Wie bereits erwähnt , mische ich bei der Beck’s Gold Urban Experiences mit. Heute abend veranstalten wir wieder ein eigenes Event, und zwar die Präsentation des ersten Beck’s Gold Design-T-Shirts im Firmament Store. Der Künstler und Designer Dave Little wird vor Ort sein und signieren, außerdem gibt’s frisches Beck’s Gold und die ersten zehn Besucher bekommen eines der auf 500 Pieces limitierten Kollektion for free. Start ist um 19.30 im Firmament Store, Schröderstr. 8 in Berlin-Mitte. Kommt auf ein Bierchen vorbei!

In this video, Tom Littlewood takes us on a journey to places where the Cold War past of Berlin is still visible. So they go to Teufelsberg, an artificial hill where the NSA built a listening station in the 60ies to spy on the communist part of Berlin, consisting of strange big white balls on top of the hill. They takl with a former army commander and visit the bunker at airport Tempelhof where thousands of meters of war film burnt right after world war II. Great piece of work, entertaining and educating, I like.

A very nice branding combination as well: VBS teamed up with Palladium boots to produce this documentary. Taking the history of these french military boot brand into account, documentaries from interesting and forgotten places seem to represent Palladium pretty well.

Doritos teamed up with several agencies (e.g. Mekanism and Proto) and Blink182 to present a concert on a snacks bag. In fall 2009, on www.doritoslatenight.com you could hold a marker printed on a Doritos bag into the webcam connected to a flash app that would recognize that code and put a concert video by Blink182 filmed in a green screen room into the virtual space. You could than turn the bag and thus control the perspective of the video. Great brand transfer and well done technology of “musicians in your palm”.

Here is an example, find the making of video from a more detailed Wired article further down.

“Streit! Konstruktive Kontroverse” (Beef – constructive controversy) is Social Media Week Berlin’s motto 2010, in this post we explain why we think it is a good subject and how we see the state of digital Streit today.

Social Media has become a buzzword, so prominent, many people are already sick of it. Social Media needs to be in every marketing campaign, Social Media is finally the utopia “the internet” (in the 90ies) and “Web 2.0” (in the 00 years) both couldn’t fulfill, Social Media can be done by everyone and everyone must do it unlesss he or she will fall into endless oblivion. Plus Obama used it. Obama!

We don’t think that that is all wrong nor are we sick of using all these handy tools to connect and interact, nor are we sick talking about it. But we want to take another stand, another perspective. That’s why we came up with the subject “Streit!”. Streit means conflict, controversy, beef! And we like it! Here is why.

Read on at SMWB blog

Die Social Media Week ist eine Veranstaltungswoche, die aus mehreren Events besteht und im Februar 2009 zum ersten Mal in New York statt fand. Dieses Jahr soll sie außerdem in Sao Paolo, Toronto, San Francisco, London und Berlin statt finden. Ich wurde gefragt, ob ich da mitmischen will und nun legen wir los und organisieren euch ein schönes Social Media Festival in der ersten Februarwoche.

Wir dabei, die eine oder andere eigene Veranstaltung zu organisieren, so soll es eine Soundcloudparty geben, eine Enterprise 2.0 Veranstaltung, etwas über Social Entrepreneurship, und ein Future of Web Strategy Meetup. Außerdem werden wir versuchen, viele Events, die ohnehin statt finden, unter das Dach der Social Media Week zu holen. Ich selbst möchte eine Veranstaltung zum Thema “Streit” organisieren, denn ich finde, das kommt bei all den Harmonieträumen und positiven Zukunftsvisionen immer etwas zu kurz, dass sich auch mal jemand streitet, vor allem im Internet. Was im zweiten Schritt ja auch wieder positiv sein kann. Quod erat demonstrandum.

Also, save the date, in der ersten Februarwoche, lest das Blog und den Twitter und wenn ihr selbst was machen wollt, sagt Bescheid! Nächstes Treffen ist Donnerstag, 19:30 im Gorki Park, wer was machen will, kommt vorbei!

Starting from tonight, “Beck’s Gold Urban Experiences” will be exploring urban ways of customizing reality today. It is sponsored by Beck’s Gold and supposed to reach out to artists and creative people for producing ideas and lots of beautiful content to put the spotlight on interesting approaches and enrich an entertaining discussion within this field.

The campaign will be lasting at least during 2010 and consists of several events and online documentation and interaction. First, there will be three so-called “workspaces” in Berlin, Hamburg and Munich, starting tonight in Berlin. Artists are invited to shape their vision of customizing reality and to present them to an audience which hopefully interacts with the created pieces. The artists, like e.g. Kim Köster, Klub7, Tracknfield or Balestra Berlin create a room filled with pieces which exist, shine or interact with the people. All of the artists have a background of creating art in a modern, reflecting and urban way in a sense of technology and interaction. Tonight, there will be a breadbaking experiment, lifesound recordings and lots of visual approaches to shaping urban environments. Check out some impressions from the preparations:

My role in the campaign is and was to find ways for interaction, preparation and documentation online, including a community for artists, social media profiles like Flickr, YouTube and the Urban Blog urban.becks.de. Together with Silk relations, Coma and the Beck’s team we put together lots of ideas which will become reality in the next 14 months. Follow @becksurban on Twitter to get updates and get the Urban Blog RSS. The blog is curated by Nilzenburger and will feature a ton of writers who will put together their vision of urban reality today.

MyLifestyleblog has a good overview in German about Beck’s Urban Experiences too.

Einige Initiativen haben sich ein Beispiel an dem sehr erfolgreichen “Der eine Nichtwähler, der Obama verhindert hat”-Tool genommen und ähnliche Web-Instrumente produziert. Immer geht es dabei um ein Video, das sich mit Name und Bild personalisieren lässt und anschließend an Bekannte als Link verschickt werden kann. Ziel ist es bei allen Tools, Menschen am 27. September zum Wählen zu bewegen.
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“Ein Jahr nach dem Bürgerentscheid „Spreeufer für alle“ wollen wir dagegen demonstrieren, dass vieles was Kreuzberg-Friedrichshain lebenswert und besonders macht, verdrängt wird. Wir werden nicht zulassen, dass die (sub-)kulturelle und soziale Infrastruktur und unsere urbanexperimentelle Underground- Kiez- und Clubkultur durch einen musikalischen und kulturellen Mainstream ersetzt wird, den wir auch noch mit steigenden Mieten bezahlen müssen. Wir wollen gemeinsam entscheiden, was in und mit unserer Stadt geschieht. Komm zur Demo-Parade am 11. Juli. Wir werden laut sein, wir werden viele sein. Wir sind die Kinder Berlins.”

Und so wars:

Nobody really likes their telco provider. Everybody can tell a story of a contract which could not be cancelled, about intransparent tariffs, crazy roaming prices (send one mail, pay 5 EUR) and unsatisfying service hotlines. So telecommunication is not a sexy product and what is the telco’s approach to that problem? Change their products? No, it’s massive investment in marketing. Which is why e.g. Peter tells us why telcos are doomed.

Now, Vodafone Germany puts 200 mio. 50-90 mio (!) EUR in a big marketing campaign. And makes it even worse by especially targetting a group of people who feel the need to be online a lot, call them “generation upload” and starting all sorts of social media channels (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and so on). While the term itself might be questionable, the targetting itself is quite smart in my opinion: it is an interesting, important and targettable group. What is missing here in the branding strategy is the consumer insight!

These people who use telecommunication more than others know exactly about the lack of good contracts, good service and fair treatment by their telco provider. They are the ones who are able to tell all the stories I started this blogpost with. Targetting them with advertising without changing the behaviour is exactly the way of one-way marketing and placebo dialogue that should be over since the days of the Cluetrain manifesto.

Vodafone picked the advertising company Scholz & Friends especially for their ideas on social media. But Scholz is an advertising company. They are not business consultants. And social media won’t change that. They talk to marketing directors about ads, not about products. They might talk about products over coffee, but they will never change a company’s behaviour. Claiming to do so, claiming to listen, claiming to put the customer first and then not living up to the expectations is worse than not even rise all sorts of expectations at all.

Of course this is not my sole opinion. The German blogosphere is filled with harsh, taunting, zynical and serious critique. No one of the targeted “generation upload” is impressed by the campaign which was presented this week in a press conference streamed live to the web. Johannes writes in a very short and precise post how a real change could have looked like.

Unlike many commenters I am not talking about sell-out of the blogosphere because some bloggers and prominent twitter users are testimonials of the campaign. That’s not the core of the problem. On the contrary: I hope, they get paid a LOT for being in that campaign. Sascha Lobo, one of the main faces should receive around 100K EUR in my estimation, everything less would be dissapointing.

Moreover, the clip itself is crap! It’s an ad which we have seen in around 100 variations for 100 products in the last 20 years: young, happy, enganged, curious, active people doing young, engaged, active stuff. Wohoo! And the David Bowie interpretation is hideous and hurts! Just to remind you that Vodafone can do better, here is the “Bohemian like you” spot again.

Update:Nevertheless, it’s a very visible campaign and all the buzz that has been created is obviously free brand space. Plus: If you work in internet marketing and like to create social media tools for companies yourself, this is a brilliant example to point to. May it be for the use of social media channels in general or the overall message I hope I made clear in this post: Social media can be about listening and in the end changing behaviour. I am curious how this works out for Vodafone.

A true Stylewalker leans back. And waits and reads all the Michael Jackson posts and remixes and then selects the best for the reader. (the picture ist taken by the brilliant Ralph Uetzelhöffer who does very nice textportraits) Here we go:

LehtMoeJoe’s Beat it remix – in your face!

Bird Petersons Thriller remix – also very funky face

The Hood Internet / Ratatat Remix to Billie Jean – some kind of Roulé feely music sounds better with you’ish floor smoother

And finally a nice mash of “I want you back” with Lil’ Wayne (find more MJ mashs at Kickin Peanuts)

Boyz Noize – Eat it remix -heavy rock disco

Thriller Disco Tech Remix – Prins Tomas space disco style, very close to the original

Louis La Roche Thriller remix – another very compressed, tight floor filler with some fragments and happy moments

Thank you Hype Machine, Popwreckoning, Aimt.us, Chromekids

Picture from lastnightsparty.com

So, you like the Berlin style, the groove, the noisy, excessive party? The wall-chique, the fabrics, the industrial meets prosecco scene? The slim jeans, the checked shirts, the sunglasses that are needed to cover worn faces from the morning sun? The guestlists, the sorry-today-only-invited parties, the secrets, the word of mouth hints to illegal places?

Yes, I know you do, that’s why you read Stylewalker. So now you can be part of such a thing, I am giving away 2 tickets for an exclusive party with some pumping music. The only thing you have to do is find out which party I am talking about!

This party is actually not so secret so it is possible to find out. And here are some hints:
1st it will take place july 2nd
2nd it is a party sponsored by a clothing brand
3rd friends of mine organize a blogger reachout so they asked me to give away tickets
4th you probably find out googeling some keywords because of 3rd
Go hunt!

First comment with the right answer wins.

Continue >>

Junge Helden is an organization aiming to promote organ donation amongst young people. It is all about putting a card in your wallet saying that you are willing to donate your organs in case you are dead. Not a big deal, right? Of course everybody can say no, reality is that most people do not know about the necessity of carrying such a card although they would be willing to help other people.

Junge Helden do a great job in engaging celebreties. This weekend, june 20th, will be a party with Jürgen Vogel, Beatsteaks, Benno Fürmann, Max Herre, Mareile Höppner, Loretta Stern and Jasmin Gerat (all quite well known in Germany) serving drinks or wardrobing. Ian Pooley, Superfitness and others will be playing music, it takes place at Audiolarium, Bessermerstr 2-14, Tempelhof, Berlin

Disclaimer: I am also a member of Junge Helden

First, you can get an overview of all articles published on the DLD live blog here.

After three days of intense blogging, live blogging(!), there should be a little resumée. Must be a personal one, naturally, although I aim to grasp some of that spirit hopefully many people sensed in these days of Digital, Life, Design 09.
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Inspired by Peter’s blogpost about Life updates, I would like to state some things, too.

Over the last year (2008), I was still working as a freelance online consultant but mainly doing concepts and creating ideas for the Berlin based digital communications agency PANORAMA3000 and its clients. I started to work for P3000 in december 2007 after having finished my studies in communcation and business at FU Berlin.

Working for P3000 has been great so far, it’s a very ambitious and young team, consisting of people who like exactly what I like: music, the interwebs and being creative. I had lots of possibilities to shape ideas and concepts for clients like Universal Music, Sony Music, arvato Bertelsmann and even the Golfclub Wannsee Berlin. Some of my posts here might have been work related but since most of it treats with funky web ideas and music, I did not take the chance every time to say I was also working (for money!) with that particular project. Sorry for that.

Next year we’ll be working for young socialists within the Social Democratic Party (SPD), short: Jusos. There are elections to the European parliament and the Bundestag (German parliament who then elect the government) coming up and we will be helping Jusos to tune their websites and most of all their online supporters management, using social media platforms and tools. You probably know that I did work for SPD with ABFace2net in the past. And that stylewalker.net always featured posts dealing with politics.

Of course I will present some strategies, tools and ideas here and hope you will find it interesting to take a look at our work and sometimes behind the curtains. Personally, I like the social democratic people we are working with and often, of course not always, agree with their political ideas about a social society, education, environment and regulating financial markets on a global level.

Stylewalker says thank you with Rocca ZillaMany, many people really did suggest me as a speaker, thank you all for that! The message got through, obviously: yesterday I got an email by the Next09 organization team, thanking me for the many applications.

I hope Next09 did not mind the little community campaign I pushed here, I think it was a nice idea to demonstrate a little of that internet community power in real time when it’s exactly the subject I want to talk about. Plus, Next09 got some nice promotion – some people (enthusiasts and professionals about the internet by the way) had not heard about it before. So, let’s see if I make it, I bring you presents from Hamburg for sure if I go!

And here’s one already: “Bring me the head of Zilla Rocca”, by Zilla Rocca, superb oldschooly hip hop shit, especially the second song “The first order of business” which features a Talk Talk sample I would have liked to use as well. If I was a producer. Other influences: El-P, RZA, Kanye West, Dan the Automator, David Axelrod, J Dilla, Havoc, Rick Rubin. Check the Rocca Zilla profile on Soundclick.

Download Zilla Rocca – Bring me the head of Zilla Rocca. [via Passion of the Weiss]

I want to speak at Next09 and I need your help to do so!

Next09 is a conference for digital communication, economy, the web, technology and the actors within this world. “Share economy” will be the theme for this year, the conference will see speakers from all over the world, the private and the public sector, workshops and start-up presentations. All supposedly dealing with how digital technology, especially the internet, is changing the way people communicate and do business with enabling them to share. Next09 is organized by the Hamburg based company SinnerSchrader.

So, here is the plan: Propose me as a speaker! I did so myself already but I need a little more support, so I will post here what I wrote to Next09 and if you like it,

I very much ask you to go to this speaker proposal form and suggest me!
Continue >>

Last week, I got a package via mail which looked quite interesting, sent to me by K-MB, a brand consultancy from Berlin.

Opening it, I found two cans connected by a thread just like one of those tin can telephones kids connect their rooms over the street with. Also, a Noise Conspiracy cd and a nice handwritten letter, inviting me to either a Babyshambles or a Noise Conspiracy concert.

Since Babyshambles are cancelled (what a surprise..) I guess, I’ll go for Noise Conspiracy on January 19th.

Opening the cans, I found one of them filled with earplugs and other stuff which turned out to be a bluetooth headset, namely a Jawbone.

I am not only impressed by the effort of this campaign; which also got coverage on other blogs like Lumma.de or blog.telefon.de but also by the product.

It looks nice, the descriptions are comprehensive. It connected easily and fast with the iphone, I just managed the first phonecall with it and the speech quality is good and everything works well. Besides, it comes with a charging unit and several eargear in different sizes.

Good product, good idea.

Create a job and service profile, connect with others, make offers and earn money.

Many ask: “What’s this track in the ford fiesta commercial with the pink car in front of many moving tv screens” or “Wie heißt der Song aus der Ford Werbung”? It’s “Transient” by Pluxus, Swedes who live partly in Berlin and come out on the label Pluxemburg. The song is very groovy, deep, longing, and a little glossy, perfect match for the commercial. Props to Ogilvy London to buy it!

I wrote the following article together with Max Senges and Peter Bihr for the UOC Fórum Innovació.

Social Communities have grown rapidly over the last years, offering people the chance to publish personal information and connect with each other. The biggest social community today is Facebook with more than 120 million members. Due to the myriad possibilities to use Facebook, there many ways to support teaching and learning.

Facebook started in 2004 at Harvard University and was aimed at connecting students. Now, almost every American student and many Europeans have profiles on Facebook. They use it to share information, such as links, photos and videos, to arrange real life events and to communicate in groups.

From: http://www.apple.com/au/education/digitalkids/disconnect/landscape.htmlFace

The use of Facebook also shows the current cultural differences between teachers who slowly have to adapt to new technologies and students who grew up with digital communication. The differences in media use and learning behaviour between so called “digital native learners” and “digital immigrant teachers” are shown below. Understanding how to use Facebook opens up a way to stepping closer to actual student behaviour and to create a more appropriate way of teaching.

Read on at the UOC Fórum Innovació.

Facebook for Services, students create job and service profiles

Greenhouse.sproutbuilder.com is an absolute blast. It’s a flash based widget builder which works entirely in your browser window and has a lot of editing features. Build sites with text, video, pictures, slideshows, maps, charts or insert RSS. Define size, fonts, colors, background, effects. Here are the most recent updates from the PANORAMA3000 blog in a widget, it took me 20 minutes to make it nice.

Auf myspace.com/urbanstreetteam gibt es eine nette Competition: Freund werden, Foto in das eigene MySpace-Profil hochladen, mit dem Urban Streetteam Profil verlinken und dann Kommentare auf dem Foto sammeln. Dazu kriegt jeder noch ein stylishes Widget zum eigenes-Bild-promoten.

Das Foto mit den meisten Kommentaren gewinnt – ein Trip im Bus inkl 5 weitere Freunde zum Konzert nach Oberhausen.

Spread the love!

Very well made video by the German ministry of labour to promote their “Ausbildungsbonus“, a public promotion for companies that are willing to train apprentices who otherwise would have a hard time to find a workplace.

Note: Sadly enough, the information what the Ausbildungsbonus really is, is rather hidden within the page: It is a one-time payment of 4000 to 6000 EUR (depending on the wage) which is paid to companies 50% when the training starts and 50% when the apprentice applies for the final exam.

Tomorrow I’ll be talking about virtual worlds and social reasons for escaping into them at the Virtual worlds camp. The camp will take place at Frogster IP, in Hardenbergstraße 9a, Berlin, from 11.00h to 16:00h. I’m talking at 14:15, you can watch the whole conference on Hobnox.

Beside me, there will be other experts, like Computec Media AG CEO Johannes Sevket Gözalan, Sunny Park from Frogster Korea or Mirko Caspar from Metaversum, talking about virtual worlds, gaming in general, promotion and business models within that area.

There will be a party at night, too, where I’ll be djing at a secret place you will have to find out by asking the sausage seller at Choriner Str, corner to Schönhauser Alle. You can register for the event at amiando.

“Ich stehe ja für eine ganz bestimmte Idee: alte, abgehangene Sounds. Deswegen sammle ich alte Schlagzeugsets; wenn sie 30 oder 40 Jahre alt sind, ist es genau richtig. Das ist dann ein klassischer Sound.” So geht Questlove, Drummer und Mastermind der Roots an seine Produktionen heran und so klingt die neue Roots Platte “Rising Down” so klassisch wie neu und poppig zugleich wie man es sich von den Roots nur wünschen kann.

Die Loops rumpeln und funken vor sich hin, Bläsersätze und Synthiesounds rauschen dazwischen, die großartigen Gäste wie Mos Def (toll: gleich auf mehreren Tracks) und Talib Kweli peitschen die Lyrics mit einer wütenden Vehemenz darüber, dass man in der Frühlingssonne aus dem Kopfnicken gar nicht mehr herauskommt. Tracks wie “I will not apologize”, “Singin Man” oder “Criminal” will man mitrappen und mitsingen und alles in allem kann man es nicht erwarten, diese Truppe mal wieder live zu sehen.

Denn darauf kommt es, um zu Questlove zurück zu kehren an: “Ich spiele jede Show so, als ob mein Leben dranhängt – und so ist es tatsächlich.” (Auszüge aus einem sehr schönen Interview mit Questlove bei Intro.de).
Videos sehen, in das Album reinhören und Hintergründe zur Produktion gibt es auf der E-Card zu “Rising Down”. (geschrieben fürs P3000-Blog)

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