Category Archive

We’re currently building some of the really fun stuff - the whole social networking side of ode.

The first building block of any network is it’s smallest unit. In our case, and in most others, it’s the user. And every user needs a profile.

Alongside lots of debate around privacy settings, newsfeeds, sharable content and nicknames I started thinking about the psychology of the profile picture, or avatar.

Every social site (that I’ve used anyway) allows you to upload a picture against your profile. This is a common web function.

So we accept we can upload a picture - but why and what do we choose to upload? What does it say about us? What are we trying to say to other people about ourselves in our choice of picture?

I guess at it’s most basic we have a need to connect on a visual level. Your profile picture is one of the most powerful ways of immediately providing a signal of who you are. On Facebook people regularly change their picture to show a new side to themselves, or to include their new baby or even in fancy dress.

Famously there’s no ugly people on Myspace, due to the rise of the Myspace Angle.

Ultimately it’s all about establishing an identity in the intrinsically anonymous internet.

But those examples are social sites, for fun and frivolity.

On a professional business network platform such as Linkedin (and ode) anonymity is not necessarily paramount - in fact you want to people to know the “real” you to a certain extent.

So it’s clear your profile picture will be chosen more carefully. It is a network used by your peers and therefore you will want to come across as mildly professional at the very least.

So that picture of you drunk and in costume as a Klingon might make people laugh, but they won’t take you too seriously.

Of course not everyone wants to show what they look like and perhaps cannot bring themselves to use an avatar (a “virtual” representation of themselves). Or they simply can’t figure out how to do it.

So, if a profile demands a picture and you can’t provide one the website has to put something in it’s place. This is where we meet the mystery men and women. What I like to call “blankies” (in place of anything better to call them, as they provide a little bit of comfort. And they’re blank. Well, you get the idea).

Universally a pale grey seems to be the colour of choice, not black as silhouettes traditionally are. Their purpose is to encourage you to upload a photo, to personalise your profile to decrease your anonymity and increase personal ownership of your profile.

So to celebrate the blankie, one of the most powerful calls to action on the internet, I present a small gallery and critique of some of the most famous…

The Youtube blankie: Dynamic, bold and immediately connects you to the purpose of Youtube using the common language of the video camera icon. Of course as it’s audience gets more and more used to filming on mobile devices perhaps that will have to be changed?

WordPress blankie: (the platform this blog is written on and a wonderful service it is too) have gone for a simple, classic, almost nihilist “fat blankie”, or “Cluedo piece”. Interestingly they have recently employed a much greater range of potions for your profile picture, including the wonderful identicons.

Ning blankie: “Make your own social network” site Ning have tried to humanise their blankie by giving it a realistic outline. Unless you’ve got Marge Simpson’s haircut it’s clear what needs to go here.

Myspace blankie: This feels more authoritarian, more demanding, even a little scary. You have “NO PHOTO”. Interesting fact: that person graphic is often also employed on Gents lavatory doors.

Linkedin blankie: Like the Myspace blankie but with a softer, more natural look, on a white background. It’s even wearing a smart/casual jumper.

LastFM blankie: LastFM is a social music platform. It has a built in coolness and it’s where all the hip and groovy cats hang out. Hence the mysterious, Third Man type blankie. One of my favourites.

Flickr blankie: Flickr, one of the most popular image sites on the net, has perhaps the most strict and simplistic blankie of all. If you stare at it long enough the straight line mouth appears to morph into a cheeky smile. Apparently you can pick from 3: this is the “ambivalent” one.

Facebook blankie: In a break from tradition Facebook has cast aside all human elements and simply gone for the classic question mark. Lazy.

Digg blankie: Is anyone else picturing Spiderman? Look at those broad shoulders. This is a man’s site, be in no doubt.

Upcoming blankie: Happy, happy, joy, joy. A smiley emoticon for this community for discovering and sharing events. Although does it look a little overweight to you?

So what will ode choose for it’s blankie? Perhaps we’ll design a few and let ya’ll vote. Has anyone spotted any other cool blankies on their travels through cyberspace?

++update 8.5.2008 (hat tip to Peter for most of these, first post below)++

Bebo blankie: Social networking, popular with teenagers. In fact if I had to guess the age of this blankie character I would probably say a moody 17. Looks a bit like Morrissey circa 1982. So, good work.

Basecamp blankie: Basecamp is a project management tool that we use, religiously. Now we have 100’s of users across multiple projects so the blankie has to be very small as it’s attached to messages etc. Interestingly, even though this is a professional office tool, of those people who have uploaded a profile picture hardly anyone has used an actual photo of themselves.

Mydeco blankie: Mydeco (”It’s a furniture fix for the decorati!”) has plumped for a large detailed male outline. Rebelliously they have gone for white figure on a grey background and included a question mark. Word. I’ve also been inspired for a new tagline for ode: “It’s a content fix for the teacherati!”. No? OK.

Entertainment Live UK blankie: I am not wholly confident what this site is, but it appears to be something to do with promotion of live music in the UK. Their blankie is as alarming in it’s complexity as their website, which has to be browsed to be believed. Hardly any of their members have added a photo, perhaps because the default blankie is more interesting than any real person could possibly be.

In Depth Arts blankie: A digital art forum that again uses the “question mark in face” motif. It’s becoming clear that if you actually have a question mark instead of a face you’ve saved yourself a click, eh?

Reggae Party blankie: Only a Dutch site called “Reggae Party” could employ a blankie like this. Personally I love it. Irie.

Sailing networks blankie: Wow. This is almost our first “non-blankie”. So minimalist it’s almost not there at all.

A recent change to a car park I use regularly has really bothered my user-centric radar (bear with me on this one!).

Our nearest local amenities from work are in Summertown, just outside North Oxford. It’s a busy main street where you can run quick errands like pop to the bank, grab a sandwich or a birthday card and so on.

Parking is a nightmare, especially at lunchtime, as you’d expect. There’s only one public car park and it’s continuously near capacity.

Until recently something used to spontaneously happen in that car park that was really interesting and I guess happens all over the country.

The entrance is right next to the exit so a car coming in would pass within a foot or so of a car going out.

You would often find people, when leaving and passing someone coming in, reaching out through their open window and offering their ticket, which usually had a good bit of time left on it, to the incoming car.

This is unexpected generosity, a little bit of sunshine, a free ticket!

It wasn’t an agreed behavior. There is likely an element of kitchen sink rebellion, but it felt good giving someone else your ticket and that recipient felt good that someone was kind enough to do so.

So what’s happened?

The local authority has introduced complex and stunningly awful new ticketing booths that force you to input your car registration number before it will issue you with a ticket, so that traffic wardens can link your car to the ticket.

This means people can’t pass tickets with a bit of time left on them to one another any more. No more sunshine.

So now you see people walking to the ticket machines, realising they have to input their registration number, sigh and go back to their car to remind themselves what it is, then walk back to the machine and wrangle with the appaling user interface (I mean, look at all the arrows, buttons and instructions) and then go back to their car to display it.

Courtesy of (the equally annoyed) louisiana

All this effort so the council can claw back the few pence it “felt” it was losing (quantifying the amount of tickets passed altruistically must be almost impossible).

And of course a ticket always guaranteed a space for 1hour - it would just be filled by a different car. The ticket still runs out as normal.

What’s more important: gaining a few quid or keeping the world .001% happier?

(An addendum tale: the council also changed the machines in a car park in the center of Oxford to number plate recognition ticket machines in direct response to complaints about a few homeless folk who used to ask (politely in my experience) for your old ticket so they could sell it on to the next person and make a few quid.

You can’t buy a ticket that hasn’t got your number plate on, right?

But what soon developed, and this always makes me smile at the ingenuity of it, is the homeless guys didn’t go away, they now help car park visitors to understand how to use the awful new machines and people tip them. Brilliant!)

So what does this tell us?

1. Humans will always find a way to break or workaround a system to help each other if such a way can be found.
2. How you think a system should work is not always the same as how users work your system.
3. Changing a system to block natural, spontaneous behavior will only alienate and drive people to work around your block.
4. Sometimes it shouldn’t just be about the money.

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”

Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC)

We’ve found a new device which we think will transform the way information is delivered.

1. It never crashes.
2. It has the simplest cross cultural interface that works.
3. It doesn’t need a help manual or instructions.
4. It requires no power supply.
5. It’s cheap to make.
6. It’s highly portable.
7. You can use it pretty much anywhere without any sort of connection.
8. If treated well it will last for generations; no matter what other technology arises it will always be usable.

We love virtual content as you know but we also love books. We encourage people in the team to contribute to our office library - if you want to borrow a book, then you have to add a book. Share and share alike.

Blogs, wikis and websites are all very well but a book gives a subject time and space to breathe. I will rapaciously tear through a 400 page book but would balk at the idea of having to read the same 400 pages online or on a mobile device. For now.

“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”

Groucho Marx (1890 - 1977)

Rockstar, the creators of the Grand Theft Auto series, have made a rather significant jump up the evolutionary digital distribution ladder by partnering with Amazon to add music downloads to their game world.

Their new title, GTA IV, will likely be the best selling game of all time. Amazon are the most successful online retailer in the world. Obviously some bright spark noticed their might be an opportunity…

A major slice of awesomeness found throughout all the GTA titles has been the music. When you drive any vehicle in the game you have a selection of radio stations you can “tune” into.

Music in games is nothing new but the GTA coup was that their music was proper chart music, music you recognise, music you could have an emotional connection to. And not just pop and rock hits but also opera, classical, jazz and much more. It really did add an edge of realism to the whole thing.

One of my favourite gaming memories of all time is from GTA: San Andreas. I was running from a car park roof top ambush and firefight. I stole a motorbike and gunned for the exit. Just as I thought I had got away the camera swung round to show an articulated lorry driven by one of my adversaries smashing (in slow motion!) it’s way off a flyover I had just passed under and barreling towards you.

But what made it really sweet was that all this happened as “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns and and Roses was blasting out. I seriously cannot tell you how cool this was.

So now Rockstar have teamed up with Amazon to sell you extra music via the medium of your characters mobile phone. From within the gaming experience you will be able to browse a music store and download digital music to compliment your game. Also the tracks will be portable, meaning you can then transfer them to your MP3 player.

This type of approach will help revolutionise the distribution of digital content. Rockstar provide the traffic (customers) and Amazon provide the content. This is a “mash up” to all intents and purposes, on an unheard of scale.

What this does is further widen the gap between those who want to exercise a “command and control” approach to content delivery and those who want their content to touch as many points as the consumer requires.

Everything is pointing towards content liberation and greater user choice.

• Virgin and Sky allowing you to choose your own TV.
• iTunes abandoning restrictive DRM so you aren’t forced to own an ipod.
• BBC iplayer giving free and easy access to the last 7 days of all BBC programming.
• Youtube encouraging you to embed their video streams into your website.
• Ringtones being available to buy directly from your mobile phone.
• RSS feeds bringing website content updates to you rather than you having to go and find the content.
• Guitar Hero 3 releasing extra tracks through the next generation of consoles shop fronts.

All these methods are commerically viable or bring added value.

If a community is available any switched on company should be able to provide them with a channel to their content in a form (or forms!) that enhance or complement that experience.

We’re all in this technology game for pretty much two reasons.

1. We are not satisfied with how things are or used to be. We tend to be consistently hungry for the next step in technology, whatever form this may take.
2. We secretly wish we were in Star Wars/Star Trek (delete as appropriate).

Well not much tends to make me sit up and spit my coffee from my nose these days but the following video, and I suggest you watch it all the way through, brings both together rather successfully. There’s nothing educational about this but LOOK AT THE BIG ROBOT DOG!

Thanks to 37 Signals for the spot.

Hi all, I’m a new poster to the odeworld blog. My name is Peter Marshall and I’ve recently joined the ode team as a software engineer and was prompted by Mr B to blog a couple of observations that peaked his interest. So here goes!

I saw an announcement today for another £100 laptop for school kids, the “Elonex One” http://www.elonexone.co.uk that will be running the Linux OS. This also comes hot on the heels of the Eeepc from Asus http://eeepc.asus.com/uk/guide.htm and they’re both very impressive.

I can also say, from first hand experience, that there is a lot of interest in these small PCs from my children and their friends. The interest to own one is being driven by the children; it doesn’t appear to be a parent led thing as in “lets buy a PC because its educational”.

I am also seeing a significant change in the way my children use and collaborate on work at school.

I think its beginning to turn into a movement driven by and for the student.

The government and schools always thought that they had to provide email for pupils. I distinctly remember there were government led initiatives to provide an email address for every school child (they failed). It became apparent it was unnecessary. No school child uses their school email address (even if they have one). They have always sourced their own.

The same has happened to documents and files. Schools thought they had to provide networks and file space and protection and all kinds of administration and support for children to upload homework files etc. Well, they don’t. Not anymore. My children use Google docs to collaborate (IN REAL TIME) with their mates to create work.

They also don’t bother to use the school network anymore. The school network naturally restricts how much space they can use to store work and students moving from the mindset outside school of web hosting services that freely grant upwards of 100GB of space to a school model that perhaps gives them 50MB and you can see why.

I can see that moving forward the only service the school has to provide is high speed access to the internet. Both the Asus Eeepc and the Elonexone devices come with full wireless internet access. Aside from any mindless controversy I think schools will very soon start to provide blanket wireless access points for pupils. In fact, it’s inevitable.

My children have made videos of their friends explaining all about pathogens for their biology homework. They upload the videos on to Youtube or Vimeo and present them in school (the school has not blocked Youtube…yet!).

Before the lesson most of the class has seen the video and rated or commented on it (because the link was shared using social networking sites in a peer to peer fashion). All this happens long before the teacher saw it in class.

What does this imply? That the teacher in this instance has become the slow link in the learning chain. And it will take a fundamental shift in thinking to make them once again an intrinsic part of the learning loop going forward.

From the students perspective a lot is changing very fast and the technology is naturally appearing to facilitate it. Demand and supply. I can see children progressing and branching in their own direction at such a pace I fear schools and the education sector are just getting left behind.

These small incredibly cheap PCs come with Linux, access to open source collaboration tools and wireless access and I think they are going to cause some big changes.

Go and see the video here: Biology video about Pathogens from Pierre Marshall on Vimeo.

What ode is attempting to do is pretty new, in the education sector at any rate. When you are trying to do something never attempted before you are keenly aware that you are unlikely to be the only person thinking in that manner.

There are almost certainly business people out there cleverer, better funded, more smartly dressed and considerably more successful with women than you’ll ever be. At least that’s how it feels when one company after another announces it’s involvement in this space.

But the reality is you shouldn’t fear the competition. You need to flip that thinking on it’s head and approach it from a completely different angle. And here’s why.

Like any business we keep an eye on what our “competitors” are doing - what new features have they added? What content have they got? What markets are they trying to break into? What are people saying about them? Do our customers use them? And so on.

Feeling a bit sick of riding this paranoia roller coaster I emailed one of my personal heroes, Seth Godin, internet marketing guru extraordinare, and asked for his advice on dealing with this issue. This is what he said:

1. the enemy isn’t the competition
2. it’s obscurity
3. they help you
4. they legitimize the space
5. just do a great job

I never really expected a reply (I mean, this is a man that advises Google and been described as “the Ultimate Entrepreneur for the Information Age” by Business Week) so once I’d got over the shock at his quick and valuable response I realised that what he said made enormous sense. I reprint them here with his kind permission.

The enemy isn’t the competition, it’s obscurity

In this new information age customers can move between products and brands faster than at any other time in history. We are digital magpies, flitting around looking for the shiny stuff.

The ability to make quick choices, to gather commentary on services and products and bask in the glow of a million and one paths has never been easier. As consumers we are empowered. As businesses we have to integrate widely and cheaply to earn people’s interest.

It’s not enough anymore to rely on catalogues and pull outs in magazines to sell our message. We have to focus our attention on taking our products to where the people are, and they are splintered across multiple niches now, not just a homogeneous mass silently consuming in front of the TV.

So the message here is that if you are going to focus anywhere, forget what others are doing and concentrate on making people aware of your product. When there are 1000’s of companies all using megaphones to shout at potential customers they understandably tune out and become ultra selective.

Understand where YOUR people hang out, LISTEN to what they have to say, make your product FLEXIBLE enough that you can tailor it to multiple needs. People want to talk about good products more than ever these days. There’s kudos and respect being gathered by consumers out there - make your product worth talking about and the real enemy, obscurity, will fade away.

They help you, they legitimize the space

You may be the only chocolate umbrella company in the world but on a global platform you will likely be a lone voice. This doesn’t make your product awful but it makes it harder to acquire customers. When customers are actively blocking out marketing noise you may remain forever niche without the funds or reach required to take your Chocobrella™ to the next level.

But then you hear that Mars is making a range of confectionery based outdoor apparel - liquorice scarfs, toffee wellington boots and nougat gloves. Initially you will panic, because they are a global corporation with huge marketing budgets, R&D departments and national distribution networks.

But instead what they are doing is raising the awareness of sugar laden weather wear, a wave which you can capitalise on.

Suddenly you have options - people will start searching for similar items on Google, you can work your niche appeal and create bespoke Chocobrellas™ for the more discerning client, lifestyle magazines will start to run comparison articles on this new trend for edible clothing and so on. They have justified your idea and will expand your market for you.

They are not the competition, they are simply a different angle on the same market. Soon others will join in and before you know it you are playing in a million dollar marketplace that previously didn’t exist. This isn’t to say the hard work has finished (see point 1) but your choices suddenly become infinitely more appealing.

Just do a great job

This is the killer point though. Forget what the competition is doing, it’s out of your hands after all, and expend your energies on being the best you can be.

It’s not enough to say your product is good (”Product X will save you time!”), it has to be truly good (customers are spontaneously telling each other Product X saves them time without prompting from you).

People will have passion for it, they will champion it, they will spread the word - the tools are all out there for consumers to do that on massive scale.

I’d add one more point: A competitor might be a collaborator

We are building ode in such a way that it can be broken up into elements, re-packaged or white labeled and inserted into almost any web based technology for any number of reasons.

We can open up ode’s functions and data bit by bit, exclusively and/or publicly to whoever we like. We are in favour of collaborations that are mutually beneficial. In this day and age products that offer openness and willingness to participate will win. So before you label someone a competitor - could they really be a collaborator if a middle ground can be found?

So, Seth did a great job of when answering my email and now I’m telling you about it thus making him look cool which I’m happy to do. Simply by taking a minute to answer my email he has likely won some new fans. Now go and buy Purple Cow, Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers and his new book, Meatball Sundae.

A very quick post to say we hope you all had a great Xmas and of course wishing you all a happy and prosperous new year.

Over the next week or so we’ll be working towards getting ready for BETT. If you come and see us (and I hope you will) you will be able to pick up one of our limited edition “invite” minicards.

There’s a special email address on them which you can use to join our trial. But I’ve cleverly smudged the email address out so you’ll just have to come and see us to get one and find out what it is, won’t you?

This is an excellent idea. Simple, intriguing, addictive, educational and worthwhile. Click the logo below to join in.

No explanation needed - go along, increase your vocabulary and help end poverty too.

“(Our) reason for starting ode (was) to make a difference, to create something awesome, to celebrate what technology can do in the modern classroom for the modern student and, of course, for the modern teacher.”

I spoke to a very happy Mr B the other day and hence I’m not surprised by the heartfelt entry that he posted last week (even though he’s supposed to be on paternity leave). Not being a daddy myself, I guess I don’t really have quite the same perspective on why we’re doing ode but I definitely agree with the quote above from his previous post.

Why the teddy bear picture? Well, I was recently in Munich where I purchased a little Steiff (creators of some of the first teddy bears) teddy for the newly arrived Little Miss B. It occurred to be that when she gets it, this bear will be not just a new little friend to chew on…it will be one of the first teaching aids in her young life.

The swing tag on the teddy says:

“Babies discover the world every day anew and the Steiff baby articles help them to do this….By touching, feeling, probing everything in reach…babies are also learning to “grasp” the world…The toys are made of easily cleaned, robust materials…allowing each growing child to make some of its early discoveries in safety.”

That got me to thinking…Knowing her dad and also the age we’re living in, she’ll have her first Internet connected device before too long. I’ll be interested to see in the years (or weeks!) to come how soon technology starts to influence Izzy’s education.

At the moment, the humble teddy bear provides the type of development that a digital resource cannot provide. Will educational technology ever provide a replacement for the teddy bear? My natural reaction was, “No way” but then I recalled the “Shift Happens” video that was going around a while back and that you can see below…

Here’s the link to the US version

Figures such as, an estimated 40 exabytes (4.0 x 10¹⁹) worth of information was produced in 2006, which is more than in the preceding 5000 years combined and that we currently have the technology to transmit “10 trillion bits per second”…That’s 10,000,000,000,000 bites per second or 1,164 gigabytes per second, down a single optical fibre strand, taken at face value are amazing.

Meanwhile back in 2007, whenever I come across anyone who doesn’t “get” ode…and that is less and less frequent these days…I tend not to worry too much. Safe in the knowledge that what we’re doing now is only the tip of the iceberg as far as educational technology is concerned. While we’re not quite up to 10 trillion bits per second bandwidth for each user, it is getting better all the time. Wireless and handheld technologies are becoming more widespread and educationally relevant too.

Hopefully, in a flattened world ode will develop alongside the convergence of fast data transmission, cheap storage and other effects of the commoditisation of IT. Further to the premise of the Shift Happens presentation, the service that we launch in 2008 will be barely recognisable in 2013. Maybe, when Izzy has children of her own, maybe they will have their own digital, teddy replacements…perhaps some type of electronic environment that stimulates their developing senses that she downloads from ode??? Or maybe they’ll use their mother’s handed down Steiff teddy!?

Hey, that’s the end of my first odeworld blog post in quite some time! Did I make sense?

I know this is a commercial platform blog.

I know this is supposed to be about ode and digital content and elearning and all that jazz.

But sometimes you need to step back and ask yourself why we do what we do. My reason for starting ode with Ed Wong was to make a difference, to create something awesome, to celebrate what technology can do in the modern classroom for the modern student and, of course, for the modern teacher.

But now I have a new reason. A brand new reason to do what I do and do it as best I can.

Last week I became a father for the first time.

Her name is Isabella (Izzy for short). She was born at 2am, Saturday 13th October, weighing 8lbs and 14oz. She is healthy and happy. What I do from now on is for my family, to make sure my daughter has an education that will complement her as yet untrained digital native mind.

So forgive me for this utterly off topic post. Normal(ish) service will resume again very soon but just for now I hope you’ll allow the indulgence of a new Dad and help me celebrate her arrival.

“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let our bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.”

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

ODE is continuing to gather interest at a phenomenal rate and we’re increasingly being asked to present the idea to a wide variety of excited potential suppliers and partners. And the first thing that has to happen is we have to describe, simply and succinctly, why ode is the best thing ever, ever, ever.

And 9 times out of 10 that calls for someone, usually me, standing in front of a group of people who would rather be somewhere else and talking at them whilst they doodle or stare blankly out of the window.

Traditionally we’d be called upon to do a Powerpoint presentation. Now if you’ve ever had any sort of office job I’m 99% sure you’ll have sat through presentations so boring you have to keep repeatedly thrusting a biro into your leg under the table to keep you awake. How many of the following do you recognise?:

• A presenter who monotonously reads each bullet point from the screen.
• A complex 3D bar chart with a tiny and pointless legend that looks awful more than 12 inches away.
• A presenter who speakssoquicklyyoucan’tunderstandwhatthey’resaying or someone who speaks….so…..slowly…er…that…er….you…um or someone who speaks so quietly that you soon lose the will to live.
• Any of the following generic sound effects: an audience weakly clapping for a few seconds, a rocket taking off, a screech of car brakes or bullet being fired. Often accompanied by a literal interpretation using cheap clipart.
• Animated GIFs, zany and wacky fonts (I’m looking at you Comic Sans), zealous over use of the zoooooom animation.
• The presenter talking to themselves as they try to navigate their own presentation (”Now where’s that button. It was here a minute ago. Talk amongst yourselves…Oh here it is. Oops, that’s opened the internet, hang on where was I…”)

So what makes a great presenter and a great presentation? Can you have one without the other? If you can do at least some of the following you’re half way there I think:

• Prepare and rehearse your first few sentences - I find the first few minutes terrifying and then relax quickly after that.
• Open with a statement of intent and/or shock your audience into paying attention. Don’t worry too much about an agenda, who cares?
• Don’t use a stock template, that’s lazy and they’re often bland and uninteresting. Create your own and be consistent for every slide - do not chop and change backgrounds and fonts on each slide.
• Ditch the bullet points. Everyone reads them immediately before you even have a chance to go through them and it will encourage you not to read from the screen.
• Don’t use sentences. Use bold statements and snappy copy. Use the words as a prompt to a subject, not as the subject itself.
• A good tip if you are speaking in a large auditorium is to have the laptop in front of you and the screen behind. Then you can use the laptop to prompt yourself but are addressing the crowd not the screen.
• Plain white background with a large black font works. Alternatively jet black background with a large white font works well too. Keep it simple.
• Instead of trying to open a live website take screenshots beforehand and fill the slide edge to edge - box out in red areas you want your audience to focus on.
• Stay away from fancy animations unless they’re intrinsic to your “narrative”. ‘Fade’ and ‘Appear’ should suffice. No harm in speeding them up either.
• Tell a story, it’s more interesting - have a clear narrative curve from your opening slide to the last.
• Try to avoid taking questions until the end as this will ruin your flow.
• To respect people’s right not to have to endure rather than enjoy your presentation keep trimming it down until each slide contains just the core message.
• If you use images or screenshots make them high resolution. Try to picture what they might look like 12 foot away at the end of a boardroom table.
• Assume the surface you might be projecting on is going to be utterly dreadful and in full sun glare, thus rendering your slides useless. Oh, and the sound won’t play, the screen won’t connect and your internet connection will be slow if not non-existent. Contingency is vital.
• What you think is a funny slide will likely not be on the day. Trust me.
• Make the end obvious and clear. Be interesting, be enigmatic, don’t be afraid to leave on a cliffhanger - this may lead to some interesting debate.
• Drink heavily prior to your presentation.
• I’m joking! Everything in moderation.

Watch and learn from the masters:

Seth Godin presenting to Google:

Watch Dick Hardt and the 1 second per slide and you’ll see how it could be done with a little imagination and grace:

Guy Kawasakis 10-20-30 rule is worth following too:

To see how to destroy a passionate and exciting talk see “The Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation” by Peter Norvig, Director of Research at Google:

http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/ Read the rest of this entry »

This is an actual Googleplex toilet (courtesy of eszter’s Flickr page) . Isn’t it brilliant?

It has an “oscillation” button. It cleanses front and back (surely it’s all “underneath”?). It has the ability to dry you.

Now I’m a guy and wouldn’t like to comment on whether this is the best toilet in the world for a woman but since when did toilets need LCD menus? The Google Mens’ toilets are probably holes in the ground but in case they’re not can you imagine the conversation?

Cubicle 1: <Bzzzzzzzzzz>

Cubicle 2: “Dude, are you oscillating in there?”

Cubicle 1: “Sorry man, I couldn’t decide between front or back cleansing and I pushed the wrong button in a panic”

Cubicle 2: “Well, hurry up. Now I’m going to have to dry early to cover your noise. Er…do you know how to set the temperature? I’m scared of burning things here.”

…and so on. Isn’t the toilet something that we, as a race of intelligently evolved beings, can say we’ve mastered already? Does it really need jazzing up? This looks like a classic example of feature creep.

We’re reaching a tentative development stage of ode where we have to be ultra careful not to let extra functions sneak up on the platform. We’re that close to having a substantial working application it’s exciting to look a few steps ahead to the fun stuff.

It would be so easy to add an oscillation button.

Some call this feature creep but as we’re not working from a traditional “Functional Spec” method (we’re all about agile design here) I’m not sure what we’re experiencing is exactly the same thing. It’s more of an impatient feature queue.

You see, with agile we absolutely can add anything in we like as we go along, there’s nothing stopping us. Agile is great for 3 very important things:

1. You openly embrace the fact that you do not know everything before you start.
2. Some things only become apparent on the journey.
3. You have the ability to react to and implement customer needs very quickly.

There’s no comprehensive specification document to lock out things that come up during the development. But that’s not to say we don’t have all the necessary checks and balances to stop us drowning under a wave of new features. You have to have resolve and will power to stop it happening as much as anything.

We’re at the stage now where we’ve done more than enough to prove the platform, but we’ve only built the solid stuff. You can’t raise a house without foundations, you can’t drive a car without wheels. But foundations aren’t sexy. It’s not the stuff that will make people’s eyes spin.

But it is absolutely 100% necessary that you get your major components right before building a toilet that oscillates.

“…Among the examples of oscillation in the physical world are the motion of a spring, pendulum, or even the steady back-and-forth movement of a child on a swing.”

www.answers.com

Whilst dressing for work in the morning I often have BBC news on the TV in the background. The bland chatter usually doesn’t penetrate my half slumbering state but this morning I was roused by two talking heads reacting in opposite directions to the TUC’s call for better understanding of the use of social media sites in the workplace.

“The TUC advice suggests that whilst employers are completely within their rights to forbid staff from using sites such as Facebook, MySpace or Bebo in work time, a total ban may be something of an over-reaction.”

http://www.tuc.org.uk/law/tuc-13641-f0.cfm

Good for them! A sensible, modern approach from the Establishment.

But what astonished and angered me wasn’t the fact that the debate was happening, but that it’s a debate at all. For me it’s not how can a business restrict use but how can it embrace and encourage sensible use.

Finally technology becomes truly interesting and inspiring! And what do we do? Ban it! Block it! Cut the phone lines! Stop emails! Encourage total silence! Empty the water coolers! Wall up the kitchens! Discard your mobile phones!

Aside from the inherent flaw in the ban argument (people will always behave like people, like the social animals that we are) the business implications of this management through fear could be insurmountable.

We’ve got a generation of young employees entering the workforce now who have absorbed these technologies. Aside from the valuable networking benefits of facilities like Facebook Polls and Linkedin to any business, there is a wider issue. Who will they want to work for? The company that has such short sighted policies it sees social media as a threat to productivity? Or the company that has clear and firm guidelines in place for web use and trusts it’s staff to use these freedoms wisely, to their own and the company’s benefit?

Isn’t a content and trusted employee a better, more productive employee?

A quick straw poll of the ode team suggest that those who use social sites have them open in the back ground and pop in now and again or wait to be notified of any activity. Once the initial “Wow this is awesome” feeling has worn off and most of your social circle have signed up it becomes a simple communication tool. It blends, not jars, with working life.

Surely if a member of your team is abusing a social media site on company time then this is symptomatic of a bigger problem? Lack of motivation perhaps? Poor time management? Under utilised? Low moral in general?

If you manage a team you cannot say you’re “too busy” to know how your staff are behaving (as one of the two pundits said in the TV debate this morning, yes the one who wanted to ban Facebook).

That IS your job.

I stumbled across www.dontclick.it today and just had to share it with you. It’s a website where you don’t have to click anything to use it.

I know that doesn’t sound like much but I had an overwhelming urge to click. I physically had to think what my right hand index finger was up to the whole time I was navigating the site. It’s like not chewing when you’re eating a Fruit Pastille.

Give it a try. Some people hate the whole idea. Others think it’s pretty nifty. Personally I rather enjoyed the mental acrobatics required of pushing myself to adapt behaviour I perform every day of my life. Deliberately not clicking to define a proactive action felt not unlike being asked to breathe through my ears.

Weird sensation isn’t it? I found it a very serene way of navigating - you just flow from one section to another in a care free manner. But that is also it’s weakest element - I found myself nervous that the navigation was somehow not something I was in control of, that I was slipping and sliding around in navigation oil.

But it’s still a set of wonderfully presented ideas about how to challenge your learned behaviours which I think is always worth doing when you can.

What’s the point in having a blog if you can’t occasionally spread the love? So instead of raging against the websites we love to hate I thought I’d start telling you about the websites we just love.

Today: www.moo.com

If you haven’t seen it before Moo is a printing company. Well, it’s more than that really. In their own words: “MOO dreams up new tools that help people turn their virtual content into beautiful print products.”

It exists because other websites opened up their technology and Moo stepped up, in this case, to Flickr, and built a website that can connect you to your Flickr photos and lets you order prints of them as the best business cards ever. Or thank you cards. Or Moving cards. Or congratulations cards. Or just lovely little mementos of your holiday snaps.

Reasons to love Moo:

• Their customers love them.
• They love their customers.
• They have one of the simplest design interfaces around.
• They’re great value for money. And they deliver nice and fast. And they are beautifully printed and packaged.
• The cards are smaller than normal business cards and just seem much more valuable. They are tough. They have nice tactile sharp edges. They are glossy and feel nice to hold, and stack, and fan out, and pin up.
• They encourage their users to show off their cards. They have a dedicated Flickr pool for that very reason.
• They cracked how to make a boring business card into a purple cow.

Go and open a Flickr account if you don’t have one. Upload some of your favourite photos to it. Then stick £10 aside to order yourself a box of Moo cards. You won’t regret it.

Apparently on average 60% of ecommerce shopping baskets are abandoned before payment is made, according to the big brainboxes at Marketing Sherpa.

“…our research indicates the problem may not be the design of your shopping cart — in the distant past consumers couldn’t figure out how to check out or got tangled on the way. Nowadays, most consumers are very well trained in the steps of using an online shopping cart. Instead, the problem is nearly entirely marketing related in nature.”

This is true. Technically most ecommerce processes are pretty sound these days. It’s that it doesn’t take much for your average consumer i.e. me, to give up, especially on a site I’m not familiar with. A major problem with buying online is that it’s just so very easy to give up. And if that’s the case, you need to design a shopping system that removes any barrier to purchase, no matter how tiny. Rule No.1: Make it as easy as possible for the customer to give you their money.

It’s often an accumulation of seemingly inconsequential things that little by little reduces my trust. And like most people I have a tipping point of trust - eventually I just give up. Whilst I am unlikely to wail “But there’s no padlock sign on the credit card machine promising me it’s secure” for me to abandon my shopping basket in a real bricks and mortar store, that’s all it takes online. 10,000 years of real world shopping and it’s built into our DNA to blindly trust a shop. In fact, it’s pretty easy to be conned face to face.

So maybe it’s time we looked harder at the little things:

Do you really require your customer to register an account before buying? - there’s no need from the customer’s point of view for giving out their email address, phone number, address, ZIP code, password creation and inside leg measurement beyond what’s needed to fulfil a card transaction is there? Really? What if it wasn’t there and you didn’t get what is to all intents and purposes is marketing info? But you did get their money - what’s more important, eh? Some sites do it and it really works. Or ask me to register afterwards, not before.

Keep it all on one page - Nothing on the page that is not strictly part of the ecommerce process - no help links, no terms and conditions, no links to other products, no pop ups for delivery info. Have it all enclosed right there on the page.

Will I actually get it before Xmas? - I almost never abandon my shopping basket in Amazon because all the info I need is on the product page, including, most importantly whether it’s in stock (plus the mini basket is quite cool). A delivery time of 4-6 weeks always makes me hesitate even putting an item in my basket, I don’t know why. In my head I think “that’s Amazon’s way of telling me I ain’t never getting it.”

Mandatory fields - how many times have you been asked for some personal details you simply don’t want to give? If a site forces me to give my phone number I automatically raise a quizzical eyebrow. I HATE getting marketing calls. If they can’t build an ecommerce site that works or that can’t communicate any problems to me by email I don’t want to know. I mean, I don’t even give it out to people I know let alone billybobshouseofsuspiciousleathergoods.com.

ZIP codes vs Post codes - You KNOW I’m in the UK as I picked “Great Britain” from a long drop down list of countries. So why can’t you dynamically change the next field that resolutely continues to request a ZIP CODE!?

When the webserver falls over half way through my transaction I want to know…has my account been debited or what? If you don’t provide me with a massive trust boost at that point I’m never ever shopping with you again. And if you do deign to give me a support phone number to contact can you please make sure the operator at the end has a clue about your website ecommerce system? “Er…I’m sorry sir but you’re not showing up on our system yet. I’ll send you a form you can fill in requesting a refund which, once processed, should be in your account in 10 working days.” (this actually happened to me with a prominent cinema chain very recently).

Tell me you are totally cool with my data - “We respect your privacy and God can strike us down with plagues of boils and locusts if we abuse that trust” or similar will be fine. It’s just good to know. It’s 1% more trust in you, which might get me to the next step in your ecommerce!

To be honest it’s usually high street stores that move to an ecommerce model that don’t get it. Is there such a thing as a perfect ecommerce model? I doubt it, but even if you leave the rest of your site to rot, keep incrementally and regularly improving your buying process. Never forget Rule No.1.

1) How many confusing instructions do you need to give me, Argos? And what’s with the nasty red crosses that seem to be begging me to give up the transaction?:

2) Click the image below to find out what item Debenhams were offering to change the colour or size of. Strangely enough I couldn’t get it in Hot Pink. This is clearly a default link that should not appear for items that do not come in different colours and sizes!

3) I’ve already put ‘Ocean’s Twelve DVD’ in my shopping basket from your banner advert so why are you still showing it, Woolworths?

And why can I see a trash can icon and a red cross icon next to my items? They are both hyperlinked to something but with no alt text. Do you want me to click them to find out? What if it removes the item? Have I then got to go back through your site to find it again? You mean…you want me to click them to find out? Bzzzz! I’m sorry you have just lost my custom. Don’t make me think! See ya!

“Everyone expects a bit of exaggeration, but the trick is knowing how much to believe.”

Susan Oates, a word usage expert in the department of politics at Glasgow University, co-author of a research paper looking at how estate agents descriptions of properties get more upbeat in a rising market.

I’m trying to sell my house at the moment, which means dealing with estate agents <sigh>. This is the first time I’ve sold a property and the first time I’ve had to consider how to allow my house to be described to make it as attractive as possible to potential buyers.

The usual estate agent speak will be employed I’m sure but will my potential buyers, as modern consumers, fall for it? In this world of instant access to information from blogs, forums, newsgroups, review sites, product comparison services and so on are we still as likely to fall for the same old routines and sales pitches that worked on our parents?

• “Studio flat” = be prepared for a Kitchen/Bathroom
• “Up and coming area” = steel bars on lower floor windows
• “Immaculate throughout” = owner has hoovered and done the washing up
• “In need of some modernisation” = at least the walls are still standing, eh?
• “Rare opportunity to buy in this location” = We don’t much like new people round ‘ere.
• “Internal viewing highly recommended” = Yes, we know it looks dreadful on the outside but…
• “On street parking” = no need to continue that gym membership, the daily 10 min walk to your parked car will suffice.
• …and so on.

Here on ode we are also trying to judge how to formulate descriptions for each piece of content or collection of content that gives the customer enough info to confidently buy quickly and easily. At this stage it is admittedly trial and error.

For example these are two different ways we might describe a Key Stage 3 Maths Puzzle game:

1. “An interactive animation and 3 follow up questions to teach and practice Algebra”
2. “An enormously popular, exciting and visually stimulating interactive animation where your student plays the character of a frog, leaping between lilly pads that each hide a challenging algebraic equation. “

Which one will appeal more? Do people expect a certain amount of effort to be made by the vendor? Or do you want just the facts, ma’am?

We won’t know for some time exactly how to balance these descriptions. Teachers will be more concerned about the exact educational content and quality of the asset itself, rather than an interesting sales pitch. But, in the same way we sub consciously interpret estate agent speak, we can expect our customers to have strong filters for hyperbole and over-sell that appreciates such florid language has it’s time and place.

Just for fun: Can anyone else offer any more translations of estate agent speak they’ve seen or experienced?

It’s nearly time to check in and let you all know where we are in development. But first I thought I’d tackle the thorny issue of a release date and why you can’t rush great art.

The most natural (and usually first) question anyone asks when they hear about ode is: “when’s it coming out then?”

Part of me wants to loudly exclaim that I bet you wouldn’t ask Leonardo Da Vinci when that portrait of the lady with the weird smile is going to be finished. Or that you wouldn’t dare say to Michelangelo as he worked on the Sistine Chapel: “Ottenga un movimento sopra. State lavorando a questo per 4 anni. Avete detto che sareste rifiniti entro la fine settimana.” He was a bit of a misanthrope by all accounts and would likely have chased you through Rome, cursing your impudence.

But, of course, I don’t. Someone is waiting on a return that justifies their investment. It’s no good telling exclaiming “oh, it’ll be out eventually”. You might aswell open their wallet, take out a twenty and light a big cigar with it.

But it needs to be balanced. I strongly believe software design is an art form. It takes love, dedication, artistic tantrums and lots of rubbing out. This is why it sends a shiver up our spines when we are asked which day it will be…grrr…”finished“.

You create something that, if it works, will touch the user in such a way that it hopefully transcends practicality and brings about an emotional connection. Whether you like it or not Myspace’s 100 million users feel an artistic connection to their “space” and how it represents them as part of the greater whole. That’s art to me (even if you couldn’t fit it in a gallery).

The vast majority of 37 Signals’ userbase would consider their unique understanding of their audience has been elevated to an artform. It’s not technology as a mechanical process.

The ipod will be remembered as a perfect peice of design for a long time to come.

Ask any videogame fan to name their best moment in their favourite game and you will see their eyes mist over with an ecstasy comparable with opera fans describing their favourite aria or how an architect might feel when confronted by Sagrada Familia. Is it too much to compare those emotions to the first time you experience Google Earth? I don’t think so.
Now we cannot presume to stand in such august company but creating an original web app is akin to creating art. You start with a big idea (”We want to sell little bits of digital content to educators”) that is like a big block of marble. You can see a beautiful finished product in your minds eye but there’s a lot of marble to chip away to get to it.

Everytime we code a new function or add some new content or make a breakthrough on an idea or receive a brilliant bit of user feedback it chips away a little more, thus making the final shape more distinct.

This analogy runs out of steam at a very specific point: eventually a sculptor will lay down the hammer and chisel and step back to admire thier work. It is done.

For good or ill software is never finished, only improved upon.

But we are the best judges of who to release it to and when (how often?) that should happen.

With software you can always improve and adjust the shape of your application. You must always want to continuously fine tune. So we will release to privately invited beta users at different stages. Then we will open our doors wider to let in more users and so on. We have loads of ideas of what we want to do with ode but they won’t necessarily be there when you use ode for the first time.

As the saying goes: release early and often. ode won’t be “out” and complete on a certain day. It will be out all the time in new and improved ways.

Now go and read the Black Perl.

“If a picture is worth a thousand words, then Google Image Search is now worth 1 trillion, 187 billion, 63 million words. Yes, that’s right, math majors; we’ve updated our image index, and now offer users precisely 1.18763 billion newly updated images….

“http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/02/get-picture.html

In my previous blogpost “Who’s Counting” I put forward the case that beyond a certain threshold numbers are pretty useless in describing value. I would like to add a caveat: except when it comes to marketing when bigger = better.

It seems that internet marketing and ROI is all based around seriously massive figures that are so high as to become abstract. That’s a natural consequence of operating on a global scale but our relationship with any website is by definition always 1-to-1, so to me it all seems a bit hard to comprehend. After all, imagining millions of unique visitors is not the same as actually seeing them all from space.

Kumbh Mela gathering (Photo: spaceimaging.com)

So, just for fun, I racked my brain to think of a way to get to a ludicrous number for ode. And then it hit me - everyone mentions time saving as a potentially massive benefit. So how much time could ode save every UK teacher?

Our teacher users, so far, reckon they spend on average 3 hours per week sourcing digital content across the internet from Google, Blogs, Flickr, resource banks, home brew websites, online subscriptions and so on. Sometimes this is at home, but mostly at work. And they all resent it to some degree as, frankly, it’s a drag.

3 hours per week per teacher (some spend up to 10 hours per week!). That’s 12 hours per month spent looking for content. Or 144 hours per year. On average, give or take.

There are roughly 500,000 teachers employed in the UK, across Primary, Secondary and College/FE sectors.

144 x 500,000 = 72,000,000 hours in total spent by teachers every year trawling a variety of sources for digital content to plug into their lessons. And time = money as we all know.

If the average teacher salary for a classroom teacher who’s been in post for 3 years is £25,000 per annum (very rough estimate) then this works out at about £14.29 per hour.

So therefore…72,000,000 hrs x £14.29 = £1,028,880,000 of teacher’s time on this common task.

If ode, as a one stop shop for all your educational digital content needs halves that time (and we think we can do even better than that) and then we reduce that figure even more to say that 50% of that time is unpaid working from home time and shouldn’t be included so we halve it again we’re left with £257,220,000. Deduct that from the original total annual cost and ode could save the government £771,660,000 per year.

How’s that for a stupid meaningless figure?

We’re soon to be running a Wisdom of Crowds experiment (a big hello if you’ve come here from the invite!). If you need to get your head round this theory that James Surowiecki proposes then I strongly suggest you read his book “Wisdom of Crowds - Why the many are smarter than the few“. It’s really rather brilliant.

Essentially the theory goes “the collective wisdom of the many is smarter than the expert opinion of the few. “

The reason we are going to all this bother at all is that we (the so-called experts) cannot agree on something essential to ode. I’m not going to post at this point what the question is we’re trying to answer, suffice to say we think that it’s something we should put to the mob to see if they can do any better.

The good news for those that are coming is that there is a very special prize up for grabs…the very first ode t-shirt.

Gen-oo-ine, unique, one of a kind, first off the press, original ode wear. We think it rocks.

Of course Ed ordered it in skinny so if it doesn’t fit we promise to order you one that does (which means it won’t be unique anymore but on the plus side you will still be one of the cool kids and get invited to all the best parties). Plus there will also be ode cupcakes (seriously!) and smoothies.

Talking to our beta users has raised an interesting point when we ask them about Peer review in ode: when shopping online many of them look for bad reviews first as a quick assessment of whether to continue to be interested in purchasing a product or service. They don’t look for the good, at least to start with.

And I thought: Hmm, I do too. In fact I realised take a perverse delight in reading 1/10 rated reviews. In a newspaper weekend review section it’s the plays/gigs/bands that get slammed that I go out of my way to read.

I like the vitriol, the scathing tones, the imaginative put downs. I always want to know “Why did that album/hotel/book get 2 stars out of 5?”

When clicking an Ebay users feedback profile is anyone else’s eye drawn to any single bad comment amongst hundreds of positive “A++++++ awesome!!!!” comments before anything else? And then you think “well, they might have 98% positive feedback but that guy thought delivery was slow“. Modern paranoia dictates that my next thought will be: “And will that happen to me?”

I would rather read “The 100 worst reviewed movies of all time” than the “The 100 best reviewed movies of all time” any day of the week.

Thanks to the explosion of opinion making all over the web do we now need to see 100% positive commentary before we’re prepared to offer our trust (and money)?

I tend to skim the positive comments. Illogically I think “how can I trust them?”, “how do I know what their standards are?” and focus on the review that found the “sea view” was actually only viewable just beyond a septic tank, or that “close to beach” was correct if you don’t mind their definition of beach being “local builders sand pit” and so on. Of course some people think this is nitpicking.

Perhaps this mistrust of positive spin is also driven by the ease with which the internet gives product owners the ability to review their own products favourably. But not for much longer it seems.

Although if someone scores something extremely highly e.g 9.7 out of 10, I will read that too. So maybe it’s the alpha and omega scoring that is attractive. Who’s interested that something is “quite good” or “satisfactory”? Who cares, Fence Sitter!

I guess I hunger for the truth in my purchasing decisions and negativity seems more honest somehow. Even if I know logically it shouldn’t make much difference at all. Maybe this is why Ebayers are so defensive about their feedback ratings it’s spawned an industry.

We all use products or services that seem specifically designed to annoy us with their uselessness (you must see Seth Godin’s “This is broken” presentation) . But I’m guessing we don’t all leave reviews everytime this happens (we’d be writing forever).

So to leave negative comments against something, even behind the neutrality that the web provides us, is a serious statement of intent. Perhaps this is why they seem so much more real then a happy, positive review.

A single bad review, even up against many good reviews, will more often than not cause me to pause before making a purchase (perhaps mitigated by cost). Or let me put it like this - if there are two balanced, well written reviews against a product/service you are are considering buying, one negative and one positive, are you more or less likely to buy it?

Certainly it will make me look for commentary on the product elsewhere. All this consumer info has made me into an arch procrastinator, a flip flopper, a weakling who can’t make an immediate purchasing decision online. I can delay a purchase for weeks as I mull the reviews over and over, trying to find a cohesive overarching argument for or against, that I put together in my head, cribbed from many different resources.

Logically I know that one bad review doesn’t mean all X company’s deliveries will be late, that all X brand stereos will arrive without that lead, that X hotel’s broken air con won’t be fixed by the time I arrive. But it might do.

After all, no one ever learnt anything from a compliment, right?

There’s a great interview with the author of “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” at Guy Kawasakis blog.

Essentially it’s a list of 6 things that certain ideas or products have that propels them to great things. He quotes JFK sending a man to the moon as a good example:

1. Simple A single, clear mission.
2. Unexpected A man on the moon? It seemed like science fiction at the time.
3. Concrete Success was defined so clearly—no one could quibble about man, moon, or decade.
4. Credible This was the President of the U.S. talking.
5. Emotional It appealed to the aspirations and pioneering instincts of an entire nation.
6. Story An astronaut overcomes great obstacles to achieve an amazing goal.

But what intrigued me more was the idea that excess knowledge can bring confusion, paralysis, procrastination and can break the back of a good idea.

How many ideas have been dismissed, shelved or diluted because someone in a position of knowledge said “but it’s too hard, there’s already someone doing it, there’s no demand for it or our research shows it just wouldn’t work“.

“Lots of research in economics and psychology shows that when we know something, it becomes hard for us to imagine not knowing it. As a result, we become lousy communicators.”

Chip Heath

When ode first started to happen we developed an “elevator pitch”. In essence this exercise is part of any agile development that is supposed to summarise your whole idea.

It’s the pitch you would give to your CEO if you happened to bump into them in the elevator (I know we’re in the UK but “lift pitch” doesn’t sound nearly so glamorous) and they turned to you and uttered the words you never want your boss to utter: “Tell me all about this idea you’ve had. Quickly.“

Your response has to encapsulate your whole strategy in all of about 30 secs. Not easy.

So we got the team together and came up with this:

“For educators who want to plan and deliver inspiring and engaging learning experiences ode is a digital content store that gives you trusted content on demand. Unlike all other educational e-content repositories our product offers a comprehensive range of commercial and peer generated material which is pedagogically sound and meets the needs of the modern educator.”

That was the work of at least 12 bright, competent people and me. It does summarise much of what we intend to achieve with ode but if I really want to let someone know what ode wants to be I give them the Hollywood pitch:

“Online content store for educational digital content”

That sentence gives the idea a physicality (the Internet) , a sales model (store), a market position (education) and a saleable commodity (digital content).

Now the Hollywood pitch won’t guarantee you immediate understanding in everyone but the vast majority will have just enough information to make it sticky in their minds. There’s no over-communication.

We’re not interested in achieving a spiritual advancement for mankind, pushing the back the envelope of engineering, furthering man’s ambition to walk amongst the stars, rapidly expanding our knowledge of our universe and developing new technological advances.

We just want to put a man on the moon.