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Internet Age Media weekend, day II, part II

One of the best things about IAM was what they called the Random Talk. Except, it wasn’t entirely random. It was meant to make you sit back, feel a little shell-shocked and not be completely sure about what you had just heard. Marta Roel from Be Another Lab spoke about their pretty extraordinary forays into empathy and compassion. This is wearable tech taken to a new galaxy, let alone new heights. The device allows the user to explore life in another body. Think Oculus Rift designed by neurologists and gender studies scientists. Still confused (totally understandable if you are…)? Click here.

If Marta got us having a lean forward experience, Random Talk number two for the day had us sitting quietly in contemplation as Hector Ayuso took us through Heima. This was ironic because apparently the man wakes up at 3am every morning with the desire to create something, just anything, raging inside him. Oh if only we were all like that, instead of hitting the snooze button a dozen times! A design, art and experimental studio, Heima welcomes all questions… even the ones you believe to be stupid. Every project is worked on in the most collaborative way possible because the answer could lead to the next revolution. And he’s right, who are we to know in the very early stages if the seed to an idea will germinate or wilt? It’s best to work on them all.

Another man who presented with great humility was Jeff Hamada. What a guy. Jeff is afraid of failure and is also the co-founder behind the art blog Booooooom. That’s seven ‘o’s. What does he do? He gives his fans an excuse to have a creative outlet. From sending him postcards and pencils to building flotation rafts, Jeff says, “Go forth and create!” and they do. If you’re a marketer or a community manager, go and look at his blog immediately and immerse yourself in a world of what true community, true fan engagement and true participation looks like. It’s a treat. In fact, even if those words don’t appear in your job title, go read his blog. If you don’t have a life motto yet, live by this one from Mr Hamada: “Let the fear of letting fear dictate your life, dictate your life.” Yep, you may call him Yoda.

Then there were the champions who are slam-dunking it with branded video content. Pernille Raven from Crane.tv said something every marketer knows to be true but the way she phrased it made it rather profound: branded content wins when it’s not product led but transparently labelled. Oh that is so nice! I like that so very much. Nastya Popova from Coub will make you want to lose hours of your life to this video mashup technology and Ian Durkin from Vimeo shared the secrets to a happy online community: as platform owners, the responsibility lies with you. Set the tone. Seed positivity. Don’t be afraid to delete bad stuff. Tell people to play nice when they misbehave. Basically, find a way to leave unconscious clues that show people arriving at your place how to behave. Solid advice.

I could write a lot about Calvert 22 and Afripedia. But instead, I will write a little and let you explore the magic they’ve created. Both of these projects, the first a foundation and the second a five-part documentary, break down stereotypes and, as a result, create new narratives. Calvert 22 is a new guide to eastern Europe and Afripedia celebrates unbelievable creative talent that’s deserving of a world stage in five countries in Africa, one of them being my home country, South Africa. Geographically they couldn’t be more different. But creatively they are both produced with such love, respect and attention to detail that they have more in common than at first meets the eye.

When FIU Barcelona took to the stage, I caught my breath a little bit. Georgina Capdevila and Humbert Clotet are both 22 years old. And there they were talking about the mission statement behind their company. These young adults took all the negative statements they were fed at university about how they wouldn’t get jobs because of the economy and blah blah blah and turned it into AMAZING. They’re all about propelling the creative talent among the youth in Spain. They’re not about the blame game. They’re not about the you-owe-me game. They’re in the business of creating a meeting point between students, young talent and new creative generations. If that sounds tough to do, it’s because it is. But that isn’t going to stop them from trying. Oh the grown adults I have met who could learn from Georgina and Humbert!

Has your brain exploded yet? It doesn’t matter. Stay with me.

Sveinung Skaalnes from Hyper Island made the audience hope they were eligible for their 30-week R&D school. Hyper Island are a consultancy that also do loads of learning experiences and training. Their new incubation for designers, called 30 Weeks, experiments at the intersection of education, innovation and incubation. Swoon! Seeing these words together makes me happy.

Fernando de la Rose from Foxsize School opened up with the insight that ignorance is the first common illness not to be diagnosed. A man after my heart. He’s a teacher who prods at the holes in the education system. An institutional rebel and professional maverick who believes that traditional educational systems do not prepare us for the world we live in. The courses are often too long. Not dynamic enough. Not practical enough. Education is usually very structured and neat and clean. When you think about it, it’s synonymous with words that are usually the opposite of how we would describe life. Foxsize School is run in five different cities in Spain. They’ve educated around 15,000 students in two years with their unique three-hour classes. In the words of an Aussie: “Sweet as!”

Picking up the pace…

Abraham Asefaw and his colleagues at the Pop Up Agency have simultaneously the most awesome and the most intense jobs on the planet. Give them three days’ notice and they will fly anywhere in the world (!) and solve your brief in 48 hours. Hell, yeah! That’s as real-time as the ideation process is ever going to get. Want their skills? Hire them and they’ll teach you. First rule? Put away the tech and take out the pens, paper and Post-it Notes. It’s time to get creative – analogue style.

Ed Macovaz from Ableton told us a sobering story of a company that got itself into a lot of trouble. They launched some software and, basically, it sucked. They had failed their audience. What did they do? They stopped everything else they were working on and for about a year, they just worked on fixing the problem. That led them to having a stare off with this question: if we disappeared, what would the world miss about us?

I hate to interrupt this flow with a deep and meaningful reflection of my own but I think that’s not such a bad question to ask ourselves every now and again. I don’t want anyone to fall off an existential cliff but, seriously, sometimes we all need a strongly worded question to reconnect us to our purpose.

Back to Ed.

Ableton realised that the world of music had gotten deeply complex. The way they responded to complexity was to a) become more diverse as a business and b) experiment. They wrote a book called Making Music, 74 Creative Strategies for Electronic Music Producers and they also invented a new instrument that doesn’t live on a screen. Now let’s remind ourselves that Ableton is a music software company. Nicely done, team.

And lastly. Ruth Daniel took to the stage, with no shoes on, to talk about the human algorithm she drives into the epicentre of her work, whether it be in a war zone or music studio: Technology + Art + Humans = Change. I love this because it’s representative of a universal key to unlocking potential.

Perhaps it’s unfair to focus on the fact that Ruth presented with no shoes on but it’s indicative of a particular point I want to make.

At the time I thought this was cool because it was quirky. But now I realise that the real reason I loved her sans-shoes style was because everyone who took to the stage that day, from the first speaker to the last, presented with this kind of raw honesty that you seldom come across on a day-to-day basis. You usually have to hunt it down among the Photoshop, buzzwords, industry lingo and photo apps that make your eyes bigger and lips pout out a little more. Many openly told us their age, their fears (whether it be failure or that public speaking is physically agonising), they told us what they were not and they told us about those times when they didn’t succeed. None of these people were the 19-year-old start-up millionaires who make you want to scream unspeakables to the universe because you feel like you’ve missed the boat and have done nothing of value with your life. They were representative of you and me. The difference? They dared.

Through this honesty, it dawned on me why transparency is really the magic sauce. Transparency allows us to collaborate on an even playing field. By showing our human flaws to one another, transparency allows us in turn to become super-human. How? Because it shows what’s possible when you don’t quit. When you don’t throw it all in at the first, second, 10th or even 200th challenge. It shows what’s possible when you just keep at it, flaws and all.

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