We Are Team Rubber

Cradle to Cradle, written by William McDonough (an architect) and Michael Braungart (a chemist), explores the notion that we humans aren’t doing ourselves and the planet any favours by our modern processes and consumer demands. But this book thankfully has a load of new approaches and innovative suggestions for rethinking the usual manufacturing, building construction and design of consumer goods.

Why do “we” create things that serve one purpose, and are then scrapped or destroyed when we’re done with them? I love the notion that packaging could have a secondary purpose, buildings can be design to self-regulate temperatures (rather than relying on expensive and damaging - to health and planet - ventilation “systems”), and that shoes can be easily renewed and reused when needed.

This book covers a lot of ground and challenges the way people think about eco-effectiveness, efficiency, design, diversity and waste. It’s also not made of trees and is fully recycleable, though the book will hopefully be passed around and read before being recycled anytime soon.

I am thinking of ways it can apply to my own work at Team Rubber: write general user instructions that can be copied and reused and create Selenium tests that aren’t specific to one user type unless needed. They alone won’t save the planet, however. Others might find some inspiration in Cradle to Cradle too - share them!

Personally, I will wrap presents in reusable wrapping paper (a tea towel or a t-shirt - why not?), buy those tasty desserts that come in the reusable glass containers when I can’t be bothered to cook and look for way to support companies that are serving the “cradle to cradle” movement.

After all, the environmentally-minded individual doesn’t want to be a part of the “bad” demand

P.S. It’s back in the bookcase for the next person.

Yesterday (Wed) Kirk and I ventured into the big smoke (LDN) to witness the Technology For Marketing and Advertising (TFM&A) expo at Earls Court (EC). We attended a number of seminars throughout the day, the first one being held in the aptly named ‘Google University’ (FYI), where we were given a Google goody bag (GGB) and a decent seminar on Google Adwords. Other notable seminars (ONS) highlighted the importance of Pay Per Click advertising (PPC), Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Web Analytics (WAncs). One was held by quite a funny Scottish guy (LOL).

Kirk and I both felt that the general level of understanding across the board of both Viral Advertising and just generally strengthening a business through online techniques was still relatively rudimentary for many people. Although the conference highlighted some interesting points and presented some good ideas, we felt like Team Rubber is part of a smaller sect of organisations that are more ‘in the know’ (MIK) and already advanced in this industry. This was probably the most eye opening experience (E-I-EIO) from the day, and certainly not a bad impression to leave with.

Walking around the expo, we were approached by many a sales vulture (MASV), scantily-clad ticket droppers (STD) and endless opportunities to take complimentary sweets and novelty gifts such as chattering sets of teeth (CST) and flasks (F). At one stand there was a Formula 1 simulator, run by a man that could only be described as a mix between Terry Nutkin and David Brent (WTF?). Kirk attempted to beat the fastest lap on the virtual Donnington racetrack (VD), and we were met with Oscar Wild-esque wit from our new pal with verbal gold such as “Stop cutting the grass, we’re saving it for Bob Marley” and “Burn some rubber, baby” (ROFL! LMAO! ROFLMAO! OMG!).

Later in the afternoon we ventured over to Soho, to see the London office at work, and meeting new Rubber recruit Rory along the way. We discussed some new pitches and the conference before heading off to grab a burger ahead of our gruelling 40 hour train journey home.

We have been having a look at the number of views that various YouTube videos recieve, and we’ve had some pretty interesting results.

You can read the reports over on Viral Manager, but in the meanwhile, you can get a good idea of the main findings in this youtube video.

Many Happy Returns and all that………

I am not going to lie, I was drawn to this book purely because of its size! I thought, “can I really learn something useful from a book only 47 pages long?” I am delighted to say I did, and it didn’t hurt to do so. It was easy to read, flowed well and had enjoyable similes such as, “For it is with the advertising man as with the cow: no browsing, no milk”.
Young’s book believe it or not came across as if it was padded at first, but the run up to his ‘technique’, where you do lots of nodding in agreement, did give it more substance. I don’t think his five-step method would seem as interesting or respectable without it, which in a nutshell is:

1. Gather raw materials
2. Work over them
3. Stop actively thinking of it/ them
4. Give birth to an idea
5. Shape the idea

His ‘technique’ taught me (as Andy put it) that you don’t have to lock yourself in an empty room for hours and hours until you come up with something and that being organised is a good thing – which I always like to hear. This book is short and sweet and proves that…. Yes I am going to say it… size doesn’t always matter… sorry!

Well I thought I would pop up another post about GHOP (although not plone like Matt).

For those who can’t remember, the Google Highly Open Participation (GHOP) competition aimed at getting “high-school” (darn US-English) students involved in open source projects, and giving them a shot at bagging a load of Google goodies.

Matt wrote several articles previously about the Plone GHOP tasks, but I was also mentoring a couple of the Python Software Foundation (PSF) GHOP tasks, for the open source game development system game baker.

I’d like to congratulate everyone that took part in the GHOP contest, and Google for holding it - I hope that the winners will have a great time over at the Googleplex.

Plone’s standard template is quite familiar to many of us now, but lets remind ourselves:

There’s also NuPlone which was brought in with Plone 3, as used on quite a few sites (but nowhere near as many as the standard):

During the sprint at Naples some clever little monkeys were working on plonetheme.pizza which looks pretty damn snazzy. It’s not quite ready yet, but so far looks like this:

As you can see, this seems mostly based on the default with a few influences from NuPlone, specifically the way tabs are rendered. Most strikingly it’s very blue to match our brand spanking new logo. This got me thinking, the colour scheme in the default theme matches Vidar Andersen’s original version of the logo from years ago. What if that original theme was updated with the new colours?

A couple of minutes with paster create and I came up with this. I can’t decide what I think about it, opinions?

Rory Ahern - come on down! In true Leslie Crowther style we’re pleased to welcome Rory to our London office. Rory’s come in as a consultant for Rubber Republic from AMV, using his Ad Agency background to round the edges of our viral offering.

Here’s a photo of Rory enjoying work a little too much . . .

“Don’t Make Me Think!” is fun to say, and is rather fun to read too.

This is one book that everyone creating web apps, design and/or content ought to read. The clue is in the name - a lot of web usability *is* common sense, but we all need a refresher course now and again.

I’d read the first edition years ago, and second edition is equally awesome. Especially useful for me personally were:

• Chapter 2 & 3 - how users really use the web (imagine users treating the web as a billboard - they are zooming by, rather than sitting down with a cuppa to read every single line of text on the page)

• Chapter 5 - writing for the web … it’s related to the billboard issue! Though the sales guys may disagree
• Chapter 6 - designing navigation
• Chapter 8 & 9 - usability testing
• Chapter 10 - usability as common courtesy

If we all were able to persuade our clients to listen to our suggestions and trust us to make the right decisions about general web usability, our projects could run run a lot smoother.

Don’t take my word for it — check out the zillions of 5* reviews on Amazon.

PS. Kirk, Chapter 11’s subtitle is “Just when you think you’re done, a cat floats by with buttered toast strapped to it’s back”

After clink-clinking our keyboards over the heads of the guys at Clink-Clink, we clink-clinked our Champagne flutes in celebration of our forced seizing of their office space. Our occupant forces finally moved in but a mere few weeks ago in order to spread the Team Rubber ideology further across Ropemaker Court.

We sent in an office monkey to test for mines, deem the area clear for habitation and - as a finale - to do his usual thing of tapping a keyboard nonsensically. However, we quickly discovered that the office looked a lot smaller in real life…

Not ones to be disheartened, and always adapting to the challenges presented by new media, we at Team Rubber have assigned a new strategy to our manifesto. We have developed a cutting edge working model that measures success by determining the amount of work per square foot on our premises.

The model works on this simple notion:

work x rubber - space = 5n (9nl cupboard x clink) - movement + emac

We aim to implant 16 workers into the new space and to send our work per square foot (WPSF) ratio through the roof. I will watch and cackle mercilessly at the metrics sky-rocketing with the new WPSF Dashboard on Polar Bear.

Thankyou, as you were.