Month: March 2016
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Learning to Unlearn
According to a new study from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory and the University Pablo Olavide in Sevilla, Spain, our brains actively erase memories in order to make space for new ones, a process that seemingly only happens in learning situations. In other words we forget through learning. I talk a lot about the importance of…
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The State of Marketing Technology
Every year (friend of ODF) Scott Brinker, who also has a new book out, does a personal survey of the marketing technology landscape to map out the number and array of martech vendors. It's remarkable that his latest survey shows around 3,500 vendors, representing a growth of 87% year-on-year (represented by that horrendously complex visual…
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Jim Gilliam on Leadership
Christian fundamentalism, cancer, loss of religious faith, a double lung transplant, the birth of social activism on the web and a growing faith in the power of people connected – Jim Gilliam's story (founder of NationBuilder), featured in this a16z podcast, is a truly remarkable one. I really liked his thoughts on leadership. It is, he…
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Stopping Meeting Creep
Meetings are a necessary part of corporate life. People need to get together in order to give and receive updates, make decisions, move projects on. But we all know how many (wo)man hours are wasted unnecessarily in the internally-focused, meeting-driven culture that seems to get worse the larger a company becomes. As Noah Brier describes, the slow…
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Google Firestarters Auckland and Sydney – Digital Storytelling
Last week I got back from running our second Google Firestarters in Sydney, and our first ever event in Auckland. Our theme for both events was Digital Storytelling, which is one of those multifaceted subjects that elicits lots of opinion, but we were particularly interested in the theme from the point of view of the…
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Reinforcement Learning
Deepmind's amazing victories against Go world champion Lee Se-dol have led many to acclaim a new era in AI. As the FT said, the achievement was in a different class to previous machine/human clashes (like IBM Deep Blue/Chess and Watson/Jeopardy): 'Unlike chess, Go permits too many possible moves for a computer to calculate. As a result,…
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Google Firestarters 19: Consultants, Customer Experience and Convergence – The Event
For the latest London Firestarters we took a theme that I've been talking about a lot over the past few years – the increasing focus on all things customer experience and what this means in terms of the changing dynamic between the big consultancies and agencies in serving a shifting set of client needs. The increasing…
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Post of the Month – February 2016 – The Winner
Happy to say that the winner of this month's vote for Post of the Month is Saskia Jones with her piece on the value of introversion in our industry and in the creative process. Well done Saskia – you get entered into the Hall of Fame. My thanks to everyone for taking part.
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Post of the Month – February 2016 – The Vote
Thanks for the nominations. So our vote this month is between: Introverted Perspective: do you need to be outgoing to be creative? by Saskia Jones Put down all behaviour hurtful to informality! from Matt Edgar Why Conversational Design is the Future by Emmet Connolly No one Gives a Sh*t About Your Content…and What to do…
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Post of the Month – February 2016 – Nominations
Slightly later than usual (due to heavy travel commitments) but it's time to open nominations for Post of the Month. If there are any good posts that you particularly enjoyed reading over the past month and would like to put forward you can do so direct or in the comments below. As always I have…