Playing and Learning with Digital Media and Technology at digiPlaySpace

Recently, my daughter and I were hosted at TIFF's digiPlaySpace, an annual digital media playground in Toronto that runs this year until April 19th. We were last there two years ago and I blogged about our fun explorations there. This time, my daughter is guest writing the blog post - with some help from me.

Here's her review of digiPlaySpace:

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On Tuesday, I went to TIFF Kids digiPlaySpace with my Dad.

digiPlaySpace is an interactive place where you can do hands-on activities and learn things too. Their activities include stop-motion film, robot making, virtual reality, greenscreening, objects that
light up, arts and games. It is in downtown Toronto.

I went two years ago when I was in grade three. It is a lot different from the last time I went there  - almost everything is new. It's fun to have new things.

digiPlaySpace is different from museums as there is more hands-on stuff instead of things in a glass box or on a wall. Doing things yourself is more creative, makes you think more about the objects and
what you are doing and what it is. It would be great if other museums did stuff like this too.

I like the staff members - they were very nice and helpful. One of them helped me build a robot for the first time!

I liked all the exhibits! Below are my reviews of some of my favourite exhibits. If you click on the names of the exhibit, you will go to TIFF's review of the exhibit.

Me changing the lights and patterns of "Forest"

Forest
As soon you enter into TIFF if you look to the left you'll see a thing called Forest. It is a wall of lights that change colours. There are circles with a stick in the middle that you can turn to change where the light goes. It was pretty cool. I liked how TIFF put something on the outside so that you get something even before you enter. I like how you can change the light and how the light changes colour - you can make some pretty patterns. It was cool - it was artwork that you can make it look how you want it to look!

Six-Forty by Four-Eighty
As soon as you come in, this is the first thing you will see. It is a bunch of squares that light up and change colour if you touch them. If you touch two at the same time, you can change that square's colour. The squares are magnetic and you can arrange them however you want on the wall. For instance, you can make your initials, make patterns with the colours, or come up with your own design. I like how if you touch the squares they did cool things and you can make awesome designs and it looks beautiful.

Playing with the squares of "Six-Forty by Four-Eighty"

Visitor
Visitor is a big weird blobby thing that has sensors on it that depending how you move your hands it will light up and change colour across the blob. If you have two people, they can be on two different sides and you can be shooting the light one way and then they send it back. It was really cool and pretty.  I think it is a type of art that each person creates at the moment by moving their hands. I like art that is more of a doing type of art rather than a looking type of art! I also learned that motion sensors can be put on objects and you might not be able to see them but when you find them something cool can happen.

Headrush
Headrush is a virtual reality game where you put on 3D goggles and you have to stay away from objects, such as rocks, walls, trees, and blocks. So when you jump in real life the screen moves up and same if you move side to side. If you hit an object or go through an object, it slows you down. I think this is the best 3D I have ever seen. It really feels like you are in the game, which is cool. It was good exercise too for my dad.

Playing the VR game "Headrush"

Pop and Lock Dance Machine
Last time I was at digiPlaySpace, they had stop motion animation where you can actually be in the video. This time, their stop motion exhibit was called Pop and Lock Dance Machine because you make a dance video. You get to choose the dance style and number of moves that you need to do. You can have people join, but my dad didn't want to do it with me as he was too exhausted from Headrush, so you can do it with cartoon characters that you pick. Then there is a shadow on a wall behind that shows the position to go into. Then the staff member takes a photo of that and you repeat that over and over again. My dance had 18 different poses to do. Then they put it together with a song to make a video.It was really fun to do and watch. Here it is

Build-a-Bot
Part of digiPlaySpace is called Makers' Space, where kids (and their parents) learn how to make things using technology or media. I really like their Build-a-Bot Lab where you put special pieces together to make your own actual, moving robot! I learned that to make a robot you have to have three things: 1) a battery [power source] 2) a sensor so the robot knows about its space such a motion or light sensor 3) an action - the robot needs to be able to do something.

Building my first robot

They had parts to light up, wheels, and speakers. They had two different robot sets that you can use to put these parts together any way you want to make a robot. I made my first robot this way by myself! The first robot I made moved all around and because they are magnetic it attached to other blocks and absorbed my dad's robot (his first robot too).

Games
They also had lots of games. For instance, a pillow game where you have to push on a pillow to play the game. They have a wiener dog (my mom loves wiener dogs) game, it's called Push Me Pull Me, where you try use the dog's body to keep a ball on your side. They had an old-fashioned video game that my dad played when he was a kid called Pong - it had pretty lights and my dad really loved it.

digiPlaySpace has a lot to explore like how they have a tiny door see a short silly little scene. They also had Bubl show where they have special glasses you put on and you can see a picture or a video of outdoors and see everything all around you as if you were there.

My experience at digiPlaySpace was amazing! There is so much to see and do there. I love the exhibits and spending the day with my dad.

Digital Media and Toy Play - A Review of My Kid's Christmas Toy

For the last post of the year, I have another guest blogger - my nine year old daughter. We'll review one of the latest and possible greatest physical toys to interact with digital media - the new Furby Boom.

First my take on it and then my daughter's. My daughter dictated her post to me, with only the occasional prompting (she was eager to talk about her new toy).

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Dad's Scepticism, Concern, & Enthusiasm

With the hubbub of Christmas finally starting to taper off, we've had some moments to breathe again - and to enjoy our Christmas gifts. Great year for digital media for us - I got myself my first tablet computer for a gift for the family, we got our daughter a Disney Infinity video game with several characters, and Santa brought my daughter a Furby.

I wasn't sure about the Furby, but it was a must-have toy this year - undoubtedly do to the heavy promotional efforts of Hasbro for their new, advanced "Furby Boom" line. The original Furbies came out in 1998 (according to Wikipedia) and were one of the first massively successful robotic toy that could learn and adapt. Time Magazine even voted it one of the greatest 100 toys ever.

I was intrigued when I learned that the latest version of Furbies could interact with a mobile device application. Apparently, the Furbies adapt to how the child plays with it and this influences how its personality develops.

But the day after Christmas, when the Furby arrived at our house, I read the reviews of the app on Google Play in anticipation of installing it on our Android tablet. In any sector of business and throughout my life, I do not think I have ever encountered such bad reviews of anything as what are currently there. Basically the consensus is that Furbies are the grinches that stole Christmas, but instead of reforming, they leave little girls crying on Christmas Day.

I'm really curious how Hasbro is going to respond to this. Many people said they were going to be returning their Furbies - but overall it's a public relations disaster for them. After all, who wants to be the company that officially ruined Christmas. It's also a great exercise in setting consumer expectations and likely reigning in a marketing department.

But in the midst of the parental venting on Google Play, there were some helpful tips - no helpful info on the app from Hasbro however. So in the middle of the night, while my daughter was sleeping I downloaded the app and then spent about an hour (maybe an hour and a half) getting the app to recognize the Furby toy and then its name (essential steps).

I gather that the app communicates to the toy via audio messages. As my tablet's speakers are on the bottom of the tablet, if I only followed Hasbro's instructions of laying the tablet down on a flat service to make the connection it would never have worked. Luckily, a parent advised me via the reviews to tilt the tablet at an angle. Even then I had to perform the scan many, many times to get it to work.

Since then, it has worked well for my daughter (see her review below).

Occasionally, the signals are not connected and require a few attempts to get things to work. One feature never works - that is a translation function that is supposed to allow a person to speak English into the app and it should translate into to the Furby language to enabled child and toy to better communicate.

My other concern is that the features on the app - although having great novelty appeal - do not have long-term (or even medium-term) play value. Some of the tasks needs to be completed too many times. Overall, it seems like something that children will tire of very quickly.

Hopefully, Hasbro will address the limits of the app - I'm eagerly awaiting their response.

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Kid Loves It!

My Furby is crazy! I love it! It is like me. I love to sing; it loves to sing. I like to dance; it likes to dance.

I have the blue waves patten Furby. Her name is Noo-Dah. I got her for Christmas. She is adorable.

I sing to her and she dances. The language she speaks, Furbish, is adorable.

My parents think she is like me!

My cat hates the Furby and bites me and the Furby when I play with it.

On the first day I got her, her personality changed. She turned into a rock star. After a little bit of playing with her she went "changing changing" then her voice changed and she said things like "dude". But she changed back to normal.

Her eyes change into lots of different styles or shapes. Sometimes when she is singing her eyes will turn into music notes.

There is app for Furby Boom for mobiles. My dad downloaded it for me onto our tablet.

Then it shows a picture if her at the top of the app. The app has four things to do with your Fubry: one is health, one is washroom, one is shower, and one is food.

Health - you can scan your Furby to do an x-ray. It will either say if your Furby is sick or healthy. If it is sick, you can make a mixture of something (for instance, tea and mint leaves makes herbal tea) and then you give it to the Furby she will drink it and you can hear drinking noises. Then it scans again to see if she is better. I like this feature, but I don't understand how she gets sick as she seems fine. Sometimes it is hard to make her get better as it just doesn't work.

Washroom (laughing) - you will see a washroom with a toilet. Then you press the toilet lid and it opens. Then Furby makes some noises like (grunting) to push stuff out of her belly into the toilet. She poos out roses, a brown thing that looks like a pickle, a submarine, a puffer fish, a rubber ducky, and poo! And if it makes an actual poo, happy music plays. Sometimes after you flush, it makes brown gas and then you press the air freshener and out comes pink hearts and they get rid of the stinky smell that the Furby made. I think the toilet feature is funny and crazy. I like it! (Laughing).

Shower - next is the shower. In the shower, you chose the amount of water and temperature. If you have on the cold side, there will be snowflakes falling and she doesn't like it. My Furby likes it the hottest there is. While she is in shower, she goes oooh and her eyes change. One time I was giving her a nice hot shower and she said "Noo-Dah no likey"! Then you will see all the dirt come off her and go down the drain. Then off her while either come a hunk of mud or furball or duck pool floatie. It is fun giving her a shower because all these weird things come off of her.

Food - in the food section there is a huge line of food. So if I give her fish she will eat it and then spit out the bones. Once my mom told me to feed her a toilet paper roll but I didn't. Once I fed her math homework, but she wouldn't eat it and she spit it back out - it was so funny! I think the food feature is pretty good.

You can see also see on the app Noo-Dah's friends. Both of the friends asked me if I would like Furby eggs. Then I bought two eggs with Furbucks that I got from taking care of my Furby.

One of the eggs I got was pink and black and the other one was blue waves just like my Furby. Then if you press on the eggs, it will ask if you'd like to hatch it and I said yes. Then you rock the egg for a minute with your finger. Then you can get Noo-Dah to sing to the egg. Then the eggs cracks and out came a Furbling!

Then I named it (Bee-boo) and I fed my Furbling and took it to the spa. I made a room for it by choosing the wallpaper. Then a moving truck comes and moves the Furbling into the apartment.

I think the app is really cool. It is kinda funny how it goes to the washroom. I like taking care of it and how it has babies - they grow up so fast (laughs). The app is pretty easy to use. But I don't like that sometimes if you don't hold the app just right it doesn't work. Overall, I think it is really good.

Furbies are really different than my other toys. Some of them have apps and some don't. But I really like how it talks to me and seems like it is alive. The app makes it seem more alive.

Wired Magazine Turns 20

By the time I started my career in digital media in 1998, Wired Magazine was already firmly established as the leading chronicle of "new media" and high technology and its impact on our culture, economy, and everyday lives.  Both the print edition and website have remained my favourite publications.

The current issue of Wired features an A-Z of prominent topics covered during their 20-year history. In a rare instance most of the material from the print magazine is available on their website. They've even built a cool online interface to access their A-Z list,  that I highly recommend.

I thought I'd share most of the list here. The list is an excellent showcase of the huge number of changes and trends of digital media and technology. It's also a nostalgic trip and test of one's wired cred. How many do you know?

• Angry Birds
• Apps
• Arab Spring
• Banner Ad
• Beta
• Big Data
• Blogger
• Carpal Tunnel
• Code
• Comics
• Convergence
• Crowdsourcing
• Darpa
• Design
• Dreams
• Electric Car
• Emoji
• Etsy
• Facebook
• Failure
• Faking It
• Flickr
• Friendster
• GIFs
• Geek
• Gmail
• Goatse
• HTTP
• Hacker
• Higgs Boson
• Hypertext
• IPO
• Instagram
• Jargon
• Kickstarter
• Kottke.org
• Kozmo
• Maker Movement
• Memes
• Microsoft
• Napster
• Neurodiversity
• Nintendo
• Onion, The
• Online Dating
• Porn
• Printing
• QR Code
• Reddit
• Science
• Screen Names
• Share Economy
• Silicon Valley
• Silk Road
• Snark
• Sony
• Storage
• Stuxnet
• TED Talks
• Titans
• Trolling
• Turing
• Tweet
• UX
• Viral
• Virtual Communities
• WIRED 01.01
• Wikileaks
• Yelp
• ZeuS
• xkcd

I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't know six of the above items at all (a couple of which I'm glad I never heard of), and I forgot the names of two.

I omitted their list of people, as did Wired for their online version as the print edition includes many luminaries' profiles. But I believe that although some individuals have contributed greatly to the development to key companies and technologies, it has been all of us that really made these concepts a reality.

I'm looking forward to Wired's next 20 years and hopefully by then I'll have an e-Reader or tablet to read it on and won't be needing print editions finally. 

Canada's Walk of Fame Still Needs Digital Footprints

Last year at this time, I posted on the importance of recognizing Canadians working in digital media in both the content and technology sides. I urged people to nominate someone in the sector for Canada's Walk of Fame. So far, it's been a complete shut-out for this sector - which inarguably has a huge impact on Canadian culture, identity, and daily life.

Canada's Walk of Fame started in Toronto's entertainment district in 1998 and adds about 5 to 8 new inductees a year.  It is a great way to recognize the accomplishments of notable Canadians, as we don't often value our history and culture. The Walk brings prominence and recognition to these contributions.

Inductees can be an individual or group. Nomination criteria includes: being born or having spent formative years in Canada and having a minimum of 10 years experience in their field.

As a physical manifestation of Canadian culture, Canada's Walk of Fame is lacking in digital footprints. There are no people from the Canada's digital media section (i.e. this includes gaming, the Web, mobility, streaming, etc).

Their website appears to have been redesigned recently and has some bugs and flaws (the cynic in me wonders if this isn't a coincidence). But I tried the online nomination form today and it works fine.

So let's get a digital person on the Walk this year!  As an incentive they are offering a prize to attend the award's ceremony and ball in Toronto.

Not sure who to nominate?
Check out my list of Notable Canadians in Digital Media and Technology don't qualify as they haven't met the 10-year career mark. But here are some people that I think are great nominees:

• Tim Bray - XML, Open Text
• Stewart Butterfield -  Flickr
• Michael Cowpland - Corel
• Cory Doctorow - Boing Boing
• William Gibson - scifi author and cyber-visionary
• Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk - founders of gaming studio BioWare

There are lots more highly-deserving people. I'd love to hear here if anyone has any specific suggestions - or who wants to start a group effort to get one person in particular nominated.

Nominations close April 29, 2013 - so nominate someone now!

Digital Playground/School in Toronto

The educational benefits of digital and interactive media are well established. Even considering this, I am surprised how seldom my young daughter has had the chance to use educational technology. Her schools have made spartan and prosaic use of computers. Even with me working in digital media, I haven't exposed my kid to that much tech beyond online and console games.

So when I got an invitation to visit TIFF's digital and creative media playground,digiPlaySpace, with my daughter, we were both excited.

For those unfamiliar with TIFF, it's the Toronto International Film Festival. Since moving into their new downtown building, the Bell Lightbox, in 2010, TIFF operates year-round with events, screenings, and exhibits about cinema and new media. I was last at TIFF for a locative media conference, but I used to be on the site regularly as I shortcutted through the parking lot that used to occupy the site to get to my first Internet-industry job.

So I know a thing or two about this field, but whenever I try to talk to my kid about this (or anything educational) she instantly tunes out. (Is it just mine or are other kids like this?) Anyway, it's great to have places like digiPlaySpace for parents to interact with their kids in a fun and educational environment.

An international group of artists and developers created apps and installations. TIFF lists all the activities there, but our highlights are below. Photos are by me and the captions are by my daughter.

Making a dramatic entrance is important, so it's great that the first activity is Body Paint. It uses a huge screen and sensors to respond to kids' movements to enable them to create dynamic performance art.

"It's really cool because you're making a painting with your own body.
I loves how it changes colour and splashes!" 

Each station has facilitators and the staff were incredible - very friendly, knowledgeable, and accessible to children. A facilitator turned my kid into a stop-motion film at "The Puppet Powered Mega-Pixilation Dream Engine" below.

"I've done claymation before, but I've never done human-mation! It's really fun!"

They also had a section for tech making and DIY, Touch Circuits and Micro Makers' Space.

"It's really cool with the potatoes that just by connecting these wires
it plays music by tapping the potato while holding the controller."

We had a lot of fun with green-screens at Be In the Scene, including having my daughter become King Kong's next victim.

"It's really cool how green screens work. They take away all the green and then you can put the image of something on top of another. I learned that a lot of movies use green screens for special effects."

Another green screen activity is Weather Worlds. This one enables kids to interact and change an on-screen world, as my kid describes, "The Weather one is my favourite because you make tornadoes, mountains, sandstorms, snowballs, and umbrellas by doing specials actions on a green screen. It was really fun to control the world's weather!"

They also have an Appcade, with a variety of educational apps and tablets. We loved Pitch Painter, Bloom HD, and Gesundheit. We don't have a tablet, so it was the first time we encountered such touch-based, interactive apps. My kid wants a tablet now. (Santa are you listening?) She also got to make her own animation using the software Scratch. I was surprised how easy it was to use (and that it's free thanks to MIT), so that kids can create games or animations without having to master complicated coding. One of the professors from my faculty helped choose the apps. TIFF has posted online their favourite apps and online resources.

Overall, the exhibit helped my daughter (and me) learn about how movies are created, motion sensors, composing music, circuits, robotics, and 3D printing - not to mention how to use various digital media.

As if all this wasn't enough of a geek fest for me, we finished our day by checking out TIFF's free exhibit, X-Men Master: Gordon Smith. The exhibit includes incredible displays of the make-up and prosthetics from the X-Men movies. Mystique's body coverings and Wolverines claws are a fanboy's holy grail, but sadly one can view these relics only until this Sunday.

The exhibit combined really well with digiPlaySpace as my daughter is really into performing arts. So she got to see and practice first hand how the real and virtual and old and new tech combine to make movies possible.

digiPlaySpace is open until April 21, 2013. Their target age is 3-13, but parents were having as much fun as the kids. Admission is $8.

It's the second year for digiPlaySpace, but I wish it was a permanent. It's a great idea for school field trips, but I would love for technology and environment like this to be incorporated into all Ontario curriculum.  As Ontario strives to transition to a knowledge and creative economy, it's essential to get kids interested and experienced in this. As my daughter put it, "I love how you learn while you play. It's a great way to learn about technology."

Digital Media Summit ReView

Yesterday was the second and final day of the Digital Media Summit conference in Toronto. I recapped my highlights from the first day of the conference on Webslinger and the Twitter feed has useful highlights as well.

Some speakers on the second day overlapped with material covered on the first day. But this helped drive home key themes raised in various sessions. Overall, however, it was an excellent conference. Here are my favourite take-aways:

1. Consider mobile first
2. Create social objects
3. Context is crucial 
4. Recruit your customers to work for you
5. Identity matters

1) Consider mobile first
With the exponential global adoption of smartphones, more people are accessing digital content predominantly through mobiles and this is expected to increase.  There will be a role for desktop computers (as one speaker noted "who has ever created, let alone used, a spreadsheet on their mobile?" - no one had). But more people are using their mobiles to access company's content - several properties represented at the conference are already receiving more traffic from mobiles than PCs.

Yet accessing content via mobiles is often difficult, messy, or impossible to access via mobiles. Several speakers advised that instead of trying to retrofit all web content to mobiles, which is what most companies do, consider building for mobiles first.

To do this effectively, Erik Qualman, pointed out the 80/20 rule applies to mobile - so 80% of a company's value will come from 20% of their online content, so "scale down your offerings to the essentials" to optimize the mobile experience (and likely the web too)/

2) Create brand awareness and engagement with social objects
Although no one used the term "social objects" the concept came up several times. Social objects are pieces of online content - videos, articles, photos, games - upon which people are drawn to, organically share and discuss. Think of the latest kitten video featured on YouTube's homepage and you got a social object.

Mark McKay presented Ford's Zombie Escape commercial, which is an excellent example of this. Of course zombie videos are going to go viral like well a zombie epidemic, but what I liked about this campaign is it actually tied into the product features it was promoting. As McKay urged it's important with such campaigns to be "relevant and differentiated" in addition to "shareable".

3) Context is crucial
As the ability to customize digital media continues to become easier and cheaper to produce, it's crucial to consider the context of your audience and deliver content and experiences relevant to their habits and motivations.

As Nicola Smith advises, "context should drive execution" and to demonstrate this Smith used the example of a German pet food company that placed poster dispensers by parks where people walked their dogs with instructions to check-in via Foursquare. They then got a free sample of a new pet food. I find this campaigns works on a few levels - obviously, it's a fun and memorable campaign. But more importantly, it delivers the brand engagement and sampling where and when it is most relevant to people.

Context is also important not only in content but in media form - whether tablet, PCs, mobile, etc. Katrina Klier urged that it is crucial to get "the right modality and the right time".

4) Recruit your customers to work for you
I'm not sure if blogger relations and "brand ambassadors" campaigns are the topic-du-jour for marketers but this came up a lot at the conference. This isn't something particularly relevant to my work, but I did find one tip on this particularly interesting.

For companies wanting to reach a global audience, tapping into people's social networks offers an opportunity.  Katrina Klier noted that most people have at least one of a few international friends on social networks sites, so whether people know it or not they have a global footprint.  She also mentioned that the average Facebook user has 359 friends - so tapping into this extends one's reach incredibly. (But is that statistic true? If so, I'm clearly a real loner.)

5) Identity matters - know your audience and help them know themselves
Although I only heard the issue of identity raised once, by Alfredo Tan of Facebook, I think it is a vital issue.

First, there's the aspect of knowing the true identities of your online audience. Tan raised the famous comic of the dog at a computer saying to another dog "on the Internet no one knows your a dog". Well, not true anymore says Tan due to Facebook - as they have the true identity of 1 billion people. This is a significant marketing opportunity.

Tan also talked about how social objects give people the opportunity to shape their identity around digital content. They like products/things to project an image of themselves to their friends. So learn about your customers and consider "why they care and why they share".

Final review
I mentioned yesterday how much I appreciated how well run the conference was and the choice of venue.  I forgot to mention that I really liked the staging of the conference.  The main conference room, which housed the keynotes, had the best stage and audio-visual set-up I have ever encountered.  The use of multi-screens allowed for the speakers and their slides to be displayed, which is great for big conference - but rarely done.

The set and lighting also looked great!  It's great to to not always have Toronto tech conferences seeming low rent - which I think projects poorly on the vitality and maturity of our industry.

View from the Digital Media Summit

I haven’t been to an industry conference in a long while, so it was refreshing to move from (generally stuffy) academic conferences to hear about the invigorating realm of digital media in the real world at today's Digital Media Summit in Toronto.

This is the second year of the conference, which runs in collaboration with Canadian Music Week. This was my first time attending the Digital Media Summit, which bills itself as "Canada's social media and iterative conference".  Well, Mesh has some claim to that title and over the years there are have been more such events here in Toronto.  But one day into the conference and it seems to me that the organizers of this event have arranged the best keynote speakers and implemented an effective format.

First off, the format of the conference is much more effective than most – very short speaker intros, short speeches, and a short time for Q&As. And no death by PowerPoint!

The facilities were great too. Too many conference organizers think this doesn't matte, but comfy chairs, enough seating for everyone, and free Wifi are vital to successful conference. The only thing missing was swag! Having been to a ton of conferences I also appreciate how well run things were as sessions started and ended mostly on time (no easy accomplishment).

The speakers were for the most part excellent. Yes, there were a few times when speakers would rehash old  and well-known platitudes and cases (e.g. I'm REALLY tired about hearing the "United Breaks Guitars" example). But there were many provocative, insightful, and invigorating  points made. I can't do justice to everything covered without writing a tome of a blog post that would have me writing it until tomorrow morning as when the conference resumes

So instead, I'll summarize the main points I found particularly interesting.

A Panorama of the Ten Best Views:

1. Amber Mac – ABCs of social media – Adapt Quickly, Be Responsive, and Create Value (here's her presentation).

2. Bryan Segal - Need to move away from Click Through Rate to “viewable impressions” which is reach X frequency that offers “opportunity to see”.

3. Erik Qualman - All companies should write a “Listening Report” that is 1-2 pages long that analyzes what is being said about companies and competition on social media. Can draw from automated metrics but must be hand-written to contextualize the stats.

4. Erik Qualman – organizations need to be aware of their Digital Legacy.  This is their Digital Footprints (what you post about yourself) plus your Digital Shadow (what others people post about you) – both live a long time (forever) online.

5. David Reis - when one of his clients had a image crisis situation, they issued their comments on this in one place, their Facebook page. Rather than respond everywhere on the web, they directed people to Facebook page and allowed people to comment there.  This gave some measure of control and allowed them after a few weeks as the hubbub calmed down to remove the content.

5. Sarah Dawley - the key to generating user-generated content for an organization is to find out what your customers/audience are already doing, and get them to do it on your behalf  - not in a controlling way, but offer amplification, shine your spotlight back on them.

6. Cindy Gallop - on noting that essentially people go online for "little pellets of love" - that is an indication of some sort of appreciation, admiration, acknowledgement, etc. But although I agree with this (and would add people go online for little pellets of self-love too) it seems that when companies try to offer this they are insincere so I asked her how companies can offer sincere, personal and scalable love pellets. She replied that the only way to do this is for organizations to become high-trust companies (most are low-trust) that work with employees and trust them to respond accordingly.

7. Lana Gay - You need to respond to issues that arise online but it is essential to "think twice, tweet once". She advises that although digital is real-time, it's a good idea often to wait maybe 20 minutes before posting something. Lana also commented on the biggest problems with recruiting brand ambassadors to blog about your company is what made them appealing in the first place - their topic focus, their style - get's lost as people begin to shill for dollars, Too many influencer campaigns result in bloggers saying "I love shoes" and then they switch to  "Now I love eggs"!  It's  insincere and ineffective.

8. Jennifer Dunn - her session on hyperlocal targetted advertising was my favourite - not only is her work up my alley, but her campaigns are among the few geo-targetted ad campaigns that I have had heard of that have been successful.  I believe her success lies in that Dunn learned that in geo-targetted marketing proximity is not the only, paramount, or possibly any consideration.  Location of the user does matter, but so do other factors such as environment, time, and demographics. People's wants and needs change throughout the day, based on their contexts, time, and place. Dunn presentation was loaded with so much novel, inspiring work that I plan to devote a full blog post to it at a later date (stay tuned).

9. Ryan Holiday - it's not a good idea to outsource social media interaction as delivering an organization's message to customers is the most important aspect of business. No agency will do a better job - or care as much - about this as you!

10. Ryan Holiday - too many English Canadian websites try to appeal to an American audience (no doubt to broaden their audience as our domestic audience is so comparatively small). Yet, from an advertiser's perspective they have not uniquely captured and segmented the Canadian market, which is what they want. There are a ton of competitors for the U.S. space, but if can't distinguish your Canadian audience then your site is actually worth less.

As lengthy as this post is, it is a small snapshot of the genuinely useful and novel information shared today.  I'm looking forward to tomorrow...

Methods to Study Digital Media

I'm teaching a class next week on "Online research: New challenges & opportunities". In preparation, I was thinking of all the ways to study online (and by this I mean both Internet and mobile) phenomena and to use online methods to study other things.

As I love typologies, I thought I'd prepare one on this.  Although such a list doesn't express the complexity of online research, I thought it would demonstrate the diverse ways to investigate digital media.

Online methods to examine online phenomena:

• computer-captured and compiled data (e.g., web metrics)
• email, virtual reality, VoIP telephone or video call, or instant messaging interviews
• diarying or user logs
• remote observation (participant or nonparticipant)
• online focus groups
• web-based or email surveys
• audience response systems
• remote user testing or experiments
• autoethnography (can be conducted through blogging)

Methods to analyze online phenomena:

• social network analysis
• semiotics or visual analysis
• content analysis
• discourse analysis 
• hermeneutics
• ethnography

Online methods to study offline phenomena:

• web-based or email surveys
• email, virtual reality, VoIP, or instant messaging interviews
• diarying (e.g. through special software or blogs)
• photo documentation via mobile device

Offline methods to study online phenomena (which may or may not involve having users interact with digital media while capturing data):

• face-to-face interviews or focus groups
• nonparticipant observation
• contextual inquiry
• verbal protocol analysis (talk-aloud method)
• eye-tracking studies
• user testing or experiments

As a colleague pointed out there's also design science and participatory design that involves creating digital media as research tool - this type of research could be place in every category.

Please let me know if I missed a major method, as I'd like this typology to evolve iteratively.

Canada's Walk of Fame - Needs Digital Footprints

Since Canada's Walk of Fame started in Toronto's entertainment district in 1998, I thought it was a great way to recognize the accomplishments of notable Canadians. Canadians don't often value their history and culture and the Walk brings prominence to these contributions.

As a physical manifestation of Canadian culture, Canada's Walk of Fame is definitely lacking in digital footprints. There are no people from the Canada's digital media section (i.e. this includes gaming, the Web, mobility, etc). I think this is the year that someone from digital media be inducted!

Suitable category are "Science and Innovation" (Alexander Graham Bell is the only inductee in this category) and  "Visual Arts" category (only Lynn Johnston and Jean-Paul Riopelle).

Only a handful of people are inducted every year and one has to be born in Canada or spent their formative years here and been working in the field for at least 10 years to qualify.

The Walk of Fame encourages submissions and it's really quick and easy (you also get a chance to win a trip to Toronto and tickets to the gala induction ceremony). So I'm starting a campaign to get a Canadian in digital media inducted this year.

A lot of people from my Who's Who in Canadian Digital Media and Technology don't qualify as they haven't met the 10-year career mark. But here are some people that I think would be great nominees:

• Lorne Abony - Petopia, Fun Technologies, Mood Media
• Tim Bray - XML, Open Text
• Garrett Camp - StumbleUpon
• Michael Cowpland - Corel
• William Gibson - scifi author and cyber-visionary
• Murray Goldberg - WebCT (first e-learning platform)
• Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk - founders of gaming studio BioWare

There are lots more. I'd love to hear here if anyone has any specific suggestions - or would like to start a group effort to get one person in particular nominated.

Nominations close April 30, 2012 - so nominate someone today.

The Top 15 Canadians in Digital Media

A blog post that I started a couple years ago in honour of Canada Day to track notable Canadians working in digital media has continued to grow over the years. Backbone Magazine asked me to write an article on this, so I selected 15 Canadians whose contributions to digital media was particularly outstanding.

The article, The Top 15 Canadians in digital media, is the November/December cover story for the print edition of Backbone Magazine. But the article is also available online on Backbone's website (along with other of my blog posts).

The editor of the magazine also started a discussion on LinkedIn to hear from other people on who else should be added to the list. I'd love to keep this list going - encompassing more people and a broader spectrum of industries and roles.








So please offer any suggestions you can think of either on the LinkedIn group or here.

Chicago Is My Kind of Town

I got back this week from a trip to Chicago to celebrate a milestone birthday. After reviewing my trip to Disneyworld in December through the perspective of my interactions with technology, I thought it would be enjoyable to relate here how digital media affected my Chicago trip.

For years, Chicago was the Second City, in that I wanted to go for many years but it was always my second choice. Several years ago when I was thinking of going I signed up for their tourist board's email newsletter. Over the years, I haven't read all their emails sent to me, but I did read some of them. More importantly, it kept the city as a tourist destination on the top of my mind so that when circumstances were right we did think of Chicago. This demonstrates that there is long-term value in online outreach efforts. With email it is easy to measure the click-throughs and response rates for short-term goals, but it is harder to measure the long-term impact such efforts have - but they are effective.

Chicago also captured my interest through their innovative and highly-entertaining project with Foursquare and Facebook last June. They offered special Foursquare badges for people checking into locations from the John Hughes' movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" (set and filmed in Chicago). They also offered a contest to people who supplied details via Facebook of their favourite Bueller location (I entered for the police station where Jennifer Grey and Charlie Sheen are arrested and Sheen has the memorable "Drugs" line.)

Before determining whether or not to go to Chicago, my wife and I did a lot of research online. This has been par for the course for all our trip planning for years now. In addition to googling Chicago, I posted a request for info from my Facebook friends. These efforts were successful in helping us determine that the city would be a great destination and that there was lots there for our specific interests (e.g. family attractions, culture, pizza). My wife is the expert in finding hotel deals online. We've stayed downtown Manhattan, Banff, Prague, Hong Kong,Disney, and now Chicago all for under $100. She also cross references TripAdvisor (a traveller's best friend) to make sure we know what we're getting into. Also, as usual, we booked our flight, hotel, and airport shuttle online.

When thinking about a trip and planning it, I always visit the official tourism website. They are not usually the most definitive source of information, but they usually present the main attractions in an engaging and succinct manner. This is certainly the case with Chicago's official tourism website Explore Chicago. The website had a lot of what I was looking for, but overall I was disappointed with it. It is extremely difficult to find specific locations and even when I did, it was hard to find them again. Their search page is horribly overcomplicated and even when one figures out how to use it, the results presented are awful. I just now tried a search for "stained glass" as the stained glass museum there was one of my favourites. The museum, however, doesn't even appear on this first page of the results and instead a lot of seemingly unrelated stuff is. Even once you find a specific site, the information presented is overly brief and not particularly enticing (and in the case of this museum completely lacking in even one photo). Another bad user experience with the Explore Chicago website is their "Trip Planner" tool. The tool sounds awesome - an interactive, customized trip planner - how useful would that be! In reality, however, if one can find a location to enter into their trip planner and hits the button provided to add it, the site makes a user go through the process of logging in each and every time. It doesn't store log-in information even during an active session. The process of logging in every time I want to add an item is way too cumbersome. Once locations are added it is possible to make a schedule of the items, but that is not a particularly useful functionality. What I wanted and I believe would be the most useful, is to have the locations plotted onto a map so I can determine the vicinity of locations. This functionality would greatly help me determine a schedule and let me visit more stuff - and probably spend more money - so there is a financial incentive for the City to offer this functionality. I stopped using this website early on as it was so unhelpful. Suffice it to say, user experience is crucial and the website can be an enticement or it can be a complete roadblock.

As we were on a budget with this trip, we had to plan our usage of pubic transit. I've yet to find a city yet that had a user-friendly transit system or even barely-adequate way-finding aids. Chicago earns its nickname the windy city and even despite the heat lamps on the L-train stations, we did not want to be out in the cold more than we had to. My wife consulted Chicago's transit website and found it most helpful in linking directly to Google Maps for directions. The city's transfer policy is not properly explained on their website (as it is too complicated to begin with) but the site was useful in presenting basic info such as fares and where to buy passes (not a given with other transit websites, ie. Toronto's).

Once we arrived in Chicago, my interactions with digital media were less frequent than usual as I did not bring my BlackBerry because my carrier (Bell) charges too much for foreign data access. There were many times we really could have used it. It would have been much easier for directions or information on specific locations - instead we had to rely on tourist pamphlets and maps and helpful citizens. I would also have loved my BlackBerry to use Foursquare. I haven’t used Foursquare in weeks as the novelty has worn off and the home-based utility is lacking for me, but when in a new city Foursquare would be invaluable. It would be great to gettargeted tips on restaurants, sites, history, etc. Also, Chicago's tourism industry appears to be embracing Foursquare. I saw posters for Foursquare at various sites encouraging people to check in and offering special deals (which I would have loved).

We did interact with digital media in some cool and helpful ways. Interactive on-the-spot maps (e.g. at the Water Tower Place or the Art Institute) helped us find specific spots. We walked past "The Oprah Store" at least ten times before an interactive map helped us determine it was actually a tiny kiosk. Once there they didn't have the postcards I wanted and the friendly clerk advised me to go to the online store to order them. (I did get to see Oprah's shoes and shirt at least). We noticed interactive maps outside, but considering how hellishly cold it was in Chicago, we weren't inclined to pause long enough to check them out.

There was some cool use of digital media at some of the museums and attractions, but not as cutting edge as I'd like. The Children’s Museum, for instance, was lacking in innovative use of digital media (although outstanding in every other way). The Children’s Museum did have one digital experience that both my daughter and I loved. In their nature section, there are computers and a giant screen. One has their picture taken by a camera and his/her face is transposed onto the body of a bee or butterfly. Then using a bug-shaped controller you can fly your insect-self around the city of Chicago. It was really fun and well executed.

The maze at Navy Pier seemed like an expensive tourist trap, but it was surprisingly really good(unlike most of their counterparts in other cities, such as Niagara Falls). The maze used references from Chicago's history and tied them into immersive audio-visual, spatial experiences and interactive media. For example, images of the great Chicago fire are projected onto a large floor space and guests must stomp out the fire. I've encountered interactive floor media before (Ontario's Science Center makes great use of it) but this was a lot of fun and appropriately-tied to Chicago. They also had a Bears football game on the floor, which was also a lot of fun ("Go Bears").

Another cool use of digital media was at the John Hancock Observatory. We decided to go to there rather than the Sears Tower as I saw on the Explore Chicago that a skating rink had just opened up on the top. I couldn't resist skating at 94 stories high. The multimedia tours seemed interesting rather than just the now obligatory audio tours that everyone still offers. Even though they were included we didn't do them as they require earphones and make the experience too isolating. They have yet to make an automated tour that allows guests to interact with each other - something people travelling together generally want to do. We did enjoy their new interactive telescopes. Made by a Montreal company, they are only available in North America at this location. The telescopes offer the standard functionality of panning and zooming, but where they were really cool is they embed textual and photographic information on top of what you're seeing live - so by touching the screen you can see and learn more than otherwise possible. The telescopes also allow the viewer to change the view to a non-live view of the same thing at different times of day or seasons. My daughter choose the Spanish language version for some reason which detracted from our experience - but otherwise the telescopes were among the most interesting, fun, useful and user-friendly tech I've encountered. There is a lot of hype of augmented reality but very little real application; judging from these telescopes though the functionality is incredible.

The Art Institute of Chicago lacked innovative or creative digital media. Overall, it is one of the best art galleries I have been to in the world. Their collection is really strong in modern and contemporary art, but had no digital media that I could detect. Digital artists are doing creative things online, and it would be great to see a major cultural institution recognize this officially on-site and online. The Art Institute does have a cool feature that allows one to make a "collection" of their favourite works to annotate and share with friends (here's my collection). There are significant usability problems with this feature, but it does make a great souvenir and online conversation starter (I posted it to Facebook).

As we were leaving our hotel, I noticed a poster in the elevator asking guests to friend the hotel. I want to friend Beyonce and Shakira, maybe even the Cheesecake Factory but I'm not sure I have such a close personal bond with a hotel. I do feel that way with the city. We loved our trip to Chicago as it is a rich cultural center. Compared to other cities, it seems Chicago is making better use of digital media. Cities are missing out on how the effective and innovative use of digital media can not only enhance a traveller's visit but offer the city financial benefits as well.

Types of Internet Media

Every time I need to think of how communication is different on Internet media I keep needing to make a mental run-through of all the various distinct Internet media. So to save time next time, here is a list of Internet media. Please let me know if I missed something or included something that should be rolled up.

I'm defining media as a unique form of communication between humans, (so FTP is more of a file exchange than a communication medium). Some mediums blur the distinctions by merging or hosting other mediums.

Typology of Internet media:

1. Website (includes publicly available websites, and private such as intranets & extranets )
2. Mobile website (a website optimized for viewing on a handheld, mobile device)
3. Internet telephony (i.e. Voice-over-Internet Protocol, such as Skype)
4. Internet television (both television channels delivered by the Internet, such as the Bell Fibe service, or individual tv shows offered via the websites of channels)
   
5. Email
6. Instant messaging and chat (I might include Twitter here)
7. Forums/message board (allows threaded text-based conversations)
   
8. Streaming audio (includes podcasts & Internet radio)
9. Streaming video (includes webcasts, podcasts, YouTube videos)
10. Games (includes console-based and online-only)
    
11. eBooks

Within mediums there are genres, so website would have some of the following genres:

• social networking site
• blog
• e-commerce site
• online gambling site
• news
• informational
• wiki

I'm not sure I got this right and I found anyone else that has tried to categorize all Net things like this, so I'm curious what others have to say.