tyson lundbech

TBWA Chiat Day’s Social Activism 2.0 Report

I just came across TBWA Chiat Day’s 2010 Social Activism 2.0 report on how purpose has become key for brands to engage with the social media generation in the US. The report revealed that 75 per cent of youth prefers purchasing brands that belong to a socially responsible company, and 56 per cent are more likely to seek employment with a socially responsible company. While women tend to spread the word about the causes they’re involved with more than men, men tend to be more active when it comes to actually doing something for a cause they’ve taken up. While younger non-working respondents prefer causes than can change the world, older working respondents prefer causes that are more personally relevant. The study clusters people into two groups. Slacktivists are more likely to talk about causes online whereas 2.0 Activists are more likely to act on the causes they support by donating time and money. Slacktivists are more likely to be women and students, while 2.0 Activists are more likely to be men and working professionals. TBWA says that it will extend the scope of the study to 15 countries in 2011, including India (Campaign India) and I’ll certainly look forward to the results.

(Source: gauravonomics.com)

Are you making something?

Making something is work. Let’s define work, for a moment, as something you create that has a lasting value in the market. Twenty years ago, my friend Jill discovered Tetris. Unfortunately, she was working on her Ph.D. thesis at the time. On any given day the attention she spent on the game felt right to her. It was a choice, and she made it. It was more fun to move blocks than it was to write her thesis. Day by day this adds up… she wasted so much time that she had to stay in school and pay for another six months to finish her doctorate. Two weeks ago, I took a five-hour plane ride. That’s enough time for me to get a huge amount of productive writing done. Instead, I turned on the wifi connection and accomplished precisely no new measurable work between New York and Los Angeles. More and more, we’re finding it easy to get engaged with activities that feel like work, but aren’t. I can appear just as engaged (and probably enjoy some of the same endorphins) when I beat someone in Words With Friends as I do when I’m writing the chapter for a new book. The challenge is that the pleasure from winning a game fades fast, but writing a book contributes to readers (and to me) for years to come. One reason for this confusion is that we’re often using precisely the same device to do our work as we are to distract ourselves from our work. The distractions come along with the productivity. The boss (and even our honest selves) would probably freak out if we took hours of ping pong breaks while at the office, but spending the same amount of time engaged with others online is easier to rationalize. Hence this proposal: The two-device solution Simple but bold: Only use your computer for work. Real work. The work of making something. Have a second device, perhaps an iPad, and use it for games, web commenting, online shopping, networking… anything that doesn’t directly create valued output (no need to have an argument here about which is which, which is work and which is not… draw a line, any line, and separate the two of them. If you don’t like the results from that line, draw a new line). Now, when you pick up the iPad, you can say to yourself, “break time.” And if you find yourself taking a lot of that break time, you’ve just learned something important. Go, make something. We need it!

(Source: sethgodin.typepad.com)

The 5 Models Of Content Curation

Over time, the idea of content curation has felt like more and more of a catchphrase that is really encompassing many smaller activities that are adding structure and insight to the cacophony of information being published online. What if we could define not just content curation as a macro activity, but look at how curation might be applied in very specific situations? The rest of this post shares 5 potential models for content curation as a starting point for discussion:

1. Aggregation - There is a flood of information online and Google can only give you a best guess at the most relevant, but there are millions and millions of pages returned for any search result. Aggregation is the act of curating the most relevant information about a particular topic into a single location. Often taking the form of catalog style blog posts which list “27 Great Resources For Small Business” (or similar aggregations), this is the most common form of content curation. Volume is not typically an issue when it comes to aggregation, so in this case you still may have hundreds of pieces of source material - but just the fact that it is in a single location and not millions of pieces of information has a high value for people interested in a particular topic.
2. Distillation - The idea behind distillation is that adding a layer of simplicity is one of the most valuable activities that someone can undertake. Distillation is the act of curating information into a more simplistic format where only the most important or relevant ideas are shared. As a result, there may be quite a bit of additional content that is lost for the sake of simplicity - however the value comes from the fact that anyone digesting this content no longer has to contend with a high volume of content and can instead consume a more focused view of information.
3. Elevation - The smaller ideas that are often shared online in 140 character bursts or pithy mobile phone images may point to a larger societal trend or shift. Elevation refers to curation with a mission of identifying a larger trend or insight from smaller daily musings posted online. Encompassing much of what many trend-focused websites do, this can be one of the hardest forms of content curation because it requires more expertise and analytical ability on the part of the person or organization during the curating. The benefit is that it can also be the most powerful in terms of sharing new ideas as well.
4. Mashup - A term often used in the context of music to describe the growing trend of taking two or more pieces of music and fusing them together - there is a wider implication for mashups in relation to information. Mashups are unique curated justapositions where merging existing content is used to create a new point of view. Taking multiple points of view on a particular issue and sharing it in a single location would be one example of this type of behaviour - and could be used to describe the sort of activity that takes place every day on Wikipedia. More broadly, mashups can offer a way of creating something new while still using content curation as a basis for it because you are building on existing content.
5. Chronology - One of the most interesting ways of looking at the evolution of information is over time - and how concepts or our understanding of topics has changed over time. Creating a Chronology is a form of curation that brings together historical information organized based on time to show an evolving understanding of a particular topic. Most useful when it comes to topics where understanding has shifted over time, this can be a powerful way of retelling history through informational artifacts that exist over time to prove how experiences and understandings have changed.

Content curation is certainly an emerging space and one where more and more thought leaders will continue to share their voices. This is simply a contribution to the curated universe of discussion on this topic - as well as an option invitation to others who have thought deeply about content curation to share their own visions for what the future may look like.

I’ll look forward to eventually reading the “Chronological Curation” of this discussion one day in the future where this post may be included among many others to spark a longer and deeper conversation about a topic that has the potential to transform how each of us sees the world around us.