Failing is shunned in our culture. It is an activity for losers, a behavior that must be avoided at all costs because with failure comes humiliation and lost respect.
This is all about to change.
2008 has revolutionized the way culture fails. Failing is no longer good or bad, rather it's part of the process; a necessary experience on the path to success. Failing is about learning. Many times I've been told to "Fail early and fail often."
I've been entertained by the FAIL! website, FAIL! flickr pictures and recently came across the history of 'fail' and an attempted explanation of the 'threshold of epic fail.'
Although the video is funny and the website funnier because it's filled with the result of poor judgments, I think it's the beginning of a new way to approach learning and accomplishing great things.
Things exist that are greater than brand; this is an example of one of them.
Comedy, culture, human interaction; they all get associated with brands because writers use comical copy to embed their client's products into our culture. I think this short might be an example of something that is greater than the brand it was conceived from.
When this spot first came out "Wazzup" was my new favorite buzzword. It became my default phone answer for the 3 months following its release and I still start emails with it. Sequels are usually annoying but this one has been timed well and I love that it's genuinely transcended brand and product.
At the end of last year one of my predictions for 2008 is that we would see the rise of video communication. Adoption has been slow despite the Macbook's integrated webcam and fun applications like Seesmic. The next logical progression is to use your cellphone so you can see who you're talking with and broadcast what you're doing as you talk. Although it didn't look like it was likely to happen in '08, I just heard that Qik is helping iPhone users to stream video.
Their new phone application will allow users to broadcast live video feed. It hasn't been officially released but it on the way and this seems like it can be a powerful, fun, little tool.
I just got back from another technology, branding and innovation summit - exciting times, I know. Most interesting was to hear how interactive experiences are becoming the predominant medium for brand communication. Twitter was at the top of the discussion so I thought I would expand.
The list of Twitter tools and applications is diversifying. It's great because they make Twitter an even more interesting and relevant medium. The people who Twitter provide great insights, interesting links, breaking news, creative perspectives and a slew of other interesting information. The problem is that it's hard to sort through it. Here are a few tools that I found at PR 2.0 that make Twitter more useful.
TwitterLocal is the ideal service for quickly finding active voices within a specific city, state, postal code as well as the vicinity, ranging from 1 mile to 20. Twinkle is a location-aware network for the iPhone and iPod Touch that helps you discover, connect, and send messages to the public timeline and also to people nearby.
Twubble can help expand your Twitter network. It searches your friend graph and introduces and recommends new people who you may want to follow.
GroupTweet allows anyone who wants to broadcast and share private tweets to a specific group can do so for free using this unique and helpful service.
Twitt(url)y is a service for tracking popular URLs people are sharing on Twitter as a way to identify trends, topics, and new and interesting tools and services. It's basically Techmeme or Google News for Twitter, but for all popular links shared in a given day.
TwitLinks aggregates the latest links from the worlds top tech twitter users.
Gridjit is a social portal that lets you view your web universe in a more visually rich way. It becomes your hub for tracking conversations, interesting people and those they @ frequently, and also provides a central location to post and share.
Twist analyzes and presents trend comparisons and volume between keywords and tags.
Whoshouldifollow.com makes it easy to find relevant, like-minded friends as well as friends of friends based on keyword and validated networks.
Tweet Scan, like Summize (Twitter Search), is a search engine for Twitter. Both services provide the ability to search keywords, company/product/competitors names, users, etc. The services also feature the hottest search trends at that particular moment.
Twitpic provides a bridge from your camera phone to Twitter.
I've been taking a mechanical engineering class and our most recent project was to design & create a rubber band powered boat that would travel 35 feet to the center of a pool and skewer a ring before a competitor. The requirements necessitated that the boat be 2 feet long or less and weigh less than 24 ounces. My teammates and I spent the past few weeks engineering a boat that accomplished the feat. I thought I would share the experience so I've included our deck and a short film chronicling the experience. We also used Google Sites to collaborate and it was a great hub for our team enabling us to brainstorm, hold online discussions, post sketch-up designs & coordinate meetings and materials.
I worked on a brief for Planning For Good a few months ago. The objective was to help re-invigorate the economy in New Orleans. We submitted an idea explaining how great minds cultivate smart ideas that lay the foundation for creativity and productivity. Flooding New Orleans with a team of innovators and entrepreneurs would enable them to rebuild their city around an infrastructure of businesses headed by brilliant people. It seems the initiative is under way and this film encourages the concept behind the brief.
Failing is shunned in our culture. It is an activity for losers, a behavior that must be avoided at all costs because with failure comes humiliation and lost respect.
