Posts Tagged ‘Clay Shirky’

  • Clay at The RSA… Yay!

    A few of us went to see Clay Shirky last night at the Royal Society of Arts. Some stuff we heard him talk about before, and some new stuff. I had sprinted from Embankment tube to make the 6pm start time, and I couldn’t face using Twitter — and so I tried the visual notetaking methods we enjoyed so much from SxSW (and some inspiration from awesomeist Len Kendall). My first attempts are a bit sh*t by comparison but I found it to be a much more thoughtful way of interacting with a talk than making snarky comments on Twitter. Not that this will stop me in the future…

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    Tim Malbon By Tim Malbon

    30th June 10

    6 comments

     Social Web

  • The Kingdom of Awesome

    We were milling about at @LenKendall’s @the3six5 meetup at The Ginger Man here at SXSW last night when Greg Christman, aka @reelspit, came over to say hello. Greg had recently taken part in a creative workshop we held at BBH NY to generate ideas and test thinking for the next phase of Metrotwin, a site we created and run for British Airways. What a dude.

    The place was packed with South By’s itinerant freak scene of start-up makers, innovators, journos, digital and new model advertising folk. I was hanging out with Utku from Mint Digital and, in jest, we discussed how awesome it would be if this group could be a country or city-state. This prompted Greg to whoop loudly that we should call it the Kingdom of Awesome and design our own awesomeness flag, and run the whole place using Foursquare. As an aside, I’ve heard a few people recently suggest that the word “awesome” is over. My friends, you misunderstand the meaning of awesome if that’s what you think – but that’s another blog post.

    The idea of a Kingdom, Republic or Nation of Awesomeness – depending on your political persuasion – is funny (especially after quantities of booze on a warm evening), but it reminded me of a tweet I’d seen earlier in the day from Jeff Jarvis:

    I don’t want to get carried with all this but I think The Kingdom of Awesome is real – real in an allegorical, Utopia sense: a metaphorical ‘State’ of hive-mind.

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    Tim Malbon By Tim Malbon

    14th March 10

    5 comments

     advertising

    innovation

  • A rant about how society recognize talent

    Clay Shirky’s “rant about women” has been on my mind this weekend. Although the blog post is intended to advice women on how to become more successful, there’s something about it that made me feel very uneasy.

    Clay’s rant about women begins with his former male student’s request for a recommendation. Clay asks the student to write down what he thinks Clay should say about him. The student returns with his draft peppered with praise, which Clay then tones down a notch “…so that it sounds like it’s coming from a person and not a PR department” before sending it off.

    Right. If you ask me, this whole practice of writing your own letter of recommendation is dodgy, but that’s entirely another discussion.

    Having signed the letter, Clay is left feeling annoyed. The interesting bit is that he’s not annoyed at himself for getting into this situation, or the student in question for being cheeky – no, he’s upset at us women.

    Hang on. “What have we done to get the pointy finger?” I thought to myself reading this. Apparently it is not what we’ve done, it’s what we haven’t done, or will not do. Women, he says, would never write a letter overstating their abilities. And that’s because… Read full post

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    Elin Sjursen By Elin

    18th January 10

    11 comments

     opinion

  • The social web: together we can be perfect(ish)

    Isaac’s been known to repeat the maxim ‘We demand perfection!’ when collaborating with our CSS Ninja, Sarah, on projects. Now, whilst visual perfection is something we strive for at MxM, we also strive for maximum engagement with our users. So I was interested to see this mini-interview with Clay Shirky who espouses a bit of rough to make sites that require interaction more friendly.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjiXevb11Rk

    Basically, he’s saying that if something looks too perfect (like a kitchen fit for a magazine shoot), people won’t touch it. This is why the sites we’ve designed recently (and in the past) put people and activity to the fore.

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    Charlotte Hillenbrand By Charlotte Hillenbrand

    9th October 08

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     Social Web

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