd.com.

That all said — act as a team.

———————————————————–

Clients, Challenging Brands, and Organization

photo credit: gcoldironjr2003

1. Clients want to hire people who are enthusiastic about the business — who have taken the time to learn — who work together to challenge each other. At the same time, never be afraid to challenge the brand’s assumptions.

2. Be very organized in your thoughts — you have to be able to tell the story. Always pretend there’s a director over your shoulder, or that you’re presenting to your own camera.

Those are the two big tenants of presenting well.

———————————————————–

Passion, Slides, and Owning the Room

photo credit: jurvetson
Clients want to see that you’re passionate about the presentation.

But don’t put everything on the slides. If I see slides with more bullets on them, I’ll probably scream.

OWN the room when you step in. What’s on the glass or projected, will fill the gap.

What is most important is that you’re standing there with your team, and you’re passionate about what you say.

———————————————————–

Words Inspire Images

photo credit: Georgieporge

I was in my car the other day, and Posion’s Every Rose has its Thorn came on the radio. I listened for a moment and then switched over to CD. That Niel Young’s Cowgirl on the Sand. That was much better for some reason.

What made it better? It’s the same when it comes to presentations.

What we want to do in presentations is to get someone to think uniquely, or to present something that shows we’re unique. The phrase “Cowgirl on the Sand” shows something to our mind. It really conjures up an image. It is also unique, while the phrase “Every Rose has its Thorn” is overgrown; cliche.

Always try to come up with polarizing and intriguing things, and be very vocal; personable.

(At this point, James Rice began to wave his hands around a bunch).

Also use a bunch of hand motions.

(He pointed to the whiteboard behind him).

———————————————————–

This whiteboard is your best friend.

photo credit: Ben30

Once we went on a pitch and won HP as a client against a big competitor. We presented without laptops and Powerpoints and just brought in a whiteboard. That way, we could actually involve the clients in our presentation. They could watch it develop instead of sit there on the screen — this unmodified, ungrowing series of static images.

That’s one of the things I’d like to see in every presentation room. A whiteboard on which you could project a presentation on the lower part of it.

———————————————————–

Owning the Room During Electronic Malfunction

photo credit: Qfamily

Sometimes you come in, and there’s stuff that sometimes doesn’t work. White boards solve that. When possible, always have a backup. You shouldn’t need a Powerpoint to pitch an idea. It should be there in your head, and the head of your team.

———————————————————–

The COLAB Sameunderneath Presentation

James Rice: Lets talk about the Colaboratory presentation to Sameunderneath. How much time do you have?

Colab Member: 30 minutes for the pitch, and 15 for questions and answers.

Another Colab Member: No, it was just 30 minutes.

At this point, the team realized that there was a discrepancy of time-knowledge amongst them.

James Rice:
This brings up a good point. There should be that one point person who is in change of the entire thing. There always should be a pitch leader who is collecting all of the ideas. Everyone will take care of parts and pieces, but there needs to be part of a collector.

———————————————————–

On the Presentation of Self

photo credit: Steve & Jemma Copley

Never spend time on welcomes. I’m probably the only team that doesn’t do biographies. With Linkedin, Facebook, ect. out there, and there’s a good chance they know it is you.

As soon as you state, “I did this”, your design work becomes about your past.
If I could bestow any philosophy — it’s all about what you did — it’s about what you’re doing.

———————————————————–

On Thanking the Client

photo credit: carakatze

Don’t thank them like, “we’re happy to be here”

I’ve seen it done where people are so soft, like “I really appreciate the time”

Clients want actionable people that are ready to hit the ground, who are ready to kick some ass.

Say: “On the left there’s Chris Stein.

If you introduce her, it begins to be like a team.

———————————————————–

The Whiteboard

photo credit: mlinksva

On the screen, you can’t do the kinds of things you can do on the white board.

(He goes to the board behind him)

I just did this in a pitch the other day. I called it this area on the board, and made it the impact zone.

Instead of having an agenda — there are other certain things you can do, like you can take little sticky things and put down the thoughts on each other, and then start to arrange them into logical clusters.

—-
So then there’s these points of impact, and you can put them on the very first slide. For instance it can say the six things we’re gonig to do for you.
For samenunderneath you’re impact zone is going to be brand, exposure, orginality…ect.

What else do you want to do?

Do you want to create a new customer? Attract a new customer?

———————————————————–

Innovate in the Marketplace

photo credit: Lauras512

If you just put one or two words here and tell a story around them.

If I were pitching for Sameunderneath I’d probably be like “we’re here today because you’ve had a large impact to a very unique set of customers in what you’ve done for the last nine years…” We’ve looked at what kind of impact you’ve had in the marketplace.

If we were look at your brand expansion and how we can bring about greater exposure through your “market expansion plan” (adding sometimes its fun to put in phrases htat sound big)
today we’rll talk about how you can re-imagine your plan.

Lets look at brand experience, social retail. It is these thigns that will increase your exposure in the lines of your market plan.

Sameunderneath will take on this exposure and expand on it.

When I talk about a markting plan I have certain fears.

ROI would be on there.
(But I hate the word ROI — I’d prefer rather to use measurement…or culpability).

I’d have a statement and the impact points of ‘experience, authority, understanding.’

When I talk about experience a story is already starting to unfold.

Powerpoint presentations makes us be explicit.

I try to rip those bullets out and say them, not show them.

A slide can say “new ideas have the power to break boundaries set by others’ assumptions.”

———————————————————–

Branding a Presentation

photo credit: PinkMoose

You can also turn the presentation…not to your brand but to their brand.

Build the presentation like you work for them and put their brand on the bottom of the slides.

We do a lot of quite a few pitches that we do at Ascentium, and the strategy used depends on the type of pitch. If it is a type of social media strategy, then that comes on our deck (our brand and feel).

———————————————————–

Building from Scratch

photo credit: Richard Jones

We put all our presentation material on the network drive and it’s a mess.

Even though the presentation material is there, every time I build it from scratch.

———————————————————–

Finding Inspiration

photo credit: alicepopkorn

I have a delicious tag called inspiration…or “fucking rad”.

They’re where I go when I need inspiration.

Another thing I go to is Flickr.

If I’m stuck while making a presentation, I get what I want to say, and then create those keywords. And I build a slide desk with just thoe images.

And I begin to fill in those gaps “what do I want to say”.

Sometimes I put those ideas on notecards.

Question: What advice would you give to someone not as comfortable with presentng to a group?

James Rice: There are some amazing creatives that don’t want to pitch. They want to contribute to ideas.

I don’t pracice creating or programming anymore.

In the big picture, I’d probably, over time, find out where I’m there on it.
I have to ask the question of whether I want to pitch, or do I want to contribute a lot of really great ideas that are on the pitch?

In the case of Friday…get over it!

You’re gonna have great ideas…

You’re too young to be nervous.

———————————————————–

Images

photo credit: gutter

If your image is about expansion, find images of storefronts on Flickr that exist in other locations. Map the Sameunderneath logo onto them and see what happens. How does Sameunderneath fit in other ecosystems?

How could Sameunderneath fit into other cultures and other audiences.

As we looked at your plan of expansion…then do a map.

———————————————————–

The Awesomeness of Circles

photo credit: kyz

People love circles by the way

And if you draw circles and shit…

(He shows the group a slide filled with various objects).

Then clients will love it. They have the capability to show growth and change.

If you can draw what you’re trying to say people are going to love it. You’ll be so successful.

———————————————————–

Macrovisualizing

photo credit: audreyjm529

(Points to the board — where many ideas are listed).Man…this could be a slide of 26 bullets.

James RiceDon’t increase the number of slides to decrease the nubmer of bullets.

What I’d do is macrovisualize what I’m trying to visualize.

(Points to the jars of M&M’s on the table… (see, M&M’s are not triangular or square. They’re circular).

———————————————————–

A Sample Introduction

photo credit: eyeliam

James Rice began by drawing a vertical line on down the white board. One one side of it, he drew Sameunderneath.

James Rice: Here’s Sameunderneath .. it’s made a great impact on 18-24 year olds.

Then James started circling the logo, adding concentric rings around it that were larger and larger as they progressed. He led them to cross over to the right side of the vertical line.

James Rice: And here’s where we need to take it. This is why circles are powerful — they show the progression of time.

Where we need to take it is the 30-40 year olds…and increase the core audience. Then, as time progresses, the 30-40 year olds need to be come the main audience.

Try to draw you what you’re going to say.

———————————————————–

Learning from Failure

photo credit: zentolos

Instead of saying here’s what succeeded, I’d like to tell you about something that failed.

It’s fun to give you advice based on a thing that didn’t work .. because it is easier to see know what went wrong.

I’ll tell you what went wrong this time.

We hadn’t met the client before, and we were up, literally, for 61 hours.
Thus, we had no context, and with only three days to prepare, it was pretty much impossible.

We should’ve been more prepared for it; I should’ve told them no.

But we all realized we liked the three day thing.
Because when you have three weeks, you smash all of your ideas against the wall. You force yourself over them too much, until they become less of what they were before.

Like my writing professor in college said — write it. And then you’rll rewrite it and rewrite it and rewrite it. But just write it.

———————————————————–

On Taking Breaks

photo credit: dennis and aimee jonez

Don’t stay continuously working on something. You need to give your brain a break.

More importantly, focus it completely for a while, and then step back.

(He examined the presentation on his laptop).

I also used the colors and blue…maybe that was the problem.
I also didn’t use rounded corners — against my best intentions.

I’ll give you a secret — brand voice is what happens when you come in with
Your goal of the presentation is to distill it down into memorabale, topical, organized pitches.

You should have over 15 slides, ideally. And talk to your slides — they’re meant to work for you. They’re also touchpoints.

———————————————————–

On Pitching

photo credit: akeg

“When will you be pitching?” He asked the Colab Members. “Will you be practicing?”

It was stated that team Lattice would be practicing at Studio Bard on Wednesday.

James Rice: Does everyone have soem Sameundernath clothing?

I might do that if I were pichng htem as a client. It’s more gimmicky — but it shows that you’re all invested in the brand.

———————————————————–

Ten Things You Can Really Remember

photo credit: seanmcgrath

Look over your documents and come up with 10 great things that you really remember.

Make sure those ten things are what is remembered when you walk out of that room.

———————————————————–

Create a Visual Analysis

photo credit: playerx

Come up with your own type of visual analysis.

Everything dyou do should be expressed visually.

(James went again to the whiteboard and drew circles).

James Rice: Here’s our biggest MINDSHARE competitor.

Here are some very unique ways for you to expand your customers…and increase their mindshare.

———————————————————–

The Impact Zone

photo credit: Ana Filipa Machado

Identify the expertise in the creative ideas… identify zones within your plan where you now have it down cold.

Know it more than what it takes to get into that plan. Consider:

• Brand
• Exposure
• Originality
• Innovation
• Expansion
• ROI

———————————————————–

Conclusions

It was great to hear what James Rice had to say about the creative industry. As an Anthropologist, it was an interesting injection into a world of competing teams, creative ideas, and intense work methods. I look forward to seeing the future ideas that come out of the mind of James Rice and the Colaboratory members.

———————————————————–

Resources

photo credit: markhillary

Check out the blog of James Rice
And you can follow his Delicious Links.
Or you can follow James Rice on Twitter.

———————————————————–

Thanks for Reading Hazelnut Tech Talk!

If you liked this article, you may want to follow my updates on Twitter, or subcribe to this site’s feed.

 

 Hazelnut Tech Talk Episode 4 [17:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (406)

Click to Subscribe

Hazelnut Tech Talk is a collaboration between Amber Case and Bram Pitoyo.

Our fourth episode was recorded right after Cre8Camp and featured Christine Vo and Kim Karalekas, two extremely talented, dedicated individuals with the guts and wit to take on a demanding and often stressful internship program.

We covered topics such as COLABORATORY’s application process, the acquisition of over 100 business cards over the period of two weeks, an intercom at eRoi’s new entrance, @dtboyd, @jamesrice, and the possibility of a Google-run US government.

Sponsored by the Portland Ad Federation, the COLAB project believes that “Interning at 1 agency is so pre-millennial”, and takes a different route in inspiring the creativity and professional education of its interns.

“COLABORATORY takes place over 6 weeks in Portland, Oregon. 10 participants are selected and individually paired with 3 of the 11 agencies based on their strengths and interests. Interns spend 2 intensely focused weeks at each agency learning from all disciplines”.

Interns:

• Allison McKeever
• Bryan Davidson
• Christene Vo
• Heather Schwartz
• Kim Karalekas
• Luke Rolka
• Melissa Casillas
• Mary McPheerson
• Megan Nuttall
• Whitney Bard
• Brain Davidson

Agencies:

• Ascentium
• eROI
• Anvil Media
• Fish Marketing
• the|new|group
• Grady Britton
• CMD
• Asterix Group
• HMH
• Livengood|Nowack.

Hazelnut Tech Talk is proud to play a part in reporting the COLAB experience, and is dedicated to connecting COLAB members with local networks, people and events that are moving and shaking the design world.

All of the members of COLABORATORY have been blogging about their adventures since their first day. Bram Pitoyo built a way to follow all of the action at once. It also checks the latest Twitter conversation that’s hastagged #COLAB, so you do none of the work and get all the results. Check out Bram’s COLAB Feed Aggregator from Yahoo! Pipes.