Without going into too much detail, the session I attended focussed on Education data and its online access by public and professionals alike.

The surgery is very strict in timekeeping with 10 minutes to ‘pitch’ and 10 minutes of Q&A questions. I used my time to try to enhance the vision. I tried to emphasise the need for any large ICT solution not to be pre-prescribed and devoid of exploration, ideas and imagination.

This approach was as a result of being involved in many Government tenders where the ITT (Invitation to Tender) already defines the solution or concentrates on areas which I consider should only be defined once the scope is known. The existing approach maybe ideal to get comparative costs from suppliers, but it doesn’t allow boundaries to broaden or innovation to flourish.

The project I discussed at the surgery is extremely exciting. The potential to benefit the education sector is huge. But to realise the opportunity you need to understand the needs and expectations of the people who will ultimately use the solution. You also need to understand how they want to use it, benchmark other applications and think of the roadmap.

For this project expectations should be high, as it is obvious that the age group of teachers and parents is increasingly inline with the expert/web savvy users of the internet.

With audience groups defined and willing to contribute you can discover not just what they feel, but also use face-to-face sessions to brainstorm and innovate for the future. Using prototypes, sketches, proof of concepts and good old drawings, ideas can come to life and stakeholders can start to recognise the impact and value that can be generated. Add benefits and business case data to support this and the design phase becomes very compelling.

The future of digital is changing. People’s expectations of accessing data are becoming much more demanding. Ownership of 6 connected devices (Desktop, laptop, tablet, mobile, games console and TV) is becoming increasingly commonplace. New sites will need to cater for these varieties of interaction methods. The advancement of Responsive Web Design will be key. Sites built over the next few years will need to realise this.

So my message to Government was that they need to provide the mechanism for ideas to be explored by designers in an environment that is not prohibitive. We can’t do this work during a tender submission and we can’t quote for the unknown as we become uncompetitive. Hence innovation is left at the back door. If you ask for X you get X but what if Y was better (or X.5)!

Creating a distinct design and research phase will allow the opportunities to be explored and then when new business cases are built you can confidently set budgets and define technology, methodology etc.

With projects as large and important as tendered by DfE, I’d imagine that you’d even be able to invite agencies to work together at this critical stage for the good of the nation.

It is great that I was given the opportunity to attend. There seems a real shift in Government to change thinking and improve interaction between the wider business community (SMEs) and central departments.

The UK excels at creative services. For the government to get the same level of innovation and design as the private sector has to be a target.

Find out more about responsive design at Smashing Magazine.

Box 1 – Letterbox

When was the last time you wrote a letter? Not a business letter, Christmas card or complaint, but a heartfelt, personal letter?

When did you last receive such a letter?

For me it was about a decade ago and I’ve almost forgotten how good it feels to open a letter, personally written to me.

It seems that personal letter writing is dead. Generally speaking, the only things dropping though my letterbox now are junk mail and bills.

Box 2 – Inbox

I guess it was email that killed personal letter writing. And why not? Email delivery is pretty much instantaneous; and you don’t need to buy a stamp.

However, it appears that what-goes-around-comes-around as email is going the same way as the post. Now my inbox just fills up with marketing material, job adverts or emails from people who want a piece of me.

Box 3 – Soapbox

So the joy of receiving a long, personal letter or email has gone; replaced by look-at-me social media.

Why take time to “touch” someone on a personal level when you can climb on your soapbox and broadcast to all of your friends at the same time, particularly if you can do it in 140 characters or less?

But let’s face it – they’re mostly not your friends anyway; they’re just people you know. A little.

And why write something personal to someone, then post it somewhere 1100 people can also see it?

Indeed, I think that social media *can* sometimes do more harm than good. After all, do you really get a truthful picture of how someone is doing, based on their updates? Of course not. When did you last see an update like: “I’m really struggling with life at the moment“, or “No one takes an interest in me“?

Likewise, you can look at people’s airbrushed updates, and end-up feeling inadequate and unappreciated.

The Next Big Thing

I assume that social media (as we know it today) will go the same way as the post and email. I’m therefore going to chat with the collective creative genius at Redweb to see if we can come-up with some concepts for the next form of digital communication:

• It needs to be easy to use
• It needs to be fun (email is passé)

Above all though, it needs to recapture something of the joy of receiving a letter, knowing that it’s personally written to you (and only you). There’s real value in that.

If you would like to comment, please use the social media links below. Or, instead, why not surprise me by writing me a letter?

Yours sincerely
Howard Bayliss

The future of publishing is an interesting topic that’s been floating around for a while. The written word will forever be popular but what formats are best suited to deliver it in, now and in the future? And how will traditional publishing and revenue models have to change to keep up?

The room was full, with a mix of authors, publishers and digital folk. Through each session: ‘innovation and the book’, ‘making money from digital’, ‘Pioneers or playing it safe?’ and ‘inventing the future’ there was a great sense of openness and honesty. It was clear that each section of the audience had a lot to learn but was equally eager to help where they could.

We saw some wonderful new work. Meg Geldens of Touch Press showed off a couple of beautiful iPad apps that bring content to life in magical ways. Dave Addey of Agant Ltd walked us though their Malcolm Tucker: The Missing Phone app that reinvents what you think ‘book’ content might be.

There were many more examples highlighting that if we can mix the best from the publishing world with the very best of what the digital world has to offer – agile approaches, digital strategy and engagement models, people shaped design, experimentation and innovation, then the future of the book, whether in body or soul will be an exciting landscape.

The last session ‘How to innovate’, was when I left my comfortable seat behind and had to get up and onto the stage myself.

I talked briefly about hack projects, why we often work this way and how we approach them. For us, hack projects have proved to be low cost, low risk, liberating, fast and exciting ways to get experimental work made and functioning ready for evaluation and improvement. A very pure, yet realistic way of innovating.

Here’s my slides:

And yes, while I was in Bristol I did collect Damian’s Champagne, and he was very lucky to get it back unopened!

I won a bottle of champagne at the last one I went to from the lovely chaps at Signal Networks, although I’ve yet to work out how I can get back to Bristol to claim it.

Photo credit

Bubbly aside, the setup at Vision Bristol in November will take some beating and their formula for success is pretty simple.

First, set a theme for the event well in advance.

This year’s undercurrent was all about how to go about selling ideas, showing their tangible value and how critical they are in the business process.

Second, ensure value for money with industry recognised speakers on multiple tracks giving plenty of choice.

Highlights for me this year were Ogilvy‘s Rory Sutherland, Pentagram‘s Harry Pearce, Creative Matter‘s Patrick Collister and Melissa from Coaching Creatives.

Thirdly, make time for questions in each session and breaks in between, so everyone has a chance to contribute and to network.

The calibre of the speakers and the ticket price ensure that the people who attend are serious about what they do.

Finally, top and tail the whole show with keynote speakers you’d kill to see so everyone stays right to the end.

Photo credit

This year the conference ended with a fantastic presentation from Dave Trott about how he simplifies the whole process down in order to aid selling creativity and ideas into a client.

Dave did an hour long presentation using no slides or prompts, just a few markers and a couple of flip charts which left a lasting impression on me.

He couldn’t have done it any other way.

And it was the most engaging of all the talks I saw at Vision both this year and last year.

Which goes to show, that it isn’t always the quality of the deck that’s key to getting your message across to a large audience.

I am currently reading Dave’s book, and those familiar with his writing style will recognise the homage in this post too.

So I have been left with plenty to think about for next year and how I can bring some of the new thinking and ideas that were discussed into the studio in 2012.

But more importantly for now, I need to get my hands on that champers!

In 2011 we designed, built, and launched several new web sites for our clients. We’ve ‘killed it’ in pitches and won some exciting new projects. We’ve seen some of our bravest ideas get taken forward, and we’ve been shortlisted for more awards than ever before.

None of this would have been possible without our Redweb staff who have spent the year working hard and playing even harder. So, to help say thanks, we decided to throw an end of year party and celebrate the very best of 2011.

Our very first Redweb Awards party had everything: lasers, fairy lights, drapes, balloons, helium stars, cheesy music, celebrity voice overs, Christmas pudding vodka and our very own comedy comperes.

Here’s the full photo set

We’re now having a well earned break and we look forward to what 2012 will bring. Happy Christmas!

In this article I hope to explain what that advantage is.

First, what is SharePoint?

In a nutshell, SharePoint is used for Enterprise Content Management and it’s one of Microsoft’s key server platforms. It has evolved over a decade or so into a stable, reliable product. People use SharePoint to build:

• Public websites
• Intranets and extranets
• Bespoke applications

The latest version is SharePoint 2010 and it’s available in a number of different flavours depending on what you want to do with it (a full comparison of features can be found here).

Even the most basic version of these flavours (SharePoint Foundation 2010) is incredibly feature-rich. It’s also free (meaning it has no specific licensing requirements) and it can be downloaded from Microsoft’s website.

Configuration vs Customisation

In my experience, the software I’m asked to build nearly always has a common set of requirements, namely:

• Store data in SQL Server
• Provide a user-interface to allow users to list, create , update and delete data
• Allow data to be indexed and searched by end-users
• Provide a separate user-interface for administrators
• Use security groups to manage users and control access rights
• Record error messages in a central log
• Generate usage reports
• Provide an end-user help interface

SharePoint has all of this functionality built-in. In fact, the list above is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the functionality that it gives you. It means we can create software using more configuration and less customisation. By doing so, we are making use of functionality created (and tested) by Microsoft, which reduces build-time and cost to our customers.

A case in point is Duke Energy, who built their intranet on SharePoint. Despite only using configuration (and zero custom code), Jakob Nielsen ranked it as one of the top 10 global intranets.

The paid-for versions of SharePoint 2010 add many more features, not limited to: advanced web content management, enterprise-level search, user profiles, personal sites, social networking and business intelligence reporting.

All of this built-in functionality can be useful in terms of satisfying customer requirements; reducing the need to write custom code.

Help

Another advantage of using a popular Microsoft product is that, if we need it, there’s help out there. Many Content Management Systems (CMS) from other vendors do not provide anywhere near the quality or quantity of developer support.

SharePoint help is in the form of:

• Excellent and comprehensive technical documentation provided by Microsoft
• A myriad of independent technical blogs
• Microsoft Premier Support

In my experience, if you have a business-critical issue, Premier Support will jump on it and (pretty much) stay on the telephone until the issue is resolved.

Programming interfaces

Most CMSs only provide a single, server-side programming interface.

However, all versions of SharePoint provide multiple programming interfaces, which make it quicker to develop and test code that integrates with SharePoint. These interfaces are powerful and include:

• A server-side .NET interface
• A client-side interface that can be called directly by JavaScript or Windows apps
• Built-in web services
• Microsoft PowerShell

The PowerShell interface is particularly handy as you can use it out-of-the-box, without needing to compile and deploy custom code.

In summary

These three facets of SharePoint 2010 help us to build excellent SharePoint solutions, such as an intranet for Action on Hearing Loss (formerly RNID) and our SharePoint radio station Redio.

Written by Howard Bayliss

It will certainly not come as a surprise to the people who know me, that I am passionate about behavioural economics. I’m driven by a self-fulfilling crusade to develop a deeper level of behavioural insight and the underlying psychology that influences the decisions people make.

So, the other day I was watching a video stream on Exploring the Science of Creativity from Cannes Lions by Jonah Lehrer, author of The Decisive Moment: How the brain makes up its mind (check it out, it’s very good) and Matthew Wilcox, Executive Director from the Institute of Decision Making. They talk about the science of creativity and how moments of inspiration come when you’re not focused on trying to “find that creative idea”.

Then, almost to illustrate Lehrer’s point, I started thinking about companies/brands that overlook some quite fundamental issues when marketing within the social landscape.

What I am about to say here isn’t particularly new and has been said before to varying degrees. However, marketing departments seem remarkably complacent in their attitude toward social marketing and therefore I don’t think it does any harm to keep this debate alive. People that know me will vouch that I am not averse to voicing my thoughts…..opinions even!

My observation is that all too often, marketers approach social media with the same attitude and mindset as they take with regards to traditional marketing through broadcast media.

The fundamental mistake is that social media is more personal and de-centralised in nature. Whilst there are varying degrees of personal interaction and investment, it is important to understand that a fundamentally different approach is needed.

Companies that have been able to integrate behavioural insight into a cohesive social marketing strategy are reaping the benefits.

I’ve listed some general points of (ahem) advice to any marketers in the process of defining a social media strategy:

1. Don’t try the direct sell. People tend to interact with each other in a social space out of a need to feel valued, wanted and part of something. Running Twitter feeds or Facebook posts that just pour out an endless stream of the latest product offers are more likely to meet resistance (and almost certainly a potential backlash from your audience) rather than fostering a deeper sense of loyalty and uptake. The Starbucks “My Starbucks Idea” campaign is a case in point….The great thing about their campaign isn’t just that they acquired (and continue to acquire) a huge amount of business ideas for free, but that they’re also generating brand awareness and customer engagement as a by-product. This means it’s something that happens as a result of other seemingly unrelated sales-focused activity.
2. Communicate more information about things of interest and what is going on within your company on a day to day basis. Open up and let people see who YOU are….this will have the effect of “humanising” your company/brand, and as a result your audience will feel naturally more inclined to buy your products if they identify or relate to you on a more “intimate” and personal level. Tone of voice and pitch are absolutely key here – seek out people within your organisation that are passionate about your brand, work, products and services and leverage their enthusiasm to communicate on your behalf……as ambassadors!
3. Carry out a risk assessment. One of the things that I have observed is how ill-prepared organisations are for negative comments being posted about them in social media environments. The decentralised nature of social media lends itself to open and frank dialogue and it is therefore essential that a strategy is in place for dealing with instances of “negative” feedback. It is important to remember that any negative comment or post by one of your customers provides your brand with an opportunity to engage with them in a positive way!
4. Use social media to address your customers concerns directly and provide a more personalised and effective level of customer service and engagement. Social media provides an ideal opportunity to offer a more fluid and personal degree of customer care. The more your customers feel that you “care” about THEM individually, the better they will feel towards you and, as a result your company gains more of what I call “social value”. This positive experience will likely have a far greater psychological impact within the customer’s decision-making process than anything that you as a brand can say about how wonderful your product is or how much of a discount is on offer.
5. Keep it real and speak your customers’ language. The point is not that you are Nike, Starbucks, Adidas or Next etc, but that you are someONE from that brand. Keeping this front of mind when developing a social marketing strategy is important and ensures a more congruent message.

The fundamental principles involved in developing any effective social media strategy are not too dissimilar from the inherent principles involved in any good design. It’s about developing a “feel” and a deep understanding of your audience. This insight, together with a sense for the issues or questions your audience may have will allow you to communicate in a way that resonates and creates a positive experience. Furthermore, customers who have had a positive experience in their interaction with your brand are more likely to tell others, post a status update or tweet about it.

To summarise, it is important that brands understand the REAL value of social media. They know the context in which more targeted, personal and subtle forms of communication are possible. It is important that they understand a key guiding principle, which is that people WILL buy your products if they FEEL good about your brand. Social media by its nature provides a fantastic opportunity to open up and let your customers experience the essence and the personality of your organisation.

SharePoint2010

Our team is made up of a handful of very talented developers who are passionate about SharePoint, a CMS they work with everyday, almost to the point of obsession. We had started a few weeks before, meeting regularly to talk about some of key areas in which SharePoint could help us. We looked into; SharePoint My Sites, search and indexing, business intelligence, connectivity to external business apps, and content management and asset libraries. Our final solution uses a little of each of these, with one of the most overheard phrases during the 32 hour hack project being:

“Don’t worry, SharePoint already does that”

The problem

We’ve been putting a lot of work into our office recently, we have new collaborative areas, a hideaway suite, our innovation lab of course, and a lot of new cool things on our walls – murals & whiteboards, paste walls, world records, books, quotes, awards and photos. But there’s often one thing missing – music

It seems like our studio’s so large these days that tunes can be a bit of a problem. If we play something one end, it’s often so quiet the other end that it’s annoying. If we turn it up then half our staff can’t hear themselves think. Then there’s the added problem of agreeing on what to listen to, and the curse of everyone employing earphones which can be horribly anti social.

The solution

The team decided they would come to the rescue by building Redweb radio, or Redio, where everyone would have a DJ profile, be able to make play lists and schedule them into the weeks programme. In addition we’d have collaborative play lists, theme days, voting on play lists, and, very excitingly, everyone would be able to record and publish their own adverts or announcements that we’d insert randomly before set expiry dates.

Inputs

To avoid most of the music legal issues we decided not to import everyone’s MP3 files, and instead concentrated on streaming in music from web based services like Spotify, SoundCloud, Lastfm, GrooveShark and YouTube. Ads & announcements are captured with webcams, built in mics and standard Windows applications

In the middle

SharePoint helps us with profiles, scheduling, calendars, notices, libraries, archives and managing the music playback. It was great to have such a robust and functional system at the core holding everything together

Outputs

The output is a music stream, split into half hour slots from one DJ at a time, so everyone gets an equal chance to play whatever they want. It’s going to be interesting to see how it works.

The stream also contains Redio stings, and staff generated announcements at random points, to help fill the gaps between play lists

Aaaarggghhh!

It sounded like a simple plan but as ever with hack projects there’s always something hiding around the corner to give you a nasty surprise. With Redio, we had more than our fair share of corners and some very nasty surprises. We’re still working on some of these right now, including legal issues and the stringent T&C’s of various streaming services.

We had various playback problems too which we got round by having all our players on one ‘HQ’ machine. This ‘HQ’ machine was told what to play by SharePoint, but it was muted to avoid time lag with our ‘satellite’ machines. It was these ‘satellite’ machines that had speakers attached and which boomed out the music, each one reading and mirroring the soundcard of ‘HQ’

Phew!

All that was left was to present Redio to the rest of Redweb, and for extra excitement, we were joined by Dan Haywood from Microsoft’s Digital Marketing Platform Group, via a Lync video call. The team took a big gulp when he told us he’d shared the live video URL with others at Microsoft and the twitterverse.

With just minutes to go before the deadline we finally got everything working for the first time.

Dan recorded our presentation and you can view it on Microsoft’s Skydrive here

And here’s the full #RedwebHack7 photo set from the two days

Thanks for tuning in!

With HTML5 it’s possible to interrogate a sound playing within a web browser and return a data feed. The data is based on the amplitude of the sound and is recorded every tenth of a second. The tough part was grabbing hold of the data, but Jon never gave up and eventually got some code working. Once accessed, Jon then used the data to edit CSS properties within the webpage, to define shape, size and colour of elements in real time as the sound played

Here’s the finished application: http://labs.redweb.com/pitchr

And Jon kept a good record of his experiments and progress in this blog

Here’s a few interesting outcomes and you can see how visual elements can be manipulated depending on the sound playing

And here’s a last word from Jon

“All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Redweb and feel pleased to have been able to work with people who’ve around in the Interactive Media industry for a many years. I’m proud of the project I prodcued, which I’ll be taking further in my final year’s studies and I’m very grateful for all I’ve learnt”

So what are my predictions for 2012?

1. In 2012, with the uptake of browsers supporting HTML5, multimedia paid advertising is going to exponentially increase.

If the major search engines are going to increase the integration of multimedia into their non-paid adverts, it would be a reasonable assumption that non-paid CTR would increase. An increase in non-paid CTR would lead to a decrease in paid revenue. Therefore, the only way to lead multimedia in the SERPs would be to lead it with paid adverts. We have started seeing this happening with product ads already. With product ads, there is little control, reporting or targeting with this format.

2. In 2012, remarketing adverts are not going to be constrained to the GCN and will break out onto the SERP pages.

Remarketing has proved itself as a very profitable tool, but it’s currently only available on the GCN which is a bit of a limitation. Although, this is the only profitable product on the GCN. My prediction for 2012 is that remarketing adverts will start to be shown in the SERP pages, initially as text ads, but eventually in rich media.

3. Phone tracking becomes a standard in PPC advertising

Google has fully rolled out its phone tracking. This is a great way to fill that big black box where everyone’s data goes when they convert from online to offline. This software exists and has existed before, but generally has been very cumbersome to set up and maintain. Having better integration with Adwords will make this data more accessible to clients with smaller site development budgets.

4. Google to offer a fully functioning premium CRM system

My biggest prediction (I might be wrong & I have no insider knowledge to back this up) is I believe Google are working on an integrated CRM system. Think about all the data that they have at their disposal, every piece of information that you could ever want to know about your clients.

Ok, there might be some privacy issues, but imagine two TV sales scenarios.

Standard CMS – You sell digital TVs, and three years ago, you sold Mrs Smith a 34” HD TV. She has sat in your standard customer database for 3 years. You may have received a warranty card from her 30 months ago and to thank her, you may have spammed her with a couple of emails. She is now bored with her old TV, searches on the internet and buys a brand new 3D TV that day from one of your competitors, you and your sales team don’t know that anything had changed.

Google CMS – Again, the same customer is sat in your database, but this time it is powered with Google data. Mrs Smith at 4:15 on 12th September logs into Google and searches “3D TV offers”. This causes the Google CMS to spring into action.

1. Your automated rules in Adwords ensure that for this user, your ads have maximum prominence for her next two search queries – “50” Plasma TV” and “3D TV”. She also sees that her friend Hillary has commented on your advert with the paid search social extensions.

2.  Your company’s Google+ account sends links to the most recent 3D TV buyers guides on YouTube and links to your companies Blogger blog posts.

3.  Your Google Docs account shares your 3D TV checklist document with her while telling her all the pros and cons of her prospective purchase.

4.  Knowing your inventory and pricing from your Google Merchant feed, a GCN remarketing advert is created and a personalised Google offer is sent to her Gmail account.

5. Unsure about something, Mrs Smith calls your company using a Google click-to-call phone extension asking about delivery times. Your call centre staff send her all the possible delivery times to her Google Calendar for her to pick the most convenient one.

6.  Still unsure about which TV is right for her, she turns to Google Maps and your company’s Places Account to find her local store.

7. In the store she pays using her tracked Google offer using her Google wallet to pay for her new 3D 50” TV, all thanks to the Google CRM software.

All of these products and services currently exist and with the new premium analytics packages, and with the release this year of multi-channel attribution modelling and real time search, the jump to a fully functioning integrated CRM platform is not that huge. Then again, they might keep it to themselves to completely decimate the “Groupon” style business model on their full worldwide release of Google offers.

Well, these are my 4 paid search predictions for 2012, can’t wait to see if they come true, but will review again next year. Hopefully see you before then but if not have a great 2012!

Written by Martin McAndrew

twitter: @martinmcandrew