eg2006 - thoughts from a conference

I've spent the last couple of days at a conference called eg2006 or 'the entertainment gathering'. (That's one of the benefits of corporate life). And I thought I'd share some of the stuff it made me think about. I can't write about the whole thing. There was way too much for that, but I'll try and mention some of the ideas that resonated with me.

Richard Saul Wurman organised the whole thing and presided over it like a mischevious Santa. He's the guy who organised all the legendary TED conferences before selling them a while ago. (I think).

You can see why he's good at conferences. He's obviously fabulously well connected, the speaker list was incredible, but it was about much more than the people, he got the dyanmics working really well too.

People were only supposed to speak for 20 minutes and he was right there on the stage the whole time to keep them in order. That worked well.

He kept changing the dynamics from heavy to light, from talking to music, from science to arts and it meant your brain ticked over properly.

He organised nice long breaks and kept things effectively on schedule.

And he clearly didn't make people prepare - just asked them to speak about something they were passionate about. And if they weren't prepared to just extemporise he interviewed them. Sometimes this led to slightly rambling presentations and sometimes he asked questions I wouldn't have asked but overall it worked really well.

I also liked the more relaxed and captivating approach to staging. There was no podium, no big dumb logo in the background the whole time. People walked around and talked. Or sat at a little coffee table. And the stage had all kinds of random and interesting stuff on it, mostly things that were going to be used by later presenters, but which intrigued you, made you want to hear what they were going to talk about.

The only big issue I had with the whole thing was a generational one. The speakers were mostly Wurman's friends or contemporaries and the whole thing had a very boomer feel. There was a lot of Elton John and we heard a new group that was being launched and marketed by Starbucks who were liked a boy band version of The Eagles. Slightly alarming.

I'd love to go to one of these for and about people under 40. That'd be really interesting. And is there anything remotely like this in the UK? Other than TED? Anything with this breadth of speaker? Perhaps there should be.

You do realise though that it would be much harder to do this kind of event in Britain - just because of our inherent cynicism. Like this conference opened with some slightly whimsical folky type singer, which melted everyone's hearts and got them in a receptive mood. You just couldn't get away with that in London. You wouldn't hear her over the rolling of eyes and the raising of eyebrows.

And even though I'm as cynical as the next Brit I think that's a shame. There's a reason that Americans (and Californians especially) accomplish so much - it's that optimisitic spirit. It can be deeply annoying, but it's massively effective. Of course, a lot of people in that room could afford to be optimistic, they had rich, white, succesful lives. But optimism and open-mindedness gets stuff done.

Anyway...

Nicholas Negroponte was up first with his One Laptop Per Child initiative. You'll have read all about this elseswhere, but one interesting thought he talked about was the power of scale. This project depends upon scale to succeed. You have to buy millions of these things for the price to come down. And you have to order millions to get the corporate attention you need to get the parts even built. This project doesn't work without scale.

And that's a little thought worth remembering for those who think about big brands. It's easy these days to be seduced by the delights of little, 'authentic' local brands, we like the the specialists and the mom and pop size. Brands like that have real appeal and emotional advantages. But a big brand that uses its scale effectively (ie not to bully or bewilder people, but to connect and delight them) has a rarer and more interesting opportunity. We shouldn't use communications to try and make big brands small (which is often the temptation) we should use them to help big brands connect and make their scale something positive for people.

(See how dreamy and Californian I'm getting)

Sky Dayton is an internet wunderkid, who made fortunes from and is now creating Helio which I like the sound of a lot. Their basic plan seems to be to bring all the innovative mobile stuff from Korea (the world's most advanced mobile markets) and sell it in the US (one of the world's stoggiest). Very smart. I hope they come to the UK soon. There's so much stuff that ought to be possible with a mobile which no-one in Europe seems to want to sell.

Dayton is apparantly a big surfer and his presentation reminded me that the trick with the 'catching the next wave' metaphor is not really the riding of the wave - it's picking the right wave. The real skill is sitting out there, thinking, waiting for just the right wave to come along and getting on it before anyone else. (Or maybe I'm wrong, I know buggar all about surfing).

Walt Mossberg talked about the impact of the ipod etc. He made the point that the unit of exchange for music is the song; the album ain't that important (mostly) and no one cares about the label or the store. And that similarly the unit of exchange for TV is the show - no one cares about the network. Which seems an interesting way to maybe think about other businesses - what is the important unit of exchange and what's irrelevant? ie with a tin of beans it's the beans that are important, though a lot of the logistics of how beans are sold depend upon the physicality of the tin. That's not necessarily a good example, but you see what I mean. Or probably you don't. I'm not sure I do now.

Wurman interviewed Chris Blackwell about stuff - and focused a bit too much on Bob Marley for my liking. Not that Marley's dull, but that's a well known story and Blackwell's done a lot of other stuff. It was clear that his success all grew from genuine love of the music, sure it was mixed with entrepeneurial energy, but the love came first.

He told us how the first Bob Marley record he released in the UK was put out under the name Robert Morley because that's what he thought it said on the cardboard box the records arrived in. Good story.

He also made me think about the contradictions between Wall Street's need for quarter after quarter of growth and the music industries need to think long-term and cultivate and develop artists over years and years. And, if you look at the music industry you'd have to say that, for the most part, the Wall Street thinking has won - record companies are looking for instant artists. You could see that as another reason for record company disintermediation. It's not just about free music and creative control it's also about artists managing their own careers with a bit of long-term thinking.

The evening ended with a performance from easily the least ego-filled musician I've ever seen - Yo-Yo Ma. What a nice, thoughtful, articulate, interesting man.

In trying to explain what made Bach great he made a point about pattern recogntion and the regular and irregular which has been running around my mind ever since. It's probably obvious to all of you but it had never occured to me. I guess music 'works' because it continually sets up little expectations with harmony and rhythm. Sufficient regularity means you unconsciously recognise all sorts of patterns in the music and your brain expects certain resolutions to those patterns. But a good piece of music is constantly messing with that regularity - not so much that it causes the patterns to break down, but enough that you're kept attentive and interested and emotionally/neurologically engaged.

Or something like that.

I'd never really thought about that before.

And when you think about it you realise that all kinds of things work like that - all aspects of human communication. And that thinking about regularity and irregularity might help us improve our writing, our presentations and all kinds of things.

Planners ought to be able to learn a lot from architects. And David Rockwell is exactly the kind of guy I'd think of. He talked about spectacle and showed a great little film about various 'spectacles' around the world. Emphasising that in an increasingly mediated and on-demand world there's something incredible powerful about real, live, in person, unmediated, communal events. He's got a book coming out about Spectacle with Bruce Mau. You should get a copy.

Naomi Judd was someone else you wouldn't expect at your average UK industry conference and she was a complete revelation to me. She talked with brains and passion about her life in music and the travails of the mining communities of the Appalachians. And she showed some fantastic footage of 'serpent-handlers' in West Virginia. These are Pentecostal Christians whose literalist interpretation of the Bible leads them to handle poisonous snakes on a regular basis. Which means they get bitten, and sometimes die.

She was making a point about the conviction these folk had in their values, but it also reminded me how thin the veneer of 'civilisation' still is in some parts of the US (which I mean in a good way). This keeps them in touch with some of the elemental stuff we stamped out in Europe years ago. Which is one reason why Tammy Wynette is a genius and Stephen Sondheim is boring.

Easily the best thing about the whole three days was Will Wright (inventor of The Sims) who did a demo of his new game - Spore.

He was fantastic.

To start with, he presented well. He talked fast but clearly so he packed way more content in than most of the presenters, who tended to ramble in a gently ad hoc way. He used visuals to help us understand and to make us laugh and he timed his stuff very well.

And it didn't hurt that the thing he was demoing was completely brilliant. There's not much point me writing more about it here. It doesn't help if I tell you that you start off as an amoeba and you have to evolve yourself into a Galactic God. Just Google it and you'll find it all over the Internet. But I can assure you now that you and your Grandmother and everyone you know will be playing it, and you'll be reaching for Spore everytime you want an analogy to talk about the changing nature of brands and the way they need to co-create with their customers, of the advantages of connecting your customers together and of the benefits of customisation made easier through machine intervention.

But his most profound point for me was about the nature of the game experience.

Games manufacturers strive to get as much game play and content into the processor in the console - this is limited by cost and technology and that. But Wright made the too-obvious-to-realise point that there are two processors involved in game play; the one in the box and the one in your head. And that if you could get those working together effectively you'd get much better games play.

This is another thing those of us in communications would do well to remember. The content isn't in what we make. It's in our audience's heads. They've got processors in there.

Next up was James Corliss of the Institute For Creative Technologies - a representative of the military/entertainment complex. They build video games for training soldiers. Military strategists often have stuff to teach the rest of us and I liked two of his thoughts.

First was the idea of 'avoiding the victory disease'. Apparently the military tries very hard to avoid institutionalising the thinking that won the last war, because the chances are the next war won't be like the last one. So they invite in all kinds of deviant and unexpected thinkers to shake things up and freshen up the thinking. Which is the exact opposite of what most agencies do. As soon as they get some kind of practise that works they start to institutionalise it, probably even trade-marking it, and they roll it out across all their clients and pitches and stuff. And even as the decks are being printed and the little cards are being laminated it's atrophying and becoming irrelevant.

He also talked about the 'Strategic Corporal'. The idea of pushing as much responsibility for strategy as possible to the lowest executional layer. So the people doing the executing, the people with the real facts, make as many strategic decisions as they can - within a broader context of aims and objectives. This too is obviously smart, but is completely unlike what most large organisations do most of the time.

The nicest guy at the whole thing was Don Hall, CEO of Hallmark cards. He was gentle but determined - a welcome alternative to a lot of the tech/entertainment bluster we saw. And he had the advantage of working for a family firm, a firm his Grandfather started, which gives everything you say a lustre of authenticity.

The most striking thing, which I hadn't realised, being on this side of the pond, was that Hallmark have been in the branded content business for 54 years, and they've made more than 250 of their own programmes as part of the Hallmark Hall of Fame. And they're convinced that it works and that it pays them back. A handy example if you ever need one.

And he showed their new e-cards thing - hoops and yoyo - which are great. Resolutely on brand, reliable, dependable, family stuff but modern and relevant too.

Peter Hirschberg of Technorati was great as well. Like Will Wright it was a polished, thoughtful, funny presentation. Exactly what you wanted.

If you're a blogging thinker / thinking blogger most of the points he made about the implications of user-created media for communications and brands and that weren't that startling. But he made them very persuasively - with good illustrations and good metaphor. I especially liked the idea that 'the demand side is supplying itself' and the thought that marketing people are starting to 'hear voices in their brands'.

If you're trying to convince a big brand organisation of the new realities of this world I bet he'd be a useful ally.

Bran Ferren of Applied Minds had some neat turns of phrase too. His constant cry about technology-mediated experiences seemed to be 'how do you make it suck less?' which I thought was fitting. And should really be the mission of most communications people, given as how most advertising etc is rubbish.

He also said that what's interesting about life is the dynamics - going from big to small, loud to quite - which is something else brand-thinkers often forget in their quest for contol and predictability. Brands need some dynamicsl, like everything else that attempts to engage the brain and the heart.

Anyway, that's enough. I can't write any more. Lots of other smart people said other smart stuff but none of it was susceptible to feeble analogies with planning/brands, so you'll have to manage with the all this other stuff.

I think this was the longest post I've ever written. Sorry to bang on. But it really was quite a stimulating few days. I hope some of the ideas emerged through my incoherent prose.

Comments

[Edward Cotton]

Poptech is really good. It's held in Maine every year. All about the fusion of technology and culture-great speakers.

[russell]

thanks ed,

I've heard about Poptech but never gotten to go. For those who don't know you can download a whole bunch of audio from previous Poptechs at the ITconversations website - which is great. http://www.itconversations.com/series/poptech2005.html

[Sam]

Poptech's great. Also, for up-and-coming conference in this space that combines the intimate size of RSW's eg with next-generation agenda topics and speakers, also look into PUSH2006, in Minneapolis in June.

The site is: http://www.pushthefuture.org/registration.asp

And, if you decide you'd like to attend, I believe you can get a discount until end-February with the promotional code:
IMTHERE_SP

[andrew]

It sounded really interesting and stimulating. Wish I had been there. But you are right about the thin veneer of civilisation - our high-tech world is probably irrelevant to the majority of the world's population. Regards,Andrew

[jason]

I'd also recommend IdeaCity, a similarly random (in a good way) mix of speakers and people held in Toronto every June. I've been the last 2 years and found it hugely inspiring.
http://www.ideacityonline.com/
I really love that there's more and more of this stuff happening.
Jason

[Lynda]

I was fortunate to attend a few TED conferences while at Sony (one of their sponsors) and felt it was like going to a spa for your brain. Interesting and passionate speakers and impressive audience. btw, did you hear Lloyd Braun from yahoo speak? some of the gossipy tech blogs said it was a train wreck.

Lynda

[marnie webb]

A quick thank you for the tips. I've spent the last 8 months working on a project to demonstrate the ways the 10 million nonprofits, NGOs and social-benefit organizations around the globe can create or leverage network effects for social change via the world wide web. It's coming together at the endo of May in a conference. We've organized something close to what you describe in the opening paragraphs of this post.

You've inspired us to make sure someone is standing on the stage w/ a stopwatch and moving the agenda/speakers along.