http://www.newkind.com Building connections among brand, culture and community through design. Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:03:05 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en In Brand Positioning Tip #3, I introduced the concept of the brand mantra. The term was originally coined by Scott Bedbury during his time at Nike, and it refers to a short 3-5 word phrase created to capture the very essence of the brand's meaning. Usually a brand mantra includes or ... http://www.newkind.com/2010/03/brand-positioning-tip-9-a-brand-mantra-is-not-a-tagline/ Last week, my friend Greg DeKoenigsberg posted an article about Jaron Lanier's negative comments regarding open textbooks. At almost very same time, I happened to stumble upon an article Jaron wrote back in 2006 criticizing Wikipedia. The common theme is Jaron taking issue with what he calls "online collectivism," "the hive ... http://www.newkind.com/2010/03/is-jaron-lanier-just-a-hater-or-should-we-be-paying-attention/ Earlier this week I wrote a post about some of the cultural challenges Wikipedia is facing as its contribution rate has slowed. The comments you made were fantastic, including one by Dr. Ed H Chi (the PARC scientist who published the study I referred to in the post) linking to ... http://www.newkind.com/2010/03/the-wikimedia-foundation-doing-strategic-planning-the-open-source-way/ Last fall, a group of researchers at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) released a study showing an abrupt leveling off in the number of editors and edits to Wikipedia, starting in about 2007. There is a great summation of the findings in a set of posts by Dr. Ed H ... http://www.newkind.com/2010/03/love-hate-and-the-wikipedia-contributor-culture-problem/ I recently finished the new book Digital Strategies for Powerful Corporate Communications, by Paul Argenti and Courtney Barnes. I must admit, I'm allergic to many Web 2.0 books. This book does have some of that social media handbook feel, but I was excited about it because co-author Paul Argenti, a ... http://www.newkind.com/2010/03/democracy-a-reason-for-communications-and-hr-folks-to-party-together/ Traditional media companies are in big trouble. You may have noticed. You know who else has noticed? David Pakman, currently a partner at the prestigious Venrock venture capital firm. You may also know David as the former CEO of eMusic—a fairly disruptive media company in its own right. David has ... http://www.newkind.com/2010/03/five-questions-about-the-future-of-music-with-david-pakman/ If you've ever watched a road bike race like the Tour de France, you know the peloton is the big group of riders that cluster together during the race to reduce drag. It's a great example of collaboration in action. But let's face it: the people in the middle of ... http://www.newkind.com/2010/02/three-tips-for-escaping-the-creativity-peloton-without-giving-up-on-collaboration/ Remember the Seinfeld episode where Kramer had the idea to make a coffee table book about coffee tables? I always thought that was a pretty elegant idea. Well, a few months ago, some of the smart folks on Red Hat's community architecture team had a similarly elegant idea: Write a book ... http://www.newkind.com/2010/02/a-handbook-for-the-open-source-way-written-the-open-source-way/ You've probably seen at least one of the 9 zillion articles written over the last week about Google Buzz. The feedback from the public has been, well... kinda ugly. There are plenty of articles and blogs analyzing problems with the Buzz launch around user privacy, opt in vs. opt out, ... http://www.newkind.com/2010/02/google-buzz-didnt-get-permission-but-it-also-didnt-get-brand-permission/ In the discussions around some of my previous articles, I've noticed a trend: we seem to be focusing on cultural changes that need to be made for the open source way to be effective in contexts beyond technology. One cultural context I think could really use some help is politics. I ... http://www.newkind.com/2010/02/what-if-politicians-innovated-the-open-source-way/