As traditional agencies embrace digital more fully, they are learning from those before them about what works -- and what doesn't. CP + B has stood out by creating a culture of making things, even when there is no assignment. The agency's chief digital officer, Ivan Perez-Armendariz, discusses this concept more fully.
Presenter: Ivan Perez-Armendariz, chief digital officer, CP+B @ivanpa
And today we’re going to talk about the culture of making at agencies.
Turns out this culture of making conversation is big right now outside of advertising too. Chris Anderson recently wrote a new book called Makers and he was interviewed on TechCrunchTV last week, so lets start by hearing what he has to say about this.
What does this mean?How is the digital revolution evolving into the physical revolution?
Reason #1: ArduinoWhat is it?It’s a prototyping technology for making things that can sense and control objects in the physical world.What does sensing enable?Sensing means we can make things that take action based on physical conditions such as temperature, humidity, distance, light, sound, voltage, RFIDs, etc. Your desktop computer can’t sense any of those things. Your phone can sense only some of those. Why is it trending?Its one of the first examples of OPEN SOURCE hardware. Think about it, open source (free, but enterprise quality products) have been a major driver of the web entreprenurialsm. Without open source we lose the databases, programming languages, and operating systems that make up the web. Well now we have the equivalent of an open source accessible tool for building THINGS, not just apps.Its literally connects the binds the digital world to the physical world.The result is a world of possibility.
And one of those possibilities is the invention of the Ruffletron.I found that on the internet, FYI.
Reason #2: MakerbotWhen you’re glueing the digital and physical world together, you all of the sudden have an increased need to make things that connect perfectly with your digital inputs and outputs. That’s where Makerbot, the 3D printer comes in. Makerbot physically makes objects from 3D design files. The objects are made by dropping filament pieces into a 3 dimensional dot matrix like grid.
I found this on thingverse.com. It was made with a makerbot.
So was this. Its much more useful.An iphone charger that fits over a case.
Physical + DigitalGet story.
What does this mean to agencies? It means that one indicator that you've created a maker culture is that you have a physical computing lab.This is the CP+B physical computing lab in Boulder.
Hologram
This is a web-enabled internet-controlled electromechanical pneumatic snow cannon that we built!The cannon fired two simultaneous snowballs, one from the cannon barrel, one from a catapult mounted on the cannon. At full pressure, the cannon's range was over 100 yards.The controller was Arduino board interfacing with a Flash Media Server and custom-built circuit board.One shot actually dropped Rob Reilly, forcing him to retire for a few minutes.
Techcrunch 2
At agencies, software is still king. Explain why:We’re making communications, not just products.Our communications are experiences. They’re interactive, they’re inside platforms where people already hang out (iOS, facebook), they capture data, and they make intelligent decisions based on available context. All of this requires software.
Gulp. At agencies, its actually is a little scary to think we’re competing with this list up here to hire ourmakers.
Do you know how to recruit software developers away from those firms?
Our clients reward us for being first.
Like the world’s first shazamable TV spot.
Or the world’s first mobile-enhanced theatre experience.
Dancingjello that can successfully detect beats per minute from your itunes playlist.The list goes on and on. And its not just apps. We also get rewarded with things like the first augmented reality banner. Or the first emotionally intelligent banner.
Developers need to know that experimentation is the common denominator of these experiments.I asked a few of our developers to tell me what technologies they’ve experimented in the last 6 months and the list blew me away.
Android Ice Cream Sandwich
Android Jelly Bean
Arduino
Apple Passbook
Adobe Edge
Altova XML Spy
Amazon cloud
Azure
Backbone JS
Biztalk
Cake PHP
Code Igniter
.net
Eclipse
Elastic Computing
Expression Engine
Facebook API
Google Maps
Google Analytics
Google Plus Hangouts
Google Street View
Grunt
Heroku
HTML 5 Canvas
HTML 5 device orientation
Instagram
ios5
ios6
Jquery
Kinect
laravel
magento
Meteor JS
ASP
MICROSFOT expression blend 3
Microsoft surface
Modx CMS
Mongo DB
Mysql
Nodejs
Nuodb
objc
Open framework
PHP
Pinterest API
Processing
Rackspace
Raphael JS
Redis
Require JS
RFID
Ruby on Rails
sitecore
SQL Server
Test Flight
Twitter API
Visual Studio
Web GL
Webistrano
Wii remote
Windows phone
Word Press
Xcode
XMPP
Yelp
Youtube
Raspberry PiThe Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video. We want to see it being used by kids all over the world to learn programming.
1.2 mill orders per week at $23 each.
How do you create a culture of making?Is having developers and giving them tools enough?What about client assignments? Are they the enabler or do they get in the way?Can we solely rely on client assignments? Probably not.
Some agencies have solved this by forming incubators.
Tell the sugar daddy story.Explain why we killed it: patent infringement + operators.
1.2 mill orders per week at $23 each.
1.2 mill orders per week at $23 each.
Whaaaaaaaa??????
Whaaaaaaa????
Our answer to incubation is Product Innovation. More strategic and carefully considered business ventures that include two must haves:Joint venture with a separate group that acts as the operatorVC funding
Our joint venture product innovation portfolio.
We’re also innovating in digital. Tell Smoke Alarm story. Discuss why its not a patent risk.
So if incubators are out, how do you create a culture of making? Are we solely dependent on our clients approving our ideas?
Invest in developers beyond what the FTE models allow.Invest in developers beyond what the production dollars allow.Build “slack” into the system.