Category Archives: Culture

What Christmas is Really About

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Being Christmas time it seems oddly appropriate to be sitting here with the woodburner blazing away and the rain pelting on the roof in the midst of summer. In the corner of my lounge is a large pine tree branch that, when propped up, passes as a rudimentary Christmas tree. The most significant aspect to the tree is that my son and I spent an enjoyable hour or so decorating it with all manner of colourful items. It didn’t matter that most of the sweets and crackers had been disposed of before the big day arrived. What mattered was the love that we put into constructing the edifice itself.

When he’s not with me, I can look at that tree and be reminded of what we shared and it fills me with enjoyment and warmth. That is why the tree remains in place long after the presents are opened and the last mince pie has been consumed. In fact every year I take a photo of my son in front of the tree. Those photos form a pictorial history of his growth and development.

Christmas tradition seems stronger than ever. I believe the reasons are twofold. Firstly we remain in the grip of a headlong rush to consumerism that began with new found post-war wealth over fifty years ago. Christmas provides us with the perfect guilt-free reason to shop. Secondly, “Western society” has been rudely awakened to the fact that there are many competing ideologies outside of the Judeo-Christian paradigm. Christmas is seen as an antidote to these strange exogenous forces.

So Christmas remains as popular as ever. But the best part is whenever I come home and open the front door I am immediately assailed by pine scent and reminded of the time that my son and I spent together at Christmas. That is what Christmas is really about.

Are We Overinvested in All Blacks Brand Culture?

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I’m not qualified at all to comment on the detail of the All Blacks embarrassing departure from the World Cup. In fact I don’t even follow the game very closely. What I do know is that as a nation we are far too psychologically invested in the fortunes of fifteen sportsmen.

The NZRFU marketing machine has to accept full responsibility for putting the team on such a high pedestal, in order to feather its nest with huge sums in sponsorship. In fact I’m surprised the team members have time to attend regular practice sessions given the demands to appear in a wide variety of TV commercials promoting airlines, credit cards, sportswear, food and beverages and even underpants. As an “iconic” brand the All Blacks have over-promised and under-delivered. It all looks rather like marketing hype gone mad.

But what concerns me most is that so much of our national self-esteem hangs on the All Blacks performance. New Zealand has so much more to offer than rugby, hakas and bubbling hot mud pools, but we cannot seem to move beyond these cliches. It’s cringeful at times. 

If our emerging technology companies could secure even a tenth of the media coverage and financial backing that the ABs get, imagine how beneficial this would be to the economy. What if our brightest science researchers could get proper long term funding sponsorship and didn’t have to head overseas to make a living.Then we really would have something to celebrate. We need some new heroes.

Generation C and the Co-Production Economy

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I predict that one way or another we’ll be hearing more about “Generation C” the Community of talented individuals who Connect to Co-Create Content. What a mouthful! Appropriately, the phrase itself has been popularised by online articles and has begun to take hold with the aid of viral marketing, virtual magazines and blogging. Idealog ran an article on the topic about a year ago.

The concept probably had part of its origins in Richard Florida’s controversial, but widely read book The Rise of the Creative Class, which explores the Post-Industrial shift towards “knowledge work” involving technology and/or creative pursuits and how this is impacting on cities and economies.

Labelling the co-production economy as the next Renaissance is possibly going a little far at this stage and I still believe we do need to question the validity of crowd-written editorial. Contrarians like Andrew Keen go even further, espousing a dystopian view of the future whereby the Internet enables the lowest common denominator to prevail in the world of arts and letters. He describes Web 2.0 as  a “vertiginous media world in which content and advertising become indistinguishable”. However, Keen may have an axe to grind. He founded an Internet startup company that crashed and burned during the first tech boom.

Notwithstanding all the cynicism, I do like Matt Webb’s summation of what Gen C stands for amongst creative and connected people. Community, empowerment and sharing seem like important themes even without referring to the Internet in any way. I’ve seen the phrase “digital socialist” used in the context of freeing up better broadband connectivity and perhaps that moniker applies here too. So is Gen C and the disintermediation of traditional media and consumer channels perceived as a broader threat to capitalism?

Patricia Seybold doesn’t think so. In fact she articulates a somewhat clinical and business centric view. She’s adamant that Web 2.0 is neither a fad nor a phenomenon associated with a particular demographic. Web 2.0 enables not only peer produced digital content, but also opens a whole new channel to engage with customers by allowing them to co-design the products and services they want.  More importantly let’s imagine what might be possible if we networked entire organisations together and let them collaborate on interesting stuff.

But once corporates and government agencies take it onboard, will Web 2.0 then become mainstream and lose its cutting edge? Once everyone is converted to Generation C and is cross-trading the same images, soundbites and information nuggets repeatedly, will this devalue the opportunity? Will we still be able to differentiate between knowledge and folklore?

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The folks at Webstock have organised a panel debate and networking evening in Wellington on June 19th. The topic of the debate is:  “That Web 2.0 is all fizz and no substance”.

Crossing the Creative Chasm

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exploreI have often thought that technology entrepreneurs have a great deal in common with artists. They are creative and passionate about their work, they need a healthy sense of self-belief and they must both struggle to have their creative output adopted by the mainstream.

Amanda Tomasoa is an Auckland artist whose colourful work reflects her passion for life and a love for the people that she encounters. Like many artists (and entrepreneurs) she has had her ups and downs as she sought to establish herself on the local scene. Choosing a “go-to-market” strategy can be as difficult for an artist as it is for a technology entrepreneur.

Fortunately her work is highly attractive to the eye, reasonably priced and makes great talking pieces for corporate foyers to domestic living spaces. Her abstracts in particular have received acclaim and sell steadily. She has even been approached by galleries as far away as New York who sense there is a market for vibrant Asia-Pacific works. New Zealand’s reputation for unique brilliance in creative endeavours still carries some weight.

 But you can’t ship artwork over the Internet, airfreight costs a lot and you also want to know you are getting your money up front first. It’s a problem. You can however licence images, create a fashion franchise and export your creativity in other ways – which is what Amanda really wants to do. She just needs someone to help make it happen.

Contact Amanda through her website or meet up with her at the Idealog/AUT Innovation Series launch event.

[tags] New Zealand, art, marketing, entrepreneurship [/tags]

Wired.com experiments with ‘crowd-sourcing’

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Speaking of e-collaboration, Wired.com and some partners have created a project called Assignment Zero by which they can experiment with the concept of peer production of media content. Through a website, hundreds of global contributors will be assigned small parts of a very large topic, then professional editors will mash it all together.

For the first story they have chosen to explore (wait for it)  – the scope and nature of peer production of media content. Well I guess that’s a logical starting point, but wouldn’t it be great to eventually see a ‘crowd-sourced’ story on Iraq or corporate corruption emerge for example?

Anyway, it will be a bit like a self-validating journalistic Wiki. That’s the part I still worry about when I wonder where Web 2.0 is going. How much is truth, how much is useful knowledge and how much will be urban myth or just plain lies? Under the ‘crowd-sourcing’ model it seems like if enough people validate a claim then it becomes socially acceptable. But that in itself does not guarantee truth. Some critics have also complained that employing an editorial board will skew the outcome according to whatever agenda Wired wishes to promote.

A project like this tests traditional models of ownership and verifiability for sure. But on the other hand it’s a step towards far greater democratisation of the media. Creating a formal framework for a creative, collaborative endeavour is a vast improvement on having no guidelines at all. The Internet is still very much a ‘Wild West’ scenario, so any improvement has to be a step forward. Doesn’t it?
[tags]e-collaboration, crowd sourcing, culture, knowledge[/tags]

The Namesake – Crossing the Cultural Chasm

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namesake.jpgI’m picking that a movie called ‘The Namesake’ will be one of the quiet cinema successes of 2007 and well worth a look see. The storyline centres on a migrant Indian family who move to America to make a better life for their young children. The elder child, played by Kal Penn (he blogs too), yearns to reconnect to his Indian roots and returns to the mother country in an effort to console himself after a relationship breakup. Directed by Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding) the film has a downunder connection featuring emerging Aussie actor Jacinda Barrett as the American girlfriend struggling to bridge the cultural gulf.

The plight of migrants who have transplanted into a foreign culture is a theme that resonates when I think about how many of the hot technology startups out of Silicon Valley were founded by first or second generation migrants, particularly from Asia. Cultural crossover and the ability to have skilled migrants and migrant entrepreneurs integrate into the economy is an important issue here in NZ too and worthy of a little more research perhaps. So with the support of the AsiaNZ Foundation we have been hosting a skilled migrants forum on ION over the last few months to gather some data on migrant experiences. [tags]Namesake, India, America, film, culture, migrant[/tags]