Archives
Bullying, the market for education and the damaged quest for learning
Posted on September 11, 2014 2 Comments
A recent study found looked into the experience of cyberbullying by university professors at the hands of their students. This disturbing phenomenon points to much larger issues beyond mental health promotion and calls into question many of the assumptions we have about the systems we’ve designed to foster education and what it means to be a […]
The Business Model of Social Media: Who Owns the Presses?
Posted on October 1, 2012
When Karl Marx asked: Who owns the presses? he was referring to the ability of wealthy private individuals to control the means of knowledge production and dissemination and thus, influence society as capital owners, not as citizens. The unequal voice of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat was what gave them undue social power. But what happens when the owners and generators of wealth (knowledge, information) shift and the result is a community that relies on the medium of production without the control of it?
Marketing Metaphors of Meaning in Complexity
Posted on July 17, 2012
Marketing is largely about identity and stories about identity. Marketers want to influence what you do (choose, use, purchase, etc..) and how you experience what you do when you do it. To do this, they know the importance of design and the stories to accompany that design. Design, when done well, is partly about creating empathy with those who are to benefit from the products of design and the best products out there are ones that apply empathy and guide behaviour at the same time. Storytelling is the vehicle that links them together.
Complexity and the Senseless Marketing of the Future
Posted on July 16, 2012
Futurists take what we know now and project into the future ideas about things will be like years from today using the models that have worked consistently up to now. Those models applied to human systems are changing quickly making marketing the future based on them senseless and potentially dangerous. Earlier this past week a […]
The Complex Consequences of Simple and Easy
Posted on July 9, 2012 1 Comment
For any marketing of complexity to work, the risk in creating a false guru is high, but so too is the risk of installing overly simplistic filters. In both cases we need to address complexity with a complex response and doing so with one that doesn’t exacerbate the problem by adding too much extraneous information to our media ecology, getting us back into trouble elsewhere.
Marketing the Narrative of Complexity
Posted on July 6, 2012
Complexity, by its very nature, is not a simple concept to communicate, yet it is increasingly becoming one that will define our times and may be the key to ensuring human survival and wellbeing in the years to come. If society is to respond to complex challenges the meaning of complexity needs to be communicated […]
Branded Knowledge: Does This Make Sense for Health?
Posted on May 23, 2011
Commercial products relying heavily on branding to entice their purchase and use in a crowded marketplace. Is this something that the health sector should consider and, if so, what might it look like? I’ve just spent a rare free weekend in Chicago walking around, taking in the sights, and doing what a lot of other […]
What If Research Was Like the Restaurant Industry?
Posted on April 25, 2011 6 Comments
Take a moment and envision what research could look like if we handcrafted it to meet the needs of our audience, still taking the time to create art like great chefs, warm our day like a host, and treat us like royalty like a great server. What might that look like and why should we not take some queues from the diners we visit and the restaurants we visit as models for a tasty future for knowledge generation and translation.
Complexity, Interaction Design and Social Media
Posted on February 26, 2011 1 Comment
Social media, like all human activities, involves designed interactions in a complex environment. How we design for this space is as much about the social as it is the media.
Social Media Street Cred
Posted on October 20, 2010 2 Comments
As social media folk, we might want to turn some of the marketing strategies we employ with others on to ourselves to see how we might better inform the public about the possibilities of social media and what kind of talk that they need to see walked before enlisting that next social media “expert”.
