Hugo Schotman

Inspiration for entrepreneurs

Gary Vay-ner-chuk ;) had an appearance on "The big idea" on CNBC together with two other entrepreneurs.
Inspiration & entertainment in one.

Pangea day: I'll be watching

CNN special on innovation -> Benjamin Zander

It's great to see orchestra conductor Ben Zander show up in a special on CNN about collaboration and innovation. Nice and timely as I am going through some plans that involve those two ingredients.
(See the interview here: part 1, part 2.)

Ben was at TED this year as well. The talk will be made available at some point in the future, I'm sure but for now you can see a similar talk here:

I had trouble singing along because the lyrics of the German song were written down fonetically and since I can speak German it threw me off.

Tom does a great job of describing the TED experience:

Swisscom Labs project profiled

Marc Osofski posted a video on the Optaros blog from Josh Bernoff, Forrester Analyst and author of Groundswell that highlights one of the projects I worked on.

See the video here.
I am not embedding the video because it starts playing automatically and loops... very annoying!

It was a very succesful example of a proper User Centered Design project.
For more information on the project, see: Swisscom Mobile Labs profiled on the Optaros Website. (Includes a nice screencast.)

Podcast advertising: more effective

A Bizreport article showed up in my Google alerts with some numbers that support what many Podcasters have been saying for some time: Podcast audiences respond well to the advertising that is tailored to them.
Some of the reasons mentioned: niche audiences that actively choose to subscribe to particular podcasts and audiences that follow and trust hosts/presenters.

Adam Curry's Podshow... Eh... Mevio among others was built with the goal of doing advertising the right way for podcasting and avoiding the failures of traditional media. Although, failures... perhaps inefficiency is a better word. Returns are harder to measure and audiences harder to target in 'traditional' media.
I think that the current good results are partly due to the 'newness': a large percentage of early adopters in the audience, podcasters who are really passionate about their content and advertisers who are in tune with the early adopters (and who are early adopters themselves).

Some things that may happen over time:
- Audience grows: on average less engaged, majority adoption -> more difficult to target.
- Podcasters (sources of content) diffuse: on average less engaged, less passionate, less niche -> more difficult to target. Example: CNN 'Now in the News' podcast.
- Advertisers have more choice: more chance to spend money on less effective podcasts.

Advantages of podcasting over TV/Radio/Print that will remain are:
- Improved measurement of effectiveness
- Potential for easier targeting of audiences
- Potential for Personalisation
- Lower financial risk: lower production and distribution costs

Amazon Webservices on WebTuesday video

The video of the WebTuesday hosted presentation about Amazon's Web Services by Mike Culver is up on Google Video.

iPhone UI critique

Some day this year I'll be able to comment on this more. (The iPhone is not out in Switzerland yet and I am waiting for version 2 before I buy one, yadda, yadda, etc.)

For now, here's an interesting discussion about the iPhone user experience and the way its apps display information:

graphpaper.com - Edward Tufte’s iPhone

It will be interesting to see what kind of user experience third party apps will offer when the official SDK is released.

Flickr + tags + creative commons + maps + geotagging = mashup

Schmap Guides richly annotates online maps to create guides for a big number of travel destinations. They make a nice mashup with existing maps sites and scour flickr for relevant pictures to use (and link to) on their site. A creative-commons licensed picture of mine was found by the editors of Schnap and they asked for permission to include it. (Yes, of course.)

Most of the people whose pictures are featured will probably spread the word. Good marketing!

A User Experience workshop experience

Working on the Swisscom Labs project was an interesting experience.
My colleague Bryce wrote a short summary of the User Experience design part of it:
From requirements to a designed UI in 5 too-short days!

(My role on the project was: project manager, UX lead and front-end developer.)

Vint Cerf's Zurich talk on YouTube

Vint Cerf gave a talk in Zurich last month with the title "Tracking the Internet into the 21st Century".
Well worth watching for some perspective on internet related developments (and some humor too ;-).

Advanced ski instructor training experience

Simon writes an (to me very recognizable) account of his first advanced ski instructor training.

The next one will be even more challenging with a giant slalom, skiing moguls on one ski and skiing with your eyes closed ;-)

Congratulations Simon!

PS: What happened in the Baum-bar after the exam?

The B Series: Brainstorm's how-to on doing an awareness campaign... but wait, there's more!

Here's a nice set of articles by Brainstorm that chronicles their awareness campaign called The B Series.

It contains links to a set of beautiful PDFs about Web 2.0, social networking, the (online) media landscape, etc.
Very clearly explained!

The diagram on the last page of this The Mediasphere document is especially interesting.

(Via: mynameiskate.ca)

If you're asking "what is important right now?"...

There is a good answer in this talk by Philippe Starck:

I hope I've given enough of a tease to make you watch.
Don't worry, as soon as you have seen 2 minutes you'll want to see it all.

Philippe's TEDTalk with transcript

Leopard print bathrobe

Looks like every Kimpton hotel 'features' the creepy Leopard print bathrobes...
Many of my colleagues know exactly what I am talking about ;-)

(I was checking out the Sky hotel website while making arrangements for my TED@Aspen stay.)