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.

Yahoo! email notification of sale and instruction to authorise permission for new company AVOS to manage.

I’m sure it has been announced previously, but as a user I just received my email from Yahoo! notifying me of the sale of Delicious to AVOS. I used to be a huge Delicious fan. Remember when it was one of the darlings of “web 2.0″? My use and fan-dom has wavered as other tools such as Instapaper have proven more useful. Even in its hey day, my inbox remained empty as friends never really leveraged the sharing aspect as it was designed. Yet the feature remained. Only recently has search of own bookmarks been enabled. I wonder what this means for the future of Delicious? Hopefully some product innovations will follow.

Anyone who visits this blog often may have noticed I go to a lot of industry events. I love hearing talks, I always get something out of it, but even meet-ups without guest speakers
are an opportunity to learn from your peers. So if you’re too shy or too busy to fit an event into your calendar – maybe you’ll find a reason to finally go below.

1. Get to know people in your industry
   New to town? Need a job? New to the industry? You will be surprised how happy people are to talk, offer advice, help you out and put you in touch with others. Talking to others also gets you an understanding of where you are at and where you want to be.
2. Understand the industry landscape
   Which companies specialise in what, who claims to specialise in the new thing, whose been doing it for real.
3. Hear new case studies straight from the makers
   Nothing is more inspiring than hearing passionate stories from industry leaders.
4. Get exposed to other industries, mindsets and methodologies
   Put those industry buzz words into perspective and learn a new approach or technique while you’re at it.
5. Get recharged!
   Feeling a bit flat at work? Need some respite from that 6 month project you’re treading water on? Bored? Get some perspective back by meeting others, hearing about their projects and remind yourself why you love what you do.

This post is dedicated to my event buddies, past and present: Jo, Kristin, Bec and Laurel.

Mathew Hodgson, an IA/UX type, writes and speaks about agile project management. I have never done an agile project, and this is not a piece about agile versus waterfall. What struck me to think about that article and Tamara’s story was a blog post and graphic that Mathew published a few weeks ago about careers and the Agile team.

In the team roles are categorised into groups, as being focussed on either:

• Process
• Output
• Analysis
• Build
• Customer, or the
• Client

The usual job titles can still be found in there, there’s an Information Architect, a DBA, a BA, a Developer an Interaction designer; but there is an emphasis on what people are doing, and what their preference is.

I wish I had thought about what job suited my personality when I was younger—I may have come to my career a lot sooner. I think this graphic would be a handy tool for any career advisor to show kids who are considering a job in IT, and especially for those who may not yet be considering the field, what they may be suited to and encourage them to think about what it is that they enjoy doing.

If you have not been, Service Design Drinks is a casual meet-up, where guest speakers present and take questions from the audience. It’s held regularly at the Trinity Bar in Surry Hills. The fourth event was held on 18 May and was attended by 30 or so user experience designers, including a team from Different.

The last event was a panel discussion moderated by Damian Kernahan, from Proto Partners. The panellists were:

• Opher Yom Tov, formally of Ideo, now working with BT
• Rod Farmer, Co-founder and Director of Research, Mobile Experience
• Susan Wolfe, Managing Director, Optimal Experience
• Faruk Avdi, from the NSW Department of Education and Training

The opening question put to the panel was “What is service design?”

• Opher Yom Tov: Weaving together discreet experiences in an ongoing relationship.
• Rod Farmer: Meaningful value at the point of interaction.
• Susan Wolfe: Thinking about the broader context. Experience design is service design.
• Faruk Avdi: The ecosystem a product exists; experience design is a subset of service design.

Much of the early discussion veered around product design, defined as designing for the experience and the utility that it brings, and not focussing exclusively on the product itself.

A conversation followed about the importance of leadership and change management in service design projects. Several challenges were discussed:

• How do you model relationships?
• If the bar is always moving, how do you exceed the standard that has been set?
• Companies do not measure people’s performance on delivering a whole service. What KPIs should be set to help put service initiatives into operation?

The final question put to the panel was, who’s doing it well? This was best answered by Ant from Different who said that the best service experiences are being had at the ma and pop stores. Everyone agreed; the challenge is getting big organisations behaving like small business. (Interestingly, Mark Pollard made the exact same analogy at a Social Media Club event when asked about the challenges businesses face in participating effectively in social media).

It was a lively discussion, where the panel conceded that service design is a fairly new term. It was interesting to see that the industry is still forming its opinions as to what service design really is, and how it differs to experience design and also interesting to see how the field of user experience is expanding and defining itself.

An edited version of this post first appeared on the blog Different UX

Postscript June 17, 2010

Audio of the event has been published on the Service Design Drinks blog:
http://servicedesigning.com.au/2010/06/17/service-design-thinks-drinks-4/

Flash 10.1 beta talking points:

• touch apis
• improved audio support
• performance improvements
• Flash mobile applications run on various platforms and devices.
  App stores for flash developers on these platforms are more open to developers than you-know-who.

The touch capabilities of Flash were best illustrated by this video, developed by Struck Axiom, that I crudely caught on my camera.

In the keynote Mike Chambers went on to demo various tablets and mobile devices running flash applications including a live demo of Wired magazine running on a resistive touch tablet. Mike hinted at some sort of workflow from the publishing suite to create interactive flash. At least, I hope this is what he was hinting at.

Greg Rewis, the Creative Suite evangelist went on to outline more flash goodies such as:

• improved text handling e.g. text boxes can be linked for flowing text
• full support of 32 new character sets e.g. asian character sets and left to right, vertical text layout.

Greg was most passionate about the new code snippet library which tackles the learning barrier of action script to newbies. This is best exemplified by his quote: “All the Flash bashing that goes with actionscript 3 — shut up now!”

• Libraries can be imported and exported. This should be a boon for flash communities
• The sample code snippets are generous and code can be exposed and includes instructions

In the Day 1 keynote Mike Chambers from Adobe came out at the gates in defense of Flash (hi Mr Jobs). Acknowledging how CPU intensive flash video can be he spoke of Flash performance improvements on mobile and the desktop. He also demoed the new flash touch apis on tablets, phones and larger screens. Microsoft were there and to the delight of many brought along a Microsoft Surface. It was a blast to play with. It was interesting to hear from Shane Morris about what constraints were put into the behaviour of the Surface. In his talk Shane outlined design principles with case studies of applications designed for ANZ, Lonely Planet and Cochlear. This was my highlight of the conference. Other more technical sessions that I did not attend talked more specifically about touch technologies e.g. Dmitry Baranovskiy demonstrated the gestural capability of his Raphael javascript library.

I am pretty much a wannabe geek, i.e. not very geeky, so I left the tech streams up to the developers and spent most of my time in the UX/team stream. There was a good mix in this stream of usability, design sessions, specifically design for mobile, wireframe design, and a mix of broader project sessions. These included:

• Robin Hilliard introducing a framework to define problems and come up with sound requirements
• Mathew Hodgson evangelising agile. This is a hot topic, but especially relevant to a developer audience from where the concept arose. It was helpful to see this explained through a warts and all case study; and
• Tim Buntel from Atlassian talking about managing developers.

What was great about this year’s webDU was that it was not a tutorial conference, nor were the sessions so general that you came away with nothing but a new vague idea. The sessions introduced applicable principles and approaches that rang true with real life case studies and inspirational examples.

Anyone who knows me knows I take A LOT of notes so instead of trying to summarise my favourite take outs from WebDU in one post I will try and publish a series of webDU posts over the coming days. OK. Weeks.

Until next year!