Last week I went along to this month’s Creative Morning to listen to Beeker Northam, strategy director of Dentsu London. I was pretty excited as I’ve followed Dentu’s work for some time (their UniQlo stuff especially) and liked the thinking that was coming out of their new (ish) London studio, where they’ve collaborated with BERG, another studio that create cool, relevant stuff (including my next birthday present).

I’ll start with a quote from Glen Gould that Beeker shared that I think summed up the sentiment to her talk really well:

“If there’s any excuse at all for making a record, it’s to do it differently, to approach the work from a totally reactive point of view…. To perform this particular work as it has never been heard before. And if one cant do that, I would say abandon it, move on to something else.”

Amongst others (more names to add to the ever expanding reading list), she introduced us to the thinking from Alan Moore, the theory that we are progressing at a double rate. He predicted full acceleration by 2015, but it could be argued that we’re already there. Beeker spoke about how it’s therefore important to create things, whatever they might be, of cultural value, that add something to the world rather than the landfill. After all, as progress continues it’s only the things of quality and relevancy that will be noticed. It made me think of an article I read last week from the ever-telling Brooker on how we take this change at break neck speed in our stride:

“When I was making the series How TV Ruined Your Life, we went out and asked members of the public to comment on a new invention that we were claiming was real: a mobile phone that allowed you to call through time, so you could speak to people in the future. Many people thought it was real: not so much as a testament to gullibility, but an indicator of just how magical today’s technology has become. We take miracles for granted on a daily basis.”

The most interesting companies get this, and create ideas, experiments and experiences that explode into reality or fail fantastically, with us all learning along the way. Beeker showcased Dentu’s iPad lighting app (above) and Sawappu as key examples of proactive innovation where they made stuff because they spotted a valuable space in the world for it. We all know that progress (and it shouldn’t be defined as digital) has crumbled the wall between agency and client. This inevitably means to remain relevant we should all make, all communicate and all collaborate.

And in turn, this ability to thrive with change and maintain creativity across an entire workplace is key, and why I think the tools that I try to practice such as open, honest feedback and active learning via reflection are so effective, and more important than ever. An effective creative environment allows for this sort of craft and Beeker’s definition of craft as ‘the workmanship of risk’ seemed particularly fitting. If you think about it these days, it’s probably more risky for industry not to take risks. To me this is a great thing that pushes fresh thinking and stops stagnation. I can’t wait to see the stuff I’ll be working on in the next month, year, decade. All I know is that it will be different from now.

So, a big thank you to Beeker for a hearty dose of inspiration on a cold Friday morning, you can check out my scribbles below. The next speaker at Creative Mornings will be David Barrie, an incredible guy who set up the People’s Supermarket - keep an eye out for tickets going up in January to kick off the new year in style.

Around a month ago, I was part of a team that brought Local by Social to Blackburn with Darwen Council. The idea behind this was to bring together innovators, forward thinking local government people and active residents and community leaders to have a new think about how the web could help them solve, or even better create, new ways to deliver services specifically to the local area.

The day itself was wonderful, and you can browse my full write-up of things here, but this is a quick post to introduce you to the idea I worked on in the afternoon with my team. Say hello to Print10!

Recently there has been heated debate surrounding cuts to council magazine funding. Print10 is a service that aims to fill that space in (hopefully) a collaborative and creative way, recognising that publications still offer a wealth of information that people might not manage to access if allowed to simply disappear. We don’t think sticking it all online is the answer, but we just might think the web could help with both design and delivery. We also think it’s vital to work with a council on all of the above. You can have a peep at our initial *cough: winning* presentation below:

We’re keen to get this moving, and already have a start up project team from local government, the voluntary sector, community leadership and web development that all believe in the idea. You can get involved by visiting the googlesite here, or, if you’d like to chat about all of this in more detail over a coffee, let me know. Contact me in the usual way, below or over here.

A few weeks ago I went along to the London edition of the Global Service Jam. I was there on official Simpl business (which you can read more about here) but also to stretch some creative muscle. It’s important to do something different every now and then, so, Simpl stickers in tact, I headed to LBi. Kudos to the wonderful Ian Bach, who dreamt up some lovely ice breaking games that ensured everyone felt suitably silly, set in their teams and ready for the weekend.

One whole hour to go. Looking deceptively calm.

So, armed with my new best friends we headed to the beautiful Seren offices to embark on our 48 hour service design adventure that involved (in no particular order) a bunch of ideas, a bunch of ideas being thrown away, one (final) presentation, one short film, one million flip chart sheets, various graphs, two brilliant breakfasts and probably a bit too much beer. My group, like all the others (but *obviously* even more amaze ; ) contained a collection of wonderfully creative designers, developers and problem solvers. We did seem to tip more on the doer rather than thinker side of the scales, and once we decided on our idea (a process in which I’m sure we all had a little inner cry) we exercised some brilliantly productive parallel working, with leadership seeming to flit around the team. Well done us.

To top it off, we ended up with (I think) a well thought out project that ticked the what, the why and the how of it all. I’ll be putting the project into a separate post, but I definitely think there’s something around being in a situation where the value is to create and to be brave. More on our bromance service project soon.

So, all in all it was a marvellous experience, but one that I would have loved to of brought more people along from outside the design world as I think anyone who needs to solve problems in new ways could have benefited from, as well as added to, the jam (I guess some of this thinking comes from our Local by Social events). On chatting to the organisers they did highlight their efforts in trying to attract other sectors, so perhaps next time.

Two things that I really liked: One – the mentors that circulated the groups were brilliant, and often shoving ideas back into focus by asking the right questions. Two – I thought each group having to present and share their progress every two hours worked well. By the time the final show and tell came about you’d have presented your project in so many ways, to so many people, each group seemed to have a solid idea with insightful, confident thinking behind it, in a “we can do this! WE HAVEN’T SLEPT” sort of way. Truth be told I was blown away on realising that all the ideas shared could move forward with the right push into the world. You can find all the final presentations here – but below gives a nice snapshot of how things went:

The energy, atmosphere, and sheer amount that was produced was in itself remarkable achievement (you can look at all the projects, over on the Global Service Jam community here), I’m still a firm believer that impact comes with, and is shaped by, implementation. However, on a personal note, the process of the weekend and the pressure of pulling something off, a something with hopefully a future, was valuable in itself. And, after the encouraging feedback I received after presenting Simpl, it seemed many of my fellow jammers felt the same.

p.s If you were one of the jammers who didn’t get a chance to speak to me and would like more info on Simpl (or anything else for that matter) just leave a comment below or send me a tweet and I’ll get back to you