Results for articles with tag 'sarahrich' (3 total)
12/02/2024 08:38:00 AM 
We have 5 tickets left for tomorrow's event!!!
The recent blog post on "Why agencies need labs" forced me to re-think the idea of our "Meet the Makers" conference in NYC on December 3rd.
It struck me that conference is the wrong term, it smacks of the past, boredom, lack of interaction, stale sandwiches, poor lighting and a lousy venue.
"Lab for the Day" is much better term and truer to what we plan to deliver.
Inside the corporate world, the mind is somewhat constrained by the realities of the endless "to do" list- space for thinking and inspiration is sometimes hard to come by.
Our "lab" is a chance to change that.
To explain more, our lab is about "Making" and is designed to provide inspiration from the makers themselves, those who have work directly with them and is all about about the act of making. The "lab" seeks to provide some rules, tools and instruction sets on how to "make" good things.
And in true lab style, we will be conducting a number of experiments.
Here are the key themes and speaker specifics.
Making and Re-Making Brands
Ashley Alsup, has spent time making-over Burger King at CPB and has some interesting thoughts on why corporate America needs to re-make itself and how to do it.
Mark Barden of Eat Big Fish is going to do an experiment with the audience to get them to help him think and re-think about a brand he's personally involved with.
Real Makers and Creators
Scott Belsky, the founder of Behance, recently wrote the best-seller, "Making Ideas Happen", is going to tell us how we can all have best sellers.
Jim Wexler makes games for a living, he's going to be talking about the ingredients for good games and talk about how and why games are going invade and become a much bigger part of our lives.
Thomas Callahan left his job in the corporate art world to make bikes by hand going to tell us what he does and why he does it.
Time Magazine was one of the first magazines to re-make itself for the iPad, the most intriguing new media platform for years. Time's DW Pine is going to tell us how they did it with considerable constraints and what they are learning about how to evolve the experience.
For another take on the future of magazine publishing, Sarah Rich is going to be sharing lessons from the 48 hour magazine project, Longshot, which she describes as follows..
In May 2010, we conducted a two-day media experiment. 8,000 people signed up, 1,500 submissions came in, 35 editors selected 70 pieces to fill a 60-page magazine.
People liked it. We broke our distributor's sales records, received positive reviews in The New York Times, PBS, and the Village Voice, and won a Knight-Batten Award for Innovation in Journalism. Here, we present selected work from the print edition of Issue Zero.
Frank Rose has spent the last two and a half years researching the past, present and future of storytelling for his new book, "The Art of Immersion". He's talked to James Cameron, the creators of Lost , the people behind Tron Legacy, and many others, about the evolving process of storytelling and what it's going to take to tell a compelling story in the C21st.
Gary Hirsch gets people "out of their shells" for a living and inspires them to develop great ideas with others. He's going to lead an experiment to get us to create a character, one of the most critical components of any story.
Creative Output and Opportunity
Finally, Piers Fawkes of PSFK is going to challenge the audience to create compelling ideas for a fascinating project for the United Nations.
We believe it will be a fascinating day and a "lab" in the true sense of the word.
If you are interested in registering for the few remaining places, you can find out more here.
We are thankful for the support of our media sponsor, PSFK
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
07/13/2007 06:04:56 AM
Here's a short interview we recently did with Sarah.
1. How has the issue of the "environment" changed in the last 18 months?
Well obviously it's become the concern of a much wider swathe of the population, and has infused all aspects of culture and politics. This is a result of things like An Inconvenient Truth, scientific reports blowing previous assumptions out of the water and holding humans responsible for planetary destruction, and of course, actual weather disasters. It's become valuable from a marketing and a social perspective to demonstrate awareness of environmental problems. The "green theme" is ubiquitous everywhere -- fashion shows, music festivals, magazines. There's some sweet spot where environment as a cultural symbol and environment as an issue that motivates people to action are at their most effective, and I sometimes think we're in a somewhat precarious place near the peak of that; on the other hand, while that's a common perspective from deep inside the field, I think the public at large hasn't passed or gotten over the critical point of adopting and acting on environmental concern.
2. Do you feel most companies understand the importance of the issue?
I do. Many companies have had environmental statements for a while that enhance their brand value (at least for some consumers), but now not having one is a real reason for criticism or for choosing a different brand. Even those who've been "environmental" for a while have polished their statements and clarified their positions. The financial benefits for business are much clearer now, both in terms of actual savings from things like increased energy efficiency, and in terms of consumer preferences and priorities shifting.
3. What brand efforts stand out for you?
Wal-Mart (minus the negative social/community impacts they still cause), Nau, Interface, Tesla...I don't know enough to say with certaintly, but I read and hear a lot of interesting stuff about Nokia.
4. Do you think consumers are prepared to act?
I'd like to think so but I guess I'm somewhat cynical or skeptical about the power of consumers to take the lead in making change. Generally consumers follow trends and precedents set by brands they like or leaders they admire or simply advertising, which means that while consumers are capable of creating change because they are such a large population, I think it's harder for them to be mass catalysts. I hope I'm wrong, though.
Posted by Ed Cotton
Articles for tag sarahrich (3 total).