I talk about these 3 presentations all the time, so I thought I’d share them here.
Hans Rosling: Debunking third-world myths. Not only brilliantly interesting but also the absolute coolest way to present data I’ve ever seen. The lesson is also that looking at top-level macro data can often be misleading.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/92
Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity? Well delivered, brilliantly funny, no powerpoint (!) and an awesome message. The current education system that was created largely during the industrial revolution won’t work in the future.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/66
Joshua Prince-Ramus: Designing the Seattle Central Library using an approach he calls “hyper rational process”. How using rationality can result into something beautiful.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/49
What are yours?
Marc Andreessen points to an excerpt of Frans Johansson’s book The Medici Effect that explains why brainstorming is a bad idea. Hmmm, I think it depends on the context of the problem that people are brainstorming about, the intellect and skills of people involved, and the size of the group.
Google uses crowdsourcing to create maps In India. Fascinating and incredibly smart.
Lastminute.com promotes carbon offsets. We’re going to see a lot more of this very soon.
Google’s viral campaign to promote Gmail.
A lot of old business models aren’t working anymore. The music industry is a good example. Prince is a great example of somebody who embraced the new reality and created an effective new business model. [The Once and Future Prince – NY Times]
Chip Health, a professor at Stanford Business School, explains about conventional wisdom and how to ideas stick. [IT Conversations]
“Hotmap shows where people have looked at when using Virtual Earth.” [MS research – Hotmap]
“Call it the 105% Rule. From a word-of-mouth perspective, it’s virtually impossible to discuss an experience that is 5% better than the norm on all dimensions. People don’t talk like mystery shoppers, reporting diligently on each relevant feature. People talk about the exceptions, the unexpected, the highlights.” [Fastcompany – Give ’em Something to Talk About]
A second screening in Vancouver for the documentary Helvetica has been announced. Fonts and type is a bit of a low-engagement hobby and I’m looking forward to it. [Helvetica Film Website], [get tickets here]
Sheryl Sandberg leads Google’s advertising business. One of the best content I’ve seen in a 10 minute presentation. About the old advertising ‘interuption’ model: “It’s goal wasn’t to be useful to the user, it’s goal was to get the advertiser your attention, even at your own expense.” About Google’s advertising model “We wanted to our ads to be as useful as our search results”. [Supernova Conference]
And for fun. The best YouTube video I’ve seen this week.
The best stuff I encountered online this week.
The fascinating BBC4 4 series documentary The Century Of the Self examines the rise of consumerism, advertising and Public Relations in the 20th century, starting with Freud’s psychoanalysis.
Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
How Seagate learned to package like Apple. Opening a product package should be an experience onto itself. Apple gets it, others are starting to follow.
Google sponsored a project in the Master’s program at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute to rethink and reinvent online social networking. This is the next phase of social networking.