search tools

fellow planner, Mikey, sent our planning group a couple tools to track trends and visual searches. i am a fan of Trendpedia's comparison function, but was blown away when I visited Searchme Visual Search.

nice tools.

here's what was found when i entered "interwoven threads." (pardon the fellow Barkley-blogger publicity)

three bits of hump-day inspiration

busy day today...gotta be brief. but wanted to point you toward three things that have me all amped up.

first, from the wonderfully insightful Ruby Pseudo Wants a Word, a look at youth tribes and their tatoos. every agency client should have a Ruby Pseudo at their service. i learn so much each time she posts.

This Ain't No Disco gives us an inside look at creative spaces. it's no shock to those of us in the creative industry that space plays a major role. an uninspiring scene often promotes uninspired work. how does your space match up?

i attended the Citizen Cope concert last night with a number of folks (and a lot of stoned college freshmen). a great concert and even better company (stoned freshmen excluded), but the highlight of the evening was Cope's encore when he launched into a cover of Radiohead's Karma Police. as i mistakenly predicted in just hearing the first few chords, it was not UB40 - happily. this is a poor quality video of the song, but you get the idea.



as i told Mark on the drive home, the amount of buzz and chatter Radiohead gets in online trendspotting circles is astounding. its press in mainstream media is even more noteworthy. attention to its music, its cultural impact and its tech/business innovation yields best practices for brands far removed from the music scene. the group has transcended mere "band" status into the arts-equivalent of U2 in my mind. remember the Amplive remix i pointed you toward? here's another well-known cover of Kid A by John Mayer. every artist and their mother has covered Creep.

enjoy, and be inspired.

a vision of students today

just watched this insightful video by Michael Wesch, Professor of Anthropology at Kansas State University, via PSFK. the video was created by Wesch and 200 of his anthropology students to document changes in student learning, while traditional education remains very much intact.




when i talk to college students the biggest change i see is the existence of laptops in class. with wireless networks allowing online perusal during lectures - and many of those lectures being given to enormous classes, tuning out and surfing the 'net become the norm. i'm not sure how this habit has taken hold in the small, private colleges i attended, but i'd imagine where there's a will there's a way in any sized class.

i think the most interesting thing about this video is its relevance to the way many of these college grads act in the workplace. just as education is changing and technology is both positively and negatively affecting the traditional school setting, the workplace is quickly evolving to reflect the same trends.

it's a permeation of multi-tasking and shortened attention spans. it's a heightened sense of urgency, perpetuated by convenience and opportunity to feed and execute any desire/task.

what does it all mean? i look at this video, and look around my own office and see that engagement is king. from the class to the office, technology plays both sides of the sword when it comes to engagement: you can use it to engage an audience in a meaningful way, or technology can be the first suitor to lure a disinterested brain away.

kudos to K-State for exploring this. too bad they couldn't win last night's game (yeah, i was rooting for them) to position the Jayhawks a bit more favorably.

the problem with trends

wow. this will be worth ten minutes of your life.

i'm not even going to try and summarize or offer too many thoughts, as i want this to sink in to readers. PSFK outlines the trouble with the trends biz and does so in a way that is relevant to everyone: from agency creatives and strategists to CMO's to the armchair trendspotting nerd.

check out the post here. Piers' list here provides a nice gut check for those of us who research, mine and follow trends in the attempt to make brands better.

Interwoven Threads on the tele and Exactitudes in my head

i put my PR experience to good use yesterday morning and media trained myself (it's much easier being the trainer than the trainee) before jumping on the Fox 4 morning show to talk about Interwoven Threads. check out a clip of the interview and more details here.



i about spit out my soup as i perused Exactitudes, which might be the most inspiring and insightful photography project i've ever seen. thanks to josh spear.com for the heads up.