Innovation feeder

I had brekky with a friend of mine this morning & amongst other things, we were talking about finding talent. He’s always on the lookout for people, I’m on the other side of the fence & always on the lookout for new freeelance opportunities. There’s a lot of people hunting for innovation consultants, innovation talent, researchers etc at the moment in Sydney. The market is abuzz with movement. People are moving around, everyone wants to know who’s free, who might come where & who’s looking for what. Anyway, this friend & I were talking about how innovation companies themselves are often not that innovative [ironically] when it comes to hiring. How they can talk innovation & have theories on innovation but when it comes to hiring practices, recruiting talent & looking for new blood, often their approach can be anything but.

As I was pondering this post-pancakes, I came across a couple of articles that speak to this topic brilliantly. So rather than bang on & paraphrase, I’ve just posted them here. Enjoy.

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I tend to take in information best with my peepers, I’m not great at listening [although I try very hard] and I really like to see things mapped out rather than a huge truckload of words. Which is why I love a good model, a good graph, schematic display - anything which represents information in a stimulating visual way. So here’s another one. This one comes courtesy of Business Week, spotted by one of Max’s colleagues & posted on his blog Experience The Message in the middle of last year. It’s a stormer for presentations & workshop stimulus so eat up friend.

You can check out Max’s original post here

The original Business Week article can be found here

Gavin tagged me (thanks Gavin) on the current meme sweeping the sphere - ‘My Media Week’ - the meme that gets you thinking about your own media consumption rather than everyone else’s. So here goes:

Reading

I have one red paperclip on my night table which a friend loaned me. It has been there for quite some time (sorry Kes) but doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. i.e. It’s certainly no closer to getting in bed with me & a cup of tea than you are. I love the idea of someone who swaps a red paperclip for something else, then swaps that for something else, yada yada, you get the picture. Eventually this guy gets a house. I like the idea of the story, I’m just not loving the story so much.

So what I’m actually reading is “How would you move Mount Fuji : How the smartest companies select the world’s most creative thinkers” by William Poundstone. It’s basically a commentary on Microsoft’s notorious grueling interview process which has been copied by companies everywhere who are seeking to separate the most creative thinkers from those who are merely brilliant. It’s got a bunch of puzzles & riddles throughout which are generally making me feel reasonably uncreative, let alone brilliant. Lucky I’m not trying to get a job in the valley I suppose.

I flicked through my usual monthly Futures magazine yesterday but I don’t think you could call that ‘reading’ with any integrity. They come in the mail, I flick through them & then make them at home in my bottom drawer. You see, I don’t have to actually read them, just knowing they’re close is enough. Oh and I read Who Weekly to get the update on Britney Spears’ fight for child custody. Are we supposed to omit the trash consumption?

TV / Video

The other night I watched a documentary on Australia’s most feared creatures, followed by an episode of “shark attack : I shouldn’t be alive”, both served to reinforce the threat of swimming at any beach in Sydney as one could be taken by an animal of the sea at any time. I’ve also been following the US election coverage with interest together with my usual diet of cable news & Sunset Tan when it’s on. (Sunset Tan is a top quality show on cable which follows the lives of people who manage a chain of tanning salons in L.A. It’s no West Wing but gee it’s close). Again, should I have omitted that?

Music

On iTunes play during the last week was Joan as Policewoman, Josh Rouse, James Blunt & a bit Pink for the angry woman moments. There have been plenty of those this week for no particular reason other than my computer has been rather temperamental.

Next Up

Next up I tag Erin aka Dora the Explorer who is on my daily Google Reader , Amanthaville to encourage you to start posting again!, Coolz0r whose blog is always jam packed with great examples & analysis, Katie whose site I love reading regularly for a brain top up, Weird from Slacker Nation whose blog is always an incredibly good read & Greg at Grassroots Innovation which I also check out regularly.

Playyoo a brand new site based out of England has just launched in beta this week. Billed as a ‘YouTube for mobile games’ by Technorati, the site offers users the chance to create, share & download games & game content for their mobile. It allows users to create their own content, interact with others and even get recommendations based on their user preferences.

This is an interesting space, especially beyond just mobile gaming. Mobile social communities and mobile blogging communities are increasing in numbers. According to the Wireless Federation Research there are currently over 45 million members engaged in ‘mobile social communities’ worldwide (including mobile gamers gamers), a number that is expected to reach 175 million in 2012.

These communities also have the potential to generate big revenue. A new study by Jupiter Research states that revenue from user generated content is projected to increase from $572 million this year to $5.7 billion by 2012, about half of which will be coming from  social networking. Moreover, membership of social networking sites is projected to grow from 14 million this year to about 600 million by 2012. Perhaps mobile content management & social software will be the next killer apps.

So what is “moblogging” exactly? Well, mo-blogging is blogging via a mobile phone, or a PDA via a mobile connection with a real IP - GPRS or 3G. It’s friendly cousin “Spot-blogging” is mobile also, just not via a mobile phone. “Spotblogging” refers to blogging via a PC through WiFi. It’s called SpotBlogging because you need to be tied to a hotspot of some sort, whereas real moblogging can be just about anywhere.

Anyhoo, Playyoo is an interesting site - check it out here

This is a brief summary of Second Life from an innovation report that I wrote a while back in  2006. It covers Second Life as both a game, a genuine alternate reality and a potential business and learning opportunity. Whilst some of the statistics might be a little out of date now ( it was written before people like Telstra and the ABC from Australia came onto the scene) it’s still a useful summary for those wishing to get their heads around SL and what all the fuss is about.

PS> having just checked how this loads onto the page, it appears that the font is a little tiny for the average peeper. The best thing to do is probably click through the Slideshare link on the bottom and watch it on Slideshow in Full Screen. Unless you have very good eyes…

While surfing the net this morning I came across Girl Geek Dinners - a program set up by Sarah Blow which aims to get nerd chicks together to talk about technology. Like any good idea it’s spreading fast and girl geek dinners are popping up in the UK, Italy, German, Belgium, Canada, San Francisco and even New Zealand!

In a space that is usually dominated by the man nerd (and a highly technical man nerd at that), what a refreshing change to see girl geeks creating their own space to play.

You can check out girl geek dinners here

Another blog which has just launched in this space is geekgirlblogs and you can check that out here

MELBOURNE’S hottest restaurant isn’t in The Age Good Food Guide, it changes location weekly, and with a waiting list of 4000, it’s booked out for the next year.

Zingara Cucina — Italian for “Gypsy Kitchen” — is Australia’s first “underground” restaurant. It is unlicensed, illegal and transient, but has won the kind of word-of-mouth accolades most legitimate establishments only dream about.

And with the identity of the people behind it a secret, it’s also the city’s biggest culinary mystery.

It began almost three years ago when dinner parties held for friends by the operator and chef developed a cult following. Now, Zingara has developed into a weekly dining experience, roaming inner-city locations from car parks to lanes, rooftops, bridges, beaches and galleries.

The chef will not reveal his identity except to say he is not a professional, was taught to cook by his Italian grandmother and mother, and works in an advertising agency during the day. He says that “fine dining has become boring”.

“The whole concept is around conviviality and creating that feeling you get when you have a nice meal with like-minded people. It’s not about making money, but about enjoying good food and good wine,” he says.

Entry is by invitation only — each guest gets two referrals to pass on to friends — and diners are told the location via email or SMS the night before.

A diner who has experienced Zingara Cucina — he asked to remain anonymous, although he will reveal he is a chef at a well-regarded CBD restaurant — described the experience as “phenomenal”.

“I’d go once a week if I could, to be frank, because it’s an incredible experience … the presentation, the food, which was as good as any two or three-chef’s-hat restaurant in Melbourne.”

At this particular dinner, held several months ago in an obscure city lane, guests were fed rustic Italian fare including handmade ravioli in sage butter with crushed pinenuts, and whole suckling pig — “all really simple flavours that were extrapolated in a beautiful way” — and serenaded between courses by an opera singer.

The diner estimates the meal would have cost $150 in any other restaurant, although Zingara diners are asked to pay what they see fit.

Story taken from The Age

There is also a gypsy  kitchen in the US which does a similar thing - Gypsy Dinners

bloggermania is here. in fact, you know it’s here because every tom, dick and barry has a blog, according to technorati there’s a new blog being created every second or was that every half second…and then there’s twittermania. for those of you who haven’t succombed to twitter, it combines IM-ing, social networking & mobile technology. twitter members can send short messages to their twitter network about what they’re doing or where they’re at…exciting isn’t it? now you can keep up with what your mates are doing every second of every  day.

whilst twitter seems a little well..time filling & stalker-ish,  think about it in the wider context of communicating online…the average geekhead has videos on youtube, photos on flickr, a blog on blogger, wordpress or typepad, maybe even a moblog, possibly a twitter network, del.ic.ious tags, they’re digg.ing and probably posting palava at myspace. which begs the question….

if a person exists in the world without a digital footprint, do they really exist and how would we know?