My friend Keith has been away from Facebook for six weeks, for work reasons, and hasnât missed it. And he asked, âWas it all really a waste of time?â
I know you think you know what Iâm going to say, but the answer might surprise you a little.
Fundamentally, itâs yes (this is how you know this blog has not been hijacked), but Keithâs question brought home to me, as well as other work Iâve done this week, the biggest con of Facebook for the creative person.
Itâs not the fact the advertising results are not independently checked, or that thereâs evidence that Facebook itself uses bots to boost likes to a page. The con was, certainly when I was a heavy user around the time Timeline was introduced, making us feel like we were doing something creative, satiating that part of our brain, when in fact we were making Zuckerberg rich.
How we would curate our lives! Show the best side of ourselves! Choose those big pictures to be two-column-wide Timeline posts! We looked at these screens like canvases to be manipulated and we enjoyed what they showed us.
Before Facebook became âthe new Diggâ (as I have called it), and a site for misinformation, we were still keeping in touch with friends and having fun, and it seemed to be the cool thing to do as business went quiet in the wake of the GFC.
And I was conned. I was conned into thinking I was enjoying the photography and writing and editingâat least till I realized that importing my RSS feeds into Facebook gave people zero incentive to come to my sites.
This week, with redoing a few more pages on our websites, especially ones that dated back many years, I was reminded how that sort of creative endeavour gave me a buzz, and why many parts of our company websites used to look pretty flash.
The new look to some pagesâthe photo gallery was the most recent one to go under the knifeâis slightly more generic (which is the blunt way to say contemporary), but the old one had dated tremendously and just wasnât a pleasure to scroll down.
And while it still uses old-fashioned HTML tables (carried over from the old) it was enjoyable to do the design work.
There’s still more to do as the current look is rolled out to more pages.
Maybe it took me a while to realize this, and others had already got there, but most of my time had been spent doing our print magazines lately. But designing web stuff was always fun, and Iâm glad I got to find that buzz again, thanks to Amandaâs nudge and concepts for jya.co, the JY&A Consulting site. Forget the attention economy, because charity begins at the home page.
Photo galleries, old and new. The top layout is more creative design-wise than the lower one, but sadly the browsing experience felt dated.
I hadn’t expected this reply Tweet to get so many likes, probably a record for me.
I knew my parents couldnât afford The Lettering Book, so I went without, which forced me to create my own typeface designs. Later I became the first digital typeface designer in this country.
It is true. That book was NZ$4·99 in 1979, when it was offered through the Lucky Book Club at school, at a time when many books were still priced in cents. Some kids in the class got it, and I admit I was a bit envious, but not having a book in an area that interested you can drive creativity. While my parents didn’t make a heck of a lot in the 1970sâwe flatted and didn’t own our own car at this pointâthey would have splashed out if I really insisted on it. After all, they were sending me to a private school and their sacrifice was virtually never going out. (I only recall one night in those days when my parents had a “date night” and my maternal grandmother looked after meâand that was to see Superman II.) But when you grow up having an understanding that, as an immigrant family that had to largely start from scratch in a new country, you have a rough idea of what’s expensive, and five bucks for a book was expensive.
As an adultâeven when I was a young man starting out in my careerâI did not regret not having this book.
Someone in the thread asked if I ever wound up buying it. I never did: as a teenager I managed to get my hands on a very worn Letraset catalogue, which ultimately proved far more interesting. But it is good to know that, thanks in large part to my parents’ and grandmother’s sacrifices, and those in my partner’s family who helped her in her earlier years, we could afford to buy this book if anyone in our family asks for it.
Were we fleeing anything when we came to Aotearoa? We left Hong Kong in 1976 because my parents were worried about what China would do to the place. In other words, what’s happening now is what they hoped for me to avoid. They called it, in the 1970s. And here I am.
I have been posting these on the videos’ page as they became public, but maybe I should have added them to this blog, too, for those of you following on RSS. The multilingual one seems to have had a lot of hits. They have been directed by Isaac Cleland, with Khadeeja Dean on sound. Lawrance Simpson was DOP on the first one below.
This one was important to me, as I sent in a submission on the local alcohol policy, leaning more in favour of the hospitality industry’s submissions while acknowledging the need to reduce harm.
Highlights from that submission: ‘The hours feel very limiting as the harm has not come from the opening hours of on-licensed venues, but from pre-loading. Most venues are responsible and safe based on my own custom. A blanket 7 a.m.âÂ5 a.m. with council officers using their discretion on venues failing to meet the highest standards, then restricting them back to 3 a.m. would be a better approach, while acknowledging the changes at the national level.’
âI remain unsure whether harm will be decreased. I have listened to the police and hospital submissions, and I have great sympathy for them. However, if we know pre-loading and drinking education to be the greatest issues, restricting on-licence hours will not help. If it forces people to drink more at home rather than frequent the city, then that doesn’t actually decrease harm: it makes harm harder to police because it is shifted to the suburbs. It adds to the cost of health services because of travel time and the inability for those harmed to get immediate help.’
âThere are some good aspects in its response to the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012âand it was right for Council to respond. The arguments on density and proximity are a good response to some residents’ concerns.’
Finally: ‘My belief is that the root cause of a lot of our drinking culture comes from socioeconomic conditions and, especially with the young, a sense of disengagement and a pessimism about their futures. While it is not the purpose of the strategy, it is something that we must address as a city.’
Judging Miromoda for the fourth (I believe) time, this time at Pipitea Marae. It must have been the first time the te Reo portion of my address was longer than the English. I need to disclose that I am not fluent but I try to make a decent stab at it at every opportunity, for the obvious reason that it is the native language of this country.
The below was written on April 22, 2013, in response to an article in The Dominion Post. It was offered to the newspaper as an opâed, then to The Wellingtonian, but it was eventually declined.
The Dominion Postâs headline on April 22 confirmed what many of us knew after numerous friends and colleagues left Wellington over the last several years.
Our population growth is below the national average, as are our employment and economic growth. In fact, the regional Wellington economy is stagnant.
In 2010, I stated that we needed to look at our creative sector, and encourage creative clusters, to get Wellingtonâs economy back on track. Even then it was evident that the early 2010s were not going to get off to a healthy start. If we were to get central governmentâs support for any projectsâeven the Mayorâs light-rail programmeâthen surely the wisest thing would be to increase the industry in our city first?
The free wifi I campaigned on was never meant to be seen in isolation. It was a signal to international businesses in that sector that Wellington was open to investment and collaboration. That inward investment and sharing of knowledge could, in turn, help local firms expand and export.
We had reached the limits of our natural resources, so we needed to start using intellectual property, and increase R&D in our city. While ICT is healthy in Wellington, the priority must be to identify companies, in this and other high-value sectors, that can become nationally or internationally competitive with the right nudge. We should not be, as the late Sir Paul Callaghan stated in a 2011 address, locked into a single sectorâand that was what the clusters were all about.
With my 2013 candidacy, not much has changed about these ideas. The real difference is that they have become far more pressing.
The next mayor needs to work with oneâs counterparts in the region and agree on identifying, using rigorous criteria, which are our next champions. Which firms, for instance, are those that are sitting on $1 million revenues today that can be at $10 million shortly, if they were given the right exposure, contacts or opportunities?
And since nationally, high-tech exports are growing at 11 per cent per annum, according to the World Bank, itâs not a bad sector to start with. It just shouldnât be the only one.
Wellington businesses are not asking for hand-outs, but the right connections. These firms also need to be encouraged to look beyond just being content with a small patch, when Wellington business-people often hold great ideals and more socially responsible ways of doing things. These can, in fact, inform the way business is conducted in other cities, and contribute to how New Zealand is marketed and seen abroad.
I do not advocate a policy of âgrowth for growthâs sakeâ. But I do argue that the innovative way successful Wellington businesses have approached their sectors can take a larger share of the global pie.
In my case, itâs putting 26 yearsâ experience on the line, the majority of that in exporting frictionless products and services.
We can opt for politics as usual, or identify and nurture the right players in our business sector.
When it comes to business, it must be international in scope, inspiring politicians at the national level about what Wellington is made of.
We can consider electing people who have spent time bridging cultures and creating those international links, which we need right now if two other cities are getting the governmentâs focus. Wellingtonâs businesses have gone under the radar for too long, and they need an ally who can balance their needs while ensuring citizensâ rights are protected.
I see our city having spent too much time breaking its own rules, and being forced to answer through formal proceedings brought by Waterfront Watch and other groups.
The system and its rules are healthy, but the players need to change, and a cultural change, internally and externally, is needed for Wellington in its local body elections.
I’d been meaning to refer readers to this for a few weeks (it has appeared on my Facebook pages, including the “fan” pageâa good place to go if you prefer my musings filtered, without the minutiĂŠ and without clogging up your feeds). My friend and colleague, Dr Nicholas Ind, has been writing about leadership and the need for leaders to show humilityânot divisivenessâin an age when we expect co-creation to bring out the best in organizations.
Nicholas begins, ‘So in spite of the rise of participation in the workplace and the appreciation of emotional intelligence as a virtue, the prevailing way of leading is still more Fordist than Googleist.’ And yet, he argues, it shouldn’t be. We’ve often looked at how responsive flat start-ups are, and how larger organizations seek to capture that sort of energyâand the simple answer lies, often, in their creativity. But those leaders that try to push certain agenda, or a cult of personality, without respecting the capability or mix of their teams, suffer in the 2010s, because the organizations cease to be creative. Layers emerge, sycophants congregate, and institutionalization sets in. Much like in politics.
Ideally, the best ideas should surface to the top, given the opportunity, and given the right sort of structure. And that the input cannot come exclusively from within the organization: co-creation must involve audiences, notably customersâin politics, it must involve citizens and voters.
Back to Nick:
The newer argument is that innovation matters more and more. The issue has, therefore, become not only how to engage employees, but also how to get closer to customers and involve them in the development of brands ⊠The upside of involving customers is the creativity and cognitive diversity of the very people who will be buying and using what the company produces. The downside is the threat to the certainty of leadership and the sanctity of the leader.
But, he rightly notes, good leaders should never fear that threat. The best know their weaknesses, and seek help on them through listening to the organization’s audiencesâand have good systems through which they can. ‘Leaders can still exercise influence and judgement,’ he writes, ‘but the decision-making process becomes more collective.’ If one has risen to a leadership position, one should have a fairly developed sense of self-awareness. And, one would hope, a sense of dignity and decorum that ties well with humility.
There’s more in Nicholas’s latest book, written with Clare Fuller and Charles Trevail, Brand Together: How Co-Creation Generates Innovation and Re-energizes Brands, which I’ll be getting once I finish The Organic Organisation.
My friend Summer Rayne Oakes at Source4Style put me on to an article in The Guardian by Ilaria Pasquinelli, on how small firms drive innovation. If the fashion industry is to survive, she says, it must team up with the small players where innovation takes place, thanks to the visionaries who drive those firms.
She’s right, of course:
The small scale allows companies to be flexible, this is crucial in order to adapt to very diverse market conditions and economic turbulence. In addition, small companies have no other option than to take risk in order to leave their mark, notably if they are start-ups. Small companies habitually lack financial resources though, and it is precisely here where larger organisations can decide to take on a calculated risk and allocate some of their funds, in order to outsource processes, products or development.
Therefore, it’s important not just to foster the growth of small creative businesses, but entire networks where they can come into contact with the larger ones. And the successful cities of the 21st century are those that can do that through clusters, clever place branding, and a real understanding of what it takes to compete at a global level.
We’re still largely hampered by politicians who cannot see past their own national boundaries or, at best, look at competing solely with a neighbouring nation, when that has not been the reality for at least 20 years.
There are exceptions where companies themselves have done the environmental scanning and found organizations to collaborate withâsuch as the ones Ilaria mentions in her article. But there’s no practical reason other than a lack of vision that they are the exception rather than the rule.
She gives three examples: Tesco collaborated with upcycle fashion brand, From Somewhere, to use textile waste, which has seen three collections produced; Levi’s is refitting vintage 501s with Reformation, so customers know their old jeans aren’t going to a landfill; and Worn Again, partnering with Virgin, Royal Mail and Eurostar, is making bags out of the likes of postal workers’ decommissioned storm jackets.
The innovations, of course, need not be in fashion or even sustainability. Look back through the last generation of innovations and many have come from smaller companies that needed the right leg up. Google, too, was started in someone’s home.
I’ve been pushing the “think global” aspect of my own businesses, as well as encouraging others, for a lot of the 25 years Jack Yan & Associates has existed. It’s why most of our ventures have looked outside our own borders for sales. When we went on to bulletin boards for the first time at the turn of the 1990s, it was like a godsend for a kid who marvelled at the telex machine at my Dad’s work. It’s second-nature for anyone my age and younger to see this planet as one that exists independently of national borders, whether for trade or for personal friendships.
As this generation makes its mark, I am getting more excitedâthough I remain cautious of institutions that keep our thinking so locally focused because that is simply what the establishment is used to. Yet it’s having the courage to take the leap forward that will make this country great: small nations, like small companies, should be, and can be, hotbeds of innovation.
Create those clusters, and create some wonderful championsâand the sort of independent thinking Kiwis are known for can go far beyond our borders.
Initially I was disappointed to lose the foreign channels on Ziln, the New Zealand service that was broadcasting DW-TV, TV5 Monde, al-Jazeera English, etc. When I wrote to them, one of its bosses repliedâon Christmas Day!
He explained to me that Ziln’s focus had changed to promoting New Zealand content, so if I knew anyone who was willing to provide some, they could get in touch and have a chance to have their work promoted.
Who could argue with that, especially with a bloke who was working on his day off? I’m all for seeing more local contentâand if it gives our entrepreneurs a chance at exposure, then all the better.
In addition, the foreign channels hadn’t disappeared: they had been shifted to Ecast TV, and TelstraClear is continuing (at least till the end of March) to offer customers unmetered usage.
I’m hoping they’ll continue it past March, and have written to them accordingly. I’ve been following Ziln since the beginning, and it’ll be a shame to limit access to innovative Kiwi content.
The Fairfax Press has been very interesting in its coverage since the beginning of my mayoral campaign. A Miramar Wharf hotelâtraining centre development that I pushed for missed any quotes from myself, while todayâs announcement of wifi for the waterfront by the incumbent and the Fairfax Press itself again does the same.
But, you might be asking, does this change any part of my mayoral strategy? No. We knew there could be the possibility of such a move since April 2010, and it came up in our Vista Group conversations in August as âa done dealâ.
We simply have to ask one question: does Wellington want a creative mayor, or a reactive mayor?
I know, a few of you cheeky ones will be posing the question back to me since I seem to be reacting to a newspaper article! In my mind I am preempting the questions you may have for me about my campaign.
Letâs say we have wifi: do we want it as part of a political move, or something that has been integrated into a proper technological strategy for Wellington?
Something well thought-out or something done for political reasons?
Looking at the early Tweets, the tech community who would benefit first from such a programme seems to recognize just where the impetus came from.
I consider it a partial victory that this has even come up on the radar at Wakefield Street, because if it were not for my pushing for it since September, I doubt it would even be on the political agenda. Or why Fairfax has kept wifi out of its pages during my campaign till now. The game has changed.
And those of us in the creative community who value originality and a global vision for Wellington wonât want someone who can now be branded a copycat, moving out of desperation.
In 2010, in a decade that is more complex than ever, and where processes and politicking have far less effect than they ever did, will you vote for creative, or reactive?
