furtherandfaster

In context: the walking dead

Story on the BBC this morning about a poster for the Walking Dead put on the side of a funeral parlour in Consett. Cue much grovelling and lessons must be learned. But mortality aside this is what most communications is trying to do these days. To make a connection with context. It is dull to drive down a road lined with posters for cars, financial services and the odd food poster. Context helps us engage and remember. So apologies to the relatives for the non walking dead of Consett - we can expect lots more of the same. WhatEVER you do - don't try to eliminate context from your communications it is usually the first and only interesting thing you have to say.

Cloud 5: Feb 1st - context and online data

Cloud 5 is on the starting blocks for tomorrow night Tuesday Feb 1st. Our theme will be about the influence of context. Mark Earls the Herdmeister is going to be talking to us about choices: Independent Choices vs. Social Choices: how can you tell? from his up and coming book. So that's Social context then.

And I am expecting to talk about online content as contextual and behavioural data traces - can we get more from the data if we stop trying to treat it like regular research content? This will be the first time we've met since the paper called Cloud of Knowing has won the MRS award for best new thinking this year - nice to get recognition for the work of the group. I wrote it in desperation this time last year and it did a lot better than I expected.

Location Face: 7, Midford Place, London W1T 5BG at the top end of Tottenham Ct Road 6.30 for 7pm. The Cloud 'place' online is on Webjam. Francesco D'Orazzio of Face is our host for the evening.

The point of these Cloud meetings is to provoke discussions which just don't happen around research conferences - this is emergent thinking. With some rather special people sharing their thoughts.

 

Nudge - or is it a kick into touch?

I met Nick Southgate - in Grey's reception this morning and he mentioned that Richard Thaler on of the authors of Nudge had just spoken at the IPA.  Or was it the COI? I have been limping my way through Nudge for what seems like most of 2010. The book is so over written I get exhausted reading it. The idea is very simple. Think about the defaults and the choices that you give to people. If you don't think about it then the structure is probably wrong and you won't get the result you want. Or people won't make a sensible choice. Or feel they have made a sensible choice. So become a choice architect and create structured choices. that's it. I just saved you 250 pages. The conservative government love it and are trying to put nudges into everything. And I think they're onto something good. Its high time we took context seriously. But not 250 pages of it - that's not a nudge.