Convergence

Are writers selling out to marketers? Alain de Botton's "Heathrow Diary"

For one week, Swiss author Alain de Botton was living the life I've always wanted to live. As the first-ever writer-in-residence of London's Heathrow Airport, he was working on his new book on site, observing, documenting, and philosophically charging the emotions and motions of the two arguably most interesting things in life--people and planes--in transit, in situ.

My own fascination with airports started at an early age thanks to the location of my parents' house. I grew up with planes taking off and landing at the nearby airport, and as a student I spent one summer vacation working … Read more

Report from the IDSA Conference: The End of an Era

by Jon Kolko, Associate Creative Director, Frog Design

I've just returned from the IDSA conference in Miami, and I'm both convinced that, in ten years, there won't be an IDSA conference to go to - and that isn't a bad thing. I don't mean this in a disparaging sense; I enjoyed the conference, caught up with old friends, made new friends, and learned a bit. But a trend that I've observed at past conferences is only more evident this year, and it's patronizing to continue to skirt what is becoming increasingly obvious: the … Read more

London Design fest celebrates design art, business

Several colleagues of mine are in London this week to unveil the special TEDGlobal issue of our design mind magazine in a very special TED Salon on Monday, with the title "More Substance of Things Not Seen." The event will be co-hosted by frog design and TED, and moderated by Sam Martin, editor-in-chief of design mind, and Bruno Giussani, European director of TED.

It comes in handy for the frog delegation that this is also the first week of the magnanimous London Design Festival, an eclectic assembly of design-related programs, exhibitions, and parties all over town.… Read more

The great healthcare word-of-mouth debate

While the rest of the developed world looks at the controversy over healthcare reform in the US with a mix of embarrassment and disbelief, Americans have experienced a raging debate this summer that was to a large part driven by word-of-mouth online.

MotiveQuest, a research firm, has evaluated the healthcare chatter bouncing around the Internet. It pulled data from more than 100 health and political forums and blogs, representing more than 2,000,000 posts and 110,000 people in the average month. Categorizing the debate’s language into thematic groups (treatments, payment methods, doctors/patients, and the uninsured), it … Read more

The future of news: hyper-distribution or hyper-branding?

Jeff Jarvis, who’s admirably trying to prevent the news industry from becoming the next music industry, recently wrote an interesting blog post in which he heralded “hyper-distribution” as a valuable new business model for news organizations. Responding to some industry pundits who propose embracing shrinking audiences as an effective means of consolidation and audience loyalty, Jarvis argued:

“Since when did it become OK for media people to shrink their audiences? Since they gave up on the ad model, that’s when. But I am not ready to surrender to the idea that advertising, which has supported mass media since … Read more

SOCAP09 (Social Capital Markets) Conference brings together social innovators from government and business

The Social Capital Markets (SOCAP) Conference, a landmark gathering of top business and government leaders creating market-based solutions for social impact, is taking place September 1-3, at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center.

SOCAP brings together a unique mix of the world’s leading social innovators--traditional investors, impact investors, social entrepreneurs, philanthropists, new media, NGO’s and non-profits, wealth managers, development agencies, venture capitalists, MBA students, and other groups interested in the growing opportunities of social capital--who are catalysts of change across the globe.

Last year’s conference gathered more than 650 leading global investors and entrepreneurs from 26 countries. … Read more

Power to Prezi!

Is it a presentation tool? Or a visual storytelling tool? Visualization software? Or a zooming editor? Budapest-based Adam Somlei-Fischer, founder and lead designer of Prezi, and Peter Halacsy, founder and CTO of Prezi, were interested in soliciting feedback on their product’s category when they visited frog design’s San Francisco studio last week and demoed their tool. Having marketed mind-mapping software previously in my career, I felt sympathetic: At the time, we went through a similar exercise, and after endless discussions and focus groups we ended up with a label only a committee could come up with: “enterprise productivity … Read more

Vote for the INDEX: 2009 People's Choice Award

To help expand the global conversation about design to improve life, INDEX:, a global nonprofit network organization based in Copenhagen, is partnering with Facebook to promote the online voting for the INDEX: 2009 People's Choice Award and enable an online discussion during the live stream of the awards show on August 28.

Worldwide voting began online on August 20 through www.designtoimprovelife.dk, and on-site in the Danish capital on August 21. During the People's Choice competition, everyone can vote for their own personal INDEX: favorite to win the People’s Choice Award. On August 28 at 6 … Read more

Socialnomics: "Social Media is bigger than you think"

The Socialnomics-Social Media Blog has compiled a comprehensive list of stats from all kinds of sources to prove that "Social Media Is Bigger Than You Think."

"Welcome to the Social Media Revolution."