Things seem to take longer these frosty-morning-creaky-limbed days. Apologies for the delay in posting, but finally we have some lovely videos to shout about.
The first is very exciting – we were commissioned by the BBC to run a workshop at the Pervasive Media Studio back in October. The brief was to give the hottest new BBC design recruits a taste of pervasive thinking. What better company to run the event than the den thinkers. It was a fun day with talks from the likes of Tom Melamed of Calvium, Luke Jerram and a stand-up brainstorm session on the PM’s monstrous and curving white board. Nick Johnston (Hatboy to most and many) kindly videoed and edited the highlights, so please plug in for 3 minutes of Thought Den magic…And Dan’s hair looks much better this time, eh!?
Another somewhat delayed announcement follows – the igfest 09 highlights reel is in! Geoff Taylor has been hard at it in the edit suite, Simon Johson has been on the phone to his copyright lawyers and I’ve been keeping interested parties happy with taster emails packed with images. But the wait is over, moving picture technology has triumped, gorge at will. What an awesome event it is. Roll on 2010.
Almost 1000 people have registered to take part in Duncan Speakman’s Subtlemob project – and we’re having great fun being his technical support team. The project has featured in The Guardian, Grazia and the Evening Standard to name but a few… Our server almost crashed last night as hundreds of people attempted to download the 50MB audio file for London, but fear not because Rackspace Cloud Files
Cloud Computing came to the rescue! We thought our original provision would be sufficient, but it wasn’t, so now the MP3s are hosted on a dedicated whatsit up in the cloud somewhere and are screaming down the thingamajiggers faster than mustard. This is what they say “Cloud Files from The Rackspace Cloud is an offering which allows users to store data on the Rackspace infrastructure, from 1 byte to 5 Gigbytes.”
Subtlemob site
The Twittersphere is slowly catching on, so all you tweeters make sure you use the hashtag #subtlemob and spread the word. We’ve still got London, Bristol and Liverpool coming up. Download the audio file, grab partner and get on board for a magic piece of crowd theatre.
And as Dan Course himself said after the pioneering Bristol subtlemob earlier this year “Suddenly the world seemed rosier, I was wrapped up in a bubble for 20 minutes, and, um, fell in love with a complete stranger…”
Thought Den are very proud to have launched the new subtlemob 09 site. For those who don’t know what a subtlemob is yet (which could be most of us!), here’s what Duncan Speakman (the producer) has to say about them.
‘as if it were the last time’ invites you to take part in a secret event this November. You’ve seen the people freeze in train stations and the mass pillow fights, well this will be a more subtle experience.’
You may soon tire of igfest self-congratulation but we’re still buzzing from it. And here for your image-based viewing pleasure (though word on the grape-vine is that someone has uploaded a **VHS** recorded version to Vimeo) we enclose some funny little stills of our moment with BBC Points West on Friday, just before the headline game La Noche De Los Muertes kicked off.
A big and very important publication shall soon be released, celebrating the success of the Media Sandbox scheme that proved so instrumental in helping launch our business. The Happy Packages project in collaboration with Mobile Pie, currently in suspended animation / on hiatus, has opened many doors for us but more than anything has kept the dream alive that one day we’ll get rich with our own IP. If all else fails, the pictures below suggest we might have back-up careers as a boy band, don’t they?
Yup. The moose are currently de-camping at the Studio, brilliant!
We now can’t wait for this weekend. The whole of Bristol will be descending to play at igFest. This is the 2nd year running and it’s already over-booked again!
Is there no limit to what this boy will do to appear in print!? From the bleeding edge of technological advancement comes the story of one boy’s quest to…destroy a table. And for some reason a national newspaper, The Guardian no less, thought it worthy of page 3 in their staple lunch-break supplement G2.
The story focuses on the recent abuse the NHS has recevied from right-wing American policy wonks attempting to derail Obama’s health reforms. Mr Course chipped into the Twitter hashtag debate (#welovethenhs) with his own heart-warming story from the NHS operating theatre. With fond memories of being lovingly nurtured back to good health in the bosom of our revered state-funded health system, he recounts in 140 characters the unfortunate lead-up to his injury. Needless to say he won’t be toe-punting any table legs in the near future. Or missing any more snowboarding trips, we hope…
Thought Den really liked this article on the Marketing Donut Blog. It’s all about getting your brother’s best mate to sort your website for ya’ cos he did HTML at school last term….
It’s difficult enough explaining what Pervasive Media means so how on earth do we go about persuading clients to part with their dwindling cash supplies on projects that are inherently risky? They regularly challenge traditional interaction and engagement; they can involve un-proven technologies that are still in development; they are often only delivered on a small scale, to a handful of people. It seems that, at the moment at least, a large part of what we are aiming to do is create a spectacle and generate buzz, encourage debate, mobilise the digital communities and inspire as much press coverage as possible.
Many of the clients employing Pervasive Media for promotional campaigns are dependent on its PR success. Enable Interactive’s Alternate Reality Game (ARG) for the Red Cross was hugely effective because of the extensive press coverage achieved with an almost non-existent media spend. The product engaged its audience and was genuinely interesting to the national press; innovation captures the imagination.
So are we likely to see more brands take these sorts of risks? And let’s be honest – the risk must be part of the appeal. As the arteries of the internet continue to be clogged with LOLs and ROFLs , sponsored marketing messages and sleep-walking dogs it is harder and harder to build an authentic and rewarding relationship with an audience. Pervasive Media is the new frontier for engagement – it could be online, offline, on a mobile device, in a busy metropolis or on a deserted hillside, in a dis-used prison or projected onto a building facade. What is unique about this sort of work is they create an atmosphere, they are experiences that transcend the medium and exist as part of day to day life, no longer confined to the screen.
And so how do we sell these products, services and pervasive propositions? We need to get people excited about them, we need examples, we need to develop a language that describes pervasive experiences, we need to come together as a community and keep on expanding and exploring, pushing the envelope, dancing on the cutting edge!
Jeez’s it’s getting good! A quick update on aMap the Argument Mapping widget/gadget which launched 10 days ago (read about it here). It’s been spreading and so far it’s had full articles on TechCrunch and the Daily Telegraph site since it went live.
Even better than that, this first version of the aMap widget/gadget has ignited bloggers’ passions and they’ve been leaving some very ‘constructive’ comments on how to improve it for the next version, like,
“Great, although it can still develop the argument threading – the concept is interesting.”, James.
“the idea is good, except the map is too shaky and is difficult to read”, ujjwal kumar.
So here’s looking forward to the version 2, and Thought Den working with Delib on the Interaction, Flash and PHP to make their product even more successful! Because last night, it screamed past 1000 arguments created (see below) which isn’t too shabby!
If you’re interested in what Thought Den can bring to your business, like expanding on your digital markets, interaction design & a shed load of fresh ideas then check our portfolio to see how we’ve helped other brands rock. Thanks, dan at thoughtden dot co dot uk
