Secrets of the video game superstars in action

My SXSW talk about analog souvenirs is now on slideshare

Here it is. The subject line is self-explanatory:

Creating Great Analog Souvenirs for a Digital Era from Nurun

If you want to hear my presentation there's also an audio version.

Hot trend alert: storytelling

Last week was my very first SXSW Interactive. And as R/GA noted, storytelling is all the rage right now:

Although I would argue that storytelling has been popular for at least 3,000 years (e.g. The Bible), spinning a good yarn is definitely a hot topic in marketing right now.

So it was no coincidence that storytelling came up during the Future of Media 2013 panel about branded content at The Drake Hotel on Thursday, March 14. As a former freelance journalist, the most interesting part of the debate was watching journalists and content marketers try to determine where journalism ends and content marketing begins.

Joseph Barbieri was the closest when he said that there is plenty of good writing and storytelling possible in branded content. It might not be journalism in the traditional sense, but branded content can have context, layers and nuance. Josh Sternberg, meanwhile, was correct in saying that having a journalistic sensibility is not the same as doing journalism on behalf of brands.

Everyone agreed that good content is good content, regardless of who or how it is produced. The ability to tell a great story is crucial to producing good content, and it just so happens that most journalists are decent storytellers.

In my attempt to support this trend, I’ve asked Arianne Schaffer to speak at the Toronto Content Strategy Meetup on Thursday March 21. Arianne is adept at telling funny and moving personal stories, and she’s agreed to share some of her secrets. Although she’s promised to explain how personal storytelling can be leveraged in professional situations, the truth is that the elements of a good story remain consistent, regardless of context.

That's why one of the first questions all content strategists need to ask is “What’s the story?”* Or, as I like to say, content strategy without storytelling sounds like a fairy tale without a happy ending.

*Morning glory

My Educated Guess At a SXSWi Schedule

It's my first time at SXSW Interactive. I'm expecting lots of walking and crazy parties.

Here's my best attempt at an educated guess for things to attend for a Retail-CreativeTechnologist-ContentStrategist-ExCulturalJournalist type guy like myself.

Friday, March 8

**5:00PM It's Reddit's Web. We Just Live In It

Sheraton Austin Capitol EFGH

8:00PM The Interactive Opening Party presented by frog design

Palmer Events Center

Saturday, March 9

9:30AM How Twitter Has Changed How We Watch TV

Austin Convention Center Room 18ABCD

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**11:00AM Show&Smell 2: Marketing Experiences Beyond Visual

Omni Downtown Austin

11:00AM Too Long Didn't Read: The Future of Indie Longform

Austin Convention Center Room 12AB

--

**12:30PM Leap Motion & the Disappearing User Interface

Austin Convention Center Exhibit Hall 5

12:30PM The Rise of Re-Commerce: Shop Used in a New Way

Four Seasons San Jacinto Ballroom

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**2:00PM Elon Musk Keynote

Austin Convention Center Exhibit Hall 5

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**3:30PM Al Gore on The Future

Austin Convention Center Exhibit Hall 5

**3:30PM Beyond Squishy: The Principles of Adaptive Design  (Brad Frost)

Austin Convention Center Ballroom BC

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**5:00PM Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now

Austin Convention Center Ballroom D

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7:00PM Knight Foundation & MIT Media Lab sponsored Demo Fair and Gathering The Parish

Sunday, March 10

*9:30AM Data, Storytelling and Breaking Through the Noise

Wanderlust Wanderlust

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**11:00AM Now You See Me: The Future of Ambient Location

Sheraton Austin Capitol ABCD

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**2:00PM From YouTube to Global Sensations: The Ap”peel” of Annoying Orange Palmer Events Center Exhibit Hall 1

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**3:30PM Physical & Digital Collide: Retail Rewired

Hyatt Regency Austin Texas Ballroom 5-7

3:30PM The Signal & the Noise

Austin Convention Center Exhibit Hall 5

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**4:00PM Big Data: Is It Killing Creativity?

Hilton Austin Downtown Room 615AB

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*5:00PM Building Tools for Creativity

Austin Convention Center Ballroom D

*5:00PM The New Serendipity?

Austin Convention Center Exhibit Hall 5

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9:00PM SapientNitro SXSW Party

The Parish

 Monday, March 11

**11:00AM Embracing Analog: Why Physical Is Hot

Hyatt Regency Austin Texas Ballroom 1-4

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11:30AM Flying Lotus - 'Until The Quiet Comes'

Rollins Theatre at The Long Center

11:30AM alt-J (∆) "Breezeblocks"

Rollins Theatre at The Long Center

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*12:30PM Hey, Where's My Robot Girlfriend?

Hilton Austin Downtown Salon FGH

12:30PM Creating & Keeping a Kickass Photo Community

SXSW Create Create Meet Up Tent

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**3:30PM Whoa Nellie! Content Strategy for Slow Experiences

Austin Convention Center Ballroom EF

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*5:00PM The Future of 3D Printing

Omni Downtown Longhorn

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**9:15PM The Punk Singer

Alamo Ritz 2

Tuesday, March 12

***11:00AM Creating Great Analog Souvenirs for a Digital Era

Omni Downtown Austin

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**12:30PM Fashion & Food: Transforming Visual Narration Sheraton

Austin Capitol EFGH

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*2:00PM Matthew Inman Keynote

Austin Convention Center Exhibit Hall 5

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4:30PM Analogue Anonymous

Austin Convention Center Meet Up Pavilion EH 3/4

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5:00PM Bruce Sterling Closing Remarks

Austin Convention Center Exhibit Hall 5

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7:15PM The Punk Singer SXSatellite: Alamo Village

Reservations

Book trailers don't work

While this isn't particularly science-y (any survey that involves a monkey is unlikely to make it into a peer-reviewed publication), my quick and dirty poll confirms what most of us literary-digital people have suspected.

Book trailers don't work.

Great advice on getting a job interview

The entire post is fantastic. Here's a sample:

"Above, all remember this: resumes have one design problem to solve. That design problem is:

• How should this information be best laid out in order to clearly and quickly communicate it?

It is not:

• What can I do to ensure that my resume stands out from everyone else's resume?

Why not? [...] I'm likely looking for the first possible excuse to put your resume down and move onto the next one. A really really good excuse would be that in order to understand your resume I needed to reorient my entire understanding of visual hierarchy or design conventions. Your task here is to make me think less, not more. You want your resume to look like a job application, not a Futurist manifesto."

- RJ Wheaton explains how to get a job interview

Food Bloggers are Authentic Lunatics

"These days, as everyone who has ever read a food blog knows, if you didn’t subsist on a particular food or cuisine in utero, you lack the ability to appreciate it, let alone the right to cook it. And should you attempt to do so, and are found out, you run the risk of being stripped naked and horsewhipped on the steps of City Hall." -- New York Magazine

The Best Whiskey Definition Ever

“A brown liquid that makes people feel differently than if they didn’t drink it.” 
                   – Louis C.K., Season 2

#savethewaldorf please

Vancouver has always struggled to create sustainable cultural institutions. I speak from experience. That's why so many of my friends joined me in leaving Vancouver over the past decade or so. If you work in the arts, it's a brutal city to try and make things happen.

This was the main reason I stayed at the Waldorf hotel in the summer of 2011. The people behind the place are clearly trying hard in a city that rarely rewards this kind of effort. So I did my best to support them with my wallet. Now someone wants to turn an amazing building into little boxes.

So sign the damn petition. The Waldorf does not need to be turned into condos.

Goodbye D̶a̶r̶i̶n̶ N̶i̶c̶h̶o̶l̶a̶s̶ Mr. “Shark Fear, Shark Awareness” Johnson

As of November 28, 2012, the guy on the far left of this photo is dead. Specifically, he is no longer in possession of his head, which he removed with a shotgun.

If that sounds terrible, it is. (Trust me, I miss him very much.) But it’s also the sort of crisp, clear writing that Darin Nicholas Nick Johnson would have appreciated. Here is the exact moment when I knew that he had a gift:

           

It was the middle of the afternoon. A man lay on his back in the middle of the hallway. He was barefoot and wearing no shirt.
[…]
“You’re sure you’re okay?” I asked as I passed the guy in the hall again.
“Eventually you will make a mistake,” he said calmly.
I shrugged and went to my room, where I curled up under the covers and started to fall sleep. Before I did, I groaned and climbed out of bed to lock the door, in case he had been talking to me.

That’s from a mass email he sent to friends while working in Antarctica. Those emails became the basis for his book Big Dead Place, which I highly recommend.

I recently went through my email archives, but was only able to locate a handful of emails from Darin/Nicholas. Here are two. The first is from 2001. I asked Darin why he stopped sending mass emails about his adventures in Antarctica. Here is his reply:

From: Johnson, Darin

Subject: RE: hey!

Date: 12 May, 2001 7:31:45 PM EDT

To: Ryan Bigge

Hi Ryan. Yeah, I tentatively decided mass emails are gross. I can't quite put my finger on it, I like to get them but when I send them I just feel cheap. So I rarely correspond at all! With anyone! I should get a job as a consultant for Negative Solutions Inc.

I'm writing a book called "Big Dead Place" about Antarctica. I don't know yet if it will be a travel account or a nonfiction story using themes and literary devices. The idea is that Americans conquer Antarctica but that spiritual corruption conquers Americans. (Maybe it's a human story, but I only feel qualified to go for the jugular of Americans.)

Yesterday I heard that in July it's traditional to have a holiday called "Christmas in July". Christmas trees. Egg nog. Candy canes. Listen, one Christmas a year is already too much and these zombies want to have two.

I must go eat waffles.

Take care of yourself.

Nicholas

This second email, from 2003, was in response to a question I had about where Nicholas was now living.

From: Nicholas Johnson

Date: 27 June, 2003 7:11:39 PM EDT

Ryan,

Are you still in Toronto? I don't remember why, but I gathered you found Toronto an improvement over Vancouver; still true?

I'm back in Seattle. I'm subrenting an apartment in a real honest-to-god neighborhood. No more eating at the gas station, and I don't have to sneak around in the alleys looking for a dumpster for my trash. There's birds, and a garden in the back. Kind of creepy, but oh well.

I spent the last week pissing in cups and bleeding in tubes for my employer at this place called LabCorp in the suburbs. The gal who works there wants to become a nurse. There were six copies of TV Guide on the waiting room table, though the TV was playing an in-house video touting a pharmaceutical company. I went in one day for a drug test and she sprayed blue stuff in the toilet and told me not to flush the toilet and not to wash my hands or I would have to retake the test. The top of the toilet was taped down with some tamper proof red tape. When I came out she told me about people who have snuck in with bags of other people's urine hidden on their person. But it's usually too cold (chilling on the way to LabCorp) or too hot (from the microwave that they heated up in before they arrived). "Then I have to call their company and tell them their employee tried to cheat," she said.

Though I have been reduced to a hollow shell of the correspondent I used to be, thanks for all the emails you've sent my way. A while ago you sent me one from salon.com about a guy on the ice who wrote some shitty article comparing working in Antarctica to being on "Survivor". I later found out that that guy was so good at poker that he had taken a bunch of people for about US$6,000 over the course of the season, not cheating, just playing. So even though he had a very low-paying dishwasher job, he made some good money down there. That story is far more interesting than anything he wrote about, yet it is nowhere to be seen.

That article about the guy reporting from the DMZ was hilarious.

Speaking of hilarious, I'm reading your book. Besides laughing though, I am happy to finally learn what that whole cocktail craze was all about. The way you explain it gives it perfect meaning, rather than just being another retro fad to fill the void. You did the same thing in tracing the emo/indie thing. So I'm reading and alternating between laughs and "aaaaahhhh, so that's what that was..."s.

Working on anything now?

I'm trying to get all my pictures together and a glossary for my book, which I just sent off to Feral House for the first round of publisher edits. It should come out sometime while I'm at the Pole, where I have a year contract starting in October. It is difficult to imagine that anything can be worth the miserable year of hell entailed in writing that accursed book whose publication is to me like excising an inflamed tumor, but I suppose it will be interesting to see if there's any fallout while I'm there. In any event, I learned a lot in the course of the project. One time you said to me, "These emails are good. You should write a book about this." Though I can say with absolute authority that those emails were mostly ego-driven dogshit, thanks for the support. It helped.

I hope you're well.

Nicholas