Archive for the ‘BBH Labs’ Category
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Homeless Hotspots: what we’re doing now
30th April 12
As promised in our follow-up post to Homeless Hotspots, we wanted to keep everyone updated on how those learnings- and open conversations- are being applied to try to help fight homelessness at scale.We’re quite proud to say we’re in active dialogue with both the North American Street Newspaper Association (NASNA) and the International Network of Street Papers (INSP) working out how to help their members (150 or so papers across the globe) address some key issues they face in a modern media landscape. We’ve begun by working on a key pilot program: StreetWise in Chicago. We came to meet Jim LoBianco, who runs the paper (and broader organization), after he wrote this post during Homeless Hotspots. Upon speaking with Jim, it was clear he has a track record of innovation fighting homelessness, and that the organization is dealing with a number of issues familiar to papers around the world, including:
- Digitizing payments options for street vendors working in an environment in which fewer people are carrying change
- Offering digital services to accompany a print offering under pressure
- Ensuring vendors have a clear set of tools to earn income and offer something of commercial value
- Do all of the above without eroding vendors’ ability to engage with mainstream society (this is good for both parties, and is the key issue that blossomed into Homeless Hotspots originally)
If we can collectively address these issues for the largest North American street paper, we’re optimistic we can help other interested street papers evolve with the changing media and mobile landscape.
We’ll continue to keep everyone posted on progress. We appreciate the exceptional level of support you’ve shown for the participants and the shelter throughout this process. In fact, it may be worth heading over to the Front Steps Facebook page to say congrats to Hotspot Manager Jonathan who raised enough money from Homeless Hotspots to put him over the edge and move out of the shelter and into housing!
If you’re interested in helping us with any of these efforts, please reach out.
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Our top ten links of the past 7 days: 20 April 2012
20th April 12
Posted in BBH Labs
If you’re a regular reader of the blog, you’ll know that we send out a email to BBH staff with 10 links we’ve liked over the past 7 days. We look for things that are provocative, challenging, useful, or just plain interesting. When we feel really good about the list, we post it to the blog. Here’s this week’s list. Feel free to let us know what we’re missing. The list is strongly influenced by what we tweet and what we put on our Google + page. Here goes:
Dr Techniko's extraordinary 'How To Train Your Robot' class
How To Train Your Robot – how DrTechniko teaches kids rudiments of programming logic (simple, genius): http://bit.ly/HRYWpQ (via@endofu)
‘Innovation Isn’t Easy, Esp Midstream’ - @nickbilton on why Kodak were incapable of making Instagram: http://nyti.ms/HOpRB1 (via @Malbonnington)
Is this the digital fin de siècle? Has the old thing run its course? A provocative must read: http://bit.ly/IMAWQG (via @jayanandrajog)
“Meaninful” startups - @cdixon on evolutionary vs transformative entrepreneurialism: http://bit.ly/HUnKQD
‘Instagram as an island economy’ - @genmon asks how do you value a closed system? http://bit.ly/HxcIz9 (HT @PatsMc)
‘We have confused productivity with acceleration’ – from interesting@lifehacker piece ‘Email Is Not Broken; We Are’: http://lifehac.kr/J9YYcY
Spectacular long read, nonfiction from 2011 – in Byliner: http://bit.ly/J7YQHmThe makers of ‘Welcome to Pine Point’ share what makes it work as a piece of interactive storytelling: http://bit.ly/JmuOjc and check out the story itself too: http://bit.ly/kE79iZ (HT @jamescmitchell)
Battle for the Internet: http://bit.ly/J0EGBQ - @guardian‘s 7 day investigation into the future of the open Internet
How would a computer scientist go about solving the issues facing journalism? Headlines on Nieman Journalism Lab blog here: http://bit.ly/I6ntDn (via @jeffjarvis)
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And a bonus 11th link, kids send Go Pro 3D cameras into space (does Space Battleship Yamato beat Lego Man?): http://tcrn.ch/J3EVhi
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That’s Entertainment: #wywo online films
19th April 12
Posted in BBH Labs, culture, online video
(click above image to view them all now)Earlier this month we released a nifty little iPhone specific web app for the connected set. While we were off building it, (you see what we did there) we decided to produce some quirky promotional films to support the app’s launch.
We crafted short narratives that extended the comedic tone of the application, and helped explain the usefulness of While You Were Off through a series of possible situations may have kept you offline and away from the glorious Internet. Watch them all on our Youtube Channel.
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While You Were Off: an iPhone web app for the connected set
5th April 12
Makers gunna make…
Anyone familiar with how we run Labs knows we make a concerted effort to learn by making. The thoughts published here and elsewhere, as well as the community’s feedback, often spark ideas that we bring to life internally for no reason other than a love of doing. For us, our curiosity was both in what we did and why we did it the way we did. Today, we’re announcing the latest output of that addiction.While You Were Off is our venture into developing a mobile specific web application. We created it to learn more about the staged process of creating such an app in an MVP-minded way. It’s especially important because more and more often, applications are running free of the device and powered by cloud services. While You Were Off (#WYWO) embraces this idea as it serves you the content you missed while your phone was offline. It features two feeds: 1) a World Wide Web (WWW) feed that taps into a curated list of APIs that we feel best represent “internet culture” and 2) a personalized Your Wide Web (YWW) feed that runs the same algorithm to display the “most interesting” content from your specific social networks.
Determining the need…
A common feeling most of you are familiar with is the pseudo-anxiety one feels awakening your dormant mobile device after it’s been offline. It’s that “post Airplane Mode tingle” we’ve admitted to one another while traveling together. We all scramble to quickly catch up immediately on email, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. We felt a need for a mobile tool to quickly reconnect and get back up to speed with the internet with one click of the WYWO icon.So we built it. And what better place to start than the beloved pink While You Were Out corporate memo pad? We even tried to pay homage to its charming name and anachronistic style. The difference is this version of the pad is specifically built for iPhones.
A model to vet native app development…
Native application development can be a costly risk. Although we have no revenue or brand expectations, we see this as an opportunity to explore a model a client may find useful. We saw an opportunity to use modern web application development as a way of vetting an application’s value by putting it in the audience’s hands first. This method allows us to test in the wild.We can optimize the experience based on consumer behavior and use that data to inform a future build, be it further web app development (including an Android version), or an eventual native app. We’ve focused on building this simple application in a way that lets us easily track performance and usage to bring about the natural parallel behaviors between web & native apps.
Pull out your iPhone and point it to http://wywo.me to give it a whirl. Once you play with it, we would love your feedback on what you like, how we can make it better, and how you are using it. Use the comments below to send us your thoughts. Thanks.
May 1st 2012, #wywo claims the Mobile Site of The Day @FWA
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Marching Backwards into 2012
21st December 11
Posted in BBH Labs
http://www.vimeo.com/32001208“The past went that-a-way … We look at the present through a rear view mirror. We march backwards into the future.” – Marshall McLuhan
Predictions are a mug’s game. In these uncertain times you won’t find us sticking our heads above the futurology parapet and making some rash pronouncements on the coming this or the tomorrow of that. Instead, at this time of the year, we like to approach the future with a longing gaze in the rear view mirror and a look back at the last 12 months of postings on this blog – 81 of them in all from 35 contributors.
As in previous years, below you’ll find ten of our favourite posts from 2011 – the ones that have provoked us in the learning and writing and our generous readers in the comments. But our self-analysis has also uncovered buried themes, some revisited, others newer, which marked our 2011 and perhaps set a tone for the year to come.
Storytelling and new forms of narrative have always been of interest to us in Labs, but this year we’ve added the growing attention paid to, er, attention to the mix with a couple of guest posts on connected TV and further exploration into storytelling with our Fray Cafe-esque TaleTorrent event for Internet Week. For many, all around the world, 2011 has been a year of grassroot activism and whilst occupying Kingly Street and 32 Avenue of the Americas is our day job, sustainable marketing and creativity for good have also bubbled up as pervasive themes in a number of posts this year. And given the tumultus changes happening within our industry, you won’t be surprised to see industry innovation and reinvention well represented as another theme below. Perhaps more than any other year since Labs was founded in 2008, this has been a year of rolling up sleeves and putting theory into practice.
It might seem that 2011 has not been a stellar year in terms of innovation in the broader technology industry. While our Facebook experience has been timelined, our Googling plussed and our questions quora-ed, the space shuttle programme has come to a close, the Higgs Boson remains elusive and so perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised that this year also saw a number of more reflective rather than reactive posts. BBH London Chairman Jim Carroll set the tone for a theme we’re calling ‘Think While you Make’, with a lovely series of elegiac posts on sleep, ennui and nocturnally abnormal wildlife.
So while we recover over the holidays we look forward to much more thinking and making, talking and doing in 2012. As always we are are astonished by the generosity of everyone who writes for, reads, shares or comments on the blog. It’s been an amazing year. Thanks for taking part, thanks for letting us in and thank you for everything you’ve taught us this year.
We’re already looking forward to the start of the Spring term – see you back at school in the new year.
Mel, Jeremy & Saneel
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So, finally, Labs top 10 for ‘11, in mostly chronological order.
1. Think While You Make, Make While You Think
Some setting out of the stall in this post which encouraged us to find a balance between action and reflection, to not have too many tabs open at once, and occassionally to leave things alone for a while to let them ripen at their own pace.
2. Collaborative Consumption & Customer Co-creation
It might be a small cheat to bundle these two great posts together in a top ten, but as a pair they make a strong argument for more evolved thinking when it comes to creativity, collaboration and consumption. When audiences are willing to participate in branded activities and business see the benefit of a more transparent and collaborative model, co-creation and collaborative consumption are surely pivotal to the ongoing success of any forward facing brand.
A fascinating guest post from Google’s David Bryant on the convergence of computer and human operating systems and the increasing adoption of intuitive physical interactions that provoke a more instinctive than reasoned response.
Provoked by a couple of posts on the need (or not) for agencies to employ Chief Innovation Officers this post looks at how to be an innovation unit and what the wider agency can and should demand of those it employs to push the envelope and live on the edge.
5. Creative Direction Vs Creative Selection
‘No one works for a Creative Director. Everyone works for the idea. The idea hires us and we go to work.’ The most popular post of the year from BBH LA’s ECD Pelle Sjoenell on the role of the Creative Director as politician, farmer and assassin.
For Labs, meeting Amber Case and learning about Geoloqi, the location sharing startup she is developing with Aaron Parecki, was one of the highlights of SXSW. We’re already looking forward to seeing her keynote in 2012 and catching up with the great concentration of smart people that SXSW attracts. Come and say hello if you’re there.
7. Turning Intelligence into Magic
To mark the launch of Sir John Hegarty’s book, we asked him a series of questions which he answered with a series of sketches, an appropriately witty, incisive and ‘different’ interview celebrating an iconic advertising career.
At Labs we celebrate the hybrid, but in this post recognize that a team of hybrids might lack the depth in specific disciplines, might spend too much time agreeing with each other and might only be appropriate to crack certain tasks. As Ben points out in the comments, it’s important for a jack of all trades to be a master of some!
A consideration for a new thinking about what an agency can be, should be and could do as we approach ‘marketing singularity’, the moment the message becomes indistinguishable from the product or service it promotes. Instead of codifying an agency operating system around functions and outputs, we suggest that an agency of the future needs an OS rooted in a culture of collaboration, experimentation and transparency.
Lastly, in a year when social media has been both blamed for fuelling the London riots and praised for fuelling the Arab Spring, we can’t have a top ten list without acknowledging the Keep Aaron Cutting project. Thanks to the generosity (there’s that word again) of all the BBH blog and twitter stream readers who used social media to spread the word about an 89-year-old barber from North London who might have lost everything, Aaron’s shop is well on the way to being rebuilt and a nice old guy has had his faith in young people and in technology restored.
More of this next year, please.
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Tech interns, we need you.
28th October 11
Authors: Gabor Szalatnyai (Creative Technology) & James Mitchell (Strategy), BBH London & BBH Labs
Here at Labs, we make a lot of stuff for other people and brands, but, now and then, we like to build experiments – additional stuff we love so much, we take extra time and pull late nights to see it done. We do this because sometimes, we want to test a theory, because we want to test our capabilities, and because we want to make something cool.
With one very special project, we’re ready to begin the making and we’re going to spend the next three months doing just that. Which is why we we’d like some inspirational new talent to come and intern with us in London to help out. We are embarking on a project with Rails and MongoDB on the backend and HTML5 on the front. We would expect you to have previous projects using these, and if you are confident with CoffeeScript, Sass and Javascript game engines (craftyjs, gameQuery, renderEngine,) you’ll enjoy the coding even more. We are managing source code with git on GitHub, so prepare your branching and merging skills too!
But this role is about more than the build. We’ll work iteratively on this, so we’ll be testing and learning as we go. This means you’ll be working with the team to prototype, test, bend and break – modifying and bettering the experiment at every stage. We’ll expect you to have a major impact on the idea itself. You’ll have the freedom to implement any technical solution that solves the problem, to work with the entire team to make sure the thing doesn’t just happen, but happens better.
Why work with us? Because we hope you’ll agree the project is cool, the team is a diverse and interesting one, and the use of data is, as far as we know, something that’s never been tried before. And, at the end of it all, you’ll get to put your name against something very special.
To apply, please send a nice message (with your GitHub username and/or some work) to **labs.intern@bartleboglehegarty.com**, and we’ll have a chat about what we’re trying to build. If you have any more questions, drop them in the comments. Thanks!
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Our top 10 in the last 7 days: 17th May 2011
17th May 11
Posted in BBH Labs
NASA's space shuttle Endeavour at Mach 11, as seen on Google Earth 05.16.11
Regular readers will know that every now and again we share our top ten links over the past 7 days. This one has a particular space mission flavour to it, we hope you enjoy.
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We’ve fallen in love with Photopic Sky Survey, a 5,000 megapixel photograph of the entire night sky (see image below).
Legendary Technologist John Seely Brown talks about “the big shift” and much more in this fantastic speech.
Our friends at Made By Many launched madebyideas, an elegantly simple platform for sharing and rating ideas.
This interactive film by Chris Milk is the latest Chrome Experiment (case study by Mirada here).
Prinstagram is the latest star in the exploding Instagram solar-system, letting you print photos or Instagrid posters.
Think Insights is a new digital marketing trends site from Google because “data beats opinion.”
BBH friend Adam Wohl writes a manifesto on the future of agencies.
An epic post by Dan Light on emerging trends in movie-land, “Distribution, Redistributed.”
BBH London’s Chairman, Jim Carroll, asks “Whose ad is it anyway?” in this post on the Labs blog.
Labs’ Jeremy Ettinghausen interviewed Amber Case (@caseorganic, a cyborg anthropologist) about everything you’d want him to.
*Bonus* Google launched its Chromebook last week (a computer-like object). Here’s the BBH-created video.
Source: Photopic Sky Survey -
Keep Austin Weird
1st March 11
So in 10 days we’ll be relocating the BBH Labs experience to Austin, Tx for the annual geek jamboree that is the South by SouthWest Interactive festival. I last attended three years ago, when I was an earnest book publisher and before advertising folk had descended in force and totally harshed the vibe, man.
This year I’m really looking forward to meeting lots of likeminds and seeing where, if anywhere, the paradigm has shifted and intend to follow @katylindemann‘s guidance of not going to see anything I already know anything about already, which makes for a pretty packed itinerary.
Given that the web based scheduler is, imho, ‘not very fun to use’ it might be that twitter or sitby.us prove to be more useful discovery tools for the good stuff, providing of course that wifi and/or 3G are in operation. We’ve hacked together a rough list (with agile development and rapid iterations built in!) using the web interface, the recently launched official app, an old fashioned contacts book (yes, friends and family are represented at SXSW) and have uploaded it to sitby.us where you can find it here.
Ping us if we’ve missed anything vital, if you want to hang out and, most importantly, to let me know where I should go for breakfast tacos now that Las Manitas has closed down!
See you there.
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Top 10 links from the last 7 days: 27th January 2011
27th January 11
Posted in BBH Labs
If you’re a regular reader of the blog, you know that we send out a weekly email to the BBH staff with 10 links we like every week. We look for things that are provocative, challenging, useful, or just plain interesting. When we feel really good about the list, we post it to the blog. Here’s the list from the last 7 days. Feel free to let us know what we’re missing. The list is strongly influenced by what we tweet. Or if following us is too big a commitment, feel free to get our links via trunk.ly.
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Source: Sensimed
Next-gen iPads & iPhones can be your payment system for things in the real world. Apple’s place in our lives may be on the verge of changing dramatically.
Smart contact-lenses with heads-up LED iris displays. Welcome to the world of augmented vision.
Former black Sheep Ben Malbon went to Tokyo on business and made this fantastic instagram album of his trip.
“We’re so eager to describe the web in utopian or dystopian terms.” NYT’s review of Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together book.
Social Media Week is a global event from 2/7 – 2/11 with a number of incredible, free events worth attending.
A second worthy bit (& piece) from the Malbon family. Tim Malbon of Made by Many rants on participation requests from brands (read the comments too).
BMW is making films again, but this time they’re documentaries about mobility. They had us at ‘jet packs.’
A collection of brilliant quotes from startups that deliver incredible wisdom in just a few characters.
We loved (and almost solved) this visual puzzle of 20 things that happened on the Internet in 2010.
TED launches TEDBooks & hot off the press, @brainpicker takes a look at the launch proposition and first titles.
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Our top ten reads from the last 7 Days: 20th January 2011
20th January 11
Posted in BBH Labs
We’ve mentioned before that we pick just 10 links we like the look of every week (provocative, challenging, useful and/or entertaining tend to be the order of the day) and send them to our friends at BBH around the world.
It’s heavily based on the @BBHLabs twitterstream across 7 days, but filleted, honed and whittled to a Top Ten for anyone who fancies a filter between them and the 24/7, 365 days a year drenching in data that is Twitter.
So here it is again. Feel free to pass on. As usual, ideas on making it more useful always welcome.
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Comprehensive analysis of CityVille game mechanics - http://bit.ly/eN4GWq
How novels came to terms with the internet - http://bit.ly/ewWiSj (via @garethkay)
66% of 16-24s cite *entertainment* as prime motivation to engage with brands - http://bit.ly/hNvy4D (via @contagiousmag)
If you’re in the Bay area, you only have a few days left to book Kevin Kelly to come and talk about What Technology Wants to your team - http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/
“Instead of thinking about what to build – It’s about building in order to think” Tim Brown at TED in 09 - http://bit.ly/h2qgHT (via @sermad)
“Each media channel is a strand in the rope that is the story” – nice piece on @LanceWeiler‘s take on transmedia - http://bit.ly/ha94fy
The Past Imagines the Future – @brainpicker revisits retrofuturism - http://bit.ly/iebLIE
The Number One Key to Innovation? Scarcity - http://j.mp/f90r5h (via @malbonnington)
Interview with Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia for the site’s 10th birthday - http://bit.ly/hfzDzB
2010 online, by the numbers - http://nyti.ms/f3elXQ (via @edwardboches)
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And bonus 11th – We’ve come a long way, baby – Map of the internet 1972 http://t.co/URxFwds Vs map of the world through Facebook connections 2010 http://t.co/MyyXkUy
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