I recently visited San Francisco courtesy of Cross Creative. We were welcomed at some of the most energetic, forward-thinking businesses in the world. These are my notes from the trip for my presentation to everyone at Equator. James Jefferson, Creative Director, Equator

1. goi n g to san Franci s co
Cross creative class of 2011

2. Awesome compani e s
Happy Cog
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G e t S a t i s fa c t i o n
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Fa c e b o o k
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Ya h o o
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IDEO
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Current TV
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Astro Studios
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Snibbe Interactive

3. Happy Cog
Greg Storey ........ Head of Happy Cog West

5. 20-ODD PEOPLE
~ Virtual company
Set up ~ SF, NY, Philly
~ Timezone is a challenge
~ Centralize in Minnieapolis
~ Prod. Hub with sales centres
~ The anti-agency
~ Essential that team write & dribbble

6. $100K FOR STARTERS
~ Local creative mornings, run by Greg
~ Razorfish starts at $1m – Travelocity was $100m
~ Walk-away if relationship isn’t right
~ Set ground rules for new clients
~ Interview previous incumbents
New busi n ess
~ Sell blocks of time rather than time and materials
~ Scoping includes client-side change guidelines

7. Getting agile
~ 2 weeks of stakeholder interviews
~ UX...GFX...Development waterfall
Process ~ Extended templates – components & inventory
~ Board sponsor for all projects
~ UX – Often use craigslist to recruit
~ Team checkpoints – weekly, monthly, quarterly
~ Over-communicate
~ Morning Scrum, Thursday directors, Campfire

8. Get sati s facti o n
Thor Muller ........ Founder

10. Out of an accident...
~ Discovered the power of engaged customer
~ 50,000 customers
~ 30 people in the business
~ “Brand transformation” – joined-up engagement
~ Social and CRM connected

11. facebook
Ga re t h D av i e s ........ P l at f orm M a n a g e r

13. More users than Google
Si z e
~ 3,000 people
~ More computing power than Google
~ World’s largest gaming platform – 200m gamers/month
~ Annual goals to reduce load-times – progressive loading etc
~ Very iterative development – no roadmap

15. Grow slowly!
~ 6 week bootcamp for new-starts
~ Product launch gong
~ Staff generated content on the walls
~ Weekly all-hands with “Zuck” – 4pm friday
culture ~ Monthly exec all-hands for everyone
~ Tech talks, team sharing
~ Talks are recorded and streamed
~ External speakers – Bush, Gore, Perry!
~ Move fast.
~ Practice empathy
~ “We’re just getting started”

17. It’s All about mobile
~ Mobile growing faster than the web, twice as engaged
~ India, high mobile use – massive opportunity
~ Unrivalled targeting – Niche fashion is 30m people!
~ Synchronous games – surface when relevant.
vi s i o n

18. yahoo
B e n S t r o n g . . . . . . . . H e a d o f P r o d u c t f o r Ya h o o ! S p o r t s

20. 1/2bn users
~ Yahoo Sports, No1 Global sports site
i n si g hts ~ 12-14m users/month
~ “The web establishment”
~ iPhone - 40% of traffic for recent fantasy game
~ Hack days:
2 days of ideas, nominate owners, create
prototype in 24hrs.

21. i d eo
D a v i d W e b s t e r . . . . . . . . Pa r t n e r

25. T-shaped people
~ 25 partners, monthly strategy & vision
~ Week-long hiring process (mini intern)
~ Transparent career navigation
~ Workmap:
careers
~ “What do you want to make happen?”
~ “How are you going to do that?”
~ “How can we help?”

27. Open design
Process
~ Radical collaboration
~ Publicise their open design process
~ Concept teams consist of 3-6 people
~ Fail Fast – Make it real as fast as possible
~ Project leader that manages project & client

28. Radi c al collaborati o n

29. Trolleys to sui t es

30. Ideo.org
~ Not for profit organisation
~ Sabbaticals for designers
~ Pump designed to be manufactured locally
vi s i o n

31. Current tv
Joanna Drake Earl ........ COO

33. Al Gore et al
Background
~ Founded by Al Gore and Joel Hyatt in ’04
~ Vision to democratise TV
~ Counter negative myth-building in news
~ Took a few years to break oligopoly
~ From UGC to participatory cooks

34. firsts
groundbreaki n g
~ Fastest growing network
~ First to put UGC on TV
~ First partner to put Twitter on TV
~ First UGC reviews with Rotten Tomatoes
~ First crowd-sourced news reports

35. 30-40% UGC
~ Demographics:
i n si g hts
25-35, male skew, SKY & Virgin in UK
~ New formats :
~Bar Karma – Crowd-sourced story lines.
~ UGC advertising:
~ 9-1 preferred by audiences
~ $5000-10000, 5-6 week turnaround

37. Astro studi o s
Ian Myles ........ Founder & CEO

39. A mini ideo
~ Multi-disciplinary design team
i n tro ~ About 25 people
~ OnLive – Streaming games - $40 investment from HTC
~ Alien Gaming PC – Bought by HP for $200m
~ Designed the new Xbox 360

40. “Mild to wild”
~ Getting clients to take risks is critical
~ Collaborative critiquing
~ Basketball tournament
i n si g hts

42. Sni b be i n teracti v e
Brian Hageman ........ VP BD

43. Gesticulating
i n tro ~ Gesture-based experiences
~ Brand recall in public events
~ 3d infra-red camera (Kinect)

46. Thank you and goodni g ht