After an impressive, undefeated start to the season (2 wins and a hard-fought draw), Team Rubber FC are set to step out against the current league holders on Thursday night (Nov 20).
‘Brucey Boys’ are also unbeaten (3 wins) but a win for Rubber would put them ahead and in at least second place, cementing their deserved status as one of the league’s teams to beat.
Current league table for you statisticians out there:
Goals goals goals!
Voter abstention may not be the issue during this United States election. Unlike Kerry/Bush, McCain/Obama present a clearer polarisation to the electorate. There are evidently fewer converged political ideologies to disengage ‘powerless’ voters, brought to light through a myriad of infotainment virals in the past months.
Will the issue be how hundreds of thousands of people in crucial states may be blocked from their right to vote? The brilliant investigative journalist Greg Palast believes so. (see part 1 of his documentary above)
The Internet with its interactive capacity is delivering on the promise of remaking a public sphere in which universal participation in debate and decision making is at hand. The public is no longer the faceless mass whose aggregated opinions have been ‘polled’ by MORI, ICM or Gallup for the mutual convenience of media and politicians. Just see Delib’s work on helping to open the National Dialogue to witness the value and prolificacy of opinions tracked in various forms of social media. Of course, citizens cannot form rational opinions on which to base electoral decisions if the extent of information is minimal. As a liberal pluralist would argue, public opinion is worthless if not derived from a multitude of sources (see the depths that the Opinion Tracker reaches). There’s perhaps at least another Web something zero to go but there’s been clear indication in this election that citizens are becoming less passive receivers and more active and influential participants in the dialogue of democracy.
The Internet is staying true to Marshall McLuhan’s assertion that “Instant information creates involvement in depth”. The ability for social media to provide top to bottom and bottom to top political conversation over social media sites lays down the architecture for political participation, particularly with politicians and parties having a strong presence on such sites and continually delivering new content through these channels.
We’ll be hoping it’s time the voting system delivers on its democratic promise otherwise those who have helped shape a plethora of public spheres and have no faith in the democratic system will create ideologically wider ones too.
To the glorious sounds of Enya’s Orinocco Flow, it flew into existence…
Delib’s first Ideas Forest, prepared lovingly for DIUS (the Department for Innovation Universities and Skills) is now live.
It’s a pretty one, so be sure to take a peek.
Thanks to everyone involved.
Another fortnight has flown by: we have arrived at another Friday meaning a brand new MCM Net produced/Aardman designed Creature Discomforts game has landed.
Visit the Rubber Republic blog for more info!
One of the greatest internet memes of 2008 will come to be remembered as the pirate.
First there was the actual event - “Talk Like a Pirate Day”. Google then last month released a pirate edition of their homepage. Facebook followed and created a pirate language you could switch to. Instead of “writing on Joe Bloggs wall” you were “carving on Joe Bloggs plank”.
Now there’s even an addictive viral game that has set sail which we’re working on - “Booty Juggler” - and we hope it’ll be dropping anchor all over the Web.
Constructed by Thought Den and illustrator Robin Davey for 4mations.tv, the game fuses beautiful drawings with casual gaming to provide its unique ‘animated game’ experience. Booty Juggler teaches us how good 2D games cold can look, and that retro (poster-like) can go deeper then 8bit pixelatness. When illustrators do flash, they do it darn well ala Ferry Halim.
The games music is every bit as viral as the addictive gameplay. Pirate favourite “drunken sailor” is remixed by Robin Davey into a dance classic that even Arrrrrrrr-mand van Helden would be found drinking port to whilst courting faire maidens at grog fests. Lubberly.
Recently Chris Quigley did a post entitled when viral food goes wrong on the Rubbertopia blog.
I saw another episode of Jamie’s show last night (I don’t watch much television, but happened to also see the first episode) I was surprised to see how much Jamie has improved his chances of teaching people how to cook.
For strangers to this blog or myself, I work on Seeding Virals through the Viral Ad Network at Rubber republic - and as a viral marketing company, we spend most of our time trying to encourage “advertainment” content to be spread through word of mouth.
Jamie’s basic idea is simple - start by teaching a group of people how to cook a simple meal, and then let them teach some other people. Hopefully the people they teach will teach still more, and eventually the number of people that know how to cook grows massively.
For those who didn’t see it - the first episode started with teaching several people who had never cooked to cook a simple meal, and then getting them to teach a friend - who in turn would teach another friend. The equivalent of this would be if every time we started to seed a viral, we sent it to a few people via email, and asked them to pass it on.
The problem is that for this method to work straight out, you have to expect that each person you send it to will send it to at least one other person. How large this number is doesn’t really matter in the long run as long as it’s more than one - if it’s less than one you’ll quickly end up without it being passed on any more. (Well, actually you have to expect more than one as it gets passed on further, but that’s a good approximation for the first few stages.)
What actually happens here, is that you end up with the message (how to cook in this case) passed on only a few stages before stopping.
Jamie’s initial mistake was in asking people to pass the recipe on to one friend. This means that when you include all the people who either don’t bother, or don’t have time to send the recipe on you end up with an expected “pass-on” rate less than one: In fact the only way that his initial plan could have worked would have been if every single person who was taught a recipe passed it on to a friend - no exceptions.
Not surprisingly, this method didn’t work very well - it quickly ground to a halt after a couple of stages. Given that he had very few people to start with, the final number ended up under 30 people.
Jamie’s newest technique (which was on television last night) started far better. His technique this time was to find 20 local companies, and get them to bring 50 members of staff along who wanted to learn to cook. Taking groups of companies at a time, his first group of 10 cooks (from the first show) would each teach five people, and those five people would then teach two more people, who would teach two more, and so on - up to the total of 1,000 people taught to cook in a day.
Why do I think this method is more likely to work?
Jamie has two massive factors working against him this time - firstly it relies on all of those employees having close enough friends outside of work who they want to teach to cook, and secondly since these 1,000 people weren’t chosen as carefully as the first group they are less likely to actually pass it on at all (the first group responded to an ad asking if they would like to learn to cook and pass it on, and have Jamie Oliver breathing down their neck to make sure they do).
But: Even though only five groups of 50 staff actually passed on the recipe (10%), that’s still 1,250 people in total - making 250 more (”new”) people who may pass it on in the future (along with the first 1,000) - compared to about 10 “new” people who had the recipe passed onto them from the first technique (closer to 100%).
In fact, after the recipe has been passed on just a few stages you aren’t really in control of what kind of people the content has been passed on to - so the chances they will pass it on becomes the same however you get to them. That means that Jamie should reach around 25 (that’s 250/10) times more people from the second method - and probably more than that due to the other 1,000.
What did Jamie get wrong?
One thing Jamie did notice was that the recipe that he taught changed slightly as it got passed from one group to another, and responded by making the instructions more clear. In my opinion that was short-sighted. If he had instead learnt from what it had been changed onto then he could have ended up with a recipe that was more liked by the local population, and more likely to be passed on. Harnessing the social effect of this could have also been useful - perhaps picking several of the best and naming them after the company that produced them - giving the cooks more of an attachment, and making them more likely to pass it on to more people.
He also tried to persuade the entire company to pass the recipe on in one go to 50 people from another company after the event - by encouraging this he relied on bosses providing cooking utensils and time off for staff to teach another group. Perhaps by encouraging people to teach their friends privately he could have increased the percentage of people that got taught - and got it closer to the magic number one.
Tim W
How does Team Rubber celebrate it’s 7th Anniversary? By going on holiday, of course. Team Rubber recently returned from a seaside holiday in Dorset, filled with songs, laughter, food and a gale force wind or two.
Many of us enjoyed playing the guitar and the singing of happy songs (despite not always knowing the words). The weather was typically British. Friday was amazing - clear skies, sunny and gorgeous. The rest of the weekend, not so much.
Laura organised the lovely, seasidy holiday cottage for us. Cheers for that! It was situated right on the beach. Inside was “like a maze”, with “cozy” rooms, and “individual and idiosyncratic” beams (quite literally - they weren’t always structural!). There enormous dining room table received many compliments, which accommodated all 18 of us.
Thought the house was spot on, loved the sophisticated-rustic balance, the chance to fully enjoy the sea views whilst staying warmly cocooned from the gales and the fact that it was right next to the pub (allowing me to drink two whole pints of cider without blowing my designated driver responsibilities).” - Ben
I was happy to sit in the conservatory all day.” - Katrina
Amazing. We should buy it.” MattG
It suited Team Rubber. I want to go again!” - Michaela
The house did have it’s quirks, though (rattling windows, temperamental cooker and casual hot water!) but these merely added to the charm.
More photos on our Team Rubber Flickr group, including the awesome panorama.
What were your highlights of the holiday?
What three words describe the holiday for you?
In summary, according to Jenny, it was the “Best fun you can have with your clothes on!”
I’ve never been speed-dating, but now I’ve been ’speed-networking’.
Last night Alex and I stood in for absentee Creative Director, Matt (currently in Africa, as you do) and went down to a great event, brilliantly organised by Bristol Media.
Arriving to drinks and delicious canapes, we were given a chance to mingle, meet new people and catch up with some familiar faces. Then the ’speed-networking’ started. It was quite an intense couple of hours - but it was a great way to meet some of the new creative talent that’s currently floating around Bristol. We met some really interesting people, and one or two that we’re looking forward to meeting again.
Thanks to the Mike and Caroline at Bristol Media! We’ll look out for the next one.
We’re very proud of our latest seeding project, ‘Creature Discomforts’ because:
1) We’re working with great people; MCM Net, Leonard Cheshire Disability and Aardman.
2) The games are ace!
3) It’s all part of a great cause.
4) We like animals.
Seeding kicked off this week, and we’re expecting a great response. Check out the first game in the four part series, ‘Flyzzz’ - featuring Callum The Chameleon…and the Rubber Republic blog for a more detailed blurb about this campaign.
We at Team Rubber are very proud of our latest effort, an online consultation for the BBC Trust, deployed with our new, custom-built online consultation software, part of Opinion Suite. Expect a lot more Opinion Suite Shipping News in the next few months!
The BBC Your Say consultation lives at http://www.bbcyoursay.co.uk. Feel free to participate if you have views on the BBC’s radio, tv and web content for younger audiences.
There is a more detailed post on the Delib blog. We were also amused to hear Chris Moyles fill in the survey on his radio show.
Well done to everyone involved: Alex, Alan, Andy, Ant, Ben, Heather, Gez, Jess, Laura, Michaela, Owen, Wilkes and myself!
