• The Writing is on the WallPOSTED BY JESSE POE ON AUGUST 6 AT 10:10 AM

  In my last post I wrote that the future of technology is ubiquity.
  
  I wanted show what an evolutionary step between today and that imminent future.
  
  I decided to show this in what might a business card look like. So here is my business card, in a evolutionary stutter between now and ubiquitous technology.
  
  HTML Code that is simple enough to work as advertisement, but still readable by a computer and not only readable but semantically tagged in such a way that would come up faster on a search than most sites we cruise daily, complete with a QR Code to bridge the physical to the virtual, and above all to bookmark it.
  
  
  
  (screen print on Canvas tote, graffiti on non-permenant surface, sticker)
  
  It took me a a bit of effort to make this example and quite a bit of analog tech like stencils, and silk screen, and is a bit crude but you get the point. And possibly the first of it's kind.
  

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• The Future of Technology and What Strategy will Serve that FuturePOSTED BY JESSE POE ON JULY 23 AT 10:10 AM

  Clients often ask me, what, in my opinion, is the future of technology. They want to know what the next internet will be, or the next iPhone, or app store, and my answer is resoundingly the same.
  
  The future of technology is not another device or service, although we will see many of those before the future arrives.
  
  Instead, the future of technology is ubiquity.
  
  You will no longer reach for you iPhone to make a call, it will simply be, need to send an email, just scratch it on to a piece of paper and write send. These sort of things.
  
  Seem like science fiction? Remember where we were 30 years ago, remember where we were 10 years ago? Now we can have face-to-face chatting through our iPhone. Imagine that 4 years ago, and this Sci-fi idea seems all the more tangible.
  
  These things are already in motion, check out MIT inventor Pranav Mistry's SixthSense technology. And the understand of simple and ubiquitous technology will be understood with clarity and wonder.
  
  We are at a bulging point with technology, and it's future is ubiquitous as opposed to device driven, and therefor the sort of thinking that was once at the forefront before technology became such a focus will be important again, but only with a full understanding of how technology can serve that insight, as opposed to lead that insight.
  

  0 COMMENTSRead Full Post
• Inspiring UsePOSTED BY JESSE POE ON MAY 25 AT 10:10 AM

  
  This post discusses:
  

  • Experience Design & User Experience
  • The Golden Circle
  • Inspiring people to use
  
  Today I took the F train to work instead of my typical route and got off at the first stop in Manhattan, East Broadway. As I wandered my way to work through Chinatown I was reminded of how quickly you can find yourself in unfamiliar territory. I had to keep checking the horizon to orient myself through what was once the famed Five Points.
  
  There was information everywhere, but none of it was information I could understand. I was looking for points of reference among this cloud of info and I was thinking about how much it was like the types of systems I help clients through and how quickly they can lose themselves in a maze of backend, CMS, servers and Ftps, and formats, all to achieve the same goal: to get their work done.
  
  This maze of tech can be confusing and no matter how well crafted a system or even your guidance through it, if the User is not the focus of the design, it is bound to end in frustration for all, and that User should be the people who will be using it it not the people building and critiquing it.
  
  
  
  Is your user experience meant for only a select few or for a greater audience? In world wide web, it should be the greatest audience as that anyone could find their way to your site, company, program.
  
  
  
  Take this ad for tea, I know it's for tea without even understanding the print, I understand most of the add and the call to action without even reading a word, and the scan leads you to purchase. Very effective and simple, yet the technology doesn't get in the way of the ad nor destroy the image and emotional feeling of the ad. And the end result is that this company went from a print add to actually connecting with me via my iPhone and one step away from the point of purchase. The contrast of the two above images says a lot about what we call experience design. Why is that some companies are able to communicate their product or idea so much better than others who are "selling" the same thing? It is the property of the Golden Circle, the positioning of what you believe first inspiring others to believe in you, as described in Simon Sinek's TED talk: How Great leaders Inspire Action.
  
  If you believe that the user's experience should be an experience they can understand and communicate (sans tech support), then you are going to inspire Users to USE your product or service.
  0 COMMENTSRead Full Post
• Bi-FocusPOSTED BY JESSE POE ON MAY 24 AT 10:10 AM

  
  This post discusses:
  • the hospitality, music, and internet industry
  • a start-up to be aware of
  • a cool iPhone app
  • two ways to direct your strategy
  • the key to successful poetry
  
  Last night, I went to the ACE Hotel in midtown to meet up with Edward Aten founder of Swift.fm in ACE's very popular bar. Swift.fm is an amazing start-up that allows users to add audio information to tweets creating a radio-station style playlist of music (check out my office ambiance channel here) which is viral-enabled to allow users to engage content in various formats and contexts by highlighting their musical perspective. They are also a breath away from being the #1 Music-specific twitter client by traffic, and with their new platform of locked down branded-wrapped embeddable channels they are soon to be a swift force in creating brand identity, engagement and social conversation on the web (well even more than they already are). We talked about the future of Swift.fm and the future of the web and which direction we see it going: a direction that other like minds across town are quickly developing at diaspora* I had two eyes open all night as that not only am I interested in the internet (as it is my field) and especially as it relates to social networking and music (as that is my love), but also because I build social media plans for hip hotels and program their facebook pages in FBML. We toured the hotel and it’s famed analog sound system, met with the event planners and tried a variety of their special brews. Independently, Ed and I both took pictures of the Hotel/bar and showed them to each other, both photos were snapped with our iPhones, yet with surprisingly different results. My photo on the left, doesn’t look cool, but points out one of the cool features of ACE and it’s brilliant design; the curation of space through text and messaging throughout the space Such as this great use of the exit sign:
  
  
  
   Ed’s photo on the right is much more cool looking and stylized in presentation as that he took it with the new app Hipstamatic which creates some really incredible shots (I have been using it exclusively ever since for all my photos), however his photo doesn’t show how cool ACE is, instead it shows how ACE is just like any other bar, hip or not, across the world, and in essence the backbone to the bar, that it is in the end a “bar”. There is what you present and there is how you present it. Success is a synergy between the two. The great poet Terry Hummer once told me the secret to poetry was to take a flower and expand it’s beauty and properties to become as vast as the cosmos, or to take the cosmos out of the sky and wrap into a language and understanding so tight that you can hand to someone like a flower.

  0 COMMENTSRead Full Post
• AdtechSF | Key TakeawaysPOSTED BY JESSE POE ON APRIL 29 AT 10:13 AM

  Written by Ayesha Mathews-Wadhwa
  
  At AdTech San Francisco last week, I caught up on current trends and insights involving the digital marketing world. Lot of great insights from speakers such as Jamie Cohen Szulc - CMO of Levi Strauss, Chis Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine, and some cool tools from Chicago based Networked Insights. Here are some highlights.
  
  "It's not about selling, it's about being coveted... and creating a consumer experience." Jamie Cohen Szulc of Levi Strauss captured the core of marketing circa 2010 with that one statement. Citing that the general public has uploaded more content to YouTube in the last few months than TV networks have in years. It's this kind of data that backs up Levi's daring plan to let customers generate content for the brand. One of many examples was their "Go Forth" campaign. Users are encouraged to re-write a constitution and critically think about what America and an American brand (Levi's) means to them. This is the kind of branding I love! It's the perfect example of having a conversation with consumers, rather than shouting about how great a brand is.
  
  "Do things for the consumer and they will carry forth your brand." Jamie Cohen Szulc was so jam-packed with great case studies it's hard to pick just one. You have to check out Compare the Meerkat. Apparently, "Compare the Market" is an over-used search term for insurance aggregators. This brand seized the opportunity to create a whole new category with a Russian accented meerkat! Their results were through the roof.
  
  The "swipe" will replace the "click." As Chris Anderson explains, the iPad is saving the day for the 21st Century magazine business. Wired magazine is taking the canape version of print magazines onto the iPad along with a level of interaction and experience that the web doesn't quite deliver yet. Consumers will "swipe" the screen simulating a page turn from a magazine. As digital marketers, our job will be to stop the finger. Some ideas? 360 product view, interactive games, and playing with engaging characters.
  
  A tool to effectively harness the spectrum of online consumer conversations? Networked Insights has an exciting new tool to capture the conversation and buzz around your brand called Social Sense™ . It translates all interactions into insights that can drive marketing and brand communication. Finally! There's a way to filter and make sense out of all the noise generated by social media, chat rooms, online cafes and anywhere else your customer is 'talking' online.
  

  0 COMMENTSRead Full Post
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• The Writing is on the Wall

  In my last post I wrote that the future of technology is ubiquity.
  
  I wanted show what an evolutionary step between today and that imminent future.
  
  I decided to show this in what might a business card look like. So here is my business card, in a evolutionary stutter between now and ubiquitous technology.
  
  HTML Code that is simple enough to work as advertisement, but still readable by a computer and not only readable but semantically tagged in such a way that would come up faster on a search than most sites we cruise daily, complete with a QR Code to bridge the physical to the virtual, and above all to bookmark it.
  
  
  
  (screen print on Canvas tote, graffiti on non-permenant surface, sticker)
  
  It took me a a bit of effort to make this example and quite a bit of analog tech like stencils, and silk screen, and is a bit crude but you get the point. And possibly the first of it's kind.
  

  August 6 at 10:10 AM by Jesse Poe
• The Future of Technology and What Strategy will Serve that Future

  Clients often ask me, what, in my opinion, is the future of technology. They want to know what the next internet will be, or the next iPhone, or app store, and my answer is resoundingly the same.
  
  The future of technology is not another device or service, although we will see many of those before the future arrives.
  
  Instead, the future of technology is ubiquity.
  
  You will no longer reach for you iPhone to make a call, it will simply be, need to send an email, just scratch it on to a piece of paper and write send. These sort of things.
  
  Seem like science fiction? Remember where we were 30 years ago, remember where we were 10 years ago? Now we can have face-to-face chatting through our iPhone. Imagine that 4 years ago, and this Sci-fi idea seems all the more tangible.
  
  These things are already in motion, check out MIT inventor Pranav Mistry's SixthSense technology. And the understand of simple and ubiquitous technology will be understood with clarity and wonder.
  
  We are at a bulging point with technology, and it's future is ubiquitous as opposed to device driven, and therefor the sort of thinking that was once at the forefront before technology became such a focus will be important again, but only with a full understanding of how technology can serve that insight, as opposed to lead that insight.
  

  July 23 at 10:10 AM by Jesse Poe
• Inspiring Use

  
  This post discusses:
  

  • Experience Design & User Experience
  • The Golden Circle
  • Inspiring people to use
  
  Today I took the F train to work instead of my typical route and got off at the first stop in Manhattan, East Broadway. As I wandered my way to work through Chinatown I was reminded of how quickly you can find yourself in unfamiliar territory. I had to keep checking the horizon to orient myself through what was once the famed Five Points.
  
  There was information everywhere, but none of it was information I could understand. I was looking for points of reference among this cloud of info and I was thinking about how much it was like the types of systems I help clients through and how quickly they can lose themselves in a maze of backend, CMS, servers and Ftps, and formats, all to achieve the same goal: to get their work done.
  
  This maze of tech can be confusing and no matter how well crafted a system or even your guidance through it, if the User is not the focus of the design, it is bound to end in frustration for all, and that User should be the people who will be using it it not the people building and critiquing it.
  
  
  
  Is your user experience meant for only a select few or for a greater audience? In world wide web, it should be the greatest audience as that anyone could find their way to your site, company, program.
  
  
  
  Take this ad for tea, I know it's for tea without even understanding the print, I understand most of the add and the call to action without even reading a word, and the scan leads you to purchase. Very effective and simple, yet the technology doesn't get in the way of the ad nor destroy the image and emotional feeling of the ad. And the end result is that this company went from a print add to actually connecting with me via my iPhone and one step away from the point of purchase. The contrast of the two above images says a lot about what we call experience design. Why is that some companies are able to communicate their product or idea so much better than others who are "selling" the same thing? It is the property of the Golden Circle, the positioning of what you believe first inspiring others to believe in you, as described in Simon Sinek's TED talk: How Great leaders Inspire Action.
  
  If you believe that the user's experience should be an experience they can understand and communicate (sans tech support), then you are going to inspire Users to USE your product or service.
  May 25 at 10:10 AM by Jesse Poe
• Bi-Focus

  
  This post discusses:
  • the hospitality, music, and internet industry
  • a start-up to be aware of
  • a cool iPhone app
  • two ways to direct your strategy
  • the key to successful poetry
  
  Last night, I went to the ACE Hotel in midtown to meet up with Edward Aten founder of Swift.fm in ACE's very popular bar. Swift.fm is an amazing start-up that allows users to add audio information to tweets creating a radio-station style playlist of music (check out my office ambiance channel here) which is viral-enabled to allow users to engage content in various formats and contexts by highlighting their musical perspective. They are also a breath away from being the #1 Music-specific twitter client by traffic, and with their new platform of locked down branded-wrapped embeddable channels they are soon to be a swift force in creating brand identity, engagement and social conversation on the web (well even more than they already are). We talked about the future of Swift.fm and the future of the web and which direction we see it going: a direction that other like minds across town are quickly developing at diaspora* I had two eyes open all night as that not only am I interested in the internet (as it is my field) and especially as it relates to social networking and music (as that is my love), but also because I build social media plans for hip hotels and program their facebook pages in FBML. We toured the hotel and it’s famed analog sound system, met with the event planners and tried a variety of their special brews. Independently, Ed and I both took pictures of the Hotel/bar and showed them to each other, both photos were snapped with our iPhones, yet with surprisingly different results. My photo on the left, doesn’t look cool, but points out one of the cool features of ACE and it’s brilliant design; the curation of space through text and messaging throughout the space Such as this great use of the exit sign:
  
  
  
   Ed’s photo on the right is much more cool looking and stylized in presentation as that he took it with the new app Hipstamatic which creates some really incredible shots (I have been using it exclusively ever since for all my photos), however his photo doesn’t show how cool ACE is, instead it shows how ACE is just like any other bar, hip or not, across the world, and in essence the backbone to the bar, that it is in the end a “bar”. There is what you present and there is how you present it. Success is a synergy between the two. The great poet Terry Hummer once told me the secret to poetry was to take a flower and expand it’s beauty and properties to become as vast as the cosmos, or to take the cosmos out of the sky and wrap into a language and understanding so tight that you can hand to someone like a flower.

  May 24 at 10:10 AM by Jesse Poe
• AdtechSF | Key Takeaways

  Written by Ayesha Mathews-Wadhwa
  
  At AdTech San Francisco last week, I caught up on current trends and insights involving the digital marketing world. Lot of great insights from speakers such as Jamie Cohen Szulc - CMO of Levi Strauss, Chis Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine, and some cool tools from Chicago based Networked Insights. Here are some highlights.
  
  "It's not about selling, it's about being coveted... and creating a consumer experience." Jamie Cohen Szulc of Levi Strauss captured the core of marketing circa 2010 with that one statement. Citing that the general public has uploaded more content to YouTube in the last few months than TV networks have in years. It's this kind of data that backs up Levi's daring plan to let customers generate content for the brand. One of many examples was their "Go Forth" campaign. Users are encouraged to re-write a constitution and critically think about what America and an American brand (Levi's) means to them. This is the kind of branding I love! It's the perfect example of having a conversation with consumers, rather than shouting about how great a brand is.
  
  "Do things for the consumer and they will carry forth your brand." Jamie Cohen Szulc was so jam-packed with great case studies it's hard to pick just one. You have to check out Compare the Meerkat. Apparently, "Compare the Market" is an over-used search term for insurance aggregators. This brand seized the opportunity to create a whole new category with a Russian accented meerkat! Their results were through the roof.
  
  The "swipe" will replace the "click." As Chris Anderson explains, the iPad is saving the day for the 21st Century magazine business. Wired magazine is taking the canape version of print magazines onto the iPad along with a level of interaction and experience that the web doesn't quite deliver yet. Consumers will "swipe" the screen simulating a page turn from a magazine. As digital marketers, our job will be to stop the finger. Some ideas? 360 product view, interactive games, and playing with engaging characters.
  
  A tool to effectively harness the spectrum of online consumer conversations? Networked Insights has an exciting new tool to capture the conversation and buzz around your brand called Social Sense™ . It translates all interactions into insights that can drive marketing and brand communication. Finally! There's a way to filter and make sense out of all the noise generated by social media, chat rooms, online cafes and anywhere else your customer is 'talking' online.
  

  April 29 at 10:13 AM by Jesse Poe