Friday, March 27, 2009
I've got a Job!
What can I say? It was amazing... At the beginning of the week I thought I was unemployable (yes, it did start messing with my head, silly me!), on Wednesday my CV was sent to an employer, on Thursday morning I had my interview and on Thursday afternoon I had a job. I'm still a bit shocked, so more thoughts will have to wait. I'll just leave you with the following note I found online:
Life from Above
We went on the London eye the other day and I was amazed how cool the world looks from
above. I should mention that I am quite scared of heights. I don't really know why. I've never been attacked by a staircase and no tower has ever done me harm. But I still don't really like them. Or rather, I don't trust myself around them. - With good reason, as my stepping off a roof a few years ago has proven.
At the same time, I have always been fascinated by tall buildings. I remember the excitement I felt the first time I saw a sky scraper.
I was 12, jet lagged out of my mind, sitting in my hotel in Anaheim, California, at 4 o'clock in the morning marveling at the sigh of small people on lit roads and a giant cross on top of the building opposite. I was only a few floors up, but to me it felt like I was in the clouds. It was the first time I had really left the confines of my little small-town life and I thought I owned the world.
Now I've long left that life behind and I know I own the world, but there is still a lot to be said for getting my feet off the ground occasionally, for getting out of my comfort zone and for seeing the world from a different perspective. I am really glad I overcame my initial reservations. It was so worth it. -- Note to self, don't listen to yourself when you're being a chicken.
Ueber den Wolken, muss die Freiheit grenzenlos sein...
above. I should mention that I am quite scared of heights. I don't really know why. I've never been attacked by a staircase and no tower has ever done me harm. But I still don't really like them. Or rather, I don't trust myself around them. - With good reason, as my stepping off a roof a few years ago has proven.At the same time, I have always been fascinated by tall buildings. I remember the excitement I felt the first time I saw a sky scraper.
I was 12, jet lagged out of my mind, sitting in my hotel in Anaheim, California, at 4 o'clock in the morning marveling at the sigh of small people on lit roads and a giant cross on top of the building opposite. I was only a few floors up, but to me it felt like I was in the clouds. It was the first time I had really left the confines of my little small-town life and I thought I owned the world.Now I've long left that life behind and I know I own the world, but there is still a lot to be said for getting my feet off the ground occasionally, for getting out of my comfort zone and for seeing the world from a different perspective. I am really glad I overcame my initial reservations. It was so worth it. -- Note to self, don't listen to yourself when you're being a chicken.
Ueber den Wolken, muss die Freiheit grenzenlos sein...
Monday, March 23, 2009
Am I Loosing it?
This morning I had some fairly unpleasant conversations with recruiters, so I was feeling a bit deflated. But luckily I am hard to put down and impossible to keep down, so I quickly got over it and went surfing. I would call it retail therapy, but it is more the online version of my shopping style: browse some sites, get some input, collect impressions, clip art, ideas. I suppose in this instance you could call it creative re-flation.
Today it was all about clothes. When I'm down there's nothing like some beautiful threads to pick me up again. I know that's kinda strange to some people because I would not consider myself a superficial person. However, I do come from a family of Jewish tailors, so the importance of dressing well is bred into me. His love for clothes and attention to detail saved my grandfather's life when the red army freed Auschwitz (they desperately needed a good tailor) and I know it will get me through this rough patch. I think, I'll go shopping now...
Oy wey, ikh gleyb ikh bin meshugge!
Today it was all about clothes. When I'm down there's nothing like some beautiful threads to pick me up again. I know that's kinda strange to some people because I would not consider myself a superficial person. However, I do come from a family of Jewish tailors, so the importance of dressing well is bred into me. His love for clothes and attention to detail saved my grandfather's life when the red army freed Auschwitz (they desperately needed a good tailor) and I know it will get me through this rough patch. I think, I'll go shopping now...
Oy wey, ikh gleyb ikh bin meshugge!
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Online Advertising Needs a New Direction
I've just read a wonderfully interesting article on TechCrunch: Why Advertising is Failing on the Internet. Inspiring stuff for my newly digital-ethnographic mind. Online advertising is fascinating to me because I think it harbours both amazing possibilities for advertisers and the online community and the dark side of modern life.
If it's done right it can entertain us, as a brief search on YouTube will show. (I love this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoRD1wmvwUc&feature=related.)
It can provide us with information we may actually need, which is why Search Marketing was so successful for such a long time. If I look for a "job site", ads form job sites are actually a good thing.
And it can save us money. If someone sends me a money off voucher or a discount code by mail, I may actually profit from it.
And yet many people (at times me included) have - to put it mildly - strong reservations against online advertising. I hate spam with a passion and have stopped using many a good app because of intrusive display ads. When I watch online videos, I keep 2 windows open to have something to do while the ads are running in the background just like I take a toilet break when the commercials come on TV.
All this is due to fundamental flaw in the way traditional advertising and it's poorly developed online cousins operate: It is disruptive. When I am watching TV or using my e-mail, I do not want some company forcing me to stop what I'm doing to listen what they have to say. It is rude and would not be tolerated in face-to-face interaction. Imagine you're in a restaurant chatting to your friends and a complete stranger walks up to the table and in a moment of silence blurts out: "Are you looking for cheaper car insurance?" It really wouldn't matter if you were, you'd not put up with him. I'd ignore him at best, but most likely would give him a piece of my mind. This is something I cannot do to obnoxious advertisers, which is a contributing factor to why I dislike them so much.
And for that very reason we have devised advertisement avoidance tools: Recording devices that let us skip TV ads, blocking software that filters it out on websites, spam filters etc. And let's not forget one of the reasons why Twitter is loved while Google, Facebook and others are met with increasing suspicion: They are not trying to turn users into consumers (something that was, according to one of my previous employers, online advertising's raison d'etre). They don't pester you with commercial rubbish. They don't interrupt your conversation.
Does that mean there is no advertising going on there? Far from it. But it has moved away from the outdated offline model of disrupting conversations to a model that is more suitable to the Web 2.0 and more gentle on the people it is trying to reach. (Sorry, I hate the term user.) So in my opinion the Internet will indeed destroy traditional advertising. But at the same time, it may actually open the doors to new forms of advertising that will finally manage to add value to the lives of its audience (whether by entertaining them, giving them information they need or saving them money) rather than just sustaining an industry that does not see eye to eye with them. They will have to learn to talk to us rather than at us. They will have to get involved in our lives rather than arrogantly assuming they can shape them to their liking. It's a brave new world and I can't wait to be part of it.
If it's done right it can entertain us, as a brief search on YouTube will show. (I love this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoRD1wmvwUc&feature=related.)
It can provide us with information we may actually need, which is why Search Marketing was so successful for such a long time. If I look for a "job site", ads form job sites are actually a good thing.
And it can save us money. If someone sends me a money off voucher or a discount code by mail, I may actually profit from it.
And yet many people (at times me included) have - to put it mildly - strong reservations against online advertising. I hate spam with a passion and have stopped using many a good app because of intrusive display ads. When I watch online videos, I keep 2 windows open to have something to do while the ads are running in the background just like I take a toilet break when the commercials come on TV.
All this is due to fundamental flaw in the way traditional advertising and it's poorly developed online cousins operate: It is disruptive. When I am watching TV or using my e-mail, I do not want some company forcing me to stop what I'm doing to listen what they have to say. It is rude and would not be tolerated in face-to-face interaction. Imagine you're in a restaurant chatting to your friends and a complete stranger walks up to the table and in a moment of silence blurts out: "Are you looking for cheaper car insurance?" It really wouldn't matter if you were, you'd not put up with him. I'd ignore him at best, but most likely would give him a piece of my mind. This is something I cannot do to obnoxious advertisers, which is a contributing factor to why I dislike them so much.
And for that very reason we have devised advertisement avoidance tools: Recording devices that let us skip TV ads, blocking software that filters it out on websites, spam filters etc. And let's not forget one of the reasons why Twitter is loved while Google, Facebook and others are met with increasing suspicion: They are not trying to turn users into consumers (something that was, according to one of my previous employers, online advertising's raison d'etre). They don't pester you with commercial rubbish. They don't interrupt your conversation.
Does that mean there is no advertising going on there? Far from it. But it has moved away from the outdated offline model of disrupting conversations to a model that is more suitable to the Web 2.0 and more gentle on the people it is trying to reach. (Sorry, I hate the term user.) So in my opinion the Internet will indeed destroy traditional advertising. But at the same time, it may actually open the doors to new forms of advertising that will finally manage to add value to the lives of its audience (whether by entertaining them, giving them information they need or saving them money) rather than just sustaining an industry that does not see eye to eye with them. They will have to learn to talk to us rather than at us. They will have to get involved in our lives rather than arrogantly assuming they can shape them to their liking. It's a brave new world and I can't wait to be part of it.
Digital Anthropology
Apart from window shopping and people watching, I have seriously increased my online activity over the past few weeks. I've not only revived both of my blogs, I've also gotten a lot more active on Facebook, joined Twitter and have gone e-mail crazy.
Equally importantly, I've spent a lot of time thinking about the Internet and my place within its community of users. Digital Anthropology is a newly discovered passion that I find hard to leave alone. Questions like what is a web user? Am I a consumer or producer of the Internet? What is the nature of my interactions with the net, its other users, and myself. Is what I am doing here a dialogue or a monologue? And if it is a monologue, does it have an audience? Or is it maybe a dialogue between two different sides of myself? Questions, questions, questions... I'm definitely going to have to answer some of them and in order to do that I will dig deeper into the field of digital anthropology.
I'm fascinated by it and really don't want to let go. I feel that this is what I'm meant to be doing, which is an entirely new sensation to me. I've never had a clear plan in my life nor did I ever know what I wanted to be when I grow up. (Other than tall, that is, and when I stopped growing at 5'3'', I gave up on the planning thing.) I've just run with whatever life put out there for me. That is not to say that I went mainstream or did not pursue my dreams. But my dreams were always individual dots on the graph of life. They never connected to form a clear path:
I wanted to live in LA, so I moved there not knowing anyone and not sure about how to get a visa, a job, a place (it worked out great!). Then I looked for a good thing to study, and despite my experience as a legal secretary anthropology was the perfect fit. During my studies I focused heavily on Latin America, but I ended up specialising on Africa. I got a PhD in Media Anthropology, but rather than staying put and pursuing research, I moved to Ireland and started working in digital advertising. Now I've quit my job to move to London. In the middle of the biggest crisis in recent history! (I must admit, I am doubting my own sanity over this step, but it felt right, so it must have been right. All previous steps have been hard at first, but I regret none of them.)
But now they all seem to make sense. It is strange, as if the diverging, interrupted paths have suddenly by some magic twist of perceptionary illusion, come together in one spot and shouted at me: "THIS IS WHAT YOU NEED TO BE DOING!" In this time of unemployment and seeming emptyness it all comes together. I now understand why my time was not wasted in trying to sell cheap car insurance, penis enlargement and the like. It gave me unique insight into the psyche of the other side of the Internet. Before, I knew only the user. Now, in an almost sickeningly postmodern, hermeneutical twist, I have come to know those who try to make money from the online community and understand what they think this community is. But I know that this is not an image. It is a distorted reflection of the commercial mind of the business world reflected onto the online community. No, that's actually not quite it. That sounds cynical and wannabe communist. I need some time. And more knowledge. But I see some really interesting stuff here; questions of the online and offline self, of the convergence of online and offline worlds and of the nature of value. In fact, I think I understand the underlying reason for companies' inability to cash in on the social side of the web. But before I go off on another accidental anti-capitalist rant, I will get on with some research. I will be digging digital. And I'm loving this!
Equally importantly, I've spent a lot of time thinking about the Internet and my place within its community of users. Digital Anthropology is a newly discovered passion that I find hard to leave alone. Questions like what is a web user? Am I a consumer or producer of the Internet? What is the nature of my interactions with the net, its other users, and myself. Is what I am doing here a dialogue or a monologue? And if it is a monologue, does it have an audience? Or is it maybe a dialogue between two different sides of myself? Questions, questions, questions... I'm definitely going to have to answer some of them and in order to do that I will dig deeper into the field of digital anthropology.
I'm fascinated by it and really don't want to let go. I feel that this is what I'm meant to be doing, which is an entirely new sensation to me. I've never had a clear plan in my life nor did I ever know what I wanted to be when I grow up. (Other than tall, that is, and when I stopped growing at 5'3'', I gave up on the planning thing.) I've just run with whatever life put out there for me. That is not to say that I went mainstream or did not pursue my dreams. But my dreams were always individual dots on the graph of life. They never connected to form a clear path:
I wanted to live in LA, so I moved there not knowing anyone and not sure about how to get a visa, a job, a place (it worked out great!). Then I looked for a good thing to study, and despite my experience as a legal secretary anthropology was the perfect fit. During my studies I focused heavily on Latin America, but I ended up specialising on Africa. I got a PhD in Media Anthropology, but rather than staying put and pursuing research, I moved to Ireland and started working in digital advertising. Now I've quit my job to move to London. In the middle of the biggest crisis in recent history! (I must admit, I am doubting my own sanity over this step, but it felt right, so it must have been right. All previous steps have been hard at first, but I regret none of them.)
But now they all seem to make sense. It is strange, as if the diverging, interrupted paths have suddenly by some magic twist of perceptionary illusion, come together in one spot and shouted at me: "THIS IS WHAT YOU NEED TO BE DOING!" In this time of unemployment and seeming emptyness it all comes together. I now understand why my time was not wasted in trying to sell cheap car insurance, penis enlargement and the like. It gave me unique insight into the psyche of the other side of the Internet. Before, I knew only the user. Now, in an almost sickeningly postmodern, hermeneutical twist, I have come to know those who try to make money from the online community and understand what they think this community is. But I know that this is not an image. It is a distorted reflection of the commercial mind of the business world reflected onto the online community. No, that's actually not quite it. That sounds cynical and wannabe communist. I need some time. And more knowledge. But I see some really interesting stuff here; questions of the online and offline self, of the convergence of online and offline worlds and of the nature of value. In fact, I think I understand the underlying reason for companies' inability to cash in on the social side of the web. But before I go off on another accidental anti-capitalist rant, I will get on with some research. I will be digging digital. And I'm loving this!
Friday, March 20, 2009
Shopping for Ideas Recession-Style
Since the move to London I've had waaaaay too much time on my hands. The job situation is a lot worse than I had expected and finding one is nigh-on impossible. My first reaction was to be happy and go shopping a lot. Not shopping in the buying sense of the word. But not window shopping either. It's somewhere in between with added people watching, scrap booking, picture taking and the odd stop in a caff. I'm forever collecting flyers and free mags, taking pictures of the strangest things (I'm preparing a bit of an exhibit of London oddities, which should be coming soon), staring at people's clothes and hair styles. I also wander through the shops to see what's up in the world of retailing. I don't target particular places, mixing and matching Selfridges with the Roman Road Charity Shop and the designer boutiques in Mayfair with Kings Mall in Hammersmith (What a dump! But what a gem at the same time!). Occasionally I actually do buy something, mostly items that reflect my current state of headless experimenting... The other day I came home with a pair of shoes that go with none of my clothes, but are great, a bag of dried Oregano, a multipack of Monster Munch and some soap.
This seemingly random selection is actually a lot less random than it seems. What binds them all together is that they each made a contribution to making my life into what I would like it to be and in the process making me happier. It's as if life is constructed like an architectural plan arranged in concentric circles. The initial sketch in the middle, the core without which the rest would not be possible, was to move to London. Once that was worked out in detail, it was time to add the ideal place in a ring around it. Then to furnish and decorate our home. Other bits in the growing layers of rings are to get me into the mental state that I have wanted to be in, get me a job, focus and update my wardrobe tweak the details of our home and many more. (Not necessarily in that order!) This is where my shopping trip fit in. The shopping in the sun soothed my mind, shoes are a reflection of where my wardrobe is going, the soap was well needed to complete the cheesy Ikea-styled colour-themed bathroom, the Oregano was sorely lacking in my kitchen. And Monster Munch is just yummy.
I think a lot of people are carrying on like me at the moment and I'm surprised the press haven't come up with a snazzy name for the phenomenon yet. It is definitely a sign of the times to go back to basics, focus on who we are and define ourselves less through the money we spend. I must admit, I've never got into the non-crisis mode, so to me it's just a deepening of what I've always done. But even some of my friends who felt obliged to spend over the odds for a night out (and then tell everyone about it and about the fact that they didn't have the money they spent before going into a long declaration of their various depts, listing them like trophies of the successful conqueror of modernity) are coming back down to earth. I doubt that this attitude will really outlive the recession, people immensely enjoyed showing off the superlatives of the growth years and are seeing the new modesty as a restriction rather than a chance.
For me, the whole point of the excercise is not to pretend that I could afford things or to dream about times when I can. Nor is it about budget buying. Trading Liberty for Primark is daft. The difference is visible at first glance, so it isn't really a substitute. Unless, of course, you never saw the difference in the first place, in which case you should have been turned away from Liberty at the door. (Sorry, I have strong feelings about posers.) Rant over. Where was I? Ah, yes, why do I wander aimlessly between Tottenham Court Road and Cannary Wharf staring at skinny jeans and CCTV cameras? It's to fill my creative store with ideas and to get a general feel for the direction the world is heading in. It's essentially urban ethnography. Maybe I should try to make this a profession?!?...
This seemingly random selection is actually a lot less random than it seems. What binds them all together is that they each made a contribution to making my life into what I would like it to be and in the process making me happier. It's as if life is constructed like an architectural plan arranged in concentric circles. The initial sketch in the middle, the core without which the rest would not be possible, was to move to London. Once that was worked out in detail, it was time to add the ideal place in a ring around it. Then to furnish and decorate our home. Other bits in the growing layers of rings are to get me into the mental state that I have wanted to be in, get me a job, focus and update my wardrobe tweak the details of our home and many more. (Not necessarily in that order!) This is where my shopping trip fit in. The shopping in the sun soothed my mind, shoes are a reflection of where my wardrobe is going, the soap was well needed to complete the cheesy Ikea-styled colour-themed bathroom, the Oregano was sorely lacking in my kitchen. And Monster Munch is just yummy.
I think a lot of people are carrying on like me at the moment and I'm surprised the press haven't come up with a snazzy name for the phenomenon yet. It is definitely a sign of the times to go back to basics, focus on who we are and define ourselves less through the money we spend. I must admit, I've never got into the non-crisis mode, so to me it's just a deepening of what I've always done. But even some of my friends who felt obliged to spend over the odds for a night out (and then tell everyone about it and about the fact that they didn't have the money they spent before going into a long declaration of their various depts, listing them like trophies of the successful conqueror of modernity) are coming back down to earth. I doubt that this attitude will really outlive the recession, people immensely enjoyed showing off the superlatives of the growth years and are seeing the new modesty as a restriction rather than a chance.
For me, the whole point of the excercise is not to pretend that I could afford things or to dream about times when I can. Nor is it about budget buying. Trading Liberty for Primark is daft. The difference is visible at first glance, so it isn't really a substitute. Unless, of course, you never saw the difference in the first place, in which case you should have been turned away from Liberty at the door. (Sorry, I have strong feelings about posers.) Rant over. Where was I? Ah, yes, why do I wander aimlessly between Tottenham Court Road and Cannary Wharf staring at skinny jeans and CCTV cameras? It's to fill my creative store with ideas and to get a general feel for the direction the world is heading in. It's essentially urban ethnography. Maybe I should try to make this a profession?!?...
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Redesign Nightmare
Wow, I'm not just back, I think I'm back with a bang. I spent all afternoon designing a new template for this blog and while I'm not completely there yet, I feel Pink Orange is finally taking shape. Watch this space, I can't wait to see where it takes me.
Another beginning
Wow, it looks like this blog is moving from one beginning to the next. After years of silence I have caught the blogging bug again. So I hereby declare a new beginning...may it last longer than the last one. ;o)
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