The panel at Digital Citizens: Ben Shepherd – Sound Alliance; Sam Buckingham – singer / songwriter; Gareth Stuckey – Director, Gigpiglet; Dan Rosen – ARIA Chief Executive Officer; Neil Ackland – Sound Alliance; moderated by@acatinatree. The event was held at FBI Social.

So the topic of the evening was meant to be Social media and the music industry but that’s not quite what we got.

Everyone talked about the revenue/rights quandary but there was no real talk of how they were strategising for the digital age. Except for Sam Buckingham, a singer songwriter who has leveraged social media to connect to her fan base, build a loyal following and even crowd sourced $11,000 via the Pozible platform to fund her first album.

Buckingham: "I don't make any money off Youtube, but I use it to build my fanbase which funds my next album" #digicitz

December 5, 2011 7:26 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@eCitizens

Digital Citizens

There was talk at the outset of how well ARIA did “engaging” fans this year on Twitter. So what? The ARIA awards are on television. It’s got a pretty good head start because its being broadcast.

Somehow it just seemed that the panel, with exception of aforementioned indie songstress, was hanging on to the old way of doing business. They reinforced the status quo again and again – acts still need the music business, there’s no such thing really as independent artists. Um, yes there is and the hecklers* in the crowd started listing acts: The Jezebels, John Butler Trio, amongst others.

Sounds like the panel like the way things were #Digicitz

December 5, 2011 6:55 pm via YoruFukurouReplyRetweetFavorite

@franksting

Gavin Costello

The topic of discovery and curated listening was raised by the moderator. The consensus was that serendipitous discover wasn’t all that it is cracked up to be and listeners need those cool music types to tell what they need to hear. OK so Genius, and other recommendation engines don’t work and won’t improve? So tag classification systems on Soundcloud or Hypemachine are useless? I know I’m a relatively savvy user but I also have faith that users, given a good service and a good UI, will explore features made available to them if they find them useful.

I agree that Last.fm hasn't evolved as much as it could, but I still love it; so much music discovery it's given me #confession #digicitz

December 5, 2011 7:28 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@natface

Nathalie Swainston

The panel, I think it was Ben Shepherd from Sound Alliance segmented the music audience into two types: loyalists and casual listeners. It was implied that casual listeners will never pay and will be satisfied with free streaming music services and illegal downloads. I think these guys just hang out with the cool kids. There is a whole mainstream audience out there – sure they might listen to Susan Boyle sometimes – but they are happy to pay for music. Case in point, the entire Apple iTunes platform proves that if you create an ecosystem that makes purchasing seamless for the user they will indeed pay. What royalties artists derive from this is another matter entirely and nothing to do with social media and the music industry.

Repeatedly the panel kept talking about the web as a channel but not about social media as a platform. But it was worse than that. The web channel they spoke of looked entirely like a broadcast option only delivered via their specific platforms or partnerships. Convenient.

Sound Aliiance have come to a partnership with last.fm but aren't able to tell us what it is #digicitz

December 5, 2011 7:10 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@eCitizens

Digital Citizens

An audience member pointed out that the three revenue streams of artists (synchronisation as in licensing from film and advertising, touring and merchandising sales) have changed only marginally and that the album, except for the top 10% of artists, has always been a loss leader. He asked Dan Rosen of ARIA where they fit in the new model of rental versus ownership (audio below). The response was that ARIA will support any legal way of purchasing music where rights/money flow back to the artist.

This led to the question of whether ARIA are exploring a streaming music chart? Sweden has one and apparently artists generate more revenue from streaming music services than they do from iTunes. OK this is interesting stuff but its platform, not social media. I also was left with no impression that ARIA are actively lobbying and negotiating with the likes of Spotify, soon to enter the Australian market. They most probably are, it just sounded so reactive on the night.

Ironically it was Ben Shepherd from Sound Alliance who was skeptical of whether Spotify will provide artists with the royalty cheques they deserve. We had learnt earlier on the night that radio only pays 1% royalties for the music they pay. This is clearly a disgrace, particularly when you consider the size of businesses like Austereo. He projected the Spotify IPO could raise a billion dollars the  Australian advertising revenues of Spotify in the millions* but he lamented that they would likely pay only minimal royalties. Why did I preface this as ironic? Because Sound Alliance themselves don’t necessarily pay their music writers for their content.

Sam Buckingham finished the night with a point that was at least on topic. Social media is about making fans and keeping them. And of course so much more.

#Digicitz Sam's point is a good one. Musicians need to focus on a direct to fan model & provide a great experience at gigs & online

December 5, 2011 6:28 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@roneo

Josephine Sabin

Full disclaimer: Some of those said hecklers are my friends and are themselves either music fans or music industry boffins.

Thanks to Jo Sabin for subbing this post.

* Thanks to Ben Shepherd who clarified what he said in regards to the potential Spotify IPO, correcting me in his comment below.

Toby & Pete founders speaking at Apple Store Sydney for Australian Infront

What do you do with your eponymous moniker when your duo turns into a company? That was the predicament that Toby & Pete founders, Toby Pike and Piotr Stopniak found themselves in only 18 months after they started and the focus of their talk for the Apple/Australian Insight series. Toby & Pete are CGI artists who specialise in print media. They produce phantasmagorical images for the likes of Nike, AMP, SBS and Daily Juice.

Current outdoor campaign for Daily Juice Company features artwork by Toby & Pete. At bus stop on William St East Sydney

After 12 months in operation and 100 projects Toby & Pete found themselves at a turning point. They had their own company but had no control of the work they were producing. Their goal was to work alongside art directors on concept and design and not just be CGI “operators”. Their strategy for branching out was to assemble a cooperative of like minded, self driven creatives with complementary skills sets. They grew from a team of two CGI artists to a team of 8 with skills in illustration, animation, app development, web, typography, print and events. The folio changed overnight as did the opportunities before them.

They attribute their success to two factors. Firstly their mission which is to “excel in and out of the pigeon hole”. Having quickly built their reputation for CGI work, they have been determined that everything the studio produce, regardless of medium be of the same quality. Secondly, the cooperative was founded with a manifesto of sorts. While the designers have non exclusive obligations to the agency, everyone is required to work from the studio space. They noted that the turning point of a creative piece can come from someone’s “two cents worth” of feedback. The value of being in a company together is the contribution and input on one another’s projects, especially those conversations in passing. Theirs is the best manifestation of collaboration I have heard in a long time. Collaboration not as a process but as an environment that provides a constant feedback loop.

What can the UX field learn from Toby & Pete?

The creative strategy of Toby & Pete is also a business one. To seize control of their work and have input earlier in projects they diversified their offering. Is this something that the UX field can learn from? UX has matured into a discipline that consults on business strategy – particularly in the area of service design. We have no hesitation stepping on the toes of product managers, marketers, business analysts and business strategists. Yet we often complain how hard it is to be taken seriously by other fields and be considered earlier in the process. Maybe we should stop lobbying and start working together – not as vendors and clients but as colleagues.

Marc Stickdorn is an academic and author of This is Service Design Thinking so we were more than lucky to have him address the group. Stickdorn teaches to both design and business students. A theme of the night was working and communicating across disciplines, with these two important requirements:

1. That the design community, specifically the UX design community generate a shared language to represent and promote itself consistently
2. That service designers learn the terminology of the other disciplines they are working with

Stickdorn quizzed us on product versus service, touchpoint versus channel, introduced us to service dominant logic and the experience economy but he really wanted to abandon the slide deck and just open up the conversation. Which he did. I think he actually found us to be a little shy as a bunch.

The group questions canvassed the following topics:

• Whether or not he pitches for work — no longer, clients either get it or don’t and management buy in is needed from the get-go
• How he changes the perception of designers? — by reinforcing their role as looking at the holistic customer experience; going on to say that:

Piecemeal consulting is old stuff. My role is changing the culture within organisations.

• How does he “sell” it?  — By talking case studies and attaching real numbers to them. By engaging with the business community at their events.
• Do you need courses? — “Service design is not rocket science” he replied (an amusing and frank answer from an academic). He went on to describe the range of skills that service designers need and emphasised the importance of workshop facilitation and learning to design the workshop itself.

What I learnt from the night was that the service design industry in Europe was born out of academic leadership where the sector leads the charge in service design/design thinking. Stickdorn sees his role as supporting industry by piloting methods and “crunching the numbers” to build case studies for the promotion of service design as a legitimate discipline and approach.

Me and my co-conspirators (Bec & Ahmed) chose to hang around for the backchannel conversation after the event had officially finished with Marc, Damian (Protopartners founder and event organiser) and several others (out yourselves in the comments). While Europe has academia to lead the way we have cloistered ourselves into corners (with the exception of one generous Westpac CX team). UX companies all working away quietly, reluctant to share with each other lest they give anything away.

We all agreed amongst ourselves that the path forward was a more open model, but could also not see this happening with the current players – and we all admitted our own complicity in this. At least we have the event itself as a sharing and learning forum. That’s a start. Melis Senova asked a similar question in her talk at Service Design Drinks. That’s a pattern.

Fetch - Curated whats on for the business and digital communities in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and London

Friends from out of town have often remarked to me that Sydney has a thriving digital scene. All the events I’ve attended, big and small, are organised by passionate people with a spirit of openness and sharing. Considering most meet-ups are free or under 10 bucks it’s pretty cheap compared to a conference ticket.

But what’s on? Where to go? Where to look? There’s twitter, eventbrite, meetup - the information is out there but its all over the place. Kindly solving this problem for all of us is Fetch by Kate Kendall (founder) and her curators including Hannah DeMilta. So far there’s Fetch lists for Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and London covering events, news, articles and more for the business, digital and creative communities. Thanks so much guys — this is a great idea and a great service.

Check out the Fetch Blog , follow them on twitter or facebook, or get the updates in your inbox.

Toko at the Apple Store presenting for the Infront Insight series

Reference is not concept

Theirs was a rally cry against derivative design. They talked about “empty aesthetics”, and the problem of relying on design blogs and the “reference folder”. Uh oh! The reference folder! I still maintain reference collections from my graphic design days, and a visual bookmark collection – and I love them! But I also understand the critique. Who needs a concept when you can just see what’s “now” by scanning design blogs? Who needs a solution when you can just copy a pattern? Interestingly Toko did not encounter the use of the reference folder in their native Holland, but found its use widespread elsewhere, particularly in Australia. Is this a result of the Antipodean condition – being so far and feeling so far behind?

Business

Toko also commented on the obsession with business growth. It’s interesting – they left an established career and client base to come here. So clearly they are not focussed on money. But they find that Australians are. They are asked regularly if they want to grow their business, which is apparently a question never broached in Holland. This leads me to their reflections on their company and workplace.

Experience principles of the design workplace

Their business philosophy is to grow better, not bigger. Their belief is that quality and innovation comes in small packages, for the plain fact that talent is a too scarce a resource to build a large team around. Furthermore their experience is that personality, collaboration, flexibility (in design approach and solution), and passion is only sustainable in a manageable environment. They acknowledged their gratitude for their time at Studio Dumbar. A prolific agency where they learnt that “quality transcends quantity”. There they found an environment that supported individual talent instead of turning people into employees – taking an active interest in their progression and growth. The atmosphere was described as informal, friendly, flat not hierarchical (“you’re a designer, that’s it”) with a shared ambition for quality. Imagine if clients shortlisted studios based on these principles and not company size?

Copy culture demeans the value of design

But back to reference culture. The critique of derivative design was that it was inflexible, making for predictable design and halting progression of skills and practice. At stake is the integrity of the profession, if the value of design is cannibalised by designers themselves and so easily diluted. This has been cruelly felt by Toko whose work was plagiarised by a design student who ended up winning a coveted Red Dot design award. But the message I got was that it’s not only about awards. If there is no originality in concept or execution we allow our service to be too easily commoditised and its value too easily bargained.

The alternative? What we all learnt at art school. Concept is king. Or as one of the Toko duo put it (sorry didn’t note which) “when the ideas are there the aesthetic happens”.

Wabi-sabi

Their talk ended on an aesthetic note – “perfection is not a good look” as demonstrated in the poster for the event itself (does something look amiss to you?). Perhaps this was a nod to design tools doing the work of designers. They introduced the Japanese principle wabi-sabi – about the imperfect, the incomplete, modesty, roughness, simplicity. They talked about finding inspiration in opposites and using those areas of tension.

So stay fresh, be novel, concept then design, don’t pursue perfection, ignore design blogs and trash your reference folder. Hmmm, I still don’t think I am capable of doing that last one. Also, if reference is bad should I or should I not include a link to the Toko site? You know you want it.

The result was a presentation on: designing your life, your business and your happiness. How do you achieve a balance between an enriched life, business and achieving your dreams? Frost had 25 mantras, part design wishes part life coach, part business coach. In fact he attributed a few of the points to his naturopath and CEO. So here they are:

1. Every day is an opp to shine.
   Have a positive outlook, choose a career you love. (With an interesting question posed to the audience – do you  separate work and life, is lack of separation a weakness? Do you embrace the fact that your life and work is enmeshed?)
2. Be decisive.
   Design and life is about solving problems and coming to solutions. Say yes and mean it. Say no and mean it.
3. Smile a lot.
   You get what you give. Smile even when you don’t feel like it. Look for inspiration, energies, queues from those around you
4. Never stop being a kid.
   Design is learning how to play again. Be expressive, try things.
5. Question everything.
   Never presume you know everything. Listen critically, carefully, quietly. Delve, be empathetic to your audience – what are they trying to achieve? The clues you hear will make your design stronger.
6. Take a break.
   Recharge, energise, take a step back. As a company celebrate achievement and introspect. Don’t get stuck in a routine – do something diff every day.
7. Play.
   Joke, enjoy, muck around.
8. Play with colour.
   Understand its effects on people. There’s a science behind it. It can stimulate, it can calm.
9. Ho(me).
   Find a home designed for you specific needs, were you can relax and switch off.
10. Create a positive environment.
    Add value, add stuff that is sustainable.
11. Be fulfilled.
    Seek satisfaction. Choose to be doing stuff you want to do, or not. Try different things, counties, studios, test things out.
12. Be challenged.
    Seek diversity in the work environment. Push in different directions, to learn and grow, gain confidence
13. Stretch yourself.
    Avoid routine.
14. Make mistakes and celebrate them.
15. Give generously.
    Help people.
16. Feel.
    Have empathy for your end user.
17. Care lots.
    Care brings determination to maximise opportunity
18. Collaborate.
    With clients too. Work closely with them, banter, aim for transparency between parties.
19. Love your family and your friends.
20. Walk everyday especially once you hit 40.
    Getting up at 5am gives you more hours in the day.
21. Be prolific.
    Do lots of good things.
22. Don’t be mechanical.
    Don’t jump on the computer. Think, brainstorm, throw ideas around. Don’t let tools  design the end result.
23. Don’t go around in circles.
    Focus on direction. Goals in life. Understand your intent and make a plan.
24. Trust your intuition.
25. Don’t focus on projects.
    Focus on giving from the heart in everything you do. How can you inspire the client, engage the opportunity in a positive engaging way?

Peppered with these messages were examples of inspiring work from the team at Frost studio. Work that had depth of meaning, texture, dimension, colour. Frost himself was a delight too. No buzz words, just sincere sharing of life and work experiences and a clear passion for applying design and seeing beauty.

The talk will also be available as a podcast on iTunes courtesy of the Apple Store. BTW Apple peeps, this blog post was produced by my delightful HP in your store ;)

My first Product Mavens found me the loveliest, warmest bunch in Sydney. I am  curious about product management in those areas where it crosses over into UX which is why I am interested in this group. So often UXers come across marketers and product managers as stakeholders yet I am not sure we always talk the same language. The topics last week focused on the marketing terrain and social media marketing at that. Presentations came from a lawyer whose firm recruited on twitter, the developer and entrepreneur behind a  product marketplace and a PR consultant.

Lessons learned from last week’s meet-up in no particular order:

• Leverage channels that will surprise your audience.
• “Fish where the fish are swimming”. Delve into metrics to find out where.
• Research subject focused forums to find hubs of conversation to generate insights.
• Don’t expect high conversion rates (e.g. traffic to your site) from social platforms. 10% is respectable and realistic.
• Don’t invest in marketing before your product, site, platform etc are ready.
• Listen first to your audience to know how to engage.
• Embrace failure. Look back and reflect. Was it effective? Refine practice.

These points aren’t necessarily mind blowing, particularly if you are across social media. But, it is always useful to see examples of how people and businesses are applying tools.  Also, it gave me the opportunity to pepper PRer Roger Christie with questions about research methods and client management. He answered enthusiastically and generously. This was such a welcoming event, and the next one promises a “brain writing” workshop.  I’ll definitely be back for that.

Did the results speak for themselves or did his team have to campaign the merits of an open source user generated collection and tagging system to museum staff? How did they get staff on board?

Sebastian Chan: Gaining staff buy in through positive case studies by erietta

What’s the lesson to be learnt here? Positive examples will arm you against risk averse stakeholders i.e. you have to generate proof. Pilot small projects to build credibility and start gaining evidence.

back row snap of the event

I first saw Sebastian Chan speak at Web Direction on 2007. He presented on social tagging (“folksonomy”) projects at the Powerhouse museum. The first of these projects was the digitisation of electronic fabric swatches. After that the entire collection was digitised and published available for public classification. Recently I saw him present and got an update on these projects.

When I first saw this case study presented in 2007 the stats amazed me:

• 95% of all available objects were visited at least once in the first 10 weeks of the collection being published online
• 86% of tags created by users were not found in museum (curatorial) descriptions
• 88% of tags were assessed as useful by museum staff

The result since has been an amazing amount of web traffic, content sharing and fresh perspectives on objects and audience interests. The technology has developed to include geo coding and search term generated tags or “frictionless” tagging as Chan called it. But in all that time I had one question, well make that two:

• Do the same items stay popular because of tagging? (i.e. does tagging perpetuate was is already popular?)
• Does the tag list get unwieldy over time?

I got the opportunity to ask Sebastian from the audience Q&A after he spoke at the Australian Infront Insight series of talks. Warning audio taken from iPhone and not that great.
Sebastian Chan on Tag Lists by erietta

What are the lesson to be learnt here? 

The museum found that audiences didn’t need incentives to describe objects. The audience tags unveiled a new lexicon of descriptions that in turn led to deeper and wider content exploration. If you have a large library of information, a catalogue, or a huge database of content open it up. Let your audience help you describe it and in turn, help other users find what they are looking for. I encourage you to check out the original 2007 presentation.

Related links:

• Seb Chan’s 2007 Web Direction’s presentation
• Fabric swatch project
• Some of Sebastian Chans’ other posts on the subject of tagging:

• http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/dmsblog/index.php/2007/06/27/a-reminder-about-user-incentives/
• http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/dmsblog/index.php/2006/09/01/taxonomies-of-tagging/

The Powerhouse Museum and the in-house digital agency Chan has been heading within it have liberated the collection and extended the museum experience beyond exhibitions and museum walls.  Sebastian Chan is head of Digital, Social and Emerging Technologies at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. I first saw him talk at Web Directions in 2007. Then he case studied social tagging projects and it was great to here how the initiatives have grown.

Amongst the strategies, tools and technologies discussed on the night were:

• Open APIs to enable sharing of collection data
• Geo coded images enabling data mash-ups of historical photos
• Social tagging enabling richer descriptions of collection items
• Keyword search tags enabling ‘frictionless tagging’ and driving improvements in how items are catalogued by examining how people describe them
• Online exhibitions (such as the Australian Dress Register) encouraging learning and cataloguing amongst smaller collectors
• Interactive games as part of exhibition displays encouraging learning through experience
• Mobile apps augmenting museum experiences (check out the Lovelace app in the App Store)
• Pre-exhibition blogs that help inform shows and even to crowd source artefacts to display

Chan calls this use of technology and the philosophy of an open collection the “post web accord”. He acknowledged the tensions that this raises:

• the family visitor versus the scholar
• the exhibit versus the collection
• the museum site versus new platforms
• formal education versus inspiration
• delivering experience versus displaying information

The benefits of embracing the post web accord speak for themselves. The exhibition “The 80s are back” began with a blog and 50% of the objects displayed were crowd sourced. After smaller initiatives the complete museum collection was digitised and published under a creative commons license with social and search tagging tools in 2006. Now links back to the site account for 50% of all web traffic. But it doesn’t end there. It’s always a curly question to consider where to publish content online, and whether content should be seeded elsewhere. Consider these results—the museum published images onto Flickr under the Flickr commons license. Images that had generated 31,000 total views up to 2007 took 4 weeks to generate 40,000 views. After 2 years the image collection had generated 2.5 million views and now over 1,800 photos have been added.

My main takeaways from the event?

• Push experimentation, pilot projects and grow good ideas.
• Embrace multiple viewpoints from the audience and from within your organisation (museum exhibitions are blogged from various viewpoints on their site).
• Encourage sharing by opening data and publishing on multiple sites–not only will it result in new information coming back to you, but communities will form around it.

This event was held on 21 August 2011 and was presented by Australian Infront at the Apple Store Sydney as part of the Insight series of talks. The talk will also be published as a podcast. The next event in the series will be a presentation by designer Vince Frost.

Related links:

A write up of the event by Justin Fox, Australian Infront founder: http://www.spamventdocument.com/infront-insight-06-sebastian-chan