Results for articles with tag 'influxmeetthemakers' (5 total)
11/15/2010 08:42:17 AM 
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Jim Wexler of Brand Games, one of the speakers at our "Meet the Makers" event, recently pointed me to an interesting idea of of the University of Utrecht called Game Seeds. Basically, it's a way to inspire game designers to think differently about game design by forcing them to think about the actions of the character first, rather than the user.
As they explain..
"Game design usually starts off by defining the actions of the player(s). Christophe Berg at Metagama wondered if the reverse would be possible, and created a new and innovative game where the design of the characters (and their behaviour patterns) is the first step.
The result is a playful card game that confronts players with certain constraints (e.g. they don’t create a character from scratch) in order to foster their creativity, and pushing them out of their comfort zone by having to make do with the given elements.
Each Game Seeds card contains attributes and an action verb. By choosing some actions, the players start to define their characters behaviour… and by doing so create the range of actions that would be available to the end-user."
It's another reference to the importance of character in the creation of compelling content, a topic both Frank Rose and Gary Hirsch will be talking about at Influx's "Meet the Makers" (a "lab for a day") taking place at Milk Studios in NYC on December 3rd.
Information about the event can be found here.
Posted by Ed Cotton
11/09/2024 12:36:53 AM
We are really pleased that Ashley Alsup is going to be one of our speakers at our Meet the Makers event on December 3rd. Ashley was one of the leading strategists at Crispin Porter Bogusky and was responsible for some of thinking around BK's Whopper Sacrifice and much more.
Ashley is now working as an independent consultant as has been spending time thinking about how corporate America might re-make itself.
I recently interviewed Ashley and here it is.
1. Briefly Tells Us About Your Background?
My agency background includes time at Kirshenbaum, BBH NY, AMV BBDO London and Crispin Porter Bogusky. I always tried to work for an agency I thought I could learn the most from.
I got into advertising because I liked the idea of creating cultural change. I came to feel over time, though, that I had less and less power to change anything. I wanted to be part of the conversation to solve the real problem.
2. What Was the Most Rewarding thing You Worked on and Why?
I worked on Johnnie Walker globally pretty early on in my career and got to travel around the world and help a client figure out how to make a global campaign work anywhere. I worked with some extremely nice and committed people at BBH and Diageo. At the time, I felt like we were solving something new. We wanted to crack it and that felt good. As for my time working for Guinness in the UK, it was always easier and more rewarding to work with a great product.
More recently in my career at Crispin, I got to work on some projects for American Express and burger King that had more to do with fundamental problems in their business. I got to be part of the team that was coming up with some product ideas or new ideas for how to relate to their customers and internal stakeholders- some of which got made. Having a very different kind of conversation with my corporate clients got my super-excited about the possibilities of how planning could help clients from a perspective independent from an advertising product.
3. What does "Making" Mean in the Context of what you do?
I try to be a creative problem solver. New problems always fascinate me because they're a chance to learn. The journey is great because you get to use a lot of craft skills, whether it's conducting research in an especially effective and inspired way or creating presentation materials that capture and argument or ideas in an especially tense, compelling and clear way. The end goal is joy, happiness- the feeling within a group that we can make a great decision and change the course of a project, product, brand or entire business.
4. What's Your Feeling about Corporate America right Now?
I think corporate America is much more broken than it realizes. Not because it's so behind on ideas, because it's not. The ideas are there, they just can't get made. Mostly because American corporations are not structured around creating great products and bringing them to marker in a speedy, transparent way. They're structured around a story told for Wall St. The sheer number of business units,layers and competing roles prohibits real leadership, the ability to make decisions and get things done. But it gives the impression of a mighty ship.
As a result, privately-owned companies are the engines of innovation and ideas because that's where the purity of purpose is. They tend to produce superior products that come from a personal mission, love and insight. They have a closer relationship with their consumers and tend to tell the truth more often and behave in a transparent and responsible way. If we want to change the larger corporate culture, we have work on both ends of the market. We have to help smaller companies become the biggest threats they can be. And we have to help corporate clients regain the purity of purpose, make good decisions, agree to behave differently. But you can't have one without the other. Because people rarely change unless they are incentivized to. We have to work together to alter the incentive.
5. What Type of Businesses Do You Think Americans want to Deal with Now?
I think people want to deal with companies they feel represent something positive for people. It's funny how often the treatment of workers come up in quant surveys of how people evaluate companies. For everything ground-breaking that Walmart is doing for sustainability, there are still stories of the way they treat their workers and local communities, creating profound dissonance. And people take that personally. It taps into an underlying anxiety that corporations can do whatever they want, that they no longer exist to serve humanity or happiness. Just wealth at any cost and for a very small group of people. People aren't sure who they can trust anymore. Even Toyota has let people down. It's creating a great, untapped market opportunity for new brands and thought leaders to move in.
6. What Corporations do you feel "get it"- names names and explain why?
From a product and marketing standpoint, Apple and Google. Apple products have an almost transcendent, spiritual quality to them. Google is great at getting tools into the hands of people and letting them shape them using betas. But both are in danger of undermining their brands with some of their corporate behavior. Brands like Patagonia and Toms Shoes have made impressive and substantive and ethical practices. Method has very effectively changed the conversations around household products- from toxic things that have to be locked in a cabinet to objects of design and pleasure that can be kept out of the counter. And I think for businesses of scale, Starbucks and Whole Foods have actually stayed ahead of a lot of issues and continue to demonstrate their desire to improve the experience for their customers. Justin's Nutbutters, a Boulder company, recently led a squeeze-pack conference with major food suppliers to get everyone to change to bio-degradable packaging. All of these brands feel loved by the people that run them. They all make great products.
You can register for Influx's Meet the Makers conference here.
Posted by Ed Cotton
11/08/2024 04:11:31 AM
Horse Cycles Day 5: Interview with Thomas from torywilliams on Vimeo.
The film above is a really nice interview directed by Tory Williams about Thomas Callahan.
We are really pleased to have Thomas as one of our speakers at our "Meet the Makers event in NY on December 3rd".
Thomas' brand is Horse Cycles and he hand-crafts bicycles in his Williamsburg workshop. He clearly loves his job and relishes the opportunity to craft something with his own hands.
Here's how he describes his brand on his website.
"Horse Cycles is a one-man custom bike shop tucked away in the streets of Brooklyn, NY. Each frame is made with love and care, innovation and inspiration. Horse makes precision bicycles one at a time using the best possible materials while working in concert with the customer to improve their riding experience. Horse offers an outstanding alternative to standard production bicycles by paying attention to the individual to create something that is made locally, by hand, and with no limitations."
Thomas is one of 9 speakers at our December 3rd event which includes a diverse mix of writers, magazine creators, iPad developers, brand owners, game makers and best selling authors.
You can learn more and register for the event here.
Posted by Ed Cotton
10/29/2010 02:00:00 PM
For the past 5 years, Influx and BSSP have organized an annual conference in San Francisco. We started off small and last year 200 people attended the event in Fort Mason.
BSSP is never comfortable with a formula, so we decided to change it up once again and hold an event in the East Coast, New York to be precise.
Over the years, we've had a number of requests for from East Coasters for an event, so we've finally decided to oblige with Influx's Meet the Makers.
We are fully aware that there are something like 15 conferences every day in NY and if you can't attend you events, there's always a TED talk online to watch, conferences are everywhere and simply put, we know time is very precious.
It's for this reason that we've chosen the specific theme of "Making", we want to be practical and instructional and not theoretical. These are interesting and challenging times and we thought it would be good to hear from people who are in the thick of it, getting their hands dirty making stuff.
We've brought together an amazing group of speakers and facilitators and compressed it all into a half-day session.
Information and tickets can be found here.
So, here's who've got speaking...
Ashley Alsup
Ashley was responsible for leading Burger King's strategy at Crispin Porter, Bogusky,before that she led the strategy on Guinness at AMV London, where she worked on one of the best TV spots of all time. She also spent time at BBH NY working on Johnnie Walker. Recently she's been thinking hard about re-making corporate America and will be sharing some of her thoughts with us.
Thomas Callahan- Horse Cycles
Thomas runs and owns Horse Cycles. He's a true maker and builds handcrafted bicycles in Brooklyn. His bikes are made of the lightest strongest steel possible. All tubing is aerospace grade and made in Italy.He will be sharing his making secrets with us.
Mark Barden- Eat Big Fish
Mark brings a lot of experience at Eat Big Fish of telling brands what to do. He's one of the fathers of Challenger Brand thinking and has helped the likes of Visa and Unilever to become more challenging. He will be asking us if it makes sense for every brand to try and be a Challenger and what kind of brand we might create if we were given the chance to do so.
Josh Quittner and DW Pine- Time Inc.
Josh and DW are the team at Time Inc who took the iconic magazine, Time onto the iPad and were one of the first publishers to do it. They have interesting tales to tell from the process and lessons to share
Jim Wexler- Brand Games
Jim is one of the pioneers in using videogames as a media platform and he will be telling us how to make a good game.
Scott Belsky- Behance
Scott used to work at Goldman Sachs, but decided his true calling was in the creative world, so he established Behance, a company that develops products and services that boost productivity in the creative professional community.
In 2010, Scott was included in the Fast Company list of 100 Most Creative People in Business. He is the author of the national bestselling book Making Ideas Happen and he's going to tell us how we can all write bestsellers.
Frank Rose
Frank is one of the leading writers at Wired Magazine and last year, wrote the much talked about piece on James Cameron. Frank is just finished writing "The Art of Immersion", which examines the future of the narrative that will be published February 2011, by Norton. He will be sharing his thoughts on the current and future state of storytelling
Sarah Rich
Sarah is a writer, editor and experimentalist focused primarily on new media, design and food. She is co-founder and executive editor of Longshot magazine (a 48 HR magazine), and co-founder of the Foodprint Project. Formerly, she was a senior editor at Dwell, Inhabitat and Worldchanging magazines. She is a co-author of the book Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century (Abrams, 2006) and is currently working on a book about urban farming, due out in 2012. She will be telling us how we can create our own magazine in 48 hours.
Gary Hirsch- On Your Feet
Gary Hirsch is the founder of On Your Feet, a workshop that uses improvisation with organizations and brands to help them create, relate, and communicate-all while having a ridiculously good time. Gary will be helping us all create an instant character.
More details here
Posted by Ed Cotton
10/18/2010 05:29:46 AM
On December 3rd in New York, Influx will host its Meet the Makers conference. It's designed to showcase makers, making and to inspire others to think about the discipline of craft.
One of our speakers will be Thomas Callahan, of Horse Cycles, who left his career in the art world to take up a passion, bike making.
Thomas is an example of a new breed of individuals, who find more satisfaction from using their hands to make a physical objects, than sitting in office cubes.
More than that, Thomas represents the re-emerging "Made in the USA" movement, which is satisfying a demand for hand-crafted objects made here. He also exemplifies the importance of strong local communities. Thomas chooses to be located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn because of its proximity to local talent and support.
Last Friday, I visited his workshop and took the photos shown above.
If you are interested in learning more about Influx's Meet the Makers event, furtner information can be found here.
Posted by Ed Cotton
Articles for tag influxmeetthemakers (5 total).