The Adnostic

- What is the highest compliment that your product can receive? "That's Cool!"

- Steve Jobs views on products from 1984
-- Technology
--- It shouldn't be like the quote from Samuel Johnson, "A dog on two legs doesn't walk particularly well, but it's amazing that it’s done at all."
-- Features
--- Not overcomplicated like 2nd generation VCRs, more about the features than the task
-- Experience
--- A beautiful elegant solution that works

- Find what people want to do and design the experience and technology around that.

- Products are people too (reactions)
-- Designing products with personality (TiVo)
-- People know who they are
-- Lack of identity results in products that don't satisfy the user experience
--- User Interface -> Logic -> Data

- Experience design strategy
-- Articulate experience vision
-- Leverage the system
--- No user application can fix a bad system
--- Fix the functionality where it is broken

- The Experience is the Product
-- iPod Experience/System
--- Play <-> Manage <-> Acquire

I know that I am breaking the first and second rule of Pillow Fight Club, but I must share this. I can't help it.

Pillow Fight at The Grove (3rd and Fairfax) on Sunday April 1st at 6pm.

It may be a prank. It may not be a prank. It's hard to tell. All I know is that this has happened in New York and San Fransico, and now it's LA's turn. So go out and throw a bag of feathers around before the rent a cops shut down all the fun.

- Technology is enabling and being effected by social change
-- 12 to 18 month cycle, broader view of immense change
-- A person's social identity is bound up with the technology they use. It affects their sense of social status. It is impossible to separate the technology from the social activity.

- Widgets take away the sense of place.
-- Plazes connects online identity with geographic location. It takes away the element of anonymity.

- Privacy makes no sense to Generation Y
- Sense of representation (separation of ids)
-- Public self
-- Private self
-- Uber self (can keep up with technology)
- Subterranean effect across demographics

- Economies of data
-- Acquiring data and giving data to major corporations

- Will there be a backlash? Will the population define themselves in opposition to the prevailing thought? Anti-blogging?
-- CDs vs. vinyl (when CDs came on the market people began to hoard and collect vinyl records for the sake of original sound quality and collect-ability)

- A word does not exist that is not on Google.
-- Internet publishing makes ideas real.

- Insecurities --> evangelical voices (tribes)
-- The 2008 election will be the next inflection point
-- Clear hero myth fortifies social role
-- Environmental movement
- Amplification of influence
-- News judgment, filtering (newspapers --> blogs)

- Businesses are still looking for disposability
-- iPhone
-- Platform for people innovating, no more black box, Tom Sawyer effect (do this for me for free because its fun), less restrictions
-- Consumer demand and good user experience can drive business development

- Futurism and environmentalism --> consequence

- Telepresence
-- Video conferencing, etc.

Heather LeFevre, a planner in Richmond, VA, is doing an international survey of Account/Strategic Planners for which I am greatful. Planning is a mysterious and youthful profession which even planners sometimes know little about and having a survey of experience and working conditions for planners everywhere will be of great use to both employers and planners everywhere.

Besides, have you ever tried to find average salary info for planning jobs? It's almost impossible. In the past I've had to infer by taking the results from simiar professions and averaging the results. Quick and dirty, but not particularly effective in salary negotiations.

So, take the planner survey so that we can collectively become more powerful, more satisfied, and better compensated.

My favorite question was whether or not I have a foriegn accent. (explanation for non-ad people: planners are famous for being from another country. Specifically Great Britain. American clients seem to pay better attention to people who have a British accent and I even had a boss once who toyed with the idea of using a British accent with some of his clients to see if they took him more seriously.)

Sorry for the silence. The past month has been a little crazy and you deserve an explanation.

First I just got caught up in the excitement of preparing for SXSW and working on Assignment 13 for APSotW. Then I was pulled into a last minute presentation on loyalty programs to my client's VP of Marketing who has a reputation for tearing out the still beating hearts of those who dare come before her unprepared. I was only given a week and a half to prepare and I was terrified. Luckily, my boss was great and made himself fully available to make sure that my ideas were justified and brand relevant and that what I gave them looked as smart and professional as possible.

It wasn't until I arrived in Nashville that I was notified that the meeting format had completely changed and that it was now about experiential marketing tactics for two new product launches. Therefore all my work, my dual sacrificed weekends, the stress, and the extra travel was completely unnecessary. Being off the hook was nice, but feeling like I wasted a lot of time and money sucked.

Then it was off to Austin for SXSW, which was wonderful. It was great to see everyone from last year, enjoy the free beer, taste the legendary barbeque from the Salt Lick with Jorie and Dave, learn about all the cool and amazing interactive current and future happenings, and spend an uninterrupted week with the Zen Master. It was just like how I picture heaven - free drinks, good food, wonderful people, excellent music, jaw dropping smarts and technology, and people that I don't have to explain Flickr to. It doesn't get much better than that.

Unfortunately, it all came to a crashing halt on Sunday when I got a call from my sister saying that my mom had been hit by a car and was being airlifted to the nearest trauma center.

I have been purposefully quiet about the situation. Just a few close friends and people who actually know my mom have been fully apprised of the situation. The short version is that she is badly broken with a few internal injuries that have kept her in the ICU for the last two weeks. She is in a lot of pain and we have encouraged the nursing staff to keep her as medicated and sedated as possible so that she can at least be somewhat comfortable, this means that she has been unconscious since the accident.

We think we're past the danger zone, but she has a long way to go before we can even think about putting her back together again and bringing her home.

For those of you who knew about this, thank you for all the love and support. The response has been amazing and the prayers and good thoughts are the most wonderful and effective medicines we non-doctors can possibly give. Thank you.