Oh well, it's always a possibility when traveling. It makes waiting for all the buses a little bit more of an adventure.
Today, I started off by tracking down some Jamba juice. (I was missing my normal daily juicing). We prevailed! I so wish we had a Jamba Juice in KC! Someone get on that quick!
Then, back to the Austin Convention Center to make the Brands as Patterns session where I listened to a panel of experts weigh in on trends in brands and where they are going. One of the more interesting concepts was that in the past branding has been based on building consistency through repetition. The brand would be outlined by rigid rules set at one point and time. However, setting rules like that makes you inflexible. But in order to be relevant, and in today's world, iterative, brands need to allow space for change and variety. Our experiences are liquid. Our brands must follow. Yet, at the same time, consistency is still needed. So what's the solution? Knowing your brand's story and ingraining it into the pattern. Patterns create consistency around difference and variance. Take Beethoven's 5th symphony and play the first four notes. (Can't remember it? Click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4IRMYuE1hI). Now, if you repeat that exact sequence over and over again, it gets REALLY boring. However, if you play the whole song as composed by the musical genuis, this pattern is threaded throughout the composition and it NEVER gets boring. It evokes emotion and keeps us excited. We don't have to be inflexible to establish consistency with our brands.
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| Beethoven's 5th - Patterns |
Next, I attended a quick session called Radio-Free Yoga - Self-realize x Social Enterprise. Yoga is about connection. So is the internet. It's only logical that there would be a natural marriage between these two things. The social media tools at our disposal can help us connect in ways that were impossible before. Virtual connections bringing about real (Jane McGonagal from yesterday would say "realized") benefits in the physical world.
Emotional Equations to Connect with Your Customers presented by Chip Conley was very interesting. I liked him as a CEO. Maybe because at the end of his presentation he stated that we are all CEOs but more than that, we are all Chief Emotion Officers. We all have emotions. If we can't connect to our own emotions, how can we connect to those of our clients' in order to anticipate their needs? The king of Bhutan once stated that he didn't care about the GDP of his country, but rather the happiness. We need to tap into our emotions, the emotions of our employees and ultimately the emotions of our clients. Chip's main ending points were to pay attention to emotional intelligence or EQ, to realize that emotions are as contagious as the flu, and that we need to be cultural anthropologists in our businesses.
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| Chip |
From there, I ran to Data Visualization & the Future of Research. There was a lot of data presented from the panel of 5 experts but the main key to understanding data now is to realize that there is more data generated today that can possibly be consumed. In past eras, you could look up and literally read through all the literature of a given time. However, in our current time, this is impossible. So, when we approach researching and accessing data, we need a way to see more than our ability. Take the telescope. It provides us a way to see things much further than the human eye can see. Take the microscope. It enables us to see things much smaller than our eyes can detect. Today we need tools as macroscopes. Tools that can take "big data" and combine it with computation in order to enhance our epistemology (or ways of knowing). Microsoft is experimenting and providing free tools for us to do just that. Check out research.microsoft.com/collaboration, or worldwidetelescope.org, or layerscape.org, or chronozoomproject.org.
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| Big data |
Jason and I ended the sessions with a Carlin Home Companion, the story of George Carlin's life and humor as told by his daughter. George started life out with a set formula that he saw work for another dj turned comedian turned movie actor. But in the end, even though it took him 60+ years for him to feel he finally found his truest artistic self, following his dreams and not others' expectations was the true key to happiness.
But the day could not be concluded before Jason participated in a little robot boxing wars! Check it out here: http://youtu.be/BMou-Kg1wwM
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