Katie Spence:
Sourcing business ideas from real-world communities
Our friend and associate, Bryan Boyer, has written about opportunities he sees in Helsinki every day: empty storefronts. Specifically, Bryan would like to be able to publicly request that a cafe opens up in an empty commercial space in his neighborhood:
On the ground floor of my apartment building is a small shop that just went out of business. It used to sell snowboard clothes but during two years of residence I never spotted a single customer inside. Lacking a great cafe in my neighborhood, I would love the next person thinking about hanging their shingle to have a way to get an idea of what the market might be interested in.
A fantastic idea. Most entrepreneurs keep their eyes open for opportunities in the market, but it's always a significant gamble. With a public forum listing the market's wishes and needs, the degree of risk is slightly less. Kickstarter, the creative micro-financing site, played the muse of Bryan's theory:
What would the Kickstarter of real estate look like and how might a similar demand-aggregator offer a productive counterpart to the dreaded “not in my back yard” syndrome? Is there a “please in my backyard” platform that could act as a spatial happiness engine, better empowering individuals to inflect their own corner of the city to meet their personal desires?
Do go and read his whole post, which includes pictures of the unused storefronts in Helsinki. In addition to a canny eye for design, he is a very talented writer: Please in My Backyard. One day, we'd love to help Bryan make this idea a reality.
SXSWi: Tales of the Past Future
We have little more than a week before the masses descend on Austin for SXSW. If you'll be attending SXSWi, you should come to my core conversation, "Tales of the Past Future." It's going to be less formal than a panel, no stage, no AV equipment nor power point deck. We'll all be sitting around, discussing our earliest experience on the internet and where it is we saw the internet going versus where it went. It's basically a good excuse to reminisce about the old 'net days.
The very nice folks at SXSW suggested I include the phrase "web pioneers" in the title of my talk. While there will be a couple of old school bloggers in attendance , I think we can all consider ourselves to be "web pioneers" in some sense. Everyone (with a badge) is welcome to come and share their experiences and lessons learned.
Some things to think about before coming:
- How did the internet come to your house?
- How old were you when you first logged on?
- How did your online life affect your offline life?
- How does the internet of today compare to your ideas of the internet back then?
Speaking of old school, after the core conversation we will be attending the Old Timers Ball at the Side Bar, hosted by Matt Haughey.
Tales of the Past Future / Friday March 11, 5 pm / Austin Convention Center, Room 8A
Vote for our SXSW panels
Preparations for SXSW seem to start earlier and earlier every year. No matter, for we love the festival that brings the world to our door step every March. The panels featured at SXSW are chosen in part by the votes of the audience. That's where you come in.
Ben has proposed a panel called Behind the Scenes of Online Communities. Vote for this panel here. His pitch:
Join real people who run real communities to learn what it's like to run a site with thousands or millions of members. Building a loyal community is a key component to the success of your website, whether you're running a content site, a web application, or something in-between. They may not have a voice on your site yet, but the community is out there, talking amongst themselves. We will discuss the practical realities of opening the doors of your website to member participation - how, when, and why. When "users" become "members," you are sharing the ownership and management responsibilities of the site with them. Your most loyal members will be with you on launch day, they'll help you through redesigns, and they'll mourn the passing of each feature that doesn't quite make it out of beta. We will discuss the risks and rewards your community will bring.
Katie's panel, which she will theoretically moderate, is called Tales of the Future Past: Web Pioneers Remember. Vote for this panel here. Her pitch:
This year, millions of people will start their first blog. Millions of people will write their first tweet, join their first social network, or post their first picture to the Web. Welcome to the future, guys, but some of us have been at this for nearly two decades! Join a panel of industry veterans who rode the waves of the first boom and lived to tell the tales of the '90s Internet. Featuring practical stories of life lessons learned online as well as fond (and not so fond) memories of bygone sites, startups and memes, this will be a great panel for those who lived through it, and those who wish to learn from the hilarious and heartbreaking mistakes of others.
Let the beautiful democracy of SXSW panel voting begin!
Helsinki Design Lab in the press
The local press in Helsinki, Finland have taken notice of Bryan Boyer and the launch of Helsinki Design Lab.
From We Are Helsinki:
Designer-architect BRYAN BOYER, originally from California but now settled into Helsinki, is puzzled by the misuse of terminology. "Strategy often gets mixed up with planning. To be strategic, you have to also make difficult decisions and produce results," ponders the Harvard graduate, who has been working on Sitra's Helsinki Design Lab project since the fall of 2008.
Read the rest here.
Helsinki Design Lab Launches
It's been a busy time here at XOXCO. I am very happy to announce our second launch of the month, Helsinki Design Lab. It was our first time working with an organization on another continent, but HDL's Bryan Boyer and his nightowl tendencies made it easy for us.
HDL's mission, in part, is as follows:
We assist decision-makers to view challenges from a big-picture perspective, and provide guidance toward more complete solutions that consider all aspects of a problem. Our mission is to advance this way of working - we call it strategic design.
HDL is collecting case studies of strategic design projects to be featured on the site and at their conference later this year. Applications for inclusion to HDL are accepted through the site.
We wanted the website to do justice to the beauty of HDL's identity and collateral, so we partnered with Andy Pressman at Rumors Studio, who did an excellent job of creating the website's design.
We're especially proud of bringing to life the special features around the site:
- Subtle animation effects in the case study and around the site highlight portions of the content.
- Case studies "come to life" as they are created using the submission tool thanks to tons of fancy CSS and jQuery magic.
- Each time the page is loaded a randomized version of the logo appears!
- "Exquisite" PDFs are generated through a custom javascript-based pagination function.
- Behind the scenes, all of the editorial tools feature autosave!
Of course, PeoplePods is providing the community components necessary for running the intense multi-user creative and editorial process Bryan and his internationally distributed team use to craft the case studies they feature. Thanks to Bryan, Andy and their teams for their hard work on this!
MediaBugs.org Launches
Today we helped launch MediaBugs.org, a website that aims to 'fix the news.' When Scott Rosenberg approached us for this project, his goal was to create a space where the average newspaper reader could submit a "bug" - or an error in reporting - that they'd spotted in their local paper. With the local news organizations participating, a conversation between the audience and the journalist responsible could then resolve the issue.
We built the site using our own PeoplePods software. It was a perfect fit for the type of interaction between readers and news organizations that Scott envisioned. Mignon Khargie designed the logo and branding, which was carried into the look and feel of the site with the help of Courtney Patubo.
For the launch, Scott and Mark Follman are focusing on Bay Area media, but eventually their plan is to expand nation-wide.
Weeknote 73
It's the end of the year, so as we try to hit our deadlines and move projects forward before the holidays, I have the glamorous job of organizing all of the financial information to have it ready for taxes. OK, it's not really glamorous but it is oddly satisfying.
I held the fort down in Austin, and Ben flew to San Francisco. While there, he met with Micki from NeighborGoods, Scott and Mark from MediaBugs and Amit from Photojojo.
When he returned, we watched the video prototype for the potential future of magazines, Mag+ brought to us by BERG and Bonnier R&D. Sadly the prototype comes at us the same week that the
Soul of the Community Launches
It is our pleasure to announce the launch of our latest client project, Soul of the Community.
Soul of the Community (SOTC) is three-year study conducted by Gallup of the 26 John S. and James L. Knight Foundation communities across the United States employing a fresh approach to determine the factors that attach residents to their communities and the role of community attachment in an area's economic growth and well-being. The study focuses on the emotional side of the connection between residents and their communities.
We had the help of some great folks on this project: Jesse Keyes, Courtney Patubo and Brian Oberkirch. We're pleased with the result of our combined efforts and we feel lucky to have worked with the Knight Foundation on such an important study.