Energy

Good idea... In my opinion there are too many people glued to their phones, and not enough "real" interactions.

Here is what SXSW is doing to get people interacting!

Story By John McDermott

SXSW has a unique problem: the bigger it gets, the less it becomes about the film, music, technology or the festival itself and more about the ad agencies, brands and marketing pap that surrounds it. 

But there are some SXSW employees who are fighting to redirect attendees' eyeballs away from the marketing side shows and back to the Austin Convention Center where the "actual" festival is held. Further, festival organizers would like attendees to actually "be" in the convention center and not on their devices.

That's partly why SXSW brought in New York City artist and educator Otis Kriegel this year. As one of the festival's several artists-in-residence, its his job to use art to distract attendees from their smartphones and precipitate face-to-face interaction.

Mr. Kriegel, co-founder of New York-based public art collective Illegal Art, spent Friday installing one of group's signature interactive art projects, "To Do." The project, which Mr. Kriegel has previously conducted in New York City and New Hampshire, involved littering a wall with nearly 5,000 Post-Its to spell the words "TO DO" over the course of seven hours.

When passersby encounter the wall on Saturday, they will be encouraged to write tasks on one of the slips of paper in the hopes that someone else will pick it up and follow its instructions.

"[SXSW] wanted to have more of a gravitational pull, to have people actually participating in the actual festivities in ways that aren't tech-based," said the wiry Mr. Kriegel as he worked four SXSW volunteers to arrange the pink and yellow squares.

Mr. Kriegel hopes the notes induce serendipitous meetings between art projects participants. He will be replacing the Post-Its throughout the week as they are taken and (hopefully) carried out.

Mr. Kriegel will also be working with fellow Illegal Art member Michael McDevitt for another art project called To Me that will be installed at the Blackheart Bar in Austin. Participants will write themselves postcards that will they receive in the mail in six months. The postcards are meant to help participants reflect upon who they are now and ultimately serves as "a memorial to your past self," SXSW said.

Morgan Catalina, saleswoman for SXSW's special projects, said that providing surprises is part of a marketing strategy that separates SXSW from other cavernous, monotonous tech festivals.

In addition to Mr. Kriegel's To Do installation, Ms. Catalina has solicited similar projects that lie at the convergence of film, music and technology including an installation at Republic Square Park that will use a series of lights to make the park appear to be a tidal pool.

Ms. Catalina said the marketing side shows that occur within SXSW's orbit don't bother her. She is, however, adamant about making the certified event as engaging as possible.

Whether her artists will be able to get attendees to look up is uncertain.

"I'm literally putting my life in their hands," Ms. Catalina said.

Colorado Gives Day (happening tomorrow, Dec. 4) might as well be a state holiday. The idea: a 24-hour giving spree to hundreds of Colorado charities, big and small. In its inaugural year, the foundation raised $8.4 million for 529 charities; last year $12.4 million was donated to 928 nonprofits. Organizers anticipate an even bigger outpouring of generosity this year, and you can help by donating to any of the more than 1,000 participating nonprofits. It's super easy: Just go to www.givingfirst.org and find the charity you want to donate to. 

Airways has been a proud supporter of the Morgan Adams Foundation for 7 years, donating technology solutions as well as strategic direction. Please help support pediatric cancer research.

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I thought this would be a good review for those who are interesed in type only logos. These are hugely successful.

The minimalist approach can go a long way, especially when you have a text only logo, meaning that it is free of any emblem or other distinct pictorial element. Text only logos can also include alettermark. A good example would be the McDonald’s “M”. According to DesignCrowd, 8 of the top 10 brands – fromInterbrand’s Top 100 brands of the world 2009 – use a simple wordmark or lettermark logo. Also 51 of the top 100 brands of the world use a wordmark or lettermark logo that is, their logos are simple, text-only and free from icons, pictures or emblems. 

Published by: GRAPHICDESIGN.com

In glorious Bello Script, the Pinterest logo comes together in perfect harmony as an icon, while remaining strictly type based. The subtle point on the P is just enough to make it extra iconic, yet still remain a letter.

Creative director Benjamen Purvis, together with legendary type designer Jim Parkinson, who drew the new logo, took their inspiration from 1930s European auto-racing posters — rugged, elegant, unadorned. “It’s handcrafted, masculine, and authoritative,” Purvis says. “I think it perfectly expresses the spirit of our magazine.”

Fleet Week is a United States Navy, United States Marine Corps, and United States Coast Guard tradition in which active military ships recently deployed in overseas operations dock in a variety of major cities for one week. Once the ships dock, the crews can enter the city and visit its tourist attractions. At certain hours, the public can take a guided tour of the ships. Often, Fleet Week is accompanied by military demonstrations and air shows such as those provided by the Blue Angels.

Unfortunatley, we weren't able to be there this year. Many of our friends did make it to Fleet Week and took in the 34th America's Cup World Series. The finals will be held in San Francisco 2013 with even bigger boats, the AC72. 

Photographer: Gilles Martin-Raget

Contributed by Joel Book , ExactTarget's Director of eMarketing Education 

Digital media has forever transformed how brands and consumers interact with each other. Online marketing has become a 24x7 multi-channel symphony designed to engage and inspire today’s hyper-connected consumer. And hopefully compel them to buy the brand’s product.

To visualize the “avalanche of digital activity” that is taking place between brands and consumers, business intelligence company DOMO paired up with Column Five Media to create this infographic to show what’s happening online every minute of every day,.  

The reason social media is so compelling probably goes back to a simple, eternal truth: human beings like to think and talk about themselves. That judgment is based on new research conducted by psychologists at Harvard, which suggests that disclosing information about oneself activates the same neural rewards center associated with other basic desires like food and sex.
 
The study, titled “Disclosing information about the self is intrinsically rewarding,” used an MRI to observe the brain activity of subjects who were asked questions about themselves and others -- including, for example, personal food preferences, enjoyment of leisure activities, and so on. This portion of the study found higher levels of activity in the mesolimbic dopamic system, including the nucleus accumbens and the ventral tegmental area, all of which are associated with feelings of rewards, when people answered questions about themselves.
 
In a second part of the study, subjects were given a choice between answering questions about themselves or questions about others, with different monetary rewards attached to each. Although the “pricing” of questions gave subjects the chance to earn more money by answering questions about others, most participants sacrificed potential earnings in order to answer more questions about themselves.
 
Referring back to earlier studies which were used as models for this study, the authors summed up the results: “Just as monkeys are willing to forgo juice rewards to view dominant groupmates and college students are willing to give up money to view attractive members of the opposite sex, our participants were willing to forgo money to think and talk about themselves.”
 
A further refinement of the study let subjects share their answers with a friend who accompanied them to the tests, and who could view answers on a computer. Unsurprisingly, even greater importance was associated with sharing information with others, both in terms of neural activity and in the amount of money subjects were willing to sacrifice in order to share. Interestingly, the value placed on sharing information with others averaged just under one cent, “putting a new twist on the old phrase ‘a penny for your thoughts,’” the authors drily observed.

This article written by Erick Sass, and was brought to my attention by The Social Graf - Connecting Through the CAOS.

Another cool idea from O The Oprah Magazine - Mobile Produce Market

Steve was motivated  "The scent of fried food is so thick here, you can smell it with the windows closed."

Steve Casey's Mobile Produce Market
In 2006 a local study labeled Steve Casey's Chicago neighborhood a food desert—a term used to describe areas that lack affordable fresh produce (but are usually awash in burger wrappers and French-fry containers). "The scent of fried food is so thick here, you can smell it with the windows closed," Casey says. "There's not a vegetable in sight." Among other things, food desert residents—there are nearly 400,000 in Chicago alone—have a higher risk of diabetes, heart disease, and obesity.

But Casey, 45, a grant administrator and father of two young boys, had an idea. With a few other local activists, he raised $40,000 from investors and used it to gut an old municipal bus (purchased from the city for $1). He christened his new wheels Fresh Moves Mobile Produce Market. "My goal is to be like the ice cream man, but with fruits and vegetables," Casey says. "We want people to get as excited about grapes in January as they are about Popsicles in July."

So far, it's working. On a recent Monday morning, a crowd of about 70 stood on a street corner in the pounding rain, waiting for their produce to pull up. With its cheerful red siding, the Fresh Moves bus was visible from blocks away. Once inside, customers stocked up on organic tomatoes, potatoes, broccoli, collard greens, and more—all priced affordably thanks to a partnership with an organic distributor.

To Casey—who plans to add five more buses to his fleet, fanning them out to schools, health clinics, and senior homes—food is a matter of social justice. "Recently, I watched a 14-year-old boy eat his first apple ever," he says. "Too often we're looking for the holy grail, but sometimes it's the little things, like giving a kid something affordable and healthy to eat."

•  You don't even realize there's a game. (And any contest, market, project or engagement is at some level a game).

•  You start getting involved and it feels like a matter of life or death. Every slight cuts deeply, every win feels permanent. "This is the most important meeting of my life..."

•  You realize that it's a game and you play it with strategy. There's enough remove for you to realize that winning is important but that continuing to play is more important than that. And playing well is most important.

•  You get bored with the game, because you've seen it before. Sometimes people at this stage quit, other times they sabotage their work merely to make the game feel the way it used to.

And then a new, different game begins. 

• You can spend your marketing money in more ways than ever
• You can live in more places while still working electronically
• You can contact different people
• You can launch different initiatives
• You can hire different freelancers...
• You can post your ideas in dozens of ways
• You can interact with millions of people
• You can launch any sort of product or service without a permit or factory