afluxstate

Podcast interview with Scrivener’s Keith Blount

As part of my MSc, I’m conducting a horizon scan on eBook authoring and digital publishing, and you can see my conference poster/infographic mapping out the territory here. I’m constantly reminded of the parable of the six blind men and the elephant when ever I explore an area of digital media. So what I try and do is get different perspectives to avoid getting caught up in the vortex of self-affirming opinion. You can check out my previous interviews with the horizon scanner Ivan Pope and self-confessed pamphleteer Julian Spalding. My latest is with Keith Blount of Literature and Latte, who’ve created the Scrivener writing software.

Ed Keller Podcast Interview

My latest podcast interview is with Word of Mouth Marketing Guru Ed Keller. The Influentials book he co-wrote with Jon Berry in 2003 was a key source for the Connected Marketing book I co-edited and authored, so I caught up with him to hear about the new book he’s written with his business partner Brad Fay, The Face-to-Face Book: Why Real Relationships Rule in a Digital Marketplace.

Unlike the plethora of books being released about Social Media Marketing, this one argues that the largest and most important part of social influence is that which happens when conversations happen in the real world, face to face. We discuss the books key themes, but also link this back to some of the key themes I’ve been exploring, such as Word Of Mouth Marketing, Influence and even Advocacy briefly. Keller and Fay are not advocating offline over online, they’re simply pointing out that 90% of word of mouth still happens offline, and these conversations are more emotive and so have a bigger impact for brands. You can read a free excerpt of their book and win a copy here.

Julian Spalding podcast interview

I first met the author/art critic Julian Spalding in 1989/90 when he was director of Glasgow Museums. He’d put on the ‘Out Of Control’ exhibition at the McLellan Gallery, which included an installation of the robotic figures by the artist/inventor Jim Whiting who I was helping at the time. I’d met Julian again in October with Jim Whiting at the British Museum, but a month ago I suddenly saw him on Channel 4 News. His new book Con Art: Why you ought to sell your Damien Hirsts while you can had been released on Kindle to coincide with the Hirst Exhibition at the Tate Modern in London. This was picked-up by the media, including the Financial Times who seem to agree pointing out that the ‘price of Mr Hirst’s work has fallen even further than the wider contemporary art market, according to data from Art Market Research’.

As part of my horizon scan into the eBook revolution, I interviewed Julian. I was particularly interested that someone in their mid-60s ,who I hadn’t considered as being particularly tech savvy, was now publishing eBooks and conducting a social media marketing campaign that had been picked up by the media across the globe. We discussed a number of themes, including: his book; his late adoption of ‘modern world technologies; Kindle as a platform for ePamphleteering and the spreading of ideas that can change the world; and his campaign to show that conceptual art is a con. You can hear this interview below, but also see his cheerful anti-conceptual art polemic over on Vimeo:

Andy Budd Podcast Interview

My lastest podcast is with Andy Budd, the User Experience (UX) designer, CEO of Clearleft and author of CSS Mastery. I’d found Andy’s blog interesting, particularly some of his polemical pieces on how UK University design courses were out of date (see How to break into User Experience Design | June 10, 2011). Andy and I discussed a number of themes around this, including:

  • How he came into web design
  • What is UX design and why it’s important to him
  • How does education in general, and academic specifically, keep up with rapid technological change
  • What role do academics and industry have to play in the teaching of more vocational courses
  • What role the teaching of critical reflection/creative problem solving has to play versus more practical skills
  • Whether entrepreneurship/entrepreneurial thinking should be taught as part of design courses
  • What’s next for him

eBook Revolution Is Now infographic

Further to my podcast interview with horizon scanner Ivan Pope, I’ve been carrying out my own horizon scan of the ‘eBook Revolution’ and put together the infographic below. I’m not a graphic designer, so I’m not going to be winning any prizes unless Richard Scarry is awarding one for busyness. The exercise was, however, a useful way of exploring the territory, which forms part of a ebook project I’m work on with the Branded Content Marketing Association (BCMA).

[full_width img="http://www.afluxstate.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/ebook_infographic.jpg"]

Professor Andrea Ordanini podcast interview

My lastest podcast interview is with Professor Andrea Ordanini from the Bocconi University in Milan. He’s written a number of papers on Crowdfunding, and we discussed a number of key themes, including: his interest in crowdfunding from a marketing service innovation point of view and the changing role of the customer; how crowdfunding differs from more traditional forms of micro-funding; participant motivations; the madness versus the wisdom of crowds; his latest research with the University of Maryland into micro-crowd cluster behaviour; and whether crowdfunding will become an important feature of economic organisation.

Tim Clark podcast interview

Earlier this week I conducted a podcast interview with Tim Clark, editor of Business Model Generation and author of the recent Business Model You: A One-Page Method for Reinventing Your Career. The career reinvention theme is of particularly interest to me right now. In fact, this blog is part of a reinvention process that’s inspired by Fast Co‘s ‘Generation Flux‘ article earlier this year. In the interview, Tim and I discussed how his Business Model You book evolved from both his commercial and academic work on new business models via his editorship of Business Model Generation. We also discuss some of the book’s key themes, including: the visual thinking approach, reinvention inspiration libraries, kick-starting your career reinvention, and collaboration.

Ivan Pope podcast interview

For the second in my third series of podcast interviews I spoke to Internet veteran Ivan Pope. I’d first met Ivan back in the early 90s when he was working as a part-time techie at Goldsmith College while studying for his masters there. He showed me the pre-web Internet, which proved to be a career changing moment for me and others who’d encountered his evangelical fervour about global networks back then. He went on to be a driving force in the early ‘daze’ of the UK Internet, including: setting up the  World Wide Web Newsletter (later 3W magazine); coining the term cyber café and helping set up the UK’s first at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London; becoming key contributor to the UK’s first consumer internet magazine, .net; co-founding the UK’s first web agency, Web Media; founding the Netnames domain name registration service; and helping form the UK’s namespace organisation, Nominet.

By strange coincidence we now both live in the same area of Brighton, and I catch-up with Ivan at the local deli to regularly to find out what he’s been scanning on the horizon. We also discuss our shared passion for camping, which we blog about over at alifeoutthere.com. In this interview Ivan talks about the Fab Lab movement, the indie publishing revolution and how crowdfunding is relevant to both.