We’ve spent the last two decades creating and storing more and more information.
David Siegel author of the Power of Pull reckons that the computer generation has digitised more than 500 Exabytes (500 followed by 20 zeros) of data. Siegel was speaking at Thinking Digital yesterday.
“In five years time we’ll have generated more than 20 years that amount. We’re builder bigger and bigger electronic filing cabinets. We’re spending trillions of dollars replicating old systems,” said Siegel.
Without context data has limited value and requires human intervention.
The semantic web is the unambiguous web where data has context because of the way it is marked-up.
During the next 30 years Siegel said that we’ll make a considerable leap in productivity because information on the web will be organised so that computers can understand its context and meaning.
Human beings aren’t very good at interpreting numbers. That’s the view of Jer Thorph speaking at Thinking Digital in Gateshead yesterday.
Thorph describes himself as a software artist, writer, and educator. He’s also a contributing editor for Wired UK.
His session described how data could be represented in a visual format. That’s the premise behind his Just Landed project.
The application scans Twitter for mentions of “I just landed” or “I just arrived” and using MetaCarta adds Longitude and Latitude data.
The Just Landed application uses these data point to plot the flights taken by Twitter users over the course of several hours.
By contextualising data in this way Thorp explained that it’s easy to understand the story behind data – in this case the flights that Twitter users are taking.
We Feel Fine takes a similar approach to plot instances of “I feel…” from social networks.
Thorph said that these same techniques could be used to predict the spread of a disease.
We’re only beginning to see the use of Twitter for customer service. Yet the expectation of brands that use the channel is increasing all the time.
Businesses may start prioritising engagement with customers on Twitter according to their influence. This was Brian Solis’ prediction speaking at Thinking Digital in Gateshead today.
Solis said that measurement tools such as Klout enabled brands to determine the influence of a Twitter user and prioritise their response accordingly.
Ultimately the ability for consumers to communicate directly with organisations is likely to required fundamental corporate and organisational change.
“Fundamental issues that are repeatedly arising on Twitter need to be dealt with at an operation level within a business,” said Solis.
Placating Twitters users will only work for so long he said.
Andy Hobsbawm, founder of Online Magic, the UK’s first Internet agency, now part of Agency.com, has a new eco-project called Green Thing.
The Green Thing team is using creative communications to reframe environmental issues for consumers in a bid to bring about behavioural change.
Speaking at Thinking Digital in Gateshead today Hobsbawm said that individuals are typically motivated by green issues but find it difficult to take meaningful action in their lives.
Hobsbawm advocates that communication lies at the core of reframing the issue.
“So often the environment al change is pitched as a form of abstinence. We need to move people from they ought to do, to what they want to do, and inspire them to do the green thing,” he said.
Hobsbawm cited examples of this approach in three Green Thing projects.
Driving music? How about walking music? Walkcast is a downloadable soundtrack tuned to the walking pace of 105 beats per minutes. Stick it on iPod and hit the streets with a beat to your step.
Glove Love brings together misplaced gloves sourced from lost property outlets from across the UK. Single gloves are united with a partner and branded label and sold by Green Thing for £5.
Nothing is a retail concept whereby consumers satisfy their need for a retail experience literally by purchasing nothing via a website wittily branded Amazero for nothing. A purchase generates a series of purchase and delivery emails aimed at mimicking a purchasing experience.
Each project is intended to prompt reflection and scrutiny of personal eco issues. Job done I think.
This video posted two years ago shows Payne’s much-loved Land Rover shortly after he flipped it on black ice.
Payne recounted to the audience during his presentation at Thinking Digital today that in the days following the post he realised the potential of social media as his network reached out to offer practical help and support.
“The more experiences I share the more connections I make,” he said.
Payne is a prolific content producer and says that his participation in social networks has enabled him to promote his trade, showcase his work and generate interesting work.
Technology has enabled computers to be connected together and has democratised how we share information at low or no cost.
Speaking at Thinking Digital in Gateshead today Joichi Ito, venture capitalist and CEO, Creative Commons (CC), told the 500-strong audience that the next significant challenge for technologists lies in the collaborative manipulation of applications and content.
“We need to create standards that harness the opportunity for collaboration that the Internet enables,” said Ito.
His contention is that it’s wrong that legal and licensing costs are now the most significant barrier between third parties seeking to collaborate and reckons CC is the answer.
CC has defined six flavours of legal contracts from full copyright to public domain that are available and enforceable in almost every country in the world.
Ito said that the benefits of using a CC licence are both creative and financial.
He cited the example of Nine Inch Nails. When it released Ghosts under a CC license it drove amateur remixes and hype that resulted in it becoming the number one paid MP3 download on Amazon in 2008.
Other CC customers include Al Jazeera, Flickr, Google and Wikipedia.
I won’t have to travel as much as usual over the next week.
I’m speaking in sessions at IPEX (#IPEX) at the NEC in Birmingham today and Monday and am then heading to Thinking Digital (#TDC10) at The Sage in Gateshead from Tuesday to Thursday next week. The latter is a short commute from my home in Northumberland.
Do look me up if you’re at either event.
IPEX is a trade event for print, publishing and media where my contribution will be to debates on the future of printed media. With the iPad’s impending launch in the UK it couldn’t be timelier.
Thinking Digital will see 500 delegates descend for the third year on what has become the UK’s answer to US conferences such as SXSW, TED and PoP!Tech. Among the speakers for 2010 will be execs from Creative Commons, Futureworks, Ogilvy Group UK, Sony Pictures Digital and Wired.
I’ll be blogging interesting content from Thinking Digital here and on The (Newcastle) Journal’s NEOtherBusiness business web site.
Herb Kim (@herbkim) has been in touch. His team at Codeworks has completed a video report on the Thinking Digital 2009 conference that took place in Gatehead in May.
Arts, business, science, technology and smart thinking – on-the-Tyne. Have a look. I’ve booked for 2010.
Wired deputy editor Ben Hammersley joined the ranks of speakers at Thinking Digital this afternoon that have called time on the traditional publishing model.
“[The premise that…] people won’t pay for content is a myth propagated by big media. The reality is that people won’t pay for their media anymore,” he said.
Hammersley said that consumers will pay for quality, crafted content pertinent to their personal interests.
“Content publishers need to stop chasing numbers and pursue quality, elegance and craftsmanship instead. Digital is enabling interesting stuff to be made [and distributed] at low cost to small audiences,” he added.
The duo is behindthe Things Our Friends Have Written On The Internet 2008 project, a beautifully designer newspaper of content drawn from around their digital networks. The publication was so admired that it has inspired a Flickr group.
Davies and Terrett have now raised funding from Channel 4’s seed fund 4iP to develop a tool to enable anyone make the transition from content on screen to a printed format.
I caught with Mike Southon this morning at Thinking Digital. He addressed the conference yesterday with an inspiring speech using The Beatles a narrative for creating and growing a business.
“The Beatles themselves were entrepreneurs [....] They developed an Elevator Pitch (‘like Elvis, Little Richard and Chuck Berry, only better…’) found a Mentor (their manager Brian Epstein), and then a First Customer, (producer George Martin, who signed them to EMI).”
During the 1980s Southon co-founded The Instruction Set, a computer services company, which he later sold to what is now Cap Gemini. He worked with 17 start-up ventures during the 1990s, two of which, Riversoft and Micromuse, later listed on the stock exchange. He writes a column for the Saturday FT on entrepreneurship and delivers over 100 presentations every year.
Southorn is also an experienced broadcaster and has released over 80 podcast-friendly interviews with famous industrialists, entrepreneurs and business experts. Tune in here to hear him in conversation with Allan Leighton, Sir Robin Saxby, SpinVox’s Christina Domecq and Nixon McInnes’ Will McInnes, amongst others.
We Tell Stories is a Penguin backed project that has presented novels in a variety of innovation formats using the web.
Adrian Hon from Six to Start explained to delegates at Thinking Digital how his team took six stories and presented them in innovative digital ways over six weeks attracting 250,000 readers and healthy discussion via an online forum.
The highlight of his session was multi-touch platforms that combine displays and touch interfaces such as Microsoft Surface to combine the physical space with the digital. He also covered electronic paper, screen technologies and electronic paper.
I originally discovered Jonny via a lecture at TED in April 2008 where he presented his low cost Minority Remote-style wiimote hack. Delegates at Thinking Digital were treated to a quick snapshot of this project.
She’s part of the team working on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to create the very early universe to test fundamental theories of particle physics in search of the origin mass, anti-matter and dark energy.
The cornerstone of the work of the 2,000 physicists at CERN is the search for the Higgs boson, an elementary particle, nicknamed the God particle.
The LHC is a massive piece of equipment that has been built in a circular tunnel 27km in circumference underground in Geneva. Unfortunately it failed a week or so after launch. When it’s back online in September it will create electron beams that carry the stored energy of half a lightening bolt and the team will be able to continue its work.
CERN has created GridPP, a distributed computing grid across 17 UK institutions. Once the LHC is back online, the grid will harness 10,000 PCs to process data from experiments.
An entertaining interview on stage at Thinking Digital (#tdc) between entrepreneur and FT columnist Mike Southon and Red Bull’s former-UK CEO Harry Drnec on the marketing strategy he developed for Red Bull.
Identify – segment market audiences – in the case of Red Bull people that burn the candle at both ends
Find them – determine channels to audiences
Touch – provide products to audience when they need them – Red Bull did this via experiential marketing
Thrill them – ensure product delivers and delivers on its promise
This simple strategy increased sales from three million cans in 1996 to 300 million cans in 2006 and combined with strong brand and channel management enabled Red Bull to maintain premium pricing.
Drnec is now CEO of the Broadband Computer Company developing a hassle free computer due to be launched later this year.
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