Ged Carroll

Category: ideas | 想法 | 생각 | 考える

Ideas were at the at the heart of why I started this blog. One of the first posts that I wrote there being a sweet spot in the complexity of products based on the ideas of Dan Greer. I wrote about the first online election fought by Howard Dean, which now looks like a precursor to the Obama and Trump presidential bids.

I articulated a belief I still have in the benefits of USB thumb drives as the Thumb Drive Gospel. The odd rant about IT, a reflection on the power of loose social networks, thoughts on internet freedom – an idea that that I have come back to touch on numerous times over the years as the online environment has changed.

Many of the ideas that I discussed came from books like Kim and Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy.

I was able to provide an insider perspective on Brad Garlinghouse’s infamous Peanut Butter-gate debacle. It says a lot about the lack of leadership that Garlinghouse didn’t get fired for what was a power play. Garlinghouse has gone on to become CEO of Ripple.

I built on initial thoughts by Stephen Davies on the intersection between online and public relations with a particular focus on definition to try and come up with unifying ideas.

Or why thought leadership is a less useful idea than demonstrating authority of a particular subject.

I touched on various retailing ideas including the massive expansion in private label products with grades of ‘premiumness’.

I’ve also spent a good deal of time thinking about the role of technology to separate us from the hoi polloi. But this was about active choice rather than an algorithmic filter bubble.

 

  • Fieldnotes & other things

    Fieldnotes

    Chad Dickerson’s Fieldnotes – Fieldnotes is an email newsletter from one of the key people during Yahoo!’s web 2.0 geek golden age and former CEO of Etsy. Chad Dickerson was in charge of Yahoo!’s Brickhouse incubator and the Yahoo! Developer Network. He then went to be the CTO of Etsy and was then promoted to CEO. Dickerson came from a background in technology for online media, having worked at CNN, Salon.com and InfoWorld before Yahoo!

    Shipping time lapse

    This is the second time lapse film I’ve seen done by an officer on a ship. I get it. No internet would give you a lot of time to put the film together. It opens up a world that I had only heard of from people older than me who had served on ships when westerners were sailors. I love the way clouds boil away, time lapse allow you to better see the liquid nature of clouds.

    20 choice edits and reworks

    Greg Wilson put together this mix of his favourite edits that had been done in 2017. Everyone of them are are an amazing track. Wilson was one of the original resident DJs at the Hacienda. He was the first UK DJ to be seen scratching on TV. He took a break from DJing and returned later to both DJing and production. Wilson is one of the pioneers in the nu disco movement.

    LV Pass Apple Messenger icons

    Louis Vuitton’s LV Pass app did some really nice integration with Apple’s Messenger stickers. It is based on Jeff Koons artworks and the iconic Louis Vuitton brand. More related content here.

    Untitled

    Switch off for the holidays

    Fair play to Nokia for running this campaign on their website over Christmas. They realise that consumers are over connected and need a screen break, so they have been encouraging consumers to switch off and connect in real life for the holidays.

    nokia

  • Reuse, reedit, remix and recycle

    Reuse, reedit, remix and recycle a minimum viable campaign

    I have been working on a couple of briefs over time that have suddenly seen budgets cut quite dramatically. It’s often a struggle to pare the list of requirements back to a minimum viable campaign.

    One thing that tends not to happen too often is seeing the reuse, reedit, remix and recycle of assets effectively.

    Reuse, reedit, remix and recycle for international campaigns

    I saw the principles of reuse, reedit, remix and recycle being used more often in international campaigns. Some brands like Mars have looked to do reuse, by spending a lot of time aligning their brands across markets. In the UK and Ireland, consumers of a certain age will remember the migration of Marathon bars to become Snickers and Opal Fruits to become Starburst a decade later.  The principles of reuse, reedit, remix and recycle was incorporated into thinking at Unilever making TV ae lssets more easily localised in different countries including adapting end slides and one shot for culturally appropriate product uses.

    Mexico

    Germany

    But perhaps the best example I can recall was one that used to show repeatedly on cable TV when I was in the final year of my degree. I would have the TV on in the background, whilst I slowly but steadily cranked out my final year series of assignments and essays.

    BreathAsure seemed to have given their London advertising agency very little to work with, but this cheeky voiceover turned the ad around and was an insiders nod to how awful the original American creative was. I am guessing that this probably would not have passed muster if it needed sign off by an American global marketing supremo.

    In case you’re wondering what ever happened to BreathAsure, it seems that soon after this ad campaign originally ran Warner-Lambert took them to court in the US regarding their product claims. More marketing related content here.

  • Innovation stuckness + more 2018 trends

    There are a number of people who have done great trends / predictions for 2018. I thought that I would focus on what I would like to see across three trends: innovation stuckness, lean web design, machine learning ethical considerations, buffer bloat and redefining what a technology start-up is.

    Smartphones are stuck in a period of innovation stuckness. It is becoming increasingly difficult to justify upgrades to your handset. This has had knock-on effects to mobile networks. In markets where subsidised handsets are the norm like the UK we’re seeing that SIM-only contracts are becoming the norm.

    Apple is trying to innovate its way out of this problem with its work on augmented reality interaction. Consumer media consumption will take a good while to catch up.

    Smartphone cameras are as good as consumers need (at the moment). Displays are now good enough that improvements look indistinguishable. They are also large enough for you to watch Amazon Prime or Netflix during a commute. Mobile wallets are merely a back-up in case one leaves your wallet at home.

    Whilst the app names have changed, much of the smartphone usage now is for the same things I used a Nokia or Palm smartphone ten years ago:

    • Alarm clock
    • Web surfing
    • Entertainment
    • Media playback
    • Communications

    I hope that we start to see smartphones going back to the future and looking at different form factors. My iPhone would be much more useful as a productive device if it was available in a similar form factor to the old Nokia communicator. Different form factors of devices for different users. Gamers would benefit from better controls a la the Nokia nGage.

    Interfaces can make better use of haptic feedback, and be designed to take advantage of more hardware-optimised devices.

    Innovation isn’t only the responsibility of app developers and phone makers. What about a modern 4G version of ‘Enhanced Full Rate’ on GSM (GSM-EFR) ‘hi-fi voice calls’. UK operator One2One launched GSM-EFR on 2G networks in the late 1990s as part of their Precept tariffs, but I haven’t seen any other carrier try to do a similar thing since. Why not? I suspect part of the problem is that ‘innovation’ in your average mobile network provider now is testing vendor products in a lab to ensure they work properly on their network.

    The web has developed a digital equivalent of clogged arteries. Part of this is down to buffer bloat and a lack of lean web design approach. Unfortunately the mobile web has not brought a clean slate approach but hacked together adaptations. A bigger issue is the layers of advertising technology trackers, analytics and assorted chunks of Javascript. Ad tech hammers page load time and responsiveness.

    Share of time spent viewing video content in selected countries using ad blockers

    We’ve seen Apple and Mozilla try to redesign their browser technology to slow down or stimmy ad technology. Consumers are adopting ad blockers to try and improve their own web experience.

    There needs to be a collective reset button. I am not sure if we see a resurgence of the paid web or a kinder lighter footprint in advertising technology. Otherwise we have an unending conflict between the media industry and the rest of us.

    The debate around machine learning in 2017 highlighted a Black Mirroresque dystopia awaiting us. The good news is that we tend to overestimate technology’s impact in the short term. In the long term the impact tends to meet our expectations all be in a more banal way.

    Part of the current problem around machine learning is that Silicon Valley seems to only consider technology rather than the consequences of potential use cases. This needs to change, unfortunately the people in charge of technology companies are the least capable people to achieve it. We need a kinder more holistic roadmap. Legislation and regulation will be far too late to the party. We won’t be able to stop technological progress, but we can influence the way its used.

    Lying in bed ill over the Christmas period, I read that crypto currency mining currently required as much energy as Bahrain. By the end of 2018, it will require as much energy as Italy. That is insane.

    Apart from speculation and buying products on the dark web what is the killer app for crypto currencies? Why is worth the energy overhead? Steve Jobs focused on computing power per watt as part of his vision for laptops and moving the Mac range to Intel. Part of the move to the cloud was about making computing more efficient for businesses and providing computing power over the network for consumers on ‘low power’ mobile devices. Yet almost a decade and a half later, the hottest thing in technology is a grossly energy inefficient process.

    We are starting to see regulators in Korea and China step in to regulate the market and energy supply to miners, but western economies need to look at this. And I haven’t even got on to the ICO (intial coin offering) as Ponzi scheme…

    If you substitute the words ‘fax machine’ or ‘call centre’ for app would Uber, Deliveroo etc be considered as technology companies? I suspect that the answer is no.  A company may use a lot of technology – it happens a lot these days. But that doesn’t make Capita, Mastercard or Goldman Sachs a technology company, lets  apply a bit of critical thinking. I wouldn’t mind, but this same mistake was made in the late 1990s during the dot com boom.

    Many companies including Enron were ‘repackaged’ by management, venture capitalists, investment banks and consultancies (cough, cough McKinsey) as asset-light technology driven businesses aka ‘an internet company’. It didn’t work out well last time. It won’t this time either.

    More information
    Enhanced full rate (GSM) – Wikipedia
    Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index | Digiconomist
    Setback for Uber as European court advised to treat it as transport firm | Reuters
    Other trends reports
    Fjord: 2018 Fjord Trends
    iProspect: Future Focus 2018: The New Machine Rules
    Isobar: Augmented Humanity: Isobar Trends Report 2018
    J. Walter Thompson Innovation Group: The Future 100
    Ogilvy & Mather: Key Digital Trends for 2018 – Whatley and Manson are doing webinar presentations this week if you want to catch them
    Campaign Asia did a nice precise of them all
    Past prediction stuff that I’ve done
    2016: crystal ball gazing, how did I do? | renaissance chambara
    2016: just where is it all going? | renaissance chambara
    2015: crystal ball gazing, how did I do? | renaissance chambara
    2015: just where is it all going? | renaissance chambara
    2014: crystal ball gazing, how did I do? | renaissance chambara
    2014: just where is it all going? | renaissance chambara 
    Crystal ball-gazing: 2013 how did I do? | renaissance chambara
    2013: just where is it all going? | renaissance chambara
    Crystal ball-gazing: 2012 how did I do? | renaissance chambara
    2012: just where is digital going? | renaissance chambara
    Things I’d like to see in 2012 | renaissance chambara
    Crystal ball-gazing: 2011 how did I do?
    2010: How did I do? | renaissance chambara
    2010: just where is digital going? | renaissance chambara
    Predictions for 2009 | renaissance chambara

    SaveSave

    SaveSave

    SaveSave

    SaveSave

    SaveSave

    SaveSave

    SaveSave

    SaveSave

    SaveSave

    SaveSave

    SaveSave

    SaveSave

  • HBN & other things from last week

    Human by Nature or HBN are a relatively new streetwear brand. This HBN football shirt caught my eye; a logo that skirts perilously close to the wrath of New Balance. And the HBN geometric pattern looks like a blown up version of the adidas ‘leaf design’ 1990-92 Manchester United away shirt, but at the same scale as the ‘vee’ motif on the 1991-1993 Arsenal away shirt.

    human by nature

    In order to get into the Christmas season I have been listening to this Amerigo Gazaway seasonal mixtape

    I also love listening to this seasonal mix that used to be played in the much missed Hideout boutique throughout the holiday season

    I can recommend Lo and Behold: Reveries Of A Connected World by Werner Herzog who gives an iconoclastic history of the internet and where it is taking us. It is currently available on Netflix.

    SaveSave

    I am currently working my way through a few different books, including Steve Coll’s forthcoming book Directorate S. Coll is a former journalist and academic. He is has written a number of non-fiction books on central Asia and companies such as Exxon. His research is exhaustive which is why my galley copy is a bit of a door stop. More later on my thoughts.

    Directorate S

  • You are not safe

    You are not safe was a theme that echoed through a period drama on Silicon Valley yet is equally applicable today.

    IBM 360 Announcement center

    I have been catching up on Halt and Catch Fire. It is a fiction based on various aspects of Silicon Valley lore. I have enjoyed watching it immensely to a point.

    I was especially struck by  episode eight in the third series. One of the main characters in series three hacks his employer and releases their anti-virus software online for free. But its the mid-1980s through a thoroughly modern lens. It resonates because it speaks to our age, not to the 1980s or even the mid-1990s.

    YOU ARE NOT SAFE

    I, Ryan Ray, released the MacMillan Utility source code. I acted alone. No one helped me, and no one told me to do it.  I did this because ‘security’ is a myth.  Contrary to what you might have heard, my friends, you are not safe.  Contrary to what you might have heard, my friends, you are not safe.  Safety is a story. It’s something we search our children so they can sleep at night, but we know it’s not real.

    Yes, there was software piracy, it was a mainstream part of computing culture which had sprung up from the ‘homebrew’ mentality.  Prior to founding Apple, Steve Wozniak used to give out the schematics of what then became the Apple I. Punched paper tapes of software used to be exchanged between members when they met up in aMenlo Park garage and later on in an auditorium at Stanford University.

    Back then the narrative was overwhelmingly positive in terms of technology. The main problem was whether the Japanese, Microsoft, Intel or IBM was going to crush the rest of the technology eco-system in Silicon Valley. Consumers  had a bright new world of technology ahead of them.  Video games were still a niche interest compared to VCRs (video cassette recorders). VHS versus Betamax was as important a format war as Windows versus Macintosh.

    Here’s the thing. This show (rightly or wrongly) may frame the way a lot of people think about this part of the digital age. For those who aren’t well read about the history of Silicon Valley OR didn’t live through the 1980s – it will colour their view of history. That detail rankled me a bit; I’m not quite sure why.  Part of it is knowing where we’re going is understanding where we have been in past.

    That’s all very nice, but why does this matter? It provides you with perspective and the ability to critique ideas. Either way you are not safe. More related content here.