Tag Archives: web 2.0

New opportunities, new challenges

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As I look back over the past 15+ years I have been working within the Internet space, I never could have predicted the changes that have come about as a result of this amazing technology. From the first early days of just trying to get connected using SLIP/PPP, to the birth of multimedia content and now the rise of the social web, I feel really blessed to have contributed, even in small way, to how the Internet has changed the world.

Over that time, I have learned a ton! From innovative product and service concepts, to how brands are engaging customers, the pace of change has been incredibly invigorating. In my practice, I have focused on Customer Experience and Innovation with a particular emphasis on the social web. I’ve tried to delve into not only social media tools, but how attitudes have changed within companies as they look at how their business fundamentally interacts with their customers.

I began my company with the goal of “bringing companies closer to customers.” And I like to think that I’ve been able to do that by understanding our clients’ objectives and constructing solutions that help them more effectively interact with their internal and external stakeholders.

But what do you do when you are given a fantastic opportunity to work with a terrifically talented and hard-working team at a great company? As hard as it is to leave what I am doing now, I feel the time is right for me to join the Corporate Development team at LoyaltyOne (AirMiles). This move makes perfect sense for me at this time; I don’t feel that I am leaving anything behind because I am taking all the skills and resources I’ve developed and applying them to a new set of challenges.

At this stage, I won’t be taking on additional clients or projects, but I will, of course, remain engaged in this industry and involved in all the pioneering groups that continue to move it forward. And, I promise to continue to learn and contribute with everyone who has made this medium the great, ongoing experiment in communication and interaction.

Digital Life- Google and statistics

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Slide5

Google recently launched its Internet Stats site which brings together information from across five different industry groups and serves it up in bite sized, Twitter-like pieces for easy consumption. It by no means is a fully comprehensive look at all the statistics out there it does provide an interesting set of seemingly separate chunks of information.

That got me thinking – what if I could take some stats and try to build a story around them and set them to music? So here is the first draft of what that looks like.

Print3D- How will you use it?

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There is a great post on the Ponoko blog, that talks about a disruptive shift in the way consumers will represent everything from maps to parts. Its called 3D printing and could be as important a change in the way we think about form as the shift from dot-matrix printers (remember those?) to laser printers.

The reason is because a company called Desktop Factory has dropped the price of the individual units to below $5000. While not exactly a staple on everyones Christmas list, they have gotten to the range that the Apple LaserWriter was in about 1985. I remember using one of these around that time and apart from the outrageous price per page (I was using it in school or at Kinkos) I knew after I saw the output that there was no going back to dot-matrix. It was like seeing a movie in colour, then again in black and white; there was no comparison.

Although dot-matrix printers continued to improve in quality and speed, the flexibility of laser printing quickly changed the way that people thought about putting graphics and text on the page. In theory consumers were able to compete with publishers with the availability of these new tools. But the reality was not quite as profound.

What I remember was that there were quite a few newsletters, posters etc. that looked like they had been assembled from a whole bunch of different sources and thrown down on paper. (Which reminds me of what is currently happening with interactive applications and Web 2.0, but that’s a whole other post.) What struck me at the time was that there still needed to be some design involved to make sense not only of the detail but of the overall picture.

You could see this about a decade later when the first html pages were created. (Anyone remember rainbow lines and scrolling status bar text?) Even though the palette of choices and tools was limited, those skilled web designers could make great looking pages even in those early days.

So maybe 3D printing will bring a new way of envisaging information to the masses. But it will still take talented designers to really make the information usuable to the masses.

(An interesting sideline to this discussion, RepRap makes a printer that (although not as esthetically nice as other commercially available machines) has successfully replicated (or cloned) itself by making its parts. Available under GNU, there are documents online so you can make one yourself.)