March 11, 2013 (4 weeks ago)
Rackspace loves startups
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[Thanks to @bombtune for sending me this photo of one of my Rackspace cartoons, spotted in the wild at SXSW Interactive.]
Hugh MacLeod
I’m Hugh MacLeod. I’m a cartoonist. Occasionally I write books.
gapingvoid is interested in start-up culture, because changing business for the better is what we’re about; that’s what Social Object Factory is about. We live and breathe it; we help everyone from lone entrepreneurs, to mid-sizers, to Fortune 500’s do the same. Check out our work here.
We create art that helps companies kick ass, end of story.
We also have a daily cartoon newsletter that makes a lot of people happy.
If you just want to say ‘Hello’, feel free to email me, anytime.
If you want to talk business, then it’s probably best to please contact my business partner, gapingvoid CEO Jason Korman, here. We look forward to working with you. Thanks!
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February 21, 2013
What is a “Cultural Object”?
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[More thoughts on The Rackspace Book…]
6. ROB LA GESSE
Rob La Gesse is the groovy cat who first hired gapingvoid at Rackspace.
He’s also the guy who hired my friend, Robert Scoble.
He’s a lot like me and Scoble, i.e. very much his own man, very much an individual.
I suppose that’s why we get along.
Above is a T-shirt design I’ve never showed Rob before– he’s seeing it for the first time here on the blog, the same as you and everyone else. He may like it, he may not.
That’s how Rob and I work together. Like I said in my last blog post, “he lets me just post stuff without getting pre-approval. We like doing that way because it lets him see the work for the first time in the wild, which keeps the thinking fresher, somehow.…”
The thing is, there’s a method to the madness. If the idea fails, hey, it’s just a wee cartoon on a blog post. We can quickly and easily try something else the same day. It’s not like we blew money on a Superbowl ad that ended up bombing…
But if the idea works, it works REALLY well. The idea gets emailed around, both inside and outside the company, to employees, shareholders, customers and non-customers alike. It suddenly takes on a life of its own, on its own merit.
In other words, it suddenly becomes a cultural object (i.e. a social object that articulates the company culture), as opposed to just a usual piece of commercial, “Here’s-why-you-should-give-us-your-money” messaging (You know, the kind that noboday actually cares about).
Rob and I never planned it this way, we just started talking and this is kinda how it evolved. That’s kinda how we both roll. Rock on.
February 20, 2013
The Rackspace Book
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[Screenshot of the cartoon showcase page we did for Rackspace etc.]
I’ve started writing a book about gapingvoid’s experience working with Rackspace. Here are some initial thoughts, some more formed than others:
i. WE’VE LEARNED A TON IN THE PROCESS.
I thought I’d share what we’ve learned about Rackspace along the way, about how this small little web-hosting company from San Antonio, Texas turned their unique take on “just being social” into a billion-dollar business.
ii. CAN A BILLION-DOLLAR COMPANY ACTUALLY BE “SOCIAL”?
I know. Right?
We’ve all been bombarded with the Social Media catchphrases, we’ve all seen the hype spewing out of every Internet orifice out there, we’ve heard every cliché and platitude known to man, we’ve all rolled our eyeballs.
The number of people calling themselves “Social Media Gurus” on Twitter numbers over a hundred thousand. “Business is Social!” “Join the conversation!” “Don’t sell, engage!”
“Hire me!” “I’m available for consultation!” “Write me a big, fat check and I’ll solve all your Social Media problems!”
Like I said, we’ve all rolled our eyeballs.
And yet… what if it actually works?
iii. “DEATH BY COMMODITY”.
Rackspace basically sells a commodity i.e. web hosting and cloud services.
They basically sell a lot of ones and zeroes, that they move through a lot of pipes, back and forth between their customers and their servers.
Not sexy, and highly competitive. What’s more, they’re competing with a lot of blue chip companies A LOT Larger than them: Amazon, Microsoft, IBM etc
It’s an easy place to get your lunch eaten by the big boys.
It’s an easy environment to be killed in.
And yet, they thrive.
iv. THE SECRET WEAPON: “FANATICAL SUPPORT” THE CREATION MYTH.
Two young guys start a web-hosting company, with Graham Weston as an investor. Graham gets an email from an irate customers. “Guys, we have to offer our customers Fanatical Support or this isn’t going to work. An ethos is born…
v. SOME MORE IDEAS TO PLAY WITH:
“IF YOU LOVE YOUR CUSTOMERS ENOUGH, YOU WILL HAVE A GREAT PRODUCT, END OF STORY…”
“DON’T TALK TO ME ABOUT R.O.I., TALK TO ME ABOUT HOW WHAT WE”RE DOING IS ACTUALLY BEING HELPFUL TO OUR CUSTOMERS.”
“HOW THE OPEN CLOUD CHANGES EVERYTHING”
HIRE THE CRAZIES e.g. SCOBLE, LA GESSE, MACLEOD
“A SHOPPING MALL CAN BECOME A CASTLE”
“COMMODITY? ODDITY? OR BOTH?
“PRODUCT IS THE PEOPLE…”
“TAKE HUMAN BITES”
“LEADERSHIP IS ABOUT CREATING MEANING, NOT TELLING THEM WHAT TO DO”
“RACKSPACE HAS TO BECOME A PLACE WHERE PEOPLE’S HIGHEST NEEDS ARE MET, OR WE’RE WASTING OUR TIME.”
“IT’S WHAT RACKSPACE MUST BECOME THAT’S INTERESTING. IT’S WHAT ALL BUSINESS MUST BECOME THAT’S EVEN MORE INTERESTING.”
[To be continued…]
[UPDATE:] Rob La Gesse, the guy who hired me at Rackspace (and also hired Robert Scoble) left the following comment below:
I’ll be interested in seeing how this series progresses. Not sure everyone here knows this, but I don’t vet Hugh’s work — I see it when you see it. And that is pretty cool to me. I experience his work when you do. No preconceptions.
Yep. It’s what makes it fun– he lets me just post stuff without getting pre-approval. We like doing that way because it lets him see the work for the first time in the wild, which keeps the thinking fresher, somehow.…
February 4, 2013
Our BizSpark Canada Commission
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This was a nice little gig: A large print for Bizspark Canada.
Three thoughts:
1. This is my first Microsoft gig for a while [Bizspark is part of their massive startup outreach program], so it felt good to be back in the ol’ saddle again.
2. This piece is a riff on a familiar theme of mine, that a nation is only as good as its startup culture etc. As we see all the economic crap happening in places like Spain and Greece (Unemployment between 25%-60%, depending on the age group!), it’s somethng we urgently need to teach our leaders, by any means necessary. And yes, gapingvoid likes having clients who agree with us.
3. Though I love doing my more highbrow, introspective fine art schtick, I also love the more extrovert stuff for the office wall. Especially offices that belong to interesting folk doing interesting stuff, like the Bizspark gang. This “tense duality” between the inner and outer parts of existence is where the action is. Too much of either one would be BEYOND tedious IMHO…
Thanks to Mark Gagne and the rest of the Bizspark Canada team for making it happen. Rock on.
January 11, 2013
“Love Matters.”
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The groovy cats at Rackspace asked me to design a new t-shirt for them; this cartoon was the first (but not the last) idea I came up with.
I know it embarrasses the grown-ups to say this, but… Love matters in Business, as much as anywhere else. Rackspace knows this as much as any client I’ve ever worked with, small or large.
Nothing wrong with connecting ‘Love’ with $1 billion in sales… Without Love, their whole “Fanatical Support” thing (something they built their whole company around) would be impossible. And I doubt there are any high-ups at Rackspace who would disagree with me.
It’s nothing to do with Romantic love, of course. Love equals passion, equals care, equals real meaning and good work etc. Exactly.
This t-shirt gig got us thinking at gapingvoid Central, why can’t Valentines’ Day (a big day in our calendar, already) be an opportunity to go beyond Romance, to communicate to those who matter to you, that they matter, that you care, and that we are all in this together?
Either by the gapingvoid Love Store or by the gapingvoid Inspiration store. Either one, it’s a great way on V-Day to express to people the stuff that really matters. Exactly.
[P.S. If you’re a Racker reading this, please leave a comment below. I’d love to hear your input on the shirt, Thanks!]
January 9, 2013
Dan Sullivan and Babs Smith
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Awwww… We were sent this photo, a commission for Dan Sullivan and Babs Smith, the husband & wife strategic coach team, that was done as a Holiday present to them, from our old buddy, Joe Polish.
“Entrepreneurship completes us.” Exactly.
Thanks Dan and Babs for taking the lovely photo, and Thanks to Joe for the great commission. Awesome.
[N.B. Sure, we do personal commissions all the time; feel free to email me at hugh AT gapingvoid.com for more info, Thanks!]
January 1, 2013
Can a New Web App Change How Companies Manage Employee Development ?
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Tilt helps you improve how you deal with people to get you to your absolute best
O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us, to see oursels as others see us.”
[Oh would some power have the gift to give us, to see ourselves as others see us.”]
The most enjoyable part of what we to do is getting to work with great companies. They range from multinationals, to newly minted billion dollar businesses and many startups.
When we were approached by a young startup, Tilt 365, last year we were intrigued by their service. Founder, Pam Boney, has the following Carl Jung quote on the bottom of her emails, “The world will ask you who you are, and if you do not know, the world will tell you.”, and in a simplistic way, this also sums up their service: The idea that we can cultivate our talents through constant feedback from our colleagues and the people around us.
We all know that once a year annual reviews & 360’s that become dated within a month, kinda suck. What is their true purpose? Can a person really be expected to make behavioral changes just from a meeting every year, or quarter, for that matter?
The folks at Tilt have created this nifty little web app that allows colleagues to assess personality patterns that are affecting others. The truth is that HR usually does a good job at hiring competent people, but what makes them effective, is all about personality and people skills - a person’s negative or positive influence on the climate around them. Pam’s tool shows us how we Tilt in and out of certain behaviors and how it impacts the people around us.
It’s all done real time and in what looks like a pretty darn perfect feedback loop. It reminded me of this piece in Wired a couple of years ago.
We’ve done quite a bit of creative for Tilt, helping them to visually communicate the behavioral changes and movement through the process– and we’ll be talking more about how this service can help affect change in businesses, especially enterprise.
Here’s to Tilting the right way in 2013 
November 7, 2012
The gapingvoid Manifesto, a work in progress
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[One of the pieces we did for Techcrunch etc.]
The gapingvoid Manifesto, Draft One.
[This is what we have so far. Jason (our CEO) wrote most of it. We feel we’re on the cusp of something, now we just need to make it more real for other people. Feedback welcome, thanks. Exciting!]
PART ONE:
Business is language. Business is about communication.
Art is is the undiscovered UX of business.
We live in incredible times.
Every single person on this earth has the capacity to make a difference… the
ability to lead, and leave their mark.
Every business is driven by forces far more powerful and profound than money.
We help businesses discover and articulate their purpose,
We help people make a difference,
We help leaders inspire.
We help businesses kick ass.
We create social objects that transform organizations, start conversations,
and spread ideas at lightning speed.
We live in incredible times. And as long as there is one person on this earth who does not agree, there is still work to be done.
Any Company/Cause/Political Party/Religion that communicates more clearly and concisely stands a better chance at winning. Art bridges this communication gap.
It is perceived as more genuine, More honest, less varnished.
Well conceived art gets attention organically
Art allows you to have conversations that you couldn’t otherwise have.
Art is a lever for action.
Art creates connection.
Art is shorthand to communicate complex issues.
Art creates community.
Art connects with a different part of the brain.
Art is Visual. Visual communications are 10x more effective than written communication.
Give a gift basket and be remembered for a week, give a print and be remembered forever.
PART TWO:
We want to transform the world of business by transforming the world of office art.
Most people believe that the act of decorating the walls of their office is seemingly one that is decided by taste: The colors of the art on the wall need not clash with the furniture, carpet or CEO’s aesthetic sensibilities.
In reality, act of decorating the walls of your office is a critical business and we believe, a moral decision. It can either set the stage for greatness and innovation, or set the stage for perpetuating the dreary, gloomy and monotonous world that is your business. It has nothing to do with aesthetics, and everything to do with purpose. The purpose and beliefs of your business.
If you could steer the course of your business by simply making a different decision about what hangs on the walls, why wouldn’t you?
Many business leaders do not realize that environment influences everything at work: Job satisfaction, problem solving, creativity, contentment and effectiveness.
You want positive outcomes? Then start with positive work spaces. Your office environment is the compass that guides how people view what they do and how they live their work life.
If you understand what your beliefs are, what your core values are, and how you want people to view why you do what you do, then you should shout those beliefs and values from every available space in your office.
Let the walls talk, guide and ground. Let inspiration hang in the air and have your people breathe and be surrounded by the bright glow of the goodness that your business represents.
The idea of deciding what wall coverings hang on your walls, isn’t about décor.
It is about purpose, culture, and values. Inform your culture, motivate your teams and send a message to the world that will have astounding impact every day of the year.
October 12, 2012
“Kiss any hope of ever leading a normal life good-bye”
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This made me so happy: My friend, Robert Scoble sent me a photo of the big gapingvoid print they have up on the wall in the Rackspace customer briefing room. This is just one of twelve giant 6 foot canvases that adorn the walls.
Aside from being thrilled that they used our work, what is interesting to me is that they had the choice of using lots of different kinds of art. They could have used photos of happy Rackers, customers, data centers, etc. But they chose to broadcast their beliefs by using messages that speak to their beliefs.
This particular cartoon about one of the fundamental aspects of the business: “Fanatical support In all we do”. I tried to present it in a way that I hope is both memorable and refreshingly disarming. Hopefully it touches a nerve.
As time goes by, one of the things that I realize is that having well chosen messages on offices walls is really powerful. They speak to people every day of the year, and brodacast what you stand for.
That’s what we think about more and more around our office, anyway.
October 2, 2012
The gapingvoid Wall at Techcrunch HQ
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[Techcrunch and gapingvoid have been friends for a while- since 2006 or so, actually. And here’s the art to prove it, hanging on a wall in the main Techcrunch offices in downtown San Francisco. Those smaller ones are 9“x12”, larger ones are ginormous. Jeff Sass took the picture while visiting there a couple of weeks ago…]
August 27, 2012
the latest gapingvoid “All-Over”; this time for the Cisco cloud.
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This made me so happy: Instead of YET ANOTHER infographic thingy (Is it just me or are they all starting to look the same?), Cisco commissioned us to produce a cloud-related “gapingvoid All-Over” for their upcoming #vBrownBag event that they’re sponsoring at VMworld, the big cloud computing conference.
As Cisco’s Amy Lewis blogged:
@ciscoDC is a proud sponsor of #vBrownBag this year. Known for their work in the virtualization space, a guide to all things training, we’ve included some great information on their USB key of awesome. The #vBrownBag crew will be out in force, and they’re easily identified. Remember, it’s all about the visuals. Visit the ProfessionalVMware.com blog for complete details on the happenings with their crew. Great information, check it out.
[…]
Whether you’re there IRL or enjoying the show from the comforts of wifi, follow @ciscoDC and #ciscovmw for livetweeting from key sessions, updates from roving reporters Josh Atwell andScott Hanson, and whiteboard showdowns from industry leaders as part of Engineers Unplugged (like MTV Unplugged, but with whiteboards and tech rock stars). Like theCiscoDC Facebook page for insider pictures, caption challenges, and more.
Your turn. How do you approach VMworld? Share a link to your blog, whiteboard pic, or video. Tweet @ciscoDC with #ciscovmw
as the tag.
As I’ve said more than once before, I’m spending a lot of time thinking about The Cloud and “Big Data”. I think it’s going to be huge; it’s going to change the world; far more so than most people imagine.
I know, I know, when you say “The Cloud” to people, they mostly scratch their head. But the head-scratching it generates reminds me A LOT of the head scratching that happend when you mentioned “The Internet” to people, back in the 1990s. Or “Personal Computers”, back in the 1970s.
Unlike the Internet, the language that describes The Cloud is still very much in embryo stage. The art, ditto.
Yes, the whole thing is nebulous– that’s why it’s called The Cloud. If it weren’t, they’d call it something else.
So that’s what’s driving me in this direction, intellectually. If it interests you as well, maybe it’s best to go check out Amy’s link and go poke around a little. Rock on.
[If you’re in the market for an “all-over” like this, feel free to contact gapingvoid CEO Jason Korman anytime: jason at gapingvoid dot com. Thanks Again…]
August 16, 2012
gapingvoid Loves The Cloud
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I drew this quick cartoon earlier today; I was thinking about how many of the companies we’ve worked with over the last year or two have serious interest in The Cloud, and its future: Rackspace, HP, Cisco, SAP etc etc.
Though we do a lot of work around startup culture (e.g. Techcrunch and Movenback) we also do a TON of work in the Enterprise space. Maybe that’s because some of our biggest fans are aslo in that space– Sigurd Rind, Dennis Howlett, James Governor etc.
Enterprise work can be fairly dry, we take pride in making it A LOT more fun than most. Rock on.
August 15, 2012
gapingvoid Adds Financial Services To Our Client List…
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This is VERY exciting: Check out the animation video and cartoon work we did for CREDscore, by Movenbank.
As somebody who spent a lot of time surrounded by bankers (back in my London days), it’s nice to finally do something in that sector… something INTERESTING and DIFFERENT in that sector.
I met Movenbank’s founder and CEO, Brett King last year in Toronto at the Innotribe event, which I REALLY enjoyed. He was a great guy. A few months later, we got the phone call.
We pitched the idea to Brett to do a wee animation people would like AND share, as a cost-effective alternative to one of those boring motion graphics thingies that usually get ignored.
[N.B. We also handled the graphics on the webpage, which was lots of fun…]
Above is the photo of the drawing I did on the whiteboard, during our first brainstorming session… it traveled from that to storyboard to finished product. Rock on.
Thanks to Brett and Movenbank for the great opportunity!
[If you’re in the market for an animation like this, feel free to contact gapingvoid CEO Jason Korman anytime: jason at gapingvoid dot com. Thanks Again…]
“Small Is The New Big”- Case Study:
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Looking at our recent deck on Slideshare, I noticed all the clients we mentioned… Wow. There are some real blue-chips amongst them.
I say “Wow” because I’m old enough to remember the days when, to have those kind of clients on your roster, you’d need to be a proper ad agency. A VERY large one. Maybe 200, 300, 500 people or more… With a HUGE payroll and large offices in Manhattan. Which we don’t have, needless to say.
“Small is the new big”, just like Seth famously said. So if anybody asks you, “So what has the Internet REALLY done for us”, you can answer their question by sending them here.
We live in incredible times…
August 14, 2012
Our new Techcrunch Disrupt video
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Very cool. We just did this awesome little video for Techcrunch Disrupt, the great tech conference in NYC and SF. This is going to be huge…
N.B. The dinosaur’s name is “Thyroid”. I’ve been using him in cartoons on and off for over twenty years. He kinda sorta represents my mischievous/disruptive side, so he was a perfect fit for this assignment. Like I said, very cool.
Thanks to the team at Techcrunch for believing in us. Rock on.
May 30, 2012
“It’s a Post-Facebook-IPO and Post-Web 2.0 World – But What Is It?”
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Very cool. I just did this piece for SAY Media magazine… but you can also download and print out the high-rez version from their site here.
It’s nice to be in print again, especially in a large format like SAY.
[N.B. I’ve been drawing this large, all-over multi-panel format for a long, long time– years and years. I call the format “Freds”. I did one for Loic Le Meur and Le Web a couple of weeks ago; I plan to do more.]
The SAY piece was a current snapshot of “The State of Web 2.0” in the post-Facebook IPO era. No doubt, as Facebook and Twitter brought about the end of the blogosphere’s half-decade golden age, so the half-decade era dominated by Twitter and Facebooks now starts to recede.
Seriously, if I was a few years younger and cared more about this kinda stuff, I’d do a start-up clone of Facebook, and keep it real simple and keep it private and UNCORRUPTED, the way Craig Newmark did with Craigslist.
Doc Searls correctly predicted it years ago.… the Internet boom would return, and it always will. And things will get silly really fast, just like they’re doing now. Exactly like Doc said.
I think things are about to get really interesting, and a lot of people in the industry are about to take a hammering. But that’s OK, it’ll clear a lot of the undergrowth in the process. Welcome to Silicon Valley.
[Feel free to contact me at gapingvoid@gmail.com if you want to commission a “Fred” for your own organization etc.]
April 18, 2012
“FASTER THAN REAL TIME”: I’m going to Le Web London, June 2012
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Hot off the press, my old friends Loic and Geraldine Le Meur asked me to do the theming for the Le Web this year. I’m especially honored as it will include their first London LEWEB which they announced yesterday.
“FASTER THAN REAL TIME”. Le Web London, June 19th-20, the # 1 European tech conference. Join me, Loic and all the gang at http://leweb.net
Having attended the first LEWEB, then called Leblog in 2004, it’s been amazing to see the event grow into Europe’s most important tech conference. It’s one of my favorite conferences (the other one being SXSW), and I’m really excited to be going again. The lineup of speakers is incredible; every year it just gets bigger and bigger.
I’ll be doing a talk this year, and sketching on stage. It’ll be nice to be in London again.…
LEWEB has kindly offered a GBP 100 discount to our friends. If you’d like to buy a ticket, just enter GAPINGVOID at checkout to receive the discount.
April 7, 2012
How Do You Best Prepare For The Creative Age?
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PART ONE: THE CONVERGENCE.
So today there was this big convergence of things I’d been thinking about lately, including:
1. The cartoon (pictured above) that we sent out in Friday’s newsletter.
2. The “Jiro Dreams Of Sushi” article I posted Thursday and the whole “Mastery” kick I’ve been riffing on recently.
3. Sir Ken Robinson’s amazing 2006 Ted Talk on how schools kill creativity.
4. Seth Godin’s fabulous, free 30,000-word manifesto on education, “Stop Stealing Dreams”.
5. The work the team and I have been doing for Babson College and to some extent, Rackspace.
6. This week’s good news for Dave McClure and 500 Startups raising $50 million for their startup incubator.
7. Being in the same room while Babson’s President, Len Schlesinger interviewed CNN senior political analyst, Dave Gergen in Boston a few months ago. Gergen’s advice to students? “Learn how to invent.”
8. A tweet I made earlier: “I’m not sure if America is ready to be a second-rate nation quite yet”.
9. The appalling 50% youth unemployment in places like Spain or Greece. Will we Americans be seeing the same one day? Horrifying!
10. One of my favorite books in the world, “Welcome to the Creative Age” by my old buddy, Mark Earls.
A lot of people worldwide are relying on America not becoming, like I said, a second-rate nation. Even some of the people who don’t particularly like America.
And how is that going to happen, exactly? How are we going to remain at the top of our game, or at least, make a damn good show of it?
The same way we’ve always done it: by creating new, interesting products and ideas that people need, want, value and are inspired by.
PART TWO: THE PREVIOUS TWO AGES OF EDUCATION.
To massively over-simplify, there were two main phases in the history of education, pre-industrial and industrial. The first meant only the clergy and the sons of the elite were properly educated. Then along comes the second, industrial phase, which meant universal education on a mass-scale, that emerges along with the “Age of Reason”, the industrial revolution and the whole modern era.
As Seth Godin famously likes to talk about, in this second, industrial phase, schools became little more than factories, churning out young people educated enough to work in bigger factories one day. Whether we’re talking blue collar or white collar, it didn’t matter, it’ still a factory job, basically. You’re still a cog in the factory machine, basically. This factory-model was perfect for when the factory was still the cornerstone of the industrial economy. A factory-centered model for a factory-centered world. This was true whether in elementary school in Iowa, or Harvard Business School in Cambridge, your reality was the factory because your career was the factory. Own the factory, work in the factory, live near the factory, become the factory. Factory, factory, factory…
And of course, this factory-centric model which worked fine for a hundred-plus years is now broken. We can no longer compete long-term that way. Just owning a factory doesn’t give us the same edge it used to, the same economic security, as anyone who’s ever tried competing lately in the global economy has been finding out.
A new model is needed.
PART THREE: WE ARE READY FOR THE THIRD AGE OF EDUCATION: THE CREATIVE AGE.
Personally, I had a pretty good formal education, where I learned the basics– reading, writing, math, a bit of science, history, languages and a wee smattering of the arts. I learned to study and pass tests. Like most students, I learned how to learn, basically. I leaned how to work in a foctory, basically.
I don’t think that’s enough anymore, as the THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS of under-employed and unemployed university graduates with good grades in Europe and America will testify. They passed all their tests fine, they all ticked off the right boxes… and yet, look at them now, poor things.
Kids in the future are simply not going to leave school with this big, bumper crop of plum jobs waiting for them to fill, not like they used to. In the future, kids will leave school and increasingly be expected to create their own viable realities.
Like David Gergen alluded to, these young adults will be expected not just to do the work, but expected to ACTUALLY invent something. Create something, not just obey orders, not just fulfill some sort of social role.
And somehow, we have to teach our schools how to teach our kids exactly that. It’s not going to be easy.
4. HOW DO YOU BEST PREPARE FOR THE CREATIVE AGE?
As I see it, there are basically two ways, at least if you go at it from a college-age, entrepreneurial, startup mentality. One is the more risky path advocated by my wonderfully lucid friend, Jason Calacanis, to forget college and instead, “Spend Your College Tuition on Being Mentored and Starting a Company.” That’s probably what I would have chosen for myself, nowadays. That, or apprenticing for a master at something, the way English tailors learn their craft, or how the advertising legend, Dave Trott used to hire kids right off the street in London and give theme a chance at writing ads (Hence the earlier Jiro/Mastery reference]. Learning on the job, as it were. The street-fighter’s approach. Tough, brutal, intense, but nonetheless a first-class education in the University of Life.
The second way is what I see Len Schesinger trying to do at Babson.… shaking things up… evolving the idea of school (business school, anyway) as not just a place of learning, but also as a place of DOING.
Where. Stuff. Gets. Done.
In the real world. Here and now.
Where students don’t just learn about running businesses, but are expected to actually start running businesses and making them viable. All while still getting good grades. It’s a pretty intense curriculum, but hey, the best students seem to thrive at it.
Michael Dell’s company was started in a dorm room. Ditto with Mark Zuckerberg. Hey, my cartooning career was, too.
This is the idea of a college as not just a seat of learning, but an incubator, of sorts. These days, business schools like Babson aren’t just competing with Harvard or Wharton, they’re competing with Y Combinator and 500 Startups. The most talented kids in the country aren’t waiting around for the grownups in the ivory towers to get their act together. They’re already inventing their own futures; they’re in a hurry.
I don’t have all the answers. All I know is that it’s already happening. It’s already begun, the genie is already out of the bottle… and it’s damn exciting to watch.
[PS: This blog post only took me a short morning and a couple of hundred words to write. Ideally, it would’ve taken me a couple of years and enough words to fill an entire book. I’m sorry if it’s incomplete, I’m sorry if there are massive holes everywhere. It’s a vast minefield of a subject that’ll take the cleverest people in the land more than a few decades to work out fully. But like I inferred, it still damn exciting to think about. I just hope we’re all up for it.]
March 27, 2012
#SmallTeamsBigImpact
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Of all the cartoons I’ve done for Rackspace, this is one of my my favorites. Part of the #SmallTeamsBigImpact thing that Robert Scoble has going on.
Besides the main sentiment of the cartoon, #SmallTeamsBigImpact is something that me and the tem at Social Object Factory can really relate to. Of course we can…
“My work doesn’t belong in galleries, it belongs in campus libraries”
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This made me so happy: Some of the cartoons I did for Babson College, now hanging proudly in their library [Thanks to John Capecelatro for sending in the photo!].
As I’ve said many times before, my work doesn’t belong in galleries, it belongs in offices. But hey, a campus library is similar enough. Rock on.
March 23, 2012
The #StartupBus video
Send to KindleRackspace — We Love Startups! from Gapingvoid on Vimeo.
Another video our new company, Social Object Factory did for Rackspace at SXSW..
A sea of little red startup folk, piling into the #StartupBus, something they sponsor.
“Because the world needs more Awesome, the world needs more Startups.” A simple enough thought, one I happen to think is very, very true.
Without startups, this world really doesn’t have much of a future. At least, not one I would want.
You?
March 22, 2012
“Because the world needs more Awesome, the world needs more Startups.”
Send to KindleRackspace — Because the World Needs More Awesome… from Gapingvoid on Vimeo.
Something that I’m VERY proud of, Social Object Factory’s recent animation we did for Rackspace.
“Because the world needs more Awesome, the world needs more Startups.”
Exactly.
What astounds me is how quickly we turned it around. A couple of days from getting the first phone call, in the can. BOOM! Just like that.
Compare that to the traditional ad agency model– it would’ve taken ten times as long and cost ten times as much. Not to mention, a lot of strategy meetings and endless Powerpoint slides.
We live in incredible times…
Congrats to the team on a splendid effort! Rock on.
March 19, 2012
Avoiding the SXSW slush-pile
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One of the highlights of this year’s SXSW for me was, creating a stampede over at the Rackspace stand on the first day of the trade show.
Rackspace printed up 2,500 gapingvoid t-shirts to give away. When the doors opened at 10am, we had 50 people already waiting in line. We ran out of shirts by day’s end.
Get your awesome on, indeed…
We like creating schwag. Schwag is fun. The challenge is to actually create something that transmits REAL MEANING to people. Otherwise you’re just adding to the slush-pile.
And it’s the slush-pile that kills most businesses in the end, schwag or no schwag.
February 28, 2012
Having Serious Fun :D
Send to KindleUsing cartoons to communicate about serious subjects is always an interesting challenge– and one that we deal with every day.
Where is the line that can’t be crossed? How do we communicate about something serious in a way that is memorable, whimsical, makes a point but isn’t frivolous?
We’ve proven 1000 times that cartoons are some of the most effective pieces of communication in existence — and we’ve been playing with animating my cartoons for some time, so when the folks at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Security contacted us, we thought, “Hey, why not do a little animation about ‘enterprise security…?”
Let’s face it, enterprise security is pretty dry stuff. Their customers are governments and giant corporations… perfect for a whimsical little animation about finding risk — kinda Pac Man-ish, it makes the point: You need help identifying all the risks to your data centers. With the nemonic binoculars (representing HP’s Enterprise Security Platform), one is able to see the big picture threats, and the threat levels they represent.
I love the little HP geek with the pocket protector. I dunno, it just works, somehow. Also check out the logo for our new venture at the very end.
Onwards and Upwards! #VeryExciting.
February 16, 2012
“Redefine Entrepreneurship”: It’s the “Who”, not the “What” that matters. cc: @Babson
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Our friends at Babson College have asked us to help out on their new campaign, “Redefine Entrepreneurship”. [Catch the backstory here, and watch the video here to get a rough idea etc etc.]
It’s a simple enough idea: If they can own a new idea of what entrepreneurship is, or at least, be a prime mover in the conversation, then people will go to them to get a piece of the action. Good for the students and faculty, good for the brand and good for the stakeholders. Exactly.
Of course, the meaning of the word has been redefined over and over many times already, from in its origins in the Industrial Revolution of yesterday, to Silicon Valley today, to India and China and Africa tomorrow. Language is organic and fluid, after all, and to hope to come up with the all-encompassing, definitive wording for it, isn’t going to happen in our lifetime. The word already has a million definitions, anyway.
But as I pondered this, more and more, I started thinking that the really interesting question isn’t, “What is entrepreneurship?”, but “Who is an entrepreneur?”
As Reid Hoffman declared in his wonderful new book, you can still think like an entrepreneur and hold a job down in a large company. In fact, it’s now pretty much essential for survival that you do so.
So I quickly drew the t-shirt idea above: “YOU ARE AN ENTREPRENEUR”.
The idea is not a “BIG STATEMENT” per se, but designed more as a conversation starter.
When people see the message, the people who already see themselves an entrepreneurs will think, “Yeah, so, I know that already.”
They’re not the people needing to hear the it.
But the people who DON’T see themselves that way, THEY WILL question why somebody would think they’re entrepreneurs.
Which could start a lot of conversations right from the get-go. Imagine what your favorite Starbucks barista would say about the t-shirt. Or that guy you know who works at The Gap. Or your college roommate, Dan who works deep in the bowels of Zappos’ call centers.
Or think about the fourteen people you now have on the payroll, and how you’re going to convince them to think of their time with you as more than just a paycheck.
Aren’t they ALL entrepreneurs? Shouldn’t they feel that way? And if not, isn’t that a problem?
I think it is.
I mean, we’re talking about actual flesh-and-blood livelihoods here, surely that’s something worth giving thought to?
T-shirt-as-conversation-starter is far more interesting that T-shirt-as-advertisement, don’t you think?
Anyway, that’s my first salvo. I hope you like
February 15, 2012
The “Productive Stupidity” Cartoon
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I had a problem…
I was creatively “stuck” on a cartoon I wanted to get drawn, one about “Productive Stupidity” that I was doing for our client, Babson College.
So I decided to “open source” the problem to my buddies over on Google Plus, to see if their input could help me.
If you read the back n’ forth, you can see, I got a lot of input. Thanks, Everybody!
It ended up in me drawing a good half dozen new cartoons on the subject. The one above was my favorite.
I’m glad I did it this way, I think the final result was much better for it.
Thanks to Babson President, Len Schlesinger for agreeing to let us try this approach, it was fun!
Rock on.
February 13, 2012
Isn’t marketing much nicer, when people treat each other like grownups?
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[A screenshot from the video: a Rackspace banner, in my handwriting etc.]
I love this Rackspace video. No thespian voiceover. No pompous top-down message yak yak yak about how great they are.
In this video, they’re not saying it, they’re SHOWING it.
What are they showing? Well, that’s for us to figure out, all by ourselves.
Isn’t marketing much nicer, when people treat each other like grownups?
[Disclosure: Rackspace is a gapingvoid client. And a damn good one, I might add. Check out our work here etc.]
December 7, 2011
Small Teams. Big Impact.
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Very cool. Rackspace are using the cartoon above for their new “Small Teams, Big Impact” homepage.
Here at gapingvoid, we feel very honored. We really do.
Like Rackspace says,
Small teams can have a huge impact on the world.
Here we hope to inspire the small teams of tomorrow by highlighting and celebrating those impacting the world today. Return here for videos, blogs, web casts and other information on the latest startups and emerging technologies.
OK, so Rackspace and gapingvoid do it differently. No matter. It’s still prayer to the same god, basically.
Trying to change the world for the better, while making an honest living in the process.
Trying to be helpful, as Rob La Gesse likes to say.
November 15, 2011
Jyri Engstrom and “Wave Media vs Particle Media”
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[Photo courtesy of @MissDestructo]
Above are some of the social object cartoons we had on display the other week at Blogworld… clients including Rackspace, Babson College, Intel etc etc.
The one on the top left got the most reaction, I wonder why 
The mission continues: to spread the message that yes, social objects ARE the future of marketing.
I think it’ll take a while to spread but hey, there’s been some serious recent progress: In his big keynote at Blogworld, Jim Farley, the CMO of Ford Motors said, “Cars are social objects”.
Wow. I was right there in the audience, hearing it live. I could hardly believe it.
It felt like a coup…
As you probably know already, I was turned onto the social object idea by the antropologist, Jaiku founder and former Google employee, Jyri Engstrom, at his big talk at Reboot 2005 (which has gone in history a one of the best tech conferences ever, btw).
A year before that, I had met Jyri for the first time at Joi Ito’s big geek dinner in London, where we talked about how blogging was all about “particle media”, whereas traditional broadcast was all about “wave media”.
Wave vs Particle. Exactly.
And what do these particles consist of? Social Objects. Exactly.
Jyri knew what I meant, kinda sorta. You?
[CAVEAT: This post is not a finely crafted piece of blog literature, witeen for posterity, but me just thinking outloud. But there’s some things in here worth thinking about firther etc.]
November 14, 2011
“How To Make The Internet Squeal Like A Pig”
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[Babson President Len Schlesinger making the intro…]
Last Saturday my business parter, Jason Korman and I gave a wee Q&A talk up at Babson College entitled, “How To Make The Internet Squeal Like A Pig”, as part of their tenth annual Babson Enterprise Forum. Below are the rough notes/transcription, with Jason asking the questions and me doing the answering. Thanks Again to Len for the great opportunity, we had a blast!
[Further Reading: “Why Social Objects are the Future of Marketing…”]
HOW TO MAKE THE INTERNET SQUEAL LIKE A PIG
Q. So, Make the Internet Squeal like a pig, what you mean by that?
If you’re going to be an entrepreneur these days, you’re going to have to figure out the Internet.
From the entrepreneur’s perspective, what makes the Internet tick? From an entrepreneurial perspective, what actually works?
We’ve built a tidy internet based business over the last ten years, b just obeying a few rules and they’re not easy to execute, but they are easy to understand.
Q. If you were going to generalize about these rules, what could you say?
The Internet is just like anywhere else– offline is just like online. Basically, the ideas that spread, win. The ideas that go no where, lose.
Q. So what spreads, how do you create stuff that goes viral?
Viral is a figment of people’s imagination.
The thing that spreads online, of course, is “great content”. This great content can either be your product itself (Huffington Post), or content about or somehow connected to your product (37 Signals).
October 25, 2011
The Babson Tee Shirt: “The Defiant Fist” as Social Object
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Here’s the latest: a tee shirt I designed for Babson College.
A well-known motif, the fist raised in defiance. Yes, all good entrepreneurship begins as some sort of defiant act. Exactly.
I’m also thinking of the idea that getting one’s degree from Babson as an act of defiance as well (as opposed to say, Harvard or Wharton).
Entrepreneurship is, of course, something inside you. If you are a budding entrepreneur, the issue isn’t whether you have that quality to begin with –you do. The question is how do you unleash it. Where do you begin?
And yes, the “Fist of Defiance” is a social object. “Cool, you feel that way too? So do I!”
Exactly.
[Essential backstory: The Social Object landing page]
September 21, 2011
TEDx Miami
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This was fun: Last week we all attended TEDx Miami. It was held at the shiny new Frank Ghery designed, New World Symphony building, just behind Lincoln Road in Miami Beach. The TED folks were kind enough to invite us along to display the Dewar’s drawings I did at TED Global in Edinburgh, back in July. These were original drawings that I did in marker. The images were presented in clean white frames to fit the venue.
I was a little anxious going into the event because I couldn’t be certain whether what resonated with a largely non-American crowd in Edinburgh, would also work in Miami. Miami is, well, at totally different place. The good news is that the work was well received, and our sponsors, Dewars, were happy. We are told that the work is now going to be installed in the new Bacardi HQ in Coral Gables.
After the talks, people were offered cocktails made of Dewars, Grey Goose or wine. As I looked around, I was surprised to see how many women were drinking scotch. That, and a conversation with our friend, Maria at the event reminded me of her comments when we posted about the scotch market a few weeks back. The surprising news from that post and subsequent exchange was that chicks love scotch. Note to Dewars: Instead of trying to get the guys to switch from another brand, it might be easier to grow your market by appealing to women. Just a thought. Rock on!
September 14, 2011
“The combination of love and utility is a powerful one.”
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This is a poster I did for Prepara, the cooking utensil maker. They’re a client of my client, Rackspace. Basically, Rackspace was commissioning me to create a little goodwill gesture, a little social object for one of their favorite customers etc.
I was trying to capture Prepara’s schtick in a single drawing. I follow the art gallery scene, I follow the industrial design scene. Pound for pound, the latter inspires me more often, more consistently. The combination of love and utility is a powerful one. Combined with something so basic and primal as eating, even more so.
September 1, 2011
“A Business Is Only As Good As Its Conversations”
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[Screenshot of the Rackspace client page etc.]
Now this is exciting: Dedicated gapingvoid client pages.
Here’s the first one: For my favorite Texan client, Rackspace. All the cartoons I’ve done for them on a single page, easy to find at the URL rackspace.gapingvoid.com.
AND… they’re all in high-rez. WHICH MEANS, anybody at Rackspace (or anybody somehwere else), can click on the image, download the high-rez version, print it out and stick it on the wall of their cubicle or office or door or wherever.
Instant cube grenades. Exactly.
And we’ll soon be doing likewise for gapingvoid’s other clients: HP, Dewar’s Whisky, Intel etc etc.
Like I said a few days ago, my work doesn’t belong in art galleries, it belongs in office cubicles. And this makes the latter REALLY easy for people. Sure, if they’d rather have a signed print that cost money, they can do that easily enough, as well… but FREE has its place, too.
Early on, we (i.e. the entire gapingvoid team– Me, Jason, Laura, Sam etc) noticed that a business is only as good as the conversations it has with people, both inside and outside the organization [i.e. classic Cluetrain parlance].
Ergo, that means there MUST be a market for art i.e. social objects that could start these right kinds of conversation. Quod Erat Demostrandum.
To us, this wasn’t rocket science, this was ALL common sense. And so we built a business around it…
So now the next question is, of course, how are YOUR conversations coming along? How can they be improved? CAN they actually be improved? Serious question.
August 19, 2011
Newsflash: Babson College is gapingvoid’s latest client.
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So gapingvoid has a new client: Babson College. Or to put it another way: gapingvoid is now the oficial cartoonist for Babson College.
Babson is a small, private college in the western suburbs of Boston, dedicated to the study of entrepreneurship. In fact, it’s been considered the top school for entrepreneurship in the country for the last 18 years in a row, beating out Harvard, Wharton, Yale, M.I.T. etc etc
Some inititial thoughts:
The college president, Len Schlesinger is an interesting guy. He has divided his career pretty equally in both academia and commerce. Over the years, the two have informed the other. Click on his link and see for yourself, he has gotten plenty of kudos in both worlds. He was a professor at Harvard Business School and a CEO of a well known company (i.e. the parent company of Victoria’s Secret). Very few people are so informed by the limitations of both, and also their lack of limitations.
He is also pretty much the biggest collector of gapingvoid prints that we have. His walls are absolutely covered with them. He was collecting them like baseball cards. So there was an pre-existing alignment there.
We met for Chinese food the last time I was in New York and hatched an “Evil Plan”. Good times.
This is such an obvious gig for gapingvoid, I cannot tell you. There are so many threads worth riffing on, I canot tell you. Education and entrepreneurship are BOTH rich, deep veins. OF COURSE they are.
Is there ANYTHING in the world that is more ripe for disruption than Education Industry (Yes, it IS an industry, sorry to break the news to my Marxist academic friends)? I mean, really…
I have some thoughts on formal education and entrepreneurship in general. See the cartoon above…
It’s amazing how this fits with a trend I’ve been noticing lately: When Jason (my business partner) and I talk to people in business who use the cartoons, it is always about the same thing: It helps them lead their organizations. Communicate better, and tell stories that they feel people should be reminded of. Around the office, we’ve become fond of saying that the work helps leaders lead.
I am TRULY honored that someone of Len’s stature is able to use my work to lead his business. Art with purpose, it’s why gapingvid does what it does.
OK, I’m ready to rock out. Next steps: Anyone got any ideas where to start? I have a few thoughts myself, of course, but please feel free to share, either by email or by leaving comments below, thanks.
Let the aventure begin! w00t!!!
August 14, 2011
“The Market For A Scotch To Believe In Is Infinite”
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[One of the Dewars drawings I did while attending TED Global etc.]
[Today’s guest post is by Jason Korman, my business partner since 2005, and CEO of gapingvoid]
“The Market For a Scotch to believe in is Infinite”
There are millions of cases at stake for the guys who get the messaging right.
We’ve had Scotch on the brain lately. We’ve done wine, we’ve done suits and we’ve done tech, but Scotch has its own particular set of challenges.
What makes any bottle of scotch different? And, does anyone care, anyway? There are, what Hugh’s dad used to call, the “whiskey bores” who drone on and on about all things whisky, but I’m told there aren’t that many of them left. So, what matters to everyone else?
There is the realm of the single malts and high end scotches. But they seem to need to be marketed more like Congac or Champagne, a bit of bling, sexy packaging, and hyped up associations.
For more broad market Scotch, the opportunities are much greater and the challenge much more complex. Scotch is a distinctly masculine product. It is strong, it is interesting, is implies thought and intelligence. It s a product that wants to have meaning.
Given that, what we see mostly in Scotch marketing is a reliance on ‘authenticity’, with everyone trying to have the most authentic conversation grounded in centuries of history. The question is really: is this relevant? Once a consumer knows your Scotch is ‘for real’, do they care enough to want to know the details? I’d guess, probably not.
With alcoholic beverages, what you do have is a desire from the market to want to know: Why? What do you stand for? Why do you exist? And does your brand represent something that I believe in — does it share my world view.
J&B says, “Let’s Start a Party”. I know that they are trying to make an old brand younger and relevant. But, OMG, does it seem disingenuous. It comes across as a little inconsistent with what the product is about. It’s not tequila, its not vodka, it’s really NOT a party drink. It feels like granny dancing on the table at your cousin’s wedding – kinda cringeworthy and creepy. Oh, and in an acknowledgement that even they don’t buy into the party thing, they also tell the story about Mr. Justerini traveling from Bologna to London in 1749. Not sure what they’re thinking, but stream of consciousness brings me to paraphrase the Artist Formerly Known as Prince… “Let’s party like its 1749″.
Chivas goes with “Live with Chivalry”, and tells “The Story Behind the Legend”. It’s place centric, it’s a nice story about a Scotsman traveling to NY a hundred years ago. But, it sounds a lot like things we’ve heard before. More importantly, they seem unconcerned with relevance in 2011. Their ultra-produced videos are like Public Service Announcements, urging people to be nice. Yawn.
As with both of the above, Dewars goes with the place centric, authentic Scottish thing, so they cover that base. But it feels like a brand that wants more. Their messaging is really very ‘of the moment’ and involves people who are actually alive today — It focuses on the top bit of Maslow’s hierarchy. They want to find people and facilitate people being self– actualized. The message is, as beings we are happier doing things that we believe in.
A bright spark at Dewars had the idea of aligning with the TED conferences. After all, Ted’s speakers do, by definition, embody the qualities that Dewars represents.
Enter Hugh. They also hired Hugh to draw at TED Edinburgh and distill the speakers ideas into his style of illustration. Hugh likes to say that his goal is to draw a cartoon that rips your face off the first time you see it, and is still doing it and the tenth time.
One of those is posted above.
We ask ourselves: Is Hugh’s style too edgy, too disruptive, not art directed enough, to be used in main stream media? How can a brand like Dewars better communicate what it stands for than through one of Hugh’s cartoons?
In today’s world, where everyone is saying advertising is dead, what they are really saying that advertising the way it used to be done is dead. Giving people something they believe in, in a way that they can’t help but notice, is where the action really is. Getting noticed. Doing stuff that gets noticed, doing it smart, and in a way that your audience will think is cool, is where its at. Have beliefs that are strong enough to build a movement, not just a brand.
We’ve got Scotch on the brain, and we’re liking it. A category ripe for disruption.
Jason Korman
CEO, gapingvoid.com
July 26, 2011
Technology
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This cartoon was originally a personal business card I designed for Microsoft’s Jeff Sandquist.
He wanted a card that he could hand out to both techies and “civilians”, both at business and social events.
It’s a common theme among most of my peers– we’re totally consumed by our careers, yet we still have the other parts of our lives to fit in somehow.
How do we do that? I have no idea. Does anybody?
July 16, 2011
Possibility
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This is one of my favorite drawings I did at TED Global.
A wee sketch, complete with the #DewarsTED hastag.
“Possibility”. A riff on the great Charles Schultz line, “I carry the burden of a great potential”.
I didn’t think too much about it at the time. But as the days progressed, the cartoon started to haunt me.
The burden of a great potential. Anyone with half a brain (or half a soul) will be able to relate.
Knowing that it might never happen. And knowing that even if you do manage to make a decent go of it, it will never be enough.
That there’s still something else you still haven’t done, that there’s still one more piece of Creation remaining, that you haven’t managed to download. AND THIS WILL NEVER CHANGE. Welcome to being alive. Welcome to the human condition. That’s what TED is REALLY about, at the end of the day.
Terrifying, isn’t it?
[Full disclosure: I was attending TED on behalf of my client. Dewar’s Whisky, who were a sponsor of the event.]
Ow. I’ve got a TED-ache.
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[The Dewar’s cartoon I did for Maajid’s talk etc.]
[View from my drawing tablet: Downstairs in the chill-out room.]
[I’m still in Edinburgh, and like everybody else, still recovering from a very intense week at TED Global. Here are some notes from an incredible event, in no particular order:]
1. “An idea is not something you HAVE, an idea is something you DO.”
I attended TED on behalf my client, Dewar’s Scotch. The idea was to create cartoons that gave justice to the Dewar’s idea, “Some things are just worth doing”.
Which ties in with the TED idea, “Ideas worth spreading.”
Which ties in with one of the great themes in my work these days, “The Unification of Work and Love”.
I’m currently running with the thought that, an idea is not something you HAVE, an idea is something you DO.
i.e. Ideas are all very well, but without some sort of action to follow, they’re not much use. Ideas don’t exist in a vacuum.
Nobody reading this, including me, want to spend their whole life, sitting on their ass, thinking big thoughts but actually doing nothing.
2. You’ve heard of live-blogging, yes? Well, I was “live-tooning”. Drawing cartoons on the spot, trying to capture all the ideas that were flying at me at 200 mph. Over four days, I drew dozens of them. The cartoon above was one I did for Maajid Nawaz. He gave a great talk on how to fight extremism on a global level:
Why do transnational extremist organizations succeed where democratic movements have a harder time taking hold? Maajid Nawaz, a former Islamist extremist, asks for new grassroots stories and global social activism to spread democracy in the face of nationalism and xenophobia.
One of the points Maajid made was how movements require four elements in order to be viable: Ideas, narratives, symbols and leaders. So I ran with that. Click on the link and watch the video to hear more.
At the event, I gave Maajid a hand-drawn copy of the work above, poster-sized. He was a very gracious man, I thought.
[Maajid’s TED video…]
3. Then there were the “Conversation Pieces”.
While talking to the polar explorer, Ben Saunders, I had the idea to make a drawing WHILE talking to him. A real-time conversational doodle. as it were. A “Coversation Piece”, as it were. Above is a picture of him holding the final result.
It’s a question that never gets old: Here you are, surrounded by all these amazing people and ideas, now how do you use what you do (in my case, my cartoons) in order to interface with them? Meaningful interaction with other people– THAT’S what makes work interesting, NOT the money.
4. Ow. I’ve got a TED-ache.
A TED-ache is what they call it: When your brain is so stuffed with all the ideas and stimuation and conversation flying around for four days nonstop, your brain can no longer keep up with it, your brain kinda wants to explode.
I came away with enough material to fill MONTHS of blogging, MONTHS of catooning. Like everybody else at TED, I’m feeling pretty overwhelmed yet supercharged.
It was an amazing experience: Hundreds of insanely bright and creative people, doing insanely interesting things. Quite a contrast to the usual mass-elevator-pitch that most conferences have become.
And now, somehow, I’ve got to do the event justice, both on behalf of myself and Dewars’. Like everybody else who attends, it’s not the event that matters, it’s what you take away and apply to your own life in a meaningful way that matters. I would be lying if I said I didn’t find it daunting.
I’ve said it before many times before on this blog: We are incredible beings living in incredible times, and as long as there is still one person alive on this planet who doesn’t believe this, then there’s still work to be done. TED re-affirmed this for me, in spades.
It’s four in the morning and I can’t sleep because of this. Thanks to TED for making this happen, thanks to Dewar’s for being such an awesome client.
5. This is only the beginning. You have my word. Rock on.
[Bonus Link:] The 23 Amazing TEDWomen Speakers Of TEDGlobal 2011. Yep. I met some of them. Yep. “Amazing” would be about right…
July 13, 2011
This is my message from TED Global: “ALL ART IS SMALL ART”
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I’m at Ted Global, on behalf of, Dewar’s Whisky.
I’m drawing tons of cartoons, based on my experiences here.
To be honest, there’s so much fantastic stuff here, coming at me at 200 mph, it’s hard to keep up with it in real time. It’s a good problem to have, I would say…
THEREFORE:
1. You can follow the action is pretty easily. Just follow #TEDglobal and #dewarsted on Twitter.
2. This is my message from TED Global: “ALL ART IS SMALL ART”. Big, important stuff is ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS preceded by small moments of genius. Watch all the TED videos if you don’t believe me. All the world’s great human-caused tragedies (not to mention, all failed expensive marketing campaigns) were caused when the people in charge tried to bypass the small stuff and go straight for the big stuff. Five Year Plan, Comrade? Great Leap Forward, Comrade?
3. And this is also my message fro Dewar’s: “ALL ART IS SMALL ART”. All great marketing starts that way. And more importantly, stays that way.
Rock and roll…
Greetings from Edinburgh!
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[A photo of whisky barrels taken yesterday at the Dewar’s distillery in Aberfeldy.]
I recently arrived in Edinburgh for the TED Global conference.
My client, Dewar’s Scotch Whisky, is sponsoring the event, so they got me along to live-draw some cartoons for them.
In my mind, the great task for humanity in the 21st Century is what I call “The Unification of Work and Love”.
In other words, learning how to make work MORE than just something to pay the bills with, but to turn it into something that expresses who we truly are.
That’s really what TED is all about, for the speakers on the stage, for the people in the audience, for sponsors like Dewar’s, and yes, the subject of a great many of my cartoons.
So I’m pretty excited. I hope to be blogging more about the event as the week continues. Obviously, there’s a lot here worth writing about.
The Unification of Work and Love. The Holy Grail for so many of us. Bring it on!
June 18, 2011
new paintings…?
Send to KindleUnify Work and Love from Paul Barron on Vimeo.
A wee video I did for Paul Barron’s People Report Summer Camp and Digital Brand Camp 2011.
Nothing too fancy (although I do think Paul did a good job with the edit), some footage of me drawing my trademark business-card doodles and, in the background, some of my new paintings, including two I did for Rackspace.
The video riffs on the same theme I’ve been obsessing about for two decades, the subject of my second book, “Evil Plans” i.e. The Unification of Work And Love. What that means, what that implies, what ACTUALLY has to happen in order for it to manifest itself etc etc.
Yes, new paintings.
That’s all I’m willing to say about it for now… though feel free to drop me an email if you’re curious, Thanks.
June 13, 2011
A brand’s first job is to be interesting. Aligned brands are far more interesting than brands that just want somebody else’s money.
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Here are some pictures Rob La Gesse sent me- people at Rackspace who downloaded my cartoons off the web, printed them out and hung them on their walls.
“Crap jobs are created by other people, dream jobs you make yourself” and “Life is short, Make it amazing”.
No “Reason Why” to buy the Rackspace product. No top-down mission statement.
Nope. Instead I tried to talk about stuff that ACTUALLY MATTER to people inside and outside the company.
Like I said in my last post, ALIGNMENT is where the action is.
“A brand’s first job is to be interesting”. Aligned brands are far more interesting than brands that just want somebody else’s money.
Just because you work for a big company doesn’t mean you don’t have to think about REAL human values. In fact, it’s more important than ever.
Think about it.
[More Rackspace cartoons here.] [More corporate cartoon commissions here.]
