It's not the band I hate, it's their fans

The real mapped against the unreal

I was in my favourite copy shop the other day, makin’ copies, and just as I finished, a man walked towards the exit singing (with confidence and melody): “My curiosity arose / I telephoned the service lady.”

For a moment we made eye contact. Then he pushed open the door and disappeared. And right at that instant, all I could think was, “If this was a video game, then that was a major clue. In fact, maybe I should follow him.”

Immediately after that, as I reflected on why I transposed a weird, random, meaningless moment into something of value in a different medium, I thought that if the same moment occurred in a film, singing guy would reappear, because while incidental, he was still somehow important to the overall narrative. Or, to be more accurate, he appeared for a reason, but the audience would only be allowed to discover why at a later point in the film.

When I got home, I did some Google work, even trying “My curiosity aroused / I telephoned the circus lady.” But I couldn’t find anything. Nice work, mystery melody man.

SubPox was part of the information superhighway

Designing a GeoCities CyberPage for my 90s cover band SubPox was a lot of fun. I was incredibly fortunate to have a great developer offer to build the site in his spare time. It's responsive and short and to the point. [Update: The site is gone, but the dream will never die.]

Are there animated gifs? Yes, there are many of them. Those took a moderate amount of work. Creating an ASCII video version of our Mudhoney cover was a real pain in the ass. But it's done.

Full page grab of ye old SubPox site

The Flesh of The World Needs a Tagline

I went to see The Flesh of the World, an amazing collection of contemporary art last Saturday at the University of Toronto Art Centre. I could pontificate about the art, but it boils down to this: it's free and incredible and a must-see.

That said, I'm a bit sad about the lack of promotion. Part of the challenge is that it's split across three galleries (two locations at U of T downtown and the remainder at U of T Scarborough). The other challenge is that their website lacks a tagline or any other form of simple description to help people understand what the exhibit is all about.

And so, since I love the show so much, I tried to fix the problem. I settled on trying to convey two things:

- the show provokes a wide range of strong emotions
- the show includes diverse, inclusive artwork

There are a bunch of other small improvements the current website could integrate, starting with more images of the art itself. But a tagline, or equivalent entry point for potential viewers, seems like the right first step. Because they can then use the tagline to better promote the show through social media and other channels.

Why did I do this? Not because I'm a marketing genius, a copywriting wizard, or a crackerjack designer looking for a reason to show off. I did this because I was genuinely moved by the artwork I saw. I did this because I'm proud of our city for supporting a collection of art related to the Pan Am & Parapan games that avoided being a room filled with watered down, up-with-people, mush. And I did this because I saw a constructive way of solving a small part of their promotional challenge, instead of just complaining.

Words if necessary, but not necessarily a wordy manifesto

Last week I had a pretty decent idea for a personal creative project. I’m not going to give much away, but when I shifted from light bulb to capturing the project on paper, I found myself doing something unusual: I didn’t just puke a bunch of words onto the page. I love using words as a cheap way to prototype an idea, but taglines and paragraphs aren’t always the best approach.

This time out, what felt most natural and appropriate for my web-based creative project was a script for a 60-second video. Understand, however, that I’m not doing a Kickstarter or a MegaGogo campaign. Having an explanatory video for my creative project certainly isn’t a bad idea, but it wasn’t an obvious first choice either.

The reason I mention my script-first approach is that I tend to overlook video due to my print journalism background. Despite all the digital copywriting and content strategy work I’ve done over the past five years, my default definition of content is still words, with the occasional nod to icons and infographics. In my defence, video can be expensive and time-consuming if you don’t want it to look like garbage.

I really enjoyed writing the script, especially because it quickly turned into something playful and fun, rather than yet another mini-manifesto. The script also helped me visually define the tone and style of the project – something that might inform the look and feel of the site design down the road. There’s also an energy and pace to the video that would be very difficult to convey through any other format.

Although it’s far from exhaustive, the script offers a concise project definition: here’s what I decided to do, and why. And, finally, I can take the key messages from the video and use them to develop headlines and body copy. That’s a lot of heavy lifting for a 130 word script.

Sexist Chumbox

Good news everyone! Conclusive proof that chumboxes are devoid of meaningful content and sexist to boot!

Hot court reporter? That's your file name? Really?

My Junction Triangle t-shirt featuring the serpentine streets of Symington and Sterling

I woke up this morning and discovered a tweet of mine was getting some attention.

I imagine there are 12 people in Toronto who will find this amusing. Maybe you're one of them? #jtriangle pic.twitter.com/z3vlYfspcj

— Ryan Bigge (@biggeidea) July 19, 2015

I have no interest in getting into the hyper-local, non-lucrative, t-shirt business, so here is the jpeg I used to make my shirt. I bought my shirt at H&M and went to Toronto Tees to get it printed.

One Woman For Every Five Men

Baby Favela

At first we barely noticed the baby hobos. Their encampment on the edges of our suburb was unruly, yes, but small. Tins of Enfalac heated over small fire pits, the occasional odour of amateur s’mores wafting into our cul-de-sac.

But strength in numbers should never be underestimated, and the babies eventually reached critical mass. They migrated south, from Markham down to North York and then still further, until the toddler tribe alighted upon the Danforth. By then they were hungry for all that they had been previously denied. They squatted on patios, in dive bars. The moment they saw weakness, they would bully or intimidate.

(Inspired by a photo from Rob Elliott).

The Gearyfication of Geary Ave has begun

Stuart Berman wrote a funny and smart Toronto Star article about the gritty pluck and changing fortunes of Geary Ave: 

Though located just steps north of heavily trafficked Dupont St., the unremarkable, one-kilometre-long Geary Ave. — beginning at Ossington Ave. in the east and terminating just past Dufferin St. in the west — exists in the no man’s land between downtown and midtown, an area so unconcerned with keeping up appearances that its modern-furniture knock-off stores actually have names like Modern-Furniture Knock Off.

However, as someone who uses and enjoys the Rehearsal Factory, I'm concerned that this article signals the start of rapid Gearyfication.

Or, to put it in language that everyone understands, "Stuart you ho this is all your fault."

Return on Collision: The Tony Hsieh Story

Excerpts from “Tony Hsieh Is Building a Startup Paradise in Vegas” by Susan Berfield published December 30, 2014 in Bloomberg Businessweek.

When Hsieh met Ashton Allen, co-founder of Rabbit!, he called it a “serendipitous collision.” That was in 2010, at a conference in Hawaii.

[…]

“We’re maximizing long-term ROC and ROL, return on collisions and return on luck. We’re accelerating serendipity.”

[…]

“We’re starting to understand what opportunities there are that could potentially both generate profitability and also a return on collision,” says Maggie Hsu, who’s focused on business development at the Downtown Project.

[…]

Now there’s a consultant who advises entrepreneurs. His company is called ROCeteer (ROC, as in Return on Collisions).

[…]

Downs says the Downtown Project is considering leasing some unused property to other developers. Hsieh would become a landlord, earning a return on investment if not collision.

[…]

“When we first started, we thought we had to invest a lot in residential, we thought we had to build high-rises or lots of small spaces to get a return on collision,” he tells the executives.

[…]

“Someone like me, I’m out in a collisionable way three or four hours a day, seven days a week. So I’m worth about 1,000 collisionable hours a year.”

[…]

“We did the math on Jake. When he’s here, he’s out about 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 12 weeks a year. So he’s worth 1,000 collisionable hours, too.”

Hsieh began to apply this metric to investments that might not make money for a while. “Say we want 100,000 collisionable hours a year from an investment. That works out to 2.3 hours per square foot per year,” he says, with a slight smile.

[…]

“We’re kind of agnostic about what goes into a space. It’s ‘are you going to yield those collisionable hours?’ If not, we can say no without judging the quality of the idea.”

Determining the number of interactions between people and their value had been Jorgensen’s job. He was the collision scientist, until he was dismissed.

[…]

A recent public document from the Downtown Project says: “Goal: 10 million collisionable hours per year inside the llama footprint.” Llamas are Hsieh’s talisman; the 60 acres he owns roughly form the shape of one.

[…]

The former collision scientist is in an Airstream. Hsieh has one, too.

The Year of 2014 for Ryan

My 2014 was better than my 2013. Here are some reasons:

Take This Job and Love It

I began 2014 gunning for a full-time job, but to repurpose Hemingway’s quote about bankruptcy, I decided to go freelance gradually, then suddenly. I was a freelance journalist for about a decade, and by the end of that cycle I was exhausted with the lack of money, the solitude, the irregular hours and extremely irregular payment schedule.

Content strategy consulting is a much different beast. There are client meetings, office visits, collaboration sessions and other social elements. And when I need to concentrate, I have the flexibility to work from home. From January to June I was gradually busy, followed by a sudden whoosh of projects and presentations. By the end of it all I was tired, but also a bit smarter and a bit richer.

Along with doing, I was able to augment my brain by reading:

* Why We Fail (Victor Lombardi)

* Service Design (Andy Polaine)

* Exposing the Magic of Design (Jon Kolko)

* The New York Times Innovation Report

* UXPin Guide to Minimum Viable Products

I also attended UX Thursday, the best $100 I’ve ever spent on a conference.

Adventures in Mid-Fi

In June I found a bass player for my indiepalooza cover band. Shortly thereafter I found a drummer. And by November we were sounding pretty darn okay. More importantly, we’d agreed on a name (SubPox). But then we had to switch drummers (amicably) and the mad rush of December happened. But I feel 99% confident we will play live in the spring of 2015.

Along the way I bought a life-changing reverb pedal and a life-affirming delay pedal. Together they cover most of my guitar noodling requirements. Which means I’m only two more pedals away from not buying any more pedals for a very long time.

All The Pretty Pictures (and Pixels too)

* Hearing Richard Turley, Erik Spiekermann and Andrew Zolty talk at Design Thinkers in early November.

* Enjoying Pulse Room by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer in a nearly empty Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal in July.

* Playing all the indie games at the AGO’s Fancy Videogame Party in February.

* Admiring all the kickass KAWS at This is Not a Toy exhibit (Design Exchange).

* Seeing the work of Tori Foster at Pari Nadimi.

* Experiencing Jacqueries on a warn August evening.

* Nuit Blanche-ing with Between Doors plus Everything and Nothing.

* Touching a bunch of fun stuff at digiPlaySpace in the TIFF Lightbox.

* Loving and not loving the Douglas Coupland exhibit in equal measures at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Word Nerd

* I was Handling Editor for an RRJ feature that won third place from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in the “Specialized Business Press Article” category.

* On June 16 I shared embarrassing moments from my Grade 5 diary at Grownups Read Things They Wrote as Kids in front of many people at The Garrison. In August my performance was broadcast on CBC radio.

* I wrote about hidden gem Black Mirror for Hazlitt.

* My byline appeared in Applied Arts and Report on Business.

* I volunteered a few times at Story Planet, but it wasn’t until I took part in an Alpha Workshop that I really felt useful. Twenty kids collectively develop a story up to the crisis point and then each writes their own ending. The whole thing takes two hours and somehow it works.

* I went to see Guillaume Morissette read at The Ossington and I’m glad I did.

This Content Isn’t Going to Strategize Itself

As I’m fond of mentioning ad nauseam (because I have SEO-whore tendencies just like everybody else), I organize the Toronto content strategy meetup. This year we were able to get Karen McGrane to give a guest talk. She was very generous with her time and insights and I’m grateful I was able to have dinner with her beforehand.

My other guest speakers were equally smart, accomplished and insightful.

The Other Stuff

* My friends Graeme and Nadine had a second child in February.

* My friends Adam and Bri got engaged in December.

* I built a foldaway cabinet standing desk thingie.

* My friend Chris threw a delightful house party in January.

* I went to the RC Harris Filtration plant during the February long weekend for an ice-tastic walk.

* I had the “SuperBeautys 2” breakfast special during a 28-hour trip to Montreal in July. It isn’t a great year without one of those.

* I quit Facebook on October 11. I thought it would be a three month absence, but I now think I’ll never return to big blue.

* On April 11 I reached peak Galaga at Get Well with a score of 150,650.

* I finally bought a super-slim Bellroy wallet and it was worth every penny.

* I’m now the sort of person who owns a wheelbarrow.