Nice morning in #SiliconGorge, a set on Flickr.
Rise of the Stick Men
Lorna Moir - September 22nd, 2011When Ally announced that everyone should go to drawastickman.com this morning.. and we all did (even if Tiffany did get a bit told off for it!) it reminded me of an awesome animation I stumbled across AGES ago and had pretty much forgotten about… thought it would be nice to share 
Even if everyone else in the office has already seen it as usual!
So here is the Draw a stick man site – the worse your drawing skills, the better it is…
And here is the video I was chatting about, it’s called Animator Vs Animation by Alan Becker… well worth a watch in my opinion!
At the time I was tearing my hair out over my final year flash project that I was having some ‘issues’ with and praying that Google would have all the answers (as usual). When I came across this video, it was obvious this did not hold the answers to all my problems or even come anywhere close to solving anything really… but it did put a massive smile on my face. Seeing as stress and panic formed the foundations of my final year project experience, actually feeling happy to see something flash related made a very nice change!
My top 5 things about TedXBristol
Matt Golding - September 8th, 2011
TedXBristol was awesome. A really inspiring selection of speakers and performers sourced from Bristol and the surrounds. Here are my highlights:
1: It was very slick and well organised. Well presented, well run, and well curated. Well done to @khbelizaire and the team who put it together.
2: Sir Richard Noble was just incredible. He reminded me of John Cleese if John Cleese were an unstoppable force hellbent on a lifelong mission to drive cars insanely fast. He was a natural raconteur who was simultaneously inspiring, funny and informative. I could have listened to him talk about his exploits all day. And the way his team is running their Bloodhound SSC project as an open data programme everyone can learn from is fantastic.
3: Arthur Potts Dawson from the People’s Supermarket gave a great impassioned speech about how he created the UK’s first not for profit people run supermarket. A real inspiration for the potential to change the current supermarket power battle that we’ve all seemingly resigned ourselves to. Find out more at http://www.thepeoplessupermarket.org/
4: Professor Mervyn Miles of Bristol Universities Nanoscience and Quantum Information Centre gave a talk that kept surpassing itself in the sheer scale of incredibleness, as he explained how he and his team used a contact based microscope to feel atoms, then wired this up to an ipod inspired multi-touch input screen allowing the atoms to be moved around, and then wired that up to a feedback glove so the relative forces required to move nano-particles around could be felt by the operator. I mean that’s just nuts (in a good way). He wasn’t sure what it was exactly useful for yet, but its so mind blowingly incredible I’m sure we’ll know what its useful for sometime soon (like Steve Jobs said in his amazing Stanford lecture, sometimes the logic of these things only makes sense in the rear view mirror).
5: Imogen Heap’s performance using Thomas Mitchell’s interactive musical gloves was brain-fryingly cool. None of the individual elements of this project are wholy new. The gloves are like the 3 generations more evolved child of some scratch mitts that were being demoed in Bristol about 8 years ago, looping the voice and instruments has been done brilliantly by many people including the awesome TuneYards, and Imogen Heap has been brilliant before, but somehow they’ve taken all these elements and brought them together with an elegance and panache that makes it look like they just stepped out of the future to show us how they do music back there.
Here’s the only bit of video of it I can find yet:
There were loads of other great bits. Tony Bury of Mowgli talking about the importance of Mentors. Dan Efergan and Gav Strange from Aardman talking about playfulness. Chris Chalkley from the People’s Republic of Stokes Croft explaining recapping on how the area had evolved over the last 5 years.
But the great thing about an event like TedX is how it exposes you to things you didn’t expect, and so the things I enjoyed the most were the things that I didn’t go there to see. A brilliant and rewarding event.
Be a part of the Viral Ad Network
ally stuart - August 24th, 2011VAN is recruiting for a Bristol-based Campaign Manager. The role will involve:
Client handling & sales (daily)
Writing proposal documents to support the sales team. Developing and closing inbound warm leads, working to achieve the monthly sales target.
Account management duties, including:
- Responding to client requests by phone and email.
- Maintaining the agency-client relationship throughout campaigns.
- Reporting and following up on campaigns
- Developing relationships to drive repeat business.
Campaign Operations (daily)
Creating and monitoring campaigns, creating media bookings and ensuring targets are met for media spend.
Reporting on campaign success – adding detail to the client dashboard during the campaign then delivering a final report at the end.
Publishers (when necessary)
Developing and maintaining relationships with publishers, including research, recruitment and account handling.
Marketing (occasional)
Assisting with marketing collateral including DM material, blog posts and presentations. Updating direct marketing lists with new clients.
_____________________________________________________________________
What you’re like
You’re probably not “well-rounded” (because it’s hard to be exceptional at everything). But you will definitely need:
- A good degree or good work experience. Everybody here has proven themselves academically or in the workplace.
- A genuine desire to get stuck into the world of work, do something, make good stuff, take responsibility.
- A passion for all things digital and social. You should already be active on social media spaces, and writing a blog would be a bonus!
- An exceptional talent. We’ve got a great team in place but we’re always on the lookout for more match-winners.
Interested? Feel free to read more, but to apply mail Ally with a covering letter outlining why you think you are suitable for the position and where your strengths lie along with a 2 page CV.
Riots, game theory, empathy.
Andy Parkhouse - August 11th, 2011I’ve seen plenty of #ukriots tweets along the lines of “OMG, this makes no sense, how do you gain by smashing up your own community”.
And when people say “it makes no sense”, it speaks to questions of rationality – they’re saying “these actions are irrational”.
Which set me thinking about game theory and some simple maths. I suspect it misses the point, but I’ll sketch it out anyway.
It’s quite easy to show that the actions of rioters and looters are entirely rational.
By setting costs and rewards for an action, you can see whether the outcome is rational.
For example:
- expected chance of getting caught or injured
- cost of getting caught
- immediate value of reward from destruction and looting (material, emotional)
- long term value of living in a not-destroyed community
Trade those off, and it’s easy to show that rioting and looting is rational for someone with low expectation of getting caught, who favours an immediate reward over a long-term reward.
But I suspect that it’s an unsatisfying answer for those who are asking the question I opened on.
My guess is those saying “this makes no sense” mean “the way these people think is alien to me”.
They’re seeking empathy, and they’re unable to find it.
Ally gets ready for the VAN #Icecreamcrawl
Lorna Moir - August 5th, 2011
Ally testing out the crawl gear as we prepare for the Viral ad Network Ice cream crawl on the 11th and 12th August!
Burning Rubber – the photo story
Andy Parkhouse - August 2nd, 2011
Team Rubber hosts two aspiring coders as part of YRS
Rowena Farr - August 2nd, 2011As part of the National Young Rewired State week, Team Rubber are playing host to two guest junior developers.
Marcus, Rhys and Sym at Team Rubber Towers - looking happy (we'd just bought them lunch) 
In an uber productive first day, the young developers have built a Geo Location Bus Spotter.
“In short its freaking cool and I’m definitely going to use it”
- Jess, Team Rubber developer & willing bus user
YRS is a network of young developers who take part in a week long event which finishes in a show and tell to government and relevant industries in the Microsoft headquarters in London this Friday.
Burning Rubber 2011
Alex Pitkin - July 29th, 2011Today sees the world welcome Team Rubber’s inaugural annual Burning Rubber.
You may ask what Burning Rubber is? Well this will be answered in due course, mainly through the art of photography, but you never know it may also be through poetry and sculpture, who knows? I think someone here does.
It was initially in honour of Team Rubber Inc.’s 10th (yes ten) birthday but this particular thread of celebratory banter will be a little more hushed while Team Rubber’s galavanting director Chris sits the party out in a chateau in France.
Happy first decade Team Rubber.
“Winning” at Twitter
Andy Parkhouse - July 28th, 2011How to win* at Twitter Tweeter.
1. Read it on Twitter.com once a day, don’t spend all day with TweetDeck in the foreground like a foool, unless your job actually *is* monitoring social media.
2. Post something interesting about once a day. Not that you had toast. That’s not interesting. Except to people doing consumer research at Mothers Pride. And find something original. Don’t just retweet what everyone else is retweeting, like a foool. Unless it’s our stuff, in which case you have a free pass. Go. Run. Retweet us.
3. Occasionally break all the rules and splurge your day away doing @s and RTs at friends and strangers. But you’ll feel dirty later.
*win = it doesn’t take over your life and have you addicted to the next dopamine hit that an exciting RT brings you.
It’s fine to live in a constant stream of information/crap, but not if you want to get like….creative stuff done. You know, like thinking, writing code, drawing crap, writing crap, actually picking up the phone and calling clients. That kind of thing.
I don’t mean win like Charlie Sheen means win, he’s a foool.
“Tweeter: (n) like irc, minus the bits that filter out all the noise” ®
Bonus feature: this post replaces a certain naughty word with ‘foool’ to avoid offence. Wherever you see ‘foool’, simply insert your favourite choice of naughty word. But don’t tell your mum.
(Just for avoidance of doubt, I do enjoy Tweeter and won’t be asking them for my money back).
Gratuitous picture of me before I was treated for minor Tweeter addiction
