November 2008

 … the convergence of social action and technology
Last week I had the pleasure of giving a keynote at the Making Links conference in Melbourne. A big thanks to the organisers and the great attendees who all represent organisations and activists doing excellent work for social change. My presentation, ‘Reaching out or Moving closer: connecting with your community’, focused on participation and engagement (See it here on slideshare). In particular ways that people can approach social technologies to initiate and foster relationships with their community.  I focused on how we can use these tools to develop an ecology appropriate to our stakeholders motivations and interests, rather than focusing on the one stop shop idea of traditional websites.

This way of thinking can often be a challenge for organisations who are uncomfortable about giving up the control of their brand or message. However relinquishing control of those things (to some degree and in new ways) are inevitably part of embracing social technologies, and working more collaboratively with our stakeholders and ‘users’. As Aradhana Goel from IDEO puts it, we should be thinking about enhancing our brand through participation (pdf).

For those that were interested in some of the other sources that I quoted around using social media and social change,  I have uploaded the presentation to slideshare and added some links.  Thanks to all for the great feedback.

Whilst at the conference I had the pleasure of seeing a number of  great projects, some of the highlights included the Freedom Centre who have been using msn and other private forms of online communication work support young people on gender and sexuality issues.  Info Exchange  do a wide range of work making ICT available to organisations and indivuals (including setting up free access via satellite in East Timor). Reps from Mission Australia, Barnadoes, Youth of the Streets and the Vodafone Foundation presented their fantastic work ‘Young People Connected’ giving street kids and disadvantaged youths mobile phones, the presentation of which brought more than a tear to the eye. Awesome work thanks guys.

Design is for the large part one of the main causes of sustainability problems in today’s world. Too often design is caught up in creating the next meaningless flavour of the month. Pushing people to consume more and think less.

As designers we are often asked to create something new for the sake of NEW, when new isn’t necessarily more usable, functional, aesthetically pleasing or in anyway better. Although designers are not completely to blame, by being more responsible and sustainable in our approach to design we refuse to take part in the joint denial that is consumer capitalism.

So, on world usability day we at Digital Eskimo would like to make a call to our readers (especially designers!): be a leader; don’t do things today that make tomorrow worse. Rather than asking yourself which one is newer, brighter and superficially better, perhaps we should ask what does better really mean?

BTW .. This year’s theme is Transportation – a matter close to our green hearts … learn more at the official site.

Ohh and this post was written by our new Art Director, Christopher Potter who has joined us from the UK after running his own agency, Grass Blades for many years. Chris and i met on the launch of the original Toyota Prius back in 2001 and have stayed in touch ever since – his design is naturally considered and he brings a swag of flash and coding skills to the house. Ohh and he cooks a mean Burmese dish with his partner Cho, check out their hsa*ba book for tastey Burmese treats.

We walked away with 2 Finalists awards for our Hey Joe campaign at the Australian Graphic Design Association’s 2008 Biannual Awards recently. The campaign has been a great success; ensuring we stay front of mind within our community and has delivered a steady stream of very talented and capable people to the igloo to have a crack at becoming digital eskimos.

The awards honoured creativity and execution and were for Self Promotion and Promotion to the Creative Industry. Special mention should go to Penny who oversaw the project, Chris Gaul who designed the ‘Babushkimo’ dolls and the campaign look and feel, Anja on flash coding/animation, the team at Mooball, led by Tom Cameron who coded the backend referral engine (we can track who forwards to whom to confirm who to pay when we hire someone) and Duncan Underwood who heads up the HR activities here at Digital Eskimo.

Apologies to Eskimo Joe for the blatant name rip-off …