LongStation

How do you get the brain a little more interested?

Photo from Deneyterrio

Kathy Sierra asked us what did you really want to be good at and didn’t make it… For me it is jewelry making / metal smithing. I used to go to Texas Tech, and had exposure to amzaing metal smith teaching… and I loved it, but was never good at it.

Our theme for the panel is “How do we help our users kick ass?”. Here are the notes:

• Second Question: Would you rather have users talk about your product or your company? I would rather have our users talk about our products… because it is more profitable. They don’t care about us as much.
• Kathy wants our users to have a better and more high resolution experience… what can we do to help that.
• Neurogenesis occurs when you are in an environment that promotes it
• The difference between fantastic and average is
  1. not about natural talent
  2. and is instead about practicing… and putting in the time
  3. It is your fault if you don’t practice
• Read the 4 hour work week -figure out what you want to be good at and find a way to devote time to that. Optimize your time

Here are the 20 Points:

1. Use Telepathy -You have to see someone’s face - Mirror neurons fire off and help us read other folks. Motor neurons react when you see movement - you run a simulation of what you see. You have to see people to do it.
2. Serendipity - make sure you build in randomness for your users. It leaves a sense of chance that people like
3. The Dog Ear Principle - the bounce at the end.. and the subtle movements make movement more attractive. Another word for secondary action
4. Joy - give your users a joyful experience
5. Inspire First Person Language - What would you do to inspire first person language. How can you get your users to talk about themselves
6. T-Shirt First Development - Say what you want your users to say on a T-shirt. What does being your user say about people. “And for God’s sake, make a woman’s fitted T-shirt”
7. Easter Egg - Give folks a good surprise find
8. Tools for Evangelizing: This helps them kick ass - Example is “Twitter in Plain English”
9. You are a….: Predator or a fluffy bunny. Manage Stress, manage the fight or flight response.
10. Exercise the Brain/Body: Exercising your body helps develop your brain too
11. Give them Superpowers Quickly: How can you get people really engaged quickly. What can you do the keep people pushing forward. (your users need to reflect their experience to you)
12. Help with reinvestment of mental resources into new challenges: Experts don’t shrink the list of things they do, they just add new challenges when an old one is done.
13. Focus: You have to devote all of your attention to certain things
14. Create a Culture of Support: If you want to build a community… you want people to be mentors early, they are an expert in the pain and can share the information - No dumb answers
15. Do not insist on “inclusivity”: Jargon is awesome. Passionate users talk different, so maybe you should try to seperate the experts from the newbies.
16. Practice Seductive Opacity: Brains love mystery.
17. Real is good… How can you deliver your message through real objects. There is a ressurgence in real tangible items - not virtual. It’s all about the package. Unboxing is the experience of opening your new digital things.
18. I missed two numbers?????

Gary Bainbridge came in to speak…. Talks about how wine can experience a deeper resolution, and how he is using his show makes his viewers entertaining.

Now we are touching the shoulder of the person next to us… good and interesting end to a panel.

We are putting ourselves in three groups:

1. Blogger
2. People that are reaching out to bloggers
3. Or Both

Most folks are in the “both category”. How do you find folks that are interested in what you say and promote it.

What are the good ways to relate to bloggers? Everyone that is involved is going to get their blog published on a this facebook event page.

Our format is we are going to “we are going to walk out with 10 ways to piss off a blogger” that we are going come up with a as a group

1. The first way to piss off a blogger is to invite them to something and not give them a chance to talk about themselves.
2. People that say they have been reading for years… but have not been
3. Someone taking your identity and using it for evil
4. Getting on spam lists (vocus takes bloggers email addresses and spam you)
5. What about treating bloggers in the same way you treat journalist
6. Don’t send bloggers things that aren’t relevant - Does bad pitching / irrelevant pitching relate to laziness
7. Don’t treat bloggers like direct mail - be specific and build relationships with bloggers
8. Don’t ask bloggers for favors
9. Actually read what they say and be familiar with the content
10. Unreasonable timelines/ expectations
11. Don’t assume some expectations from bloggers
12. Format your content so that a blogger can use it conveniently
13. Don’t make bloggers deal with bureaucratic layers and approvals
14. Make sure you identify yourself
15. What about managing expectations of treatment for bloggers vs press. Example would be invitation for an event would be just attending vs a full press pass. This can be a double edged sword… do you want to be treated like a journalist or a blogger? Do bloggers put themselves in the “kid’s sandbox”. A solution would be give examples of how you would like to be pitched to. (This is a big tangent) There are clear differences between bloggers and journalists.
16. Bad attribution or non attribution of a bloggers story as the original source
17. Insincerity relating to some hidden motivation
18. Retaliation lead by corporation related to something that disagrees with their point of view
19. Full disclosure

The number one way to piss off a blogger is: ???? Don’t be sincere, don’t share your identity, unrealistic expectations, unattribution… etc.

Thanks again Deneyterrio

After a quick breakfast with the Sk*rt folks, I battled the stairwells and found Level 4 at the SXSW conference. Now I am in the Social Design Strategies panel watching the dudes talk about design

1. Link to a users true online profile for a sense of accountability
2. Give Recognition: Recognition seems to work better when it comes from the group rather than from the company.
3. Show Causation: Repeat what you are doing with the data. Like on NetFlix and how they recommend movies you might like - The interface says four times that they are going to use your ratings to give you good recommendations.
4. Leverage Reciprocity. If someone shows you love it is very likely that you will show love in return. Folks feel obligated to return the favor.
5. Funny one - dude on Facebook deleted writings on the wall and was anti social without knowing it.
6. Privacy on social networks is a combination of public and private data. How do you decide what is and what isn’t?
7. What do you think about “cross site data posting” like on Fandango and Facebook. What about a personal action that is turned into a public action. Be careful of what you make public.
8. Be careful of making items a “preference setting”
9. Be transparent in regards to who gets to see the data
10. (Where are the funny people? I think it is odd that the panelist I have seen so far / yesterday and today are ignoring the connection to their audience. Very funny since they pretty much all of the panelist say that the world is about you)
11. Spam Control. What is a fair balance of solutions?
12. Wow. 75% to 80% of new accounts are spam!
13. Don’t want to cut off features that are great for the community because of spammers. Must find a way to limit spammers while keeping a good experience
14. Folks are paying people in sub-economies to post spam for pennies
15. Magnolia puts folks on “whitelists” after they are approved by “gardners”. Gardners are completely altruistic. (Start a conversation on what motivates a gardner - thought of Ed Schipul and motivations of people)
16. (Sub Plot on Altruism) Gardners are helping themselves… because they don’t want to be impeded by spam and don’t want others to be impeded. So as a gardner they are protecting their content.