March 2008

Process Pattern: Crowd Unifier

30 Mar 08
in

From WNYC's RadioLab episode called "Contact":

The Conan O'Brien show has a person called the 'crowd unifier', whose role is to "unify" the crowd prior to show's start. The unifier starts about half an hour before the show, trying to get the crowd to think and behave as one, to have the same mood - purportedly so that their mood influences the mood of the TV viewers watching the show. Sometimes the unifier's job is easy - when the weather's lousy, for instance - but other times he has to resort to tactics like

  • the state game: singling people from a particular state or country out to connect the crowd at their expense
  • picking out the loudest: and shutting them up
  • giving them stuff: handing out gift certificates if the crowd gets too feisty

This is in the context of a segment of the show on crowd control, but it strikes me as a potential process pattern: a short warm-up exercise just before a (participatory) design exercise to get everybody in good humour and, more importantly, to get them to agree about the purpose and nature of the activity. This kind of thing tends to get called "alignment" or "getting everybody on the same page" in corporate circles - but somehow 'crowd unifier' seems particularly appropriate to this situation.

Caveats: this particular pattern operates under certain assumptions

  • the crowd is heterogeneous
  • the crowd is a poorly connected social network
  • the crowd members are unlikely to convene again

In short, the Conan O'Brien show has a crowd whose members do not have any investment in each other - so the unifier is free to pull and push the crowd apart using tactics like those above, and also to treat each instance as a new beginning. Probably not a wise thing to try at your next design team meeting.

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Lipstick proof cups and other oddities

27 Mar 08
in

lipstick-proof cup?

This is a lipstick-proof cup, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for the Imperial Hotel in Japan: the red edge prevents lipstick stains from being visible. Of course, this only works if you're right-handed. The tour guide at the meyer may house was unable to confirm that this was indeed the intention of the designer...

I also found paper flatteners, rotary window openers, umbrella stands and even a handle set into a wall. See the photo set for more details.

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Microfinance comes to music

26 Mar 08
in

From Tune Your World: 1,000 True Fans to Launch Calabash's Music Microfunding Platform!

What's the solution for how to survive as a struggling musician in the 21rst Century?

According to Wired Magazine editor Kevin Kelly's article, 1,000 True Fans,  an artist needs to find only 1,000 core fans -- defined as those who will buy everything produced by the artist. If each 'True Fan' is willing to give up a day's wage ($100)  each year to support the artist, then an artist can earn $100,000 per year.

It's a simple formula for artist success and it is exactly the path that Calabash is currently developing to allow fans to microfund working musicians. Calabash is changing the way the world finances music by applying the principles of microfinancing to the music industry.

This is impressive - crossover from international development ideas to music. The important idea here, and the difference between something like emusic/magnatune is that instead of framing the buyer's contribution to the artist as a percentage of the sale price, which makes understanding one's total contribution difficult (what's 1385 x 0.75 x 65c in dollars?) this system foregrounds the total contribution one makes and connects it with the artists total income. The system appears to be currently designed in the style of Wikipedia-style "fund drives", with a chart tracking the current contributions vs the overall goal.

What is interesting about this is that it is easier for someone to make a value estimation on an artists' music and pay appropriately, but also to know how well (or badly) a favourite artist is doing, and pitch in appropriately. If I find my favourite Garifuna musician is  barely scraping by at $35,000 a year, I'll put more of my music budget towards him than, say, Bjork. Not only is this more power to the artists, this is also more power to the people.

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underflow

25 Mar 08
in

0321_172409

the display (oriented towards the purchaser) on this point of sale terminal counts upto $99,999.99 - however, this is in a neighbourhood grocery store, where the chance of such a large sale is, let's say, highly unlikely... would have been much more useful to have used a portion of the display to show the last item scanned along with the total...

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6 Moments in a Concert: Additions to the Experience

17 Mar 08
in

Extra-performative elements of a recent concert by the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra.

  1. The preliminary discordance: which is not actually a discordance, but the simultaneous tuning of a full set of instruments before the performance begins
  2. The turning of the pages: as the choir sings, and reaches the end of one page; there are ripples of page-turning that pass through the choir, regions of coordination, late-turners, all visually apparent as little bits of white appearing and disappearing across the sober black field of choir robes
  3. The standing up of the choir: as the choir gets up from their benches (but why do they do that?) there is a momentary hush; robes rustle together like a breaker on a shore, and suddenly the choir is still, poised, ready to deliver
  4. The putting-down of the violins: twenty violins go from neck to knee, from horizontal to vertical, all at the same moment. And wait. The reverse is not quite as spectacular.
  5. The coughs in the silence: during interludes in the music, coughs pop out like firecrackers, as if they had been held back and could not be resisted any longer. Echoes travel round the auditorium and set off further rounds of coughing, like a ball in a pinball machine that has been hit too hard.
  6. The crackle of flipping through the program: as the music drops to a gentle whisper, just moments after a sheer crescendo, the pages of hundreds of program booklets crackle as they are turned by an audience intent on following the words, unaware that the effect they have on a sensitive listener is not unlike the sound of a million locusts alighting on a dry cornfield. But they intend well, so we forgive them
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