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South by round up Day 1
How quickly can I fire off a blog post?Bag a waste of time. RecyclingPassion vs processExploring AustinSitting in a talkMxM homepageOur home pageThe reaction to our Twitter home page take over has been overwhelmingly positive. Thanks everyone for their feedback and comments. It was really fun working on it and seeing it in use in real time has sparked off lots of ideas about how we could use something similar as our permanent home page once we’re back home. Somehow we need to find a way of showing our social presence and network on the web, whilst combining the conversations around us.My favourite tweet about our home page?<they look beat up>Ah, our avatars. Always a source of amusement (or horror) when a new set arrive from our amazing illustrator (Paul Davis). I’ve always felt that their style reflects the Made by Many way – sketching and creating things being a big part of who we are and how we work. However, to clarify, in real life none of have fascinating skin conditions (@saradotdub), badger strips down out forehead (@bobbyc) or bolts sticking out of our neck (@malbonster).The SXSW experienceAfter registration at 11 yesterday I spent the entire day with a goodie bag slung over my shoulder, just like many attendee. I think the first thing we all did was sit down and throw stuff away:<silverlight>After getting rid of so much junk I was still left with a heavy bag of newspapers and directories to carry around. If we come next year I won’t bother picking up the bag at all – it’s just a hodge podge of sponsor messages that no one is interested in. Straight into the recycling bin. I just wish they hadn’t bothered to print it in the first place.Sitting in a talkWatching the rest of the conference crowd in a session is fascinating. We’re all geek boys, so everyone has an iPhone and/or a laptop. This constant connection to the digital world has taken over – no one sits and just listens. Everyone is tweeting, blogging, checking which session they’re going to next, checking which sessions they’re missing out on right now.It must be a slightly threatening and interesting measure of engagement. No one was truly paying attention to me talking, but I did get a shed load of tweets!Post match shake downIt sounds from much of Made by Many that we went to quite a varied mix of talks yesterday. Some good, some not so much… However, even the talks that didn’t hit it off became the start of a very interesting debate afterwards. Over a drink of course, this is Austin after all.The “Passion vs Process” debate was particularly interesting. Some of the MxMers who went were a tad scathing:<tweets>The main crux seemed to be that people should focus their careers on their passion. However, no lee way was given for your skill level. Just because you’re passionate about something doesn’t mean that you’re any good at it. (And that certainly isn’t going to bring you happiness!)This turned into an interesting post match talk about what passions some of us had followed and whether they had worked out or not. For example, one of the MxMers once went to a virtually deserted island to write a novel for 6 months. Others had started off their college years being amazing at sports, to a near pro level, but knew their passion, whilst strong, wasn’t enough to get them through to the final yard line.At this point the conversation became a wider discussion about skill. Most fascinating of all was hearing @shanerichmond (first passion: music journalism, not the brilliant technology editor of the Daily Telegraph) talking about writer’s block. For him as a journalist it’s rarely an issue – if you’re writing a news story you have facts to report, if you’re writing an comment piece you have your opinion. You never ever start off with a blank page.As a designer it struck me that at Made by Many we never start off with a blank page either. The way we work and our processes are nearly always intended to lay layer upon layer upon our ideas. That traditional moment of a designer firing up Photoshop for the first time on a project, sitting behind a white screen of empty pixels searching for something to start with rarely happens at MxM. By that stage in the project we have sketches and prototypes to work with. You have the information and service design in your hands – a framework (or in Shane’s case the facts or opinions) to work with.Not so much a revelation, but fascinating to view our process from the perspective of anotherOur home pageThe reaction to our Twitter home page take over has been overwhelmingly positive. Thanks everyone for their feedback and comments. It was really fun working on it and seeing it in use in real time has sparked off lots of ideas about how we could use something similar as our permanent home page once we’re back home. Somehow we need to find a way of showing our social presence and network on the web, whilst combining the conversations around us.
My favourite tweet about our home page?

Ah, our avatars. Always a source of amusement (or horror) when a new set arrive from our amazing illustrator (Paul Davis). I’ve always felt that their style reflects the Made by Many way – sketching and creating things being a big part of who we are and how we work. However, to clarify, in real life none of us have fascinating skin conditions (@saradotdub), badger strips down out forehead (@bobbyc) or bolts sticking out of our neck (@malbonster).
The SXSW experience
After registration at 11 yesterday I spent the entire day with a goodie bag slung over my shoulder, just like many attendee. I think the first thing we all did was sit down and throw stuff away:

After getting rid of so much junk I was still left with a heavy bag of newspapers and directories to carry around. If we come next year I won’t bother picking up the bag at all – it’s just a hodge podge of sponsor messages that no one is interested in. Straight into the recycling bin. I just wish they hadn’t bothered to print it in the first place.
Sitting in a talk
Watching the rest of the conference crowd in a session is fascinating. We’re all geek boys, so everyone has an iPhone and/or a laptop. This constant connection to the digital world has taken over – no one sits and just listens. Everyone is tweeting, blogging, checking which session they’re going to next, checking which sessions they’re missing out on right now.
It must be a slightly threatening and interesting measure of engagement. No one was truly paying attention to me talking, but I did get a shed load of tweets!
Post match shake down
It sounds from much of Made by Many that we went to quite a varied mix of talks yesterday. Some good, some not so much… However, even the talks that didn’t hit it off became the start of a very interesting debate afterwards. Over a drink of course, this is Austin after all.
The “Passion vs Process” debate was particularly interesting. Some of the MxMers who went were a tad scathing:



The main crux seemed to be that people should focus their careers on their passion. However, no lee way was given for your skill level. Just because you’re passionate about something doesn’t mean that you’re any good at it. (And that certainly isn’t going to bring you happiness!)
This turned into an interesting post match talk about what passions some of us had followed and whether they had worked out or not. For example, one of the MxMers once went to a virtually deserted island to write a novel for 6 months. Others had started off their college years being amazing at sports, to a near pro level, but knew their passion, whilst strong, wasn’t enough to get them through to the final yard line.
At this point the conversation became a wider discussion about skill. Most fascinating of all was hearing @shanerichmond (first passion: music journalism, now the brilliant technology editor of the Daily Telegraph) talking about writer’s block. For him as a journalist it’s rarely an issue – if you’re writing a news story you have facts to report, if you’re writing an comment piece you have your opinion. You never ever start off with a blank page.
As a designer it struck me that at Made by Many we never start off with a blank page either. The way we work and our processes are nearly always intended to lay layer upon layer upon our ideas. That traditional moment of a designer firing up Photoshop for the first time on a project, sitting behind a white screen of empty pixels searching for something to start with rarely happens at MxM. By that stage in the project we have sketches and prototypes to work with. You have the information and service design in your hands – a framework (or in Shane’s case the facts or opinions) to work with.
Not so much a revelation, but fascinating to view our process from the perspective of another profession.
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SXSW countdown: one day!
At long last… tomorrow morning we’re off to Austin!
Stu and Antonica, Made by Many’s de facto cat herders, are limbering up even as we speak to corral the lot of us from Heathrow to Dallas Ft Worth on to Austin. Assuming no one offends Homeland Security on the way in (you know who you are…), we should all be ensconced in our Texan digs by tomorrow evening.
Our departure is big news for our website, as it means our super-dynamic, sex-on-Twittter-toast* SXSW special homepage will be live. We’re kind of excited about this page. As well as all our latest tweets and links to our Twitter accounts, it shows off the latest Made by Many blog post and the most recent addition to our Flickr account. It offers a smooth user experience, too, as everything updates dynamically and in real time.
The page will be live the whole time we’re away, which means you can keep (non-creepy, please) tabs on us and get a sense of what the SXSW experience is like. You’re also heartily invited to @ or DM us with suggestions, feedback, jokes etc while we’re gone — this is, after all, a conversation.
For those who missed the earlier posts on this project, we took this page as an opportunity to open up our creative process and design in public. Here’s the first vision of the page. We followed this with a post on the idea’s evolution before whipping the curtain back for the big reveal.
Thanks very much to everyone who offered feedback on this work — and of course, if you want to do so now, you are more than welcome.
So on that note… have a great week and, um, watch this space!
*not my words but damn do I love ‘em
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SXSW countdown: one week
And lo, ready to roll a full week before we take off for Texas, here it is — our Twitter-powered SXSW people-tracker:

For those who haven’t been following the posts and discussions around this project, here’s the story…
Just about all of Made by Many is heading to Austin, Texas for SXSW interactive. Several weeks ago, we decided to build something onto our website to bring our SXSW experience to life for the people who aren’t going to be there with us. We thought this project would also be the perfect occasion to throw the doors open on our creative process and actually share the journey we go through as we work an idea through to a final execution.
This series of posts started with shots of our original approach. We then showed how this idea was refined a few different ways. The third and final instalment in this design journey is above.
The idea for the page is very simple: all of our most recent tweets on one page, updated in real time as it happens.
The design started out as a series of coloured panels, one for each person, laid out on a very regimented grid. However, we all felt that this was a bit strict – it neither reflected our personality nor the event we’re going too.
So we loosened the design up, taking the hand drawn style of our avatars as inspiration. The page is a series of speech bubbles, laid out in a seemingly random and slightly haphazard way. Connected by lines, doodles and graffiti, the speech bubbles change colour with time: the freshest tweets are dark, the stalest white. The page will be darkest when the conference sessions are going on and we’re tweeting non-stop, but completely white in the middle of the night when we’re all sleeping. Except for @malbonster’s bubble. He never stops.
As well as pulling in our tweets, the page also pulls in the latest photo in our Flickr stream, our latest blog posts, even twitpics. You’ll be able to see more tweets from each person by clicking on their avatar or simply going through to their Twitter stream.
The idea for the page is very simple: all of most recent tweets on one page, updated in real time as it happens.The design started out as a series of coloured panels, one for each person, laid out on a very regimented grid. However, we all felt that this was a bit strict – it neither reflected the personality of us or of the event we’re going too.So we loosened the design up, taking the hand drawn style of our avatars as inspiration. The page is a series of speech bubbles, laid out in a seemingly random and slightly haphazard way. Connected by lines, doodles and graffiti, the speech bubbles change colour with time: the freshest tweets are dark, the stalest white.We imagine that the page will be dark red whilst the conference sessions are going on and we’re tweeting virtually non-stop, but completely white in the middle of the night when we’re all sleeping. Except for @malbonster’s bubble. He never stops tweeting.As well as pulling in our tweets, the page also pulls in the latest photo in our Flickr stream, our latest blog post, even twitpics. You can see more tweets from each person by clicking their avatar or simply going through to their twitter stream.We like the sketchy style and the playful execution. We also think the design has some dynamism to it, that it tells a story and carries your eye through that story fairly easily. All in, we think this is really close to who we are.
This whole ‘designing in public’ thing felt a little strange at points (sort of like being naked in front of a lot of people, I reckon) but we got some interesting feedback here and on other blogs, which was cool. And it’s practice for us to be more open in the future — something we are really committed to doing.
Our SXSW special will be live on Made by Many as of Thursday 11 March.
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SXSW countdown: two weeks, one day
We’re still keen to open up our creative process by sharing the evolution of our SXSW project.
As mentioned last week, it’s a Twitter-powered execution that aims to give an as-it-happens update of what the Made by Many folk are up to, as we’re doing it. This week we’re sharing three snapshots to show how the design is coming together.
Here’s where we were in the middle of last week:

This was our first attempt in Photoshop. Each person gets a panel that shows their avatar and latest tweet. We’ve colour-coded the boxes to show recency, with the freshest content (hot colours) at the top, and the stale content (cold colours) at the bottom.
However, we wanted the page to update in real time, which would mean people and their panels moving around the screen. We figured that was going to get far too busy and complicated… Onwards!
Here’s the next stop on the journey:

Here we’ve brought in a bit of alpha-order to give everyone a spot on the page and keep them there. This solved the busy problem, but when the coloured panels are shown in a non-spectrum order, it looks confusing. We trimmed the colour back to what you see here but found that they meant less.
Standing back a bit, we worried that this design was actually a bit boring and unemotional… just not MxM enough. Next!
Finding the right conversational note:

Here we’ve started to play around with something that’s a bit more conversational and has more personality. There’s still more work to go, but we think this could be fun. Now we’re moving in the right direction.
We agreed this design and we’re taking it forward even as we speak.We’ll preview this project again next week, but in the meanwhile, feel free to tell us what you think.
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Excellent, a real-life Skinner Box
Instead of rodents, they’re using journalists – and instead of a Skinner Box they’ll be locked inside a French farmhouse in Perigord for five days and only allowed to access Twitter and Facebook.
The experiment – run by RFP the French-language public broadcasters association – will discover how warped our perception of the world could become if we rely solely on Twitter and Facebook.
Like anyone would do that!
The journalists will continue to report the news as they see it – coming solely through tweets, hashtags, status updates, messages and – gulp – contextual advertising.
What a great experiment, but five days is clearly nowhere near long enough. A year would be more like it. And the floor should be electrified, with mild shocks being dispensed for inaccurate reporting, and fags and booze dispensed to the journo-rodents for getting it right. A house of correction. Could this be the model for a distributed social media version of Big Brother where contestants are placed under house-arrest and allowed only to connect with other contestants – and Big Brother – via Twitter and Facebook?
It kind of reminds me of the Biosphere 2 experiment, photos of which were posted on Boing Boing earlier this month. I’ve always thought the Biosphere story would make a great horror film, or musical comedy, or both. Imagine if a mystery virus wipes most of the Earth’s population out while they’re in there… and they have to listen to the whole world dying on Facebook and Twitter… and then use these services to coordinate the rebuilding of the human race.
Tres awesome. Starts February 1.
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Are we just mice trapped in a digital ‘Skinner Box’?
Yay… many thanks to Ben for mailing this awesome blog post from the O’Reilly Radar blog, by Jim Stodghill. Today is supposed to be the most depressing day of the year, so it’s time I finally tried to finish.
For nigh on two weeks now Jim’s post has freaked me out. I have wondered if I am a bit like this mouse. I certainly recognised some of my own obsessive digital behaviour in his brilliantly written and moving account of life as a “digital stimulusaholic”. He describes being engulfed in a deep personal crisis, an addiction within which he feels utterly trapped. He talks of a cognitive biological barrier to our information processing powers. And the paradox of being infinitely distracted by infinite information. It’s pretty disturbing.
It’s even more worrying that this isn’t your average ’social-networking-and-Twitter-is-bad-for-you” rubbish. You can toss that sort of thing aside in a moment – but Jim is one of us. He a geek. He loves Twitter… a lot (actually that’s a big part of his problem). No, this is someone who’s done his time in the twenches. He’s a super-user, or more accurately a super-abuser. And yet it’s also massively entertaining – a bit like Trainspotting.
But hold on, what the heck is a Skinner Box?
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Old media vs. new media…and then some
Old Media vs. New MediaView more documents from Bart De Waele.Bart De Waele from Netlash made this presentation on old vs. new media recently. You can see the whole thing for yourself, but I wanted to mention a few things that stood out for me:
The comparison of old vs. new media to Jesus vs. the jester. Some people are trying to be the Next Big Thing when all they really need to do is light a few small fires. Making people laugh is sometimes an ability that is highly underrated. It doesn’t HAVE to be an Avatar. A Juno will do quite well.
The power of real-time search and the shift from algorithm-based to social-powered search. More and more, I see friends asking for advice on Facebook about things they’re considering buying, so I agree with this.
The power of digital curation. When it comes to news, we don’t want to search for the news, we want the news to come to us – one of the many reasons why people use Twitter. Twitter hasn’t perfected the art yet, and Google News and others offer no way of serving up just what we’re looking for – I still wade through a lot of trash to get to the news that interests me. There’s a big role for digital curators in the future, as Bart says. Piers Fawkes at PSFK wrote a good post about what the future of blogs may be, and received an overwhelming response affirming the role of digital curators. However, Peter Rojas, publisher of Gizmodo and Engadget, made an interesting point when he said:
…….when I thought about what I wanted to do after Engadget I realized that there was something really interesting happening with the web — it was becoming more social, more dynamic, and more real-time, and I wanted to try and build a gadget site built around those ideas rather than one predicated on a team of editors cranking out posts.
I think FriendFeed went some way towards this, but it didn’t quite crack the code. I want to see things that interesting people (like some of the people I follow on Twitter) read and share on the web, but I don’t want to see comments of a personal nature they make to other friends (which includes personal stuff they share on Twitter, for example). With Google Reader I can ‘follow’ some people who choose to share their items with me, but I find that a lot of those items are from sites that are in my feed reader anyway. There’s a problem of duplication there, in other words. I think I’m describing a purely news-oriented Twitter – a sort of Google, FriendFeed and Twitter mash-up, where you follow people you want to, and get the content they’re into, on a real-time basis.
Another interesting comment from the PSFK post was:
It is endlessly frustrating to find a post that you put hours of loving care into get 1800 page views, and then throwing up a timewaster on LED encrusted eyelashes gets a hundred times that because of the power of DIGG.
There is nothing wrong with the medium of blogs, the problem is how the for-profit sites monetize it. That is why I think Fast Company and Atlantic are doing such a good job, they are bringing the discipline and editing of good magazines into the blog world and, I think, with their professionalism, will eat our lunch.
Now that is something that media outlets need to decide for themselves. Professionalism is a good thing. If the problem is the big supermarkets eating the small independent corner-shop, or the Fast Companies of this world eating smaller blogs, then the situation is the same as it was when globalization happened in South Asian countries like India years ago – some Mom and Pop shops died, but some didn’t. Sites like Unchained Guide are proof of the fact that there are plenty of independent boutiques that I personally would much rather patronise than H&M or Topshop in the UK, for example. Besides, if your blog is good, or popular (which is arguably more more important, from a monetization point of view), you may even get bought by a conglomerate, like Mashable is rumoured to be by AOL (whether or not the $15-25 million valuation is justified is a different issue altogether).
It’s called creating a niche for yourself.
I submit, however, that it IS irritating when sites like Digg give silly posts undue attention – I’m skeptical of the kind of people that use services like Digg in the first place. Taking this a bit further though, it would be useful to have a Digg-type vote up/vote down functionality on the mash-up service I described above.




So websites cajole you into registering with them so you can sign in next time you visit. You’re promised an embarrassment of riches – newsletters, games, offers, exclusive content. How can you turn it down? But of course, most do. Most people really can’t be bothered registering or signing in to anywhere.