The Feast

"The Feast" on October 16th in NYC will gather 150 of the world's leading creative mavericks, entrepreneurs, revolutionaries, radicals, and innovators together to inspire action to change the world.

A series of inspiring, mind-expanding, and innovative talks that will showcase a look at social innovation from all angles. From design to business to science, our speakers will share a deep look at changing the DNA of their respective industries by harnessing the power of creativity to propel social change. Some confirmed speakers include Dale Jones of PlayPumps International and Tom Szaky of TerraCycle.

Whether you're a social entrepreneur or socially conscious at heart, "The Feast" will provide you with an excellent platform for inspiration, connection, and action.

For more information and to purchase tickets, visit http://www.thefeastconference.com

Twittering the RNC

I am attending the RNC tonight and will be twittering live from the Xcel center. I've never been to a party convention before and am curious to see what it's all about. It should be good ...

Check for a planner's perspective on the convention at: twitter.com/minneswiss

Web 2.0: Advertus Interuptus

Google released a teaser comic about their latest develops, Google Chrome browser. Besides the fact that I want it (not avail yet) and this mode of Simplexity communications (think CommonCraft) are increasingly necessary in the modern age...

Most intriguing for advertisers are page 23's implications:


I think this page is a really simple metaphor and explainer to clients for just how Web 2.0 has/will continually handicap the classic, long-held interruption model of advertising.

Note other trends of this sort on Facebook such as the new "thumbs up/thumbs down" ad options for voting "irrelevant" or "uninteresting" advertising out of your social life.


As predicted (endlessly) by many of us, WEB 2.0 IS ENABLING PEEPS TO SHUT OUT THE UNWANTED (SPAM) OUT OF OUR LIVES. And the passkey back in won't be in trojan horses and increased noise, but rather: offering up generous value.

Politics 2.0: Sex Ads in Denver Up During DNC

Timeless behavior, perhaps, but now enabled and amplified by social media - CNet says: Sex Ads in Denver Up During DNC

"Ads seeking casual sexual encounters through the Denver Craigslist site increased an average of roughly 70 percent to 80 percent over the same days of the week earlier in August."

The general content is what you might expect. Posts suggested "Here 4 DNC? Come get sexual with me"; "Does the DNC make you hot?"; and "Looking to service a young Democrat."


And CNet offers this fair disclaimer: "mere correlation does not imply causation - other factors could explain this rise in advertisements." True, indeed. And I would also add to this disclaimer that increased ad spending doesn't necessarily mean increased sales resulted, either. Advertisers could, perhaps, have been pitching to an indifferent target base who were far too busy to care. If anyone has ROI research data on this feel free to post your charts. Will keep eyes peeled for RNC comparisons.

via Adlab

Community 2.0: Hurricane Gustav Information Center

A collective assembly of Gustav Information. Using Ning platform, the site aggregates content from a variety of social media resources, including; Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, Utterz, Technorati, etc.- all you have to do is tag the item gustav.



*Hopefully, this will be a merely academic exercise in pre-caution.

via Social Media Club

Mass Interactive: Cymbolism

Cymbolism is a new website that attempts to quantify the association between colors and words, making it simple for designers to choose the best colors for the desired emotional effect. Taking web 2.0 folksonomy to the next stage, users are invited to organize the definition of color itself with word associations and tags.

Social 10: Facebook’s New Social Video Ad Unit is an Engagement Magnet

A few of us noticed a curious new ad unit pop up in our Facebook feeds yesterday. The unit is a video that also displays open comments from your friends circle about that ad. Real-time, ongoing conversation about the ad - which potentially gives advertisers a peek directly into the sentiment of the audiences receiving the ad. I think this is a game-changer for social ads.

Inside Facebook notes: Facebook will fill the sponsored home page slot with this kind of unit.

The behavior:
1)Clicking on the ad image opens a video player in-line
2)Comments on the video are visible to your entire friend list.

The comments around the ad dramatically increase engagement with the unit, as the highly visible comments provide an opportunity for users to simultaneously draw attention to the ad by drawing attention to themselves.

*While this could backfire if comments degrading the advertiser are abundant ("this movie is Lame"-type commentary could overwhelm - but hey, the comments are from your friends so it has a certain relevance to you), the ad comments take powerful advantage of Facebook’s social dynamics to draw attention to an ad in a way that is impossible without the social graph. When is the last time you heard 9 friends talk about an online ad in the same day?

Ad comments are an interesting step forward in the evolution of “Social Ads.” While this kind of ad may not work as well outside of a few advertiser verticals, expect that early advertisers will be pleased with its performance.

Aki's quick takeaways:
1) Ads will need to become more engaging and comment provoking or risk flaming commentary (or worse, not being worthy of notice and comment)
2) Advertisers will need to become reactionary to response...maybe change the ads up, or try 10 ads - monitor feedback/response/actions taken and let the top 2 effective ads move forward
3) Advertisers will need to become choiceful about what they put in this channel...relevance and interestingness will matter now more than ever
4) EVERY MEDIA will soon be made more accountable to results and data of this nature for every ad media buy

Leave Twitter ALONE!!!

Imagine that title in the voice of the weird dude from the Brittany video...

Mass Interactive: Nokia Productions

Nokia Productions says: "Most films are made for the masses. This one is made by them. Join a production crew of thousands and play a part in creating Spike Lee and Nokia Productions’ latest film collaboration."


Check to all the boxes: big participatory idea and user co-creation blahblahblah, BUT the really important (smart) distinction here is Spike Lee has been hired to "direct" the crowd and conduct this orchestra with very thorough and paced "briefings" that detail what user co-creation should deliver on, creatively. This whole format reminds me of an agency process - Spike isn't hindering creative output from the crowd, but nor is he just leaving it up to some teen to submit any ol' piece of video nonsense and we call it "brand passion". Spike/Nokia Productions is deftly briefing in a creative strategy to the crowd (translate: he's keeping all the submissions ON BRIEF and not just random cheese from the masses).

Brilliant answer, Nokia, to the whole "losing control" debate that always come up with regard to user co-creation. Or...I think its a brilliant answer. We'll see, I guess. Fingers crossed.

*My Age of Conversation submission delves into this burgeoning opportunity to "outsource the agency" by recruiting users as panelists and advisors to the creative idea. More on this soon.

Fallon Brainfood: Social 10 *UPDATE: Scrabulous vs Hasbro

In my Social 10 trends in social media presentation a few months ago, I recounted the cautionary tale of Hasbro's Scrabble versus Scrabulous


Well since then, Hasbro finally beta launched their official Scrabble app on Facebook. And Scrabulous unexpectedly closed down their app last week - only to then relaunch as Wordscraper.

The numbers are in from Adonomics, and Wordscraper has almost matched Scrabble Beta's usage numbers - in only a few days since launch.


Some lessons to learn:
-Again, at the Social, you're competing with the crowd as much as you're competing with "competitors"
-Collaboration may be a better option. So, what Hasbro has created is a new enemy, a formidible competitor more nimble and effective than you (I hear word of tech glitches with the Scrabble Beta, Worscraper is further along and has groundswell)

Electing a US President (in Plain English)

Common Craft strikes again. Swing thought: planners' job is to make strategic complexity as simple and succint as these guys continually do.

Fallonites ride Critical Mass Minneapolis

Last Friday, several Fallonites partook in Critical Mass Minneapolis, the Twin Cities' chapter of a nationwide bicycle awareness movement. For those unaware, Critical Mass is a group that meets in Loring Park on the last Friday of each month and consists of several hundred bikers who ride through the streets of Minneapolis. The group's founding mission is to promote bike usage as a regular means of transportation and raise awareness of how unfriendly city streets are to cyclists.

TJ, Claire, and myself took the streets of Minneapolis to experience what exactly this is like. The following is a photo storyline of our experience.

Cyclists begin to assemble at Loring Park around 5:30. Before the ride, a small civilians rights group makes a presentation about how to interact with police if they give you difficulty. (This was presented due to incidents like this which have occurred in Minneapolis.) The group also makes us write a "jail hotline" on our arm, in case we are arrested.


Claire's arm


The police arrive on bike and in squad car to escort the group. After multiple incidents, the MPD has decided to play nice. (Ironically they don't play so nice later, but that is a whooooole different story.)


TJ and Claire cruisin' Lyndale Ave.


CM heads downtown


Fallon represent!!


Post CM celebration at Preston's.


Overall great experience. I will be back on August 29 as will many others hopefully.

YouTube choose your own adventure

Online video has quickly become the most popular and mainstream form of social media participation. But as it becomes more mainstream, what ideas have surfaced to make video more interesting? Sure, sites like YouTube, DailyMotion, etc continue to spring up, but the videos themselves have remained rather one-side broadcastish.

Until now.



Choose your own adventure (nostalgic of the book series popular when I was in elementary school) utilizes the video response system in YouTube to make online video into a game of sorts. You have to go to the actual site to be able to use it, but the embed will give you an idea.

This particular adventure is about some guy trying to find his cat. I spent awhile searching and thought i had exhausted all of my options in order to find the feline. Apparently I was wrong and never found kitty. Maybe you will be more successful.

Visualization of Information: PicLens, Digg Labs and Twitter/Flickrvision

Here are three applications that allow you to search visually news, status updates, videos, pictures etc. in cool new ways.

PicLens lets you search for photos and videos in 3-D and in full screen. This web browser add-on makes it way easier to search for things with out paging through a website and its also makes it much more fun. Its like apple's coverflow to another dimension. Once you download the add-on a blue box in the upper right corner will light up when a page is viewable with PicLens.

Digg labs web applications organize all the news items on Digg visually. With Digg Stack, the stories are bar graphs that get taller given the amount of Diggs, so you can watch stories grow. Digg Swarm creates circles around stories that get bigger as they are dugg. All of these applications can be accessed online or used as a screensaver.


Twittervision and Flickrvision allow you to see what people are seeing and saying in real time around the world. Using google maps or a 3-D map this program shows you exactly where tweets and photos are coming from. It can get addicting. You can view it on a browser or download the screensaver. They also have a local version that only shows what is going on in your specific area. There is no way I know of to see only my friends on the map and have multiple tweets or photos up at a time. I imagine these programs will get cooler and developed as GPS is becoming more common in cell phones.

Agencies (re)Imagine the Stop Sign

"What if there were no stop signs, and a major corporation was charged with inventing one?"


via moneyries

Message For Future Generations

Mark Earls and Domenico Vitale have created Message For Future Generations a depository of planners' wisdom about Account Planning.

Fallon Planning Blog on Facebook

Fallon Planning Blog on Facebook, ya'll

don't stop, git it, git it
this app is still a bit *buggy*, so expect RSS feeds soonish...and "confirm" a brotha when you visit (or get my confirm email)...I can't activate the hot features til 10 peeps confirm that I'm me. Recognize.
Twitter feeds comin' soon, too, standby.

What the F**K is social media?

Found this great slide show on Blog de Nuit today. It's a very simple presentation about what social media is and what it means for brands.

For those social network connoisseurs out there, it probably won't say anything new. But I appreciate the simplicity and clarity. Reminds me a bit of the CommonCraft vids about Twitter and LinkedIN


My favorite quote from the presentation:


"Relinquish control: The goal is not to control the conversation."

| View | Upload your own

via Blog de Nuit

Virtuality: Onion Spoofs Virtuality

The Onion News Network explores the World of World of Warcraft, a game where you play a person playing a game.

'Warcraft' Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing 'Warcraft'

Fallon Brainfood: Communicators Forum @ University of Minnesota Q2

I presented a keynote at last week's Communicators Forum at University of Minnesota and I ran over time before I could answer many of the Question Cards from the audience. Let's keep the dialogue going. Here are more answers to one of the cards (expect a few more posts in coming days):


Q: Many of the examples refer to "selling products" - can you talk about how we might translate this to "selling research"?
Great question. Ironic, too. Because I am, right now, "selling research". Or strategy. Or an odd hybrid, but I digress. My point is, thru all my social media tools, I am working to get insights out of the file cabinet, out of my notepad, out of the presentations for 6 people and never seen again, and into the hands and minds of my living clients/associates/collaborators/students, etc. In this day and age, there is so much data and research that the role of interpreter and guide is more vital than ever. Research matters not if the people who matter don't "get it". Your mission, as researcher, should be to demystify and help them "get it". So be the Virgil of your research. Social media can help you get your research "slippy" and out there and exposed and in the conversations.

How to get your research social? Dramatize your research's effects on people, show us on YouTube what the data means in an engaging way, blog about how it impacts us in ways we never expected, podcast the interviews of those at the frontlines of your research, Delicious your article links to parallel paths of other thinkers in your field. Slideshare your latest thinking, and Flicker the latest charts and graphs. Get it out of the research journals and into the spheres of influence, your peers, your bosses, your financiers, the press, whoevs and wherevs, get the research socialized, man!

The old school approach to research? A mysterious cabal sequesters themselves away and test and think, then come down off the mountain with tablets of new gospel. Well, the new way is

-Open share - you don't own an idea if you insist on hiding it, you own an idea by sharing it. Throughout the research process, tease us with drafts and sketches and updates.
-Open source - in college, collaboration on a test or paper is called "cheating"...but collaboration is the only way to solve problems faster and smarter in this age. Start cheating, and letting others cheat off you which requires
-Open code, make your info stealable, thus it is desirable, thus it is shareable, thus it gets spreadable. Give up a few secrets (charts, graphs, insights, interviews) and let others work on the equation with you and pay you back. Oh, and steal from others, too (just give credit so that person may own their contribution).

Some quickie sites that come to mind for me (while not knowing what form of research you specialize in) of making research engaging and slippy:
http://blog.compete.com/
http://www.wefeelfine.org/index.html
http://twistori.com/
http://www.heynielsen.com/
http://www.trendrr.com/home