Friday 17 February 2012

Memes, LOLathons and The School of Life

A busy week! First of all, got a new (old) Kodak Instamatic camera – like the one featured in Kenneth Grange’s recent exhibition at the Design Museum. There's a wonderful weight to it, and the winder makes a satisfying click. Just need to get the (discontinued!) Kodak 126 film now…



Tuesday evening I went along to KittenCamp hosted by the Viral Ad Network and Rubber Republic. The night kicked off with a meme battle followed by drinks / talks from Don’t Panic and Rubber Republic. The former created the famous Roger Federer ‘trick shot’ viral for Gillette – and still didn’t let on as to its authenticity (although ‘some digital trickery was involved’). Full coverage of the event is here --> along with a rather unflattering profile shot of myself within the crowd. I deciphered my scribbled notes after the talks, with some nuggets of inspiration and advice within.

1). When planning content, consider the following points…

 What conversations do you want people to have?
 Who do you want to have those conversations?
 What’s the hook that’ll instigate the conversation in the first place?

2). Make shit! – if you don’t, it doesn’t exist (or someone else will do it before you).

3). Are you thinking what the public is thinking?

4). Is what you’re creating art, or information? For art is timeless, but information can decay with time as new information arises.


On top of that LOLathon was an evening at the School of Life with Nick Southgate in his witty talk about ‘Making Better Decisions’. I really recommend going to one of these classes. Using his background in philosophy and advertising, he delivered a talk that was both informative and insightful. Again, more scribbled notes were deciphered…

1). What you consider the ‘right’ decision, is not necessarily the ‘best’ decision because our decisions are governed by variables and our relative knowledge of a situation.

2). Ignorance of the consequences from decision-making is not longer acceptable in an age of hyper connectivity and information.

3). Real life is a flow of experience, and reasoning helps us stay on track.

4). Can you calculate a person’s level of self-interest to discover their incentives for acting? (Our minds normally follow the path of least resistance).

5). Opinion is not information. The former gives rise to more opinion, the latter can give rise to answers.

6). We learn to see choice – the more we’re attuned to choice, the more variety we see.

7). We love the illusion of choice, rather than having too much choice.

8). One’s last memory of an experience determines their willingness to repeat the experience.

Ok…so how the hell do we actually make decisions? Well, start by limiting the variables that’ll govern that choice (because as I’ve said before, too much choice makes it difficult to make a decision). Know your own desires. How you frame behaviour will govern how it’s perpetuated – so alter how you address a behaviour to enact change. I’m sure there’s bucketloads I’ve missed so feel free to add. Or better yet, get your eyeballs into these books…
Best of all, I picked up some (hard to find) Action Cahiers that help you use Behance’s Action Method. Booyah!


 

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