Thanks to Steve Moore and his colleagues at Policy Unplugged for organising a terrific ‘unconference’ event at NESTA on Tuesday. Under the heading Uploading Innovation, they assembled an eclectic and engaging mix of authors, entrepreneurs, consultants, software developers, bloggers and other creative types for an afternoon of structured and unstructured debate, with food at the beginning and drink at the end.

We were spoilt for choice when it came to the ’speakers’, who didn’t deliver lectures (putting the un- into unconference) but facilitated discussions around different themes. In the first round I went to Mark Earls‘ session about mass behaviour, based on his new book Herd (previewed here on Wishful Thinking last summer). The session started promisingly, with a group Mexican wave, and entered the realms of the faintly surreal during a discussion about Diana’s funeral when one of the group casually mentioned that he was responsible for organising the Royal funerals… My contribution was a story from my time in the trenches doing psychotherapy for the NHS, which has since appeared on Mark’s blog.

Theoretically all delegates were free to move from one debate to the next, but we got so involved in individual vs group dynamics that the hour went very quickly. Which was great, although it meant I missed the other sessions, including Charles Leadbeater about his new book We Think, Matt Hanson about A Swarm of Angels, a collaborative £1 million film that will be given away to 1 million people, Jeremy Ettinghausen of Penguin about their Million Penguins wikinovel, and Dan McQuillan from Amnesty talking about the implications of Web 2.0, intellectual property and online privacy for human rights issues.

In the second round I joined Johnnie Moore and James Cherkoff for a welcome bout of improvisational silliness, playing at being ’slow-motion samurai’ and throwing and catching imaginary balls made of strange noises (hopefully those bits won’t surface on YouTube).

The structured sessions were just a part of the event though - the main attraction was the opportunity to meet up with so many enthusiasts doing creative things with people, networks and technology - many of which overlap, intersect with or hover in a conceptual space ‘next door’ to what I’m doing with Wishful Thinking.

Special thanks to Deb Khan for introducing me to Steve Moore and indirectly wangling me an invitation to the event. Deb is a very bright and very charming lady who does lots of work around creativity, presentation and communication (see what I mean about the ‘next door’ thing?). I met her recently and we have a lot in common, although obviously I’m furious now that she’s blogged the event before me. Deb introduced me to Inga Clausen, another bright and charming lady who is also ‘next door’ to Deb and I, doing creative facilitation work with Artisan, whose website will be here soon. Russell was in the building and Richard Tyrie is doing something intriguing to do with labour markets, which I didn’t find out about on the day, so this is my reminder to investigate it.

Turning from the ‘people people’ to the ’software’ side of social software, I met Fiddian Warman who’s got some dangerously addictive online creativity toys at Soda, Matt O’Neill, Sam Sethi, Christoph Schmaltz of Headshift, and Raj Anand and Jack Fairhall of Kwiqq .

“It’s a bit like blogging in real life” was a phrase I heard several times during the day (as if blogging weren’t real life…). Watching others typing into their laptops during the sessions reassured me that my ‘blogging addiction’ is probably nothing more than a mild recreational habit…

Thanks for the photo and videos to Lloyd Davis, self-proclaimed social media tart and one-man camera crew. If you want to see/hear/read more about the event, check out the Uploading Innovation blog and the nestauploading tag on Technorati, Flickr and YouTube.

Steve Moore at Policy Unplugged has let me know about an event called Uploading Innovation hosted by NESTA in London on 27 February.

The Uploading…Innovation conference has been convened to help us to learn from those people who have been at the forefront of the development of new participatory ways of working, those who have harnessed the network effects of emerging technologies of collaboration to create new business models, new products and services, to bring about culture change within organisations and disruptive innovation to their sectors.

The organisers are looking to bring together “people from a range of backgrounds including social software developers, bloggers, Web 2.0 start ups, people working within private, public and not for profit organisations, communication professionals, writers and journalists”. If that sounds like you and you’re interested in the topic, there are a few places left, at no charge.

I’ll be there - send me an e-mail if you’re going and want to meet up.

I make a cameo appearance in the January edition of Creative Review. The magazine features the web designers WeFail, who have been working together for 4 years and only met 3 times, partly because one of them is in the States and the other in the UK, but mostly because they prefer collaborating online. And they don’t meet their clients, who include Eminem, Dixie Chicks, Christian Aid and BBDO.

Creative Review asked me what I thought of WeFail’s working practice - well, I’d better not steal their thunder by repeating it here so I’ll just say I was intrigued by their approach and after several months blogging it makes a lot more sense than it would have beforehand. A bit like Russell’s idea of the Global small business.

Come to think of it, I did the Creative Review piece without meeting or even talking to Mark Sinclair who commissioned it. We did it all by e-mail and I didn’t give the process a second thought. It seemed normal.

Technorati Tags: Creative Review, WeFail

This interview for my research into Perceptions of Coaching in the UK Creative Industries was with Matt Taylor, Director and Producer at Fat Beehive and Fat Beehive Films.

Fat Beehive is a small web developer based in the heart of London’s New Media cluster around Hoxton Square. Established in 1997, it has built up a strong reputation for creating accessible and engaging websites for charity, NGO, Faitrade and sustainability organisations. Its client list includes The Sustainable Development Commission, Crisis, GamCare, Global Witness, Compass Network, People Tree and Union Chapel.

Matt is one of the founding directors of Fat Beehive - there are now seven members of theteam including fellow director Tom Moreton. They have recently launched Fat Beehive Films, taking advantage of their film-making skills and the growth of the corporate film marketing, driven by the expanding broadband network. As well as the actual filming and editing, Fat Beehive Films offer video hosting and live webcasting services. You can see a selection of their films on their website.

I spoke to Matt in the relaxed surroundings of a cafe on Hoxton Square, where he described the importance of social skills and peer learning in a small new media agency. He also offered some amusing observations about the way management terms such as ‘coaching’ are regarded in the Fat Beehive office!

Click the ‘AUDIO MP3′ icon below to hear the interview.

 Interview with Matt Taylor: Download

Apologies to anyone who, like me, spent the first 5 minutes of Imagine: The World Wide Web on Tuesday night watching something else on BBC2 instead of BBC1. When I realised my mistake and switched over I enjoyed the programme, although it didn’t come anywhere near the heights of The Ingenious Thomas Heatherwick. I think this was partly down to the familiarity of the subject matter - I already knew about most of the things it covered - blogging, YouTube, social media etc., whereas Heatherwick’s imagination was like something freshly landed from outer space. But if you haven’t spent much time on the internet recently it was probably a good general introduction to what’s going on the web at the moment.

The bit I found most interesting was the film director who does his casting by asking actors to submit videos of themselves reading his script. As he pointed out, this means the actors are more relaxed and often give a better performance. This also applies to the director himself, who can view the clips repeatedly, at leisure and make a more considered decision about who to invite to a face-to-face audition. He was impressed by the creativity of the actors, many of whom donned costumes and made mini movie-clips with their friends, instead of just reading the script to camera.

This seems to be part of a shift in hiring practices - instead of the old interview/audition/c.v./covering letter, applicants are using more initiative and creativity to demonstrate their skills. E.g. when Chemistry recently advertised some planning vacancies, they received “podcasts, business plans, dedicated websites, and brilliantly written emails” in response. (Found via Russell.) And in a lot of cases, it’s not an applicant-interviewer relationship at all, just people being engaged or deciding to collaborate on the basis of cool stuff they’ve created.

There are some excellent creative blogs out there - here are a few recent posts that have chimed in with my creative interests.

Whistle Through Your Comb

A new discovery this week, via Russell’s post of the month. Having blogged about creative environments, I thoroughly enjoyed The Perfect Office - which is emphatically not the kind of creative showroom where ‘the architecture is meant to communicate to the onlooker, “we’re highly creative.”‘:

I think an agency should not look at its office as a place: it should look at it as a tool. In other words, agencies should not create architecture that communicates creativity. They should create architecture that generates creativity.

Among the suggestions for a truly creative office are “No headphones… ever” - the author evidently agrees with the Creative Review blog that iPods Can Seriously Damage Your Creativity.

Noisy Decent Graphics

Great post on what it’s like to be a graphic designer - The Design Disease. Subjectivity rules on Wishful Thinking - I’m always fascinated to glimpse the world of someone who works in a different creative field, and this gives an good idea of what it’s like to be thrilled by arrows and tormented by shocking kerning. I draw the line at choosing a book by its cover though.

Cookin’ Relaxin’

Another new find, with an ingenious analysis of ways to consume Time based media such as music and radio programmes. With creative synaesthesia fresh in my mind, I’m intrigued by the visual representations of radio shows - and it’s worth reading to the end for the fractal bit.

Logic + Emotion

David Armano has put together a nice end-of-year e-book in the words of his readers:

2006: The year of…
PC (Power Consumer)
Connection
2.0
Business + Design
Video
Creativity
People

Download page: 2006 in your words

One of the most popular posts on Wishful Thinking is The Ingenious Thomas Heatherwick, prompted by Alan Yentob’s Imagine documentary about the multi-talented designer. There’s another Imagine on tonight, about the World Wide Web, featuring interviews with Tim Berners-Lee, various bloggers and contributors to Wikipedia and the Arctic Monkeys messageboard. If it’s half as good as the Heatherwick programme it’ll be well worth staying up for…

This interview for my research into Perceptions of Coaching in the UK Creative Industries was with Terry Childs, who has the dual roles of Managing Director and Creative Director at Silver Chair.

Founded in 1998 Silver Chair has developed into an agency with international experience in creativity and media, working on brands such as BMW, Barclays, Kellogg’s, Sears, BT, Norwich Union, HSBC and Land Rover. 2006 saw the agency expand with the launch of Silver Chair Digital.

Terry is the Managing Director and Creative Director at Silver Chair and has spent over 15 years in the marketing communications industry. During this time he has worked for both agencies and clients including Ogilvy & Mather, WWAV, Leo Burnett, BT, Norwich Union, Safeway, BMW and has recently developed campaigns for tic tac, Yamaha and the Department For Education and Skills.

Terry gave an entertaining account of the challenges involved in managing creative professionals. He also described Silver Chair’s internal mentoring programme, and highlighted the importance of using appropriate terminology when ’selling’ a development initiative to a creative team.

Click the ‘AUDIO MP3′ icon below to hear the interview.

 Interview with Terry Childs: Download

I’m feeling better than I really deserve to after spending yesterday afternoon on Hugh MacLeod and Robert Scoble’s pub crawl, followed by a party in the evening (not the Firefox one, I’m not a hardcore geek yet). As well as Hugh and Robert, who were both charming, I met a bunch of very interesting guys (no ladies) involved in all kinds of web-related projects.

If you read a lot of blogs Hugh and Robert will need no introduction - if not, Hugh draws the wickedly funny cartoons on GapingVoid which he simultaneously gives away for free and uses to sell Stormhoek wine, Savile Row suits and Thingamy software. Robert blogs at Scobleizer.com and quite literally wrote the book on blogging - Naked Conversations, which he co-authored with Shel Israel, essential reading for anyone considering writing a business blog.

The afternoon was kickstarted when Hugh received a call to say the Thresher viral campaign has resulted in 800,000 downloads of the 40% off coupons and wine is quite figuratively flying off the shelves. I woke up this morning to learn that the campaign (and Hugh’s cartoons) had been featured on the BBC News and national press. If you’re one of the few people in the UK who haven’t received a voucher, you can get one here and cross your fingers that Thresher have still got some wine left.

The Apple store was on the itinerary at the beginning but seemed to fall off it after a few pints. We did get a tour of Savile Row from Hugh, recorded in HD video by Robert - doubtless some of the footage will surface on the web soon. Apart from that the afternoon was spent diligently quaffing pints of Guinness and sharing ideas and enthusiasm.

People I met included Yakov Sadchikov, President of Quintura, who is developing a visual search engine using ‘clouds’ that work a bit like a mind-map; Jeffrey Walker of Atlassian Software Systems, Bob Pinkett of Peter Brett Associates, Martin Judd of Joined-up Solutions, Darren Straight who’s studying IT at the University of Kent, and Nigel Cooke who is photoblogging everything he eats and drinks and John Wilson who did a great job of shepherding us with a mulitcoloured umbrella.

Thanks to everyone for a great afternoon - if you were there and I didn’t get your URL, send it to me and I’ll add it to this post.

If you remember my post about Tim Wright’s amazing Playtime event in October, you will no doubt be concerned to hear that the Russians have joined the golfing space race.

Not to be outdone, Tim is stepping up his plans for his mission to play gold on the moon with David Bowie - he’s registered www.golfonthemoon.com and (ahem) ‘launched’ a competition to win an iPod Shuffle. The prize will go to “the best moon/golf/Bowie image submitted by Xmas”.

Tim has also posted links from some of the Playtime presentations - by Gavin Stewart, Tom Hume and Rob Bevan. See my previous Playtime post for more about the presentations.