Of course, in its parts, it is nothing new. Alltogethernow (#a2n) as a conference saw it’s first issue last year. Popkomm as a global trade fair for the music industry has a tradition of over 20 years and is slowly getting back some of the relevance it lost while the major music labels had to fight with revenue losses. And the Berlin festival started 2005.

From a branding aspect, it is good idea to put all this under one umbrella and attract people from all sorts of music business, whether it be major or indie labels, concerts, live events or distribution. It will be a week packed with talks and meetups and of course many concerts. I am personally looking forward to being present at a panel at a2n about the myriad of possibilities of self marketing for artists and will be attending the Berlin festival, of course.

Hier ist das Video dazu:

BCG Studie: Innovation 2007
BCG Studie Measuring Innovation 2009
Ogilvy Digital Innovation Lab Launch
How Can Innovation be measured
Podcast Whitt
Paul Romer: Charter Cities TED Talk
Knowledge Entrepreneur
Zeit Online: Der 20 Gramm Brief
A Culture of Innovation at 3M
Connect & Develop: Inside Procter & Gamble’s New Model For Innovation
http://trabayo.com
http://www.innocentive.com/
http://jovoto.com/
https://www.tchibo-ideas.de/
http://mystarbucksidea.force.com/
http://www.ideastorm.com/
http://www.pgconnectdevelop.com/
http://www.arvato-innovation.com/

An old industrial building with several rooms, the walls covered with handwritten paper and plans and rooms and talks, with small wooden chairs outside and a 3d printer which can repair its 3d printer brother and a supercreative crowd who didn’t care about business cards and seemed to be really interested in answers (not the kind of people that ask “so, what do you do?” and then look the other way).

And: Whenever talks mentioned the word “crisis”, they never meant the financial crisis but were talking about the climate crisis ahead and how to adress it with smart technology and will. Most of the sessions I found interesting, but I was surprisingly dissapointed by two internet legends who seemed not to care so much about inspiring people: Dave Winer who just let the audience talk and produced a lot of unstructred noise (nothing against open mic but without some outlines there will be nothing of substance) and Stowe Boyd who told us to use our rights on the net. Yeah, thanks.

But some stuff was truly amazing, there was a hellride through all sorts of geo location examples and tools by Andrew Turner, a very dark yet humorous speech by Bruce Sterling (“get the best bed you can get!”) and again, the Placebo of tech festivals, David Weinberger about Cyberutopianism. Not to mention Tor Nørretranders who showed us how literally sharing your shit makes things better.

Look for more posts about reboot11, thank you again Peter for suggesting me to go!

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.

In the position of being confronted with so many ideas, witted people, diverse subjects, opinions, trends and conversations I felt intectually challenged almost all the time. Plus, trying to find my own “art of live blogging” I was in a constant state of concentration, in search of the essence of the panels I focused on to cover. Now I feel tired and inspired, with the “Black swan” beside my bed and “What would Google do” on my desk. And with many images still in mind that make it hard just to say “DLD was awesome!”. But it certainly was.

We had economics, design, psychology, neurobiology, architecture, technology, education, fashion, music.. DLD was so diverse and at the same time deep in concern of the arguments of the people and mostly entertaining by the performance. And this inspirationally broad deepness certainly had effects on the talks in the hallway which I personal did not have. Because I had to blog. Because I was honoured to blog!

My thanks go to the whole team, all those fast and motivated people who made this conference so smooth, so you would not notice the organization, just the flow. And especially to my blogger colleagues Nicole, Oliver and Andrea. We came up with some nice techniques to cover people’s talk with live writing which include Google Docs, hand signs, twitter search, mobile photo uploads and the help of people who plug the laptops, know about details, give comments.
So thank you all, team, speakers, participants and especially to the cute coffee machine in the team room.

Before I go and polish my posts and clean up all the typos, here are my personal Top9::

9. With the Zuckerberg appearance I found the controversial twitter conversation as interesting as what was said on stage.
8. The Varsavsky – Obermann talk
7. Simplicity (mostly)
6. Fashion
5. The paddle symphony
4. Internet politics
3. Reflection on a crisis
2. The robots!
1. Predictably Irrational

And here are fotos! We love fotos. (all Flickr pics tagged with dld09)

I will cover the conference together with Nicole Simon, Oliver Gassner and Andrea Vascellari – I am proud to be working with them.

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.

The people of CERN (European Nuclear Research Center) who run the big 17mile long atom smasher called Large Hadron Collider in between France and Switzerland made a very cool video about what they are doing and kind of questions their research adresses:

Weiter geht mein Artikel als Gastbeitrag bei den Blogpiloten

Einge Fragen bleiben aber immer offen und die Macher stricken, nach einer wohlverdienten Pause, sicher schon an Konzepten für das kommende Jahr. Eine Frage jedoch, die meines Wissens verblüffenderweise selten öffentlich gestellt wurde, ist die nach einem Live-Stream aus den Panels oder von der Konferenz allgemein. Denn eine Veranstaltung, die sich “Get Realtime” auf die Fahnen schreibt, muss sich diese Frage sicherlich gefallen lassen.

Martin Recke, Hauptverantwortlicher in der Organisation der Konferenz hat sich die Frage gefallen lassen und ein Interview gegeben, das ich hier im Original wieder geben möchte. Vielen Dank dafür!

Frage:Warum gab es auf einer Konferenz, die das Motto “get realtime” hat, und die sich auch explizit mit Live Video beschäftigte, keinen Live Video Stream?

Martin Recke: Unser Fokus lag auf der Videoaufzeichnung. Denn nach unseren Erfahrungen werden viele Videos in den Wochen und Monaten nach der next conference von etlichen tausend Menschen angesehen. Ein Livestream würde nur einen Bruchteil davon erreichen.

Nachfrage: Dass es Livevideo gibt, schließt ja die nachträgliche Bereitstellung als Videoaufzeichnung nicht aus. Im besten Fall streamt man live und hat das ganze als abrufbares Video im Netz sobald man auf Stop drückt, oder?

M.R. Soweit die Theorie. In der Praxis setzt das eine Menge voraus, der Aufwand ist nicht gerade klein und die möglichen Fehlerquellen zahlreich…

Frage:Wertet ein Live-Videostream eine Konferenz vielleicht für Präsenzbesucher ab, die dann keinen Eintritt mehr zahlen, sondern sich statt dessen per Netz informieren?

M.R. Das kann sein, spielt aber für uns höchstens eine untergeordnete Rolle. Die Teilnehmer kommen neben dem Programm auch für das Liveerlebnis, die entspannte Atmosphäre und das Networking.

Frage:Gab es Bedenken hinsichtlich der technischen Machbarkeit, an der man sich “nicht die Finger verbrennen” wollte? Oder waren die verfügbaren Lösungen vielleicht schlicht zu teuer?

M.R. Es war eine Grundsatzentscheidung, die Machbarkeit war nicht das Thema.

Frage:Unter welchen Vorraussetzungen ist eine Next09 vorstellbar, die Live-Video-Übertragungen anbietet?

M.R. Wir müssten davon überzeugt sein, dass wir Liveübertragungen brauchen.

Frage:Eine Einschätzung, bitte. Gibt es technische Grenzen für Live-Video im Netz? Wird Live-Video bald die Leistungsfähigkeit der heutigen Datenübertragung überfordern und so vielleicht zum Killer für die Netzneutralität?

M.R. Sicher gibt es technische Grenzen. Sie werden aber von der technischen Entwicklung dauernd erweitert. Die Netzneutralität sehe ich eher durch wirtschaftliche und politische Interessen gefährdet als durch Livevideo.

Nachtrag: In Martin Reckes eigener Zusammenfassung der Konferenz, taucht unter der Rubrik “What we could have done better” schließlich auch der Livestream auf.

Indiegames says: “Use the left or right cursor keys to match colors. Forty-two levels are included, though most players might not find the gameplay enticing enough to hold their interest for that long.”

Ich persönlich bin z.B. ein großer Fan von Fermats letztem Satz und war geschockt als ich erfuhr, dass ich, als der Preis für seine Lösung vergeben wurde, wohl nur weniger Meter oberhalb der ehrwürdigen Göttinger Aula unwissend Bier trinkend auf dem Fensterbrett saß. Hier das Buch zu der Geschichte.

Also eigentlich wollte ich nur sagen, dass mir das Motiv gut gefiel, vorhin am S-Bhf Schönhauser Allee. Aber der Trailer ist auch ganz schick:

Link: sevenload.com

Schrödingers Cat, installation by Reinhard Wanner

With system theory it happened to me in a similar way. The first time I heard about the idea of seeing society as a communicative system that consists of communication and nothing else I was fascinated yet unable to grasp only ten percent of what it really means as a consequence. Now, I even read books understanding that their authors criticize system theory without having understood them.

As for quantum theory I am still struggling – what about these strange states and probabilities little quantums are in? Being waves and particles at the same time? And what about Schrödinger’s cat who is dead AND alive at the same time? I know there is something big waiting for me, I just need to be patient to understand.

In the meantime I listen to Stars new album “In Our Bedroom After The War” (order on itunes) because it’s really great and look forward to Chikinki’s new album “Brace Brace” which will be out on Weekender records in November. Singer Rupert’S voice still sounds pretty whiny but very charismatic and the whole Chikinki-experience has become much bigger and broader. Check out “Oh my God” from the new album:
Download audio file (chikinki-oh_my_god.mp3)

And taking this story on BoingBoing about remote-controlled fruit flies into account, adding the fact that one of the scientist behind the fruit flies experiments is Dr Gero Miesenböck and funded by the us military brings us to one sad conclusion: Despite being humans, complexly developed creatures, sex and violence are still the main drivers of our progress.

Pippa Norris: A virtuos cirlce: Key literature for all interested in the change of political campaigns especially taking into account digital technologies and its influence on politics, including a comparison of different nations and their resprective approach to digital democracy.

[via Falk Lueke]

Picture by Christian Iten & Daniel Lüthi

If you like this you might also find the following interesting:
Multitouch interaction research at NYU
and the interactive multitouch instrument Reactable

“The reactable, is a state-of-the-art multi-user electro-acoustic music instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface. Several simultaneous performers share complete control over the instrument by moving physical artefacts on the table surface and constructing different audio topologies in a kind of tangible modular synthesizer or graspable flow-controlled programming language.”

Science

Ever since the ground-breaking article by Albert & Whetten, defining organizational identity as what is central, distinctive and enduring about an organization, a wide range of scholars have emerged, trying to theoretically describe and analyze this field. In their views, organizational identity serves as a cognitive frame for understanding reality, as shared assumptions about the world that lead to collective actions (just like in organizational culture), as a discourse about sense and reality (therefore there can be multiple identities to organizations), as collective claims about the contents of the organization and room for personal identification (e.g. “I am with Boston Consulting now, boy, I’m proud, we are so going to do a good job on this project!” social identity theory).

This can be found in organizational artifacts, like documents, visions and mission statements, but also in email exchanges or conversations, basically in any kind of communication – also in weblogs. A very interesting idea is looking for identity in narrations which are basically stories or conversations about organization (Brown and Czarniawska are known for that and here’s a cool narration about the company ERCO in a weblog with discourse).

And while I am still trying to understand, more and more a systemic approach seems to be able to integrate the various fields:

1.) The boundaries of an organization are the frontiers of its identity. What is perceived and what not, who is a member and who not (because he or she not does not meet the shared expectations), the unique form and set, that differentiates an organization from its environment are clearly what makes it distinct from all other organizations that thus become environment.

2.) Organizations are autopoietic social systems that keep themselves alive by communication and decisions, always reproducing their boundaries and creating possibilities for connecting operations. That is what is enduring about an organization, the necessity to connect the operations to the past and create possibilities for the future.

3.) Social systems exist to reduce complexity and therefore create boundaries to decide what is relevant and what not and in what it is perceived. Identity is the central medium in which decisions can be made, it shapes a space of contingent possibilities and reduces complexity. It’s like shared views of the world, things that “don’t need to be mentioned” or actions “you just don’t do” (e.g. some organizations might be tough on crime, like corruption, others might consider it for the good of the firm – the trick is to understand that it’s not alone people that make decisions, but that the exact same person might act differently in different environments, like using corruption or violence or not)

4.) Construction identity is an ongoing, self-reflective process, it’s a self-observation and thus always has a blind spot. Organizational identity cannot be perceived to its full extent from the inside of the organization. But neither from the outside, there will always be something missing. Dissapointing but true.

Organizational identity in practice

..means the usage of identity or what is claimed than to be identity. Corporate identity tries to shape a consistent image for the outer side of organization, controlling every interconnection from the inside to the outside: Buying awareness as advertising, shaping products, trying to control what the media say, educating staff how to communicate with the outsiders.

Using identiy on the inside is a matter of power: Who is powerful enough to decide what is central and distinctive? Which people stay long enough to make it enduring? How much tension is an organization able to take before fights burst out, not only about interests but also about what holds the team together and what common goals unite the members?

Conclusion

On a theoretical level many approaches to identity can be integrated by a systemic view that sees organization as self-referential, autopoietic social system that uses identity to maintain its boundaries and as a medium for communication and decision. It can be found in organizational communication like mission statements, blogs or conversations.

On a practical level, these blogs can be a decisive point for discourse about organization: They create public awareness and places for communication that have not been existed before. They change the boundaries and the power balances because public communication about organization that for a long time has been the central domain for corporate communication now becomes available to everyone, members or stakeholders of the organization.

1.) Weblogs can be a source for analysis about organizational narrations or even discourse about what is central, distinctive and enduring.
2.) Weblogs shift the power of deciding about the content of organizational meaning and behaviour because they create a public space for communication
3.) Let alone the way of dealing with weblogs (offensive, defensive, ignoring, open or controlling) is organizational practice that tells us about organizational rules, power, worldviews and attitudes.

If you are a FU student, take part in the survey until january 15th!

The “Center für digitale Systeme” wants to build a place on the web for the students to connect to other students and teachers, share knowledge, experience and documents, get information and news by the administration and the faculty, use it as a calendar and for administrative issues like adress changes and so on.

It’s a pity that I will not be able to make use of this but I am sure within some years these webbased platforms will be compulsive for any modern university and it makes me kind of proud that mine is already starting it. Good luck, people, it will not be easy to handle a project like this, especially not when there are so many people to integrate!

Hans Rosling on TEDtalks

Now TED Talks features many, many highly interesting speeches online that are really worth watching. I especially enjoyed Hans Rosling’s speech about Gapminder and data visualization (sounds boring but he is entertaining, educating AND funny) and Barry Schwartz, author of “The paradox of choice” who explains why more choice does NOT mean more freedom, on the contrary. A point, I am pretty sure, all of you have discussed with friends considering what you want to be in this world and how the many possibilities we have these days are more a burden than alleviation.

Jeff Hahn and his colleagues at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University are working on that and there’s an impressive movie clip to visualize their efforts. Mindblowing, music by Peter Kruder.

[via sounds.imnetz]

So, what’s the origin of violence and war? The answer seems simple: Angry young men. Sociologically this is summarized in the theory of the “Youth Bulge” which describes the battle of the sons for the powerful positions in a society. Happens all over the world for centuries, again and again. Terror and war are the most recent outcomes, the scientist Gunnar Heinsohn has written a fascinating book about the connection between the spare sons, fundamentalism, terror and war: “Söhne und Weltmacht” And now enjoy a short clip from the VICE travel DVD “Surviving the slums of Rio”

Surviving the Slums of Rio

Add to My Profile | More Videos

More VICE DVD travel experiences like boyscouts in Beirut or illegal gun markets in Pakistan.

Robert Scoble started a videoblog with interviewing Jonathan Schwartz, Sun’s CEO

www.gruenderszene.de is a german videocast by one of the Spreadshirt founders Lukasz Gadowski focussing on German entrepreneurs like Stefan Glänzer (Last FM), Jürgen Kluge (Head of McKinsey Germany) and Thomas Knüwer (Handelsblatt). Unfortunately pretty bad quality in picture and sound and sometimes a little unispired interviewer, yet very interesting people.

@xolo.tv has interviews with interesting people from all over the world and has really good editing.

and one of my favourites is the conversation between Joi Ito and Loic LeMeur about online gaming, video and copyright

• 1st: Integrate tags into stylewalker – I have enough content now to tag it more thoroughly and it would be cool to let people participate – suggest tags and if I like them they will be part of the categorization. Does anyone know a good WP-plugin?

• Start a blog about organizational identity and weblogs. I am writing my master thesis and should export some wisdom to the net.

• Buy a DJ! A friend is coming from Barcelona, Marco Delvai, you can book him for little money and big fun! Expect more information later.

• A guide to MySpace – people keep asking me what to do there and I should write down all the things I tell each one of them.

And: A great mix at Miss Glitter – Bastard Cutz on bastard rec.
Download audio file (Basstard_Cutz_Vol.1.mp3)

Downloadink

Comments about the propositions are open and welcome. Say something!

Wenn Tita von Hardenberg, die eine eigene TV-Sendung hat, sich und Harald Schmidt mit der Kamera beobachtet und wir sie dann später auf ihrem Blog dabei beobachten, ja welche Beobachtungsordnung haben wir denn dann? Die Medien beobachten die Medien, wir beobachten die Medien und dabei die Welt und uns selbst. Mein Gott, als Systemtheoretiker muss man doch irgendwann wahnsinnig werden..


Tagebuch 300k @ www.polylog.tv/tita

ERCO light design in Hong Kong

About 4 months ago, Cem Basman published an article about the transformation of the company ERCO from a dull bed stand lamp producer to a worldwinde innovator in lighting. A new manager asks his employees the significant question: “What business are we in, actually?”. “Lamps” was the first answer, and he said “no, it’s light”.

This story always has been a classic example for doing succesful business by thinking beyond the obvious. It is a nice telling indeed and it can be beautifully illustrated by the impressing projects ERCO is realizing now all over the world.

Erco light design in TokyoNow for the second part and the perfect example of something I am trying to show in my master thesis: Identities become visible in narrations and those narrations are created in a group dialogue over time. Weblogs are the perfect medium for that.

Four months later, the said new manager, Klaus-Jürgen Maack, comments in the weblog and writes an email to the author, adding further details to the story! Now, a search in Google for “Erco Geschichte” delivers exactly this story, collaboratively written by the weblog author and one of the protagonists.

I am glad having discovered this little piece of identity on the web.
Imagine, there’s much more and every day, people adding new parts to it.

Photo by eanousa@Flickr

And it’s all there, there’s tons of playlists and charts on the internet and you can listen to many songs as snippets on Juno or the sites of the labels.

So, theoretically, you could put that together automatically, creating playlists with the corresponding links to the soundfiles, “playing playlists” so to say.

Dear coders, go ahead, I know it is difficult, every playlist is in different formats and finding the mp3-links is even more difficult (crossing different search engines e.g.).

I tried to do it manually once and now I am trying it again. It is now 22:36 and I let you know how much it took. But before: Enjoy Dixons playing playlist for his set for Anja Schneider on Radio Fritz.

Argy / La Pasion / Poker Flat
Tom Clark / Meteor Im Eis / Highgrade
Peter Dildo / Curley Blonde – Agnes Mix / Track Down Records
Tadeo / Tercer Rojo / Cyclical Tracks
Troy Pierce / The Day After Yesterday / Items & Things (not found)
Isolee / Blue – Dixon Edit / Playhouse (again: not found, really)

That took me about 25 minutes. It’s difficult to know when to stop searching.

Anyway, not every playlist is worth to be a “playing playlist”. When I read these titles, I do not want to know the music.

Bis zu allerletzt war er, so viel er konnte, am Institut, als brummig und sperrig war er bekannt, aber stets hat er sich für seine Studenten eingesetzt und den Fachbereich in schweren Zeiten am Leben erhalten.

I searched it for the keyword ‘identity’ and not surprisingly most of the contributions I found deal with ethnicity, culture and society. Constructing identities appear, twice linked with organization, once even within networks, a subject I have been working on before.

Identity and the internet is discussed on the matter of identification, but:
Constructing organizational identities with weblogs – that’s new, I am proud. Hope, I can do something really innovative here.

Meanwhile, we might want to go back to a specific page we have been to before. Maybe we forgot to open a link there or it adds some important piece of information we misjugded before. And so. Wouldn’t it be easier to find that page again if the described clickways were represented in the browser?

The graphical user interface of a browser should show the visited pages and the ways we went on a graphical landscape. I don’t know how to do it exactly, but it would have something to do with levels and everytime a new tab or window is opened the clickways would start again with level 1. Like this we would know which way we have come and the design would represent much more what goes on in our head. Network-like, woven information, three-dimensional, like brain cells, not linear.

This is an invitaion to developers, screen-designers and c+-coders. If you have any further idea, let me know! If something like this exists allready, like a plugin for Firefox, let me know as well, please.

In the map, I tried to combine all the theories I would like to discuss in the thesis. From organizational theories (e.g. Max Weber, Mintzberg) to the discussion about formal and informal structures of organizations, psychoanlytical organization theory (starts with Freud, happ 150th, anyway!), organizational culture and to my core object: organizational identity. (Albert & Whetten wrote a lot about it)

You can perceive organizational identity from different viewpoints, analyze it, make it visible with different matters: narration (look at stories told), actions (Giddens structuralization: how people shape social structures by acting and act according to social structures – yes, a self-referential system), psychological (the schizophrenic organization, creepy, hugh?) and of course the whole marketing and pr-guidelines about corporate identity, corporate actions, mission statements and so on. All of them are different views on organizational identity.

My own special viewpoint is the systemic view. I will try to see an organization as a social system. Luhmann, Maturana & Varela, Baecker and Seidl have been writing about this subject and Spencer-Brown has the most formalistic, mathematical position.

It’s a highly complex and theoretical field, nevertheless, one important problem for my thesis is the difficulty of perceiving yourself, your identity. Who is able to talk about your identity? You? Those who know you? Your psychiatrist, the “objective perceiver”? Society?

Varela wrote about the biological implications and the problem of one perceiving him or herself (human senses, human brain, human reality). Just like the philosophical Frankfurt school (Horkheimer, Adorno), the constructionists, he stated that every reality is constructed. Spencer-Brown tried to solve the problem with a re-entry process between marked and unmarked space.

I will assume the position that one is able to perceive at least important parts of his/herown identity. So, organizations as well have an identity and are able to see it. But how?

Digging deeper into system theory, the distinction between system and environment, inside and outside of the organization will remain important. Because that is what identity is about: Who are you? It is easier to answer the following question: Who are you not? What is the essence that distinguishes you from all the rest, that makes you unmistakable? This is what call identity distinction.

Of course, organizational identity is also about sense. Identity is part of the sense of an organization, the reason why it exists and the reason for the identification of its members. Also, identity is about interaction and communication, you will see different parts of your own identity through the eyes of the others.

So we have distinction and sense. All stuff that happens in the head of the people. And then there’s discourse and communication, dynamic over the time, reflecting in actions. But in the scientific-analytical end, it is about contents. You need something to analyze.

This the basic connection to Blogs. I will look at the texts in blogs, not forgetting that they are about pictures and videos and links as well. Blogs can be a lot of things, beyond all technological ways to describe them.

Blogs are stories. They are unfiltered personal information. People talk about their lives, also about their organizations. Where they work, study, do politics.

It’s communication and discussion. Can a blog be perceived as a social system as described above? Absolutely, in fact, it’s only communication and the person(s) behind is(are) almost unvisible (much like Luhmann states so often: Systems consist of communication, not of people. “If you cut your hair, do you cut something from the society?” Anyway..)

In the very end, I want to answer the question, if blogs can contribute to analyzing and shaping an organizational identity.
It is complex but exciting. I will be posting some updates here.

Over at the hard blogging scientists, they discuss if sharing ideas in blogs might harm the career of a scientist. Actually, I cannot think of any argument to support that thought. Ideas need to be released. And if you are afraid that they might get stolen you just don’t have enough. And you are blocking yourself.

Now here is one fascination toy: Monome40h. It consists of 8×8 touchpads that are programmable via an open-source controlling routine which turns them into keys, radio groupings, virtual sliders, etc., to communicate with ableton live, reason, cubase, logic and alike. To read more and watch a video

It’s not only flexible, it’s also very stylish and very handmade. The guys documented the whole manufacturing process. It’s 500$ and right now they cannot satisfy the overwhelming demand. In their forum they communicate directly with the people.

[Via Bureau Beige]

It is called “The tipping point” by Malcom Gladwell.

It’s not an insider’s tip, especially not in the U.S. and already has had quite an aftermath. Libraries, e.g. were rewarded for new ideas that had spread from the book.
The tipping point is the moment in which an epidemic starts, a situation in which small effects can have deep impacts.

This is an almost mathematical, biological approach but suits for many social phenomenas as well: Crime rates drop abruptly, a fashion trend takes off and it shows why 150 is a magic number for groups and organizations.

You can browse through the table of content.

Not only is the idea so clear and convincing, it is also written in such an entertaining way, it obeys what it explains: It sticks.

Gladwell has many examples that stayed in my head: The story of Lexus’ “perfect recall”, the surprising comeback of the now again fashionable Hushpuppies shoe, how crime changed in New York, the success factors of “Sesame’s street” and “Blues’s clues”, and my favourite one: How a social worker in San Diego had the brilliant idea to educate women about breast cancer and diabetes. Turning their hair dressers into evangelists and give them stories to tell to their clients made them really think about prevention.

The book is about people, how they connect, whom they trust, about conncetors, mavens and salesmen, about the power of context and what makes messages sticky.

A pleasure to read. I discovered a little error, might be a typing error, but maybe a meaningful one. Later I’ll talk about that. Please come back.

Big sunglasses, baggy jeans that look vintage but cost a fortune, suits that do not look like suits and surprisingly similar haircuts are the visitors trademarks. Although those people deal with selected brands and individuality in general, they look astonishingly alike. It’s a very focused scene: There are the buyers for fashion stores and chains, independent designers who produce for their own little brands and also the big corporate machine players with their inescapable position terms like chief of marketing, brand manager or creative director. And they are all in the database..

This database and the way of treating the customers is one of Bread and butter’s key success factors. The other is the great commitment of its people, willing to work hard to create a unique event.

Looking back on the days I have been working here, I am glad to have learned so much: I spent the five first days in the IT-team, learning about IT-networks, how they manage 80 points of sale, including card payment systems, how to plug it all together and build this big network, connected to their business database with the clients information.

Then for two days, I worked with an electrician who showed me how to wire tents and how much power you can get out of a electric circuit. I took a look at the boothbuilder’s work and all their fancy materials. Now I am sitting in the back office, filling the mighty database with customer information from accreditation sheets the visitors had filled out at the entrance.

This information is not only used for the regular phonecalls and newsletters, so to say the communication between customers and the organizers but also in between the visitors and exhibitors.

It works like this: Exhibitors can rent little advices that scan the barcode which is printed on the trade show passes. Whenever somebody enters the booth, a hostess scans the pass. The information who entered the booth at what time is stored on the device’s memory.

When going home, the exhibitors have a complete file with the information of every single person they had contact with: Not only name and contact data but also their branch, position and interests. Pretty complex, huh?

Bread and butter not only is a very well organized trade show, these people are building a community. They enable communication in between their customers thus help to create a common identity.

People who work here also have a strong commitment to the Bread and butter. It is not a normal fair, it is a creative challenge to manage all the construction, organization and infrastructure. People like to work, they are paid relatively well and do not mind to work nightshifts. The day before the opening, I finished at 1 am attaching all the lose cables for security. The food is great, bosses are nice (a beer on the house after 8pm is a friendly gesture) and you really feel you are working on something special and interesting.

The parties are also part of building the fame. Last year they chartered a boat to go to Ibiza after the fashion show. Stories about this adventure differ, but apparently it was quite an excessive experience. One guy kept on spinning records for 24 hours, fell aspleep in the sand, woke up, did not know how to get home, went to the airport and bought a flight. You know.

This year, Bread and Butter had a big opening celebration in the Palau Nacional above the exposition area. It is an old, pompous and impressive building with stucco and marble and a huge hall. The upcoming stars Chikinki (very good, sounded like Oasis with synthesizers) played and my friend Suzi Wong had come from Berlin to make the people dance with her typical minimal techhouse style. All the drinks were free and people enjoyed the decadent atmosphere with cocktails.

Friday is the last day and I will return to my IT colleagues. We are going to disassemble all the cashiers and the corresponding machines and put them into cases. Soon they have to be in Berlin for the next Bread and butter tradeshow there. And so the circus goes on and on, bye, bye Barcelona. Bread and Butter returns to Barcelona in summer with a hole fashion week.

See more fotos on Stylewalker@Flickr!

Es geht zuächst ganz grundsätzlich um das Verhältnis von Lernen und Spielen, um Kategorisierungen von Computerspielen und den Stand der Wirkungsforschung. Schließlich um kontemporäre Ansätze zum Einsatz von Computerspielen als Lernumgebungen und Chancen für die Zukunft. Im folgenden das Inhaltsverzeichnis, hier die html- und die pdf-Version.

In diesem Rahmen möchte ich mich auch mal ganz deutlich gegen diese furchtbaren Hausarbeit-Verticker wenden. Nicht nur, dass viele mit ziemlich unseriösen Mitteln á la Dialer etc arbeiten, den gesamten Ansatz finde ich zum kotzen. Das Studieren in Deutschland ist immer noch kostenlos, Diplomarbeiten müssen in öffentlichen Bibliotheken stehen und trotzdem findet es das Gros der Studenten ziemlich in Ordnung, ihre stinklangweiligen Ergüsse verkaufen zu wollen.

Wissenschaft muss meiner Meinungs nach offen zugänglich sein und als Student muss man der Almende etwas von dem zurückgeben, das man über die Jahre von ihr bekommen hat: das Wissen. Daher geht mein Dank raus an alle, die ihre Arbeit frei zu Verfügung stellen, insbesondere an Kurt Squire und Marian Dörk.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Inhaltsverzeichnis2
1 Einleitung3
2 Spielen und Lernen5
2.1 Was sind Spiele?5
2.2 Wie hängen Lernen und Spielen zusammen?5
2.3 Neue Paradigmen des Lernens6
3 Computerspiele7
3.1 Was sind Computerspiele?7
3.2 Kategorisierungen nach Geräten7
3.3 Kategorisierungen nach dem Zeitempfinden7
3.4 Kategorisierungen nach Genres8
4 Nutzung und Wirken von Computerspielen9
4.1 Nutzung von Computerspielen – Wer spielt was?9
4.2 Gratifikation – Warum wir am Computer spielen10
4.3 Wirkungsforschung11
4.4 Transferprozesse11
4.5 Kategorisierung im Dreieck Denken, Action, Geschichten12
4.6 Schlussfolgerungen für das Lernen mit Computerspielen13
5 Edutainment15
5.1 Was ist Edutainment15
5.2 „Gutes“ Design16
5.3 Kategorisierungen von Edutainment-Software17
5.4 Herausragende Beispiele19
6 Der Markt für Computerspiele und Edutainment20
6.1 Edutainment-Hersteller in Deutschland20
7 Fazit und Ausblick21
Literaturliste24

Ganz im Gegensatz dazu die letzten Eindrücke, die ich von der FU Berlin mitgenommen habe. Eine liebevolle und professionelle Baustellenabsperrung in Lankwitz, Institut für Publizistik und Kommunikationswissenschaften:

Auf der anderen Seite: Wer sich hier durchgeschlagen hat, der ist gehärtet für die Anforderungen des Lebens. Es gibt übrigens auch ein schönes Blog dort: Publizistik in Berlin. Und auch die haben eine launige Geschichte zum Chaos am Institut, dem man nur mit einer gehörigen Portion Gleichmut und Glück entgegen treten kann. Anyway, ich habe es jedenfalls fast geschafft und es nie bereut, dort studiert zu haben (um mal einen versöhnlichen Abschluss zu finden..)

Overview on articles, examples, papers: Video games in education
Medienpädagogik Online von der Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung
Educational Computer Games in Wikipedia
Zavatar – eine Suchmaschine über Unterhaltungssoftware in Deutschland
Kurt Squire, expert on games and education at the MIT

Welchen Stellenwert und welche Formen Mundpropaganda für Filme im Internet annehmen, ob und wie man sie beeinflussen kann und welche weiteren Marketinginstrumente es für das Onlinemarketing für Kinofilme gibt, habe ich in gegebener Kürze in einer Hausarbeit mit dem Thema “Das Internet als Filmmarketingtool” zeigen dürfen. Ich finde, sie ist ganz gut gelungen, eben eine Hausarbeit, nicht mehr und nicht weniger. Abgegeben an der FU Berlin, Publizistik und Kommunikationswissenschaft, Medienökonomie bei Prof. Goldhammer, Seminar “Situation der deutschen Filmwirtschaft”.

Im Folgenden gibt es das Fazit, Inhaltsverzeichnis, die Pdf- und die HTML-Version.

Update: Seit Dezember 2007 arbeite ich bei PANORAMA3000, Agentur für digitale Kommunikation, die sich unter anderem auf Online-Promotion und Online-Marketing für Musik und Filme spezialisiert haben. Sprechen Sie uns doch an!

Und das Fazit aus der Hausarbeit:

Marketing ist für Filme unverzichtbar und umfasst bei großen Produktionen inzwischen die Hälfte der Kosten. Mund zu Mund – Propaganda hat einen hohen Einfluss auf die Entscheidung einen Film zu sehen, die Blockbuster-Strategie versucht (mit schwankendem Erfolg) diesem Einfluss zu entkommen. Das Internet bietet jedem die Möglichkeit, Meinungen und Ansichten zu veröffentlichen und sich zu Interessengruppen zusammen zu schließen. Für Marketingtreibende heißt das sehr gezielt mit ganz bestimmten Gruppen kommunizieren zu können. Vor allem für häufige Kinogänger, also Experten und Meinungsführer in ihrem sozialen Umfeld und die Hauptzielgruppe nach Alter (15-35) ist das Internet inzwischen wichtigste Informationsquelle für neue Filme. Onlineportale, Online-Filmmagazine und Fan-Foren nehmen dabei eine besondere Rolle ein. Die Vielfalt der Möglichkeiten und die hohe Dynamik, verbunden mit der Komplexität einer weltweiten, gleichzeitigen Vermarktung eines Films machen die Online-Kommunikation schwer zu kontrollieren, viele tun sich auch daher schwer, die Möglichkeiten zu nutzen.
Über das Netz kann eine große Menge Information für den Film bereit gestellt werden, kein Film kommt heutzutage ohne eine Webseite mit mindestens dem Trailer und einfachen Informationen zu Besetzung und Story aus. In den USA ist der Absatz, also der Verkauf, von z.B. Kinokarten und Merchandising bereits in die Webseiten der Filme integriert, in Deutschland besteht Nachholbedarf.
Durch den „Many to many“-Charakter der Onlinekommunikation haben virale Maßnahmen, Zuschauerbindung- und Integration einen hohen Stellenwert im Onlinemarketing für Filme. Verglichen mit den Kosten für Film-PR und Werbung in klassischen Medien ist die Online-PR sehr effizient, wird aber, gemessen an der finanziellen Ausstattung, bisher wenig genutzt. Vor allem für Independent Filme mit einem großen Fan- und Kultpotential ist das Internet eine große Chance für effizientes Marketing.
Mit fallenden technischen Barrieren (flächendeckende Breitbandanbindung, handwerklich besser gemachte und funktionale Webseiten, gewachsene Internetkompetenz) wird auch die Bedeutung des Online-Marketings für Filme steigen.

Das Internet als Filmmarketing-Tool
Entertainment und maßgeschneiderte Kampagnen für internationale Kinoproduktionen
Hausarbeit von Thomas Praus

Inhaltsverzeichnis
Das Internet als Filmmarketing-Tool1
Inhaltsverzeichnis2
1 Einleitung3
2 Definitionen4
2.1 Marketing4
2.2 Film-Marketing6
2.3 Online-Marketing8
3 Potentiale9
3.1 Vergleich Kinogänger – Online Nutzer9
3.2 Entscheidungs-Prozess für einen Kinobesuch10
3.3 Internet und Mundpropaganda12
4 Struktur Online-Marketing14
4.1 Wer macht Online-Marketing?14
4.2 Marketingbudgets14
4.3 Anforderungen an das Kommunikationsmanagement15
5 Instrumente der Kommunikationspolitik15
5.1 Die Filmwebseite15
5.2 Online-PR – Kommunikation über Medien und Meinungsführer17
5.3. Guerilla, Content-Aggregation, Kampagnen und Alternate Reality Games18
5.4 Marktforschung, Kundenbindung, Zusatzservices, Kundenintegration19
8 Fazit und Ausblick21
9 Informationsressourcen23
10 Literaturliste23

Hier das ganze als PDF: Das Internet als Filmmarketingtool und als HTML-Version

Ein schönes Blog über Mund-zu-Mund-Propaganda schreibt übrigens Martin Oetting: Connected Marketing.

8 Minutes (send by Ele – warum hat die kein Weblog?).
I am flashed..

Book Cover

Social Software, Corporate Weblogs, Corporate Communications, Agenda Setting, Opinion leaders, podcasts, media-for-the-masses, bloggings vs journalism and so on are the buzzwords.

All the science basically is by Dr. Zerfaß, case studies and the business part by Mr Boelter and my part was mainly to surf the web and find interesting stories and to write them down neatly. A lot of work but at last a lot of fun, too. You should read (if you read German) it is really interesting.

Find more about the events here:
Deutscher Multimedia Kongress
Multimedia Award

I will post more pictures, stories and links to people I spoke to later.