Creativity and Technology

Creativity and Technology Conference New York June 2011

I was lucky enough to attend this conference recently and thought I’d share what I’ve learned …
Key points from presenters.
1) Bre Pettis ‘Makerbot’ ‘This is just the beginning …’
We are in a DIY creative revolution.
Mash-ups are the new trend.
Take a bad/absurd idea and push it so far (with collaboration) that it becomes a great idea.
We are in a public domain and it is the sharers who win.
We need to share innovation plus creativity so that wonderful things will happen in the future.
2) Adam Sadowsky ‘Syyn Labs’
Collaborative team must be the following:
• talented, smart
• explorers and experimenters
• tenacious
• not afraid to fail / be willing to make mistakes (factor these into costings)
• disciplined
• fascinated by art and technology
• passionate
• funny and have fun
Always a good idea to work with someone smarter than you are.
Instant feedback is crucial to collaboration.
3) Tom Thai ‘Bluefin Labs’
Builds Television genome maps to show the link between social media and TV. Approximately 13.7 million social media to TV comments made per month.
The semantic barrier between mass media and the audience in the past is now bridged via social media.
Social media provides instant feedback.
4) Tony Nethercutt ‘Mojiva’
Works as a Mobile Creative. That is, uses Apps and Mobile Web.
Working on integrating non-interruptive ads into gaming.
Taps into the Rich Media experience to engage audience (see National Centre for Accessible Media)
Rich Media is information that consists of any combination of text, images, audio, video and animation. Also called multimedia.
5) Jennifer Kattula ‘Facebook’ facebook-studio.com
Developed Facebook Studio (600 million users)
Platforms (technology platform and communication platform) for creativity for creative people in marketing. Must be social by design so that the creative people are at the centre.
Elements include:
– community
– interactivity (engagement) eg like. Share, comment
– engagement
– Human beings
– meaningful / relevence
– fluid
– fans contribute to development of final product
Jennifer’s mantras: Fail harder; Move fast and break things and; What would you do if you weren’t afraid?
6) Sam Ewen ‘Interference Inc’
Three greatest innovations in technology today are:
i) Augmented Reality
ii) Kinect Hacking (human/computer manipulation)
iii) Projection Mapping
Social media has changed from ‘Look at me!’ to ‘Look at you! Talking about me!’
In the future we will interact with spaces around us, not just a keyboard, via:
• Voice recognition
• Face recognition
• Commands
• Gestures

7) Jason Krebs
Showed Tremor Video
8) Matt Lewis, Aram Yang
Call themselves ‘Ideas Engineers’ ie they fuse creativity and technology through innovation.
9) Lisa Bettany ‘Tap, Tap, Tap’
Created iPhone camera app called Camera Plus.
Believes we have become photojournalists of our own lives and the world around us.
‘Location’ takes prominence in our lives.
• Must create a significant buzz when launch App eg Tweet Buzz.
• Strategic pricing $1.99 best selling point
• Create loyal following through engagement eg share an image a day
• Differentiate yourself
• Product must be Five Star.
• Don’t get kicked out of the App store (maintain rankings)

10) Brian Whitman ‘Echo Nest’
Application Programming Interface (API) allows users to feed data directly into their own sites.
APIs influencing music industry.

11) Frank Rose ‘The Art of Immersion’ and Geoff Gomez ‘Transmedia’
Messages, themes and storylines are reaching mass audience via various platforms.
Aim of transmedia is to:
• Intrigue
• Educate
• Build fans (who help build a rich deep world, backstory and future story)
Transmedia Steps:
i) Incubation
ii) Development
iii) Production
Story is now:
• Non-linear
• Participatory (engage + share)
• Immersive (through committed fans)
• Aspirational story world ie ‘I want to be there’
• Has something to say
• Uses multiple platforms

12) Brian Wong ‘Kiip’
Ways to go beyond technology:
• Emotive Start-up
• Tap into the universal currency of gaming which is that ‘moment of achievement’
• Reward the moment of achievement’ with gifts/rewards
• Only reward achievements earned by player
• Use ‘life moments’ to enhance story
• Mobile Phone = Social + virtual + games + customer service
• embrace serendipity (discovery made by fortunate accident in presence of keenness of insight)
• feedback cycle ͢ ‘Joy’ moment (users feel cared about and validated)
• attribute personality to brand or product
• users must relate to your vision from its inception ie share same thrill as creator
• ‘feel or die’

13) Evan Ratcliff ‘ The Atavist’ – Interactive longform non-fiction storyteller
A postliterate society is one in which multimedia technology has advanced to the point where literacy, the ability to read or write, is no longer necessary or common.
Graph of sustained attention, from a 19th Century reader willing to read David Copperfield over several weeks, to long-copy magazine ads of our grandparents’ generation, to web pages that are granted 4.5 seconds to show themselves relevant, and ultimately to Twitter’s 140-character limit.
Kindle Singles program has stories longer than mags but shorter than books.
Include video + audio + story + photos + …
See longfrom.org
14) Panel Discussion on creativity in the future
Points made:
– Learn to play.
– Remove functionality to increase serendipity
– Don’t be afraid to try something publically and fail.
– Must give a dedicated focus to developing intellectual property