By the way, today’s post really is about creativity. I’m forewarning you before I go off on a slight tangent explaining how I came to these thoughts.

I’m one of those guys that’s absolutely addicted to flash games - can’t get enough of them. But recently there haven’t been hardly any good ones. Today, I found the amazing one. This is literally the best freaking game I’ve played in months.

99 Bricks is a mix of Jenga and Tetris, with a bit of the physics that is all the “rage” in flash games recently. This has got to be one of the most creative games I’ve ever come across. Yes it’s just a simple conglomeration of two different games but it’s become something completely different. Something that simply hasn’t been done before.

I applaud creativity because without it we would not have any of our present day innovations. Creativity drives business and product creation. When you are creative, you can look at a market like golf and find a different perspective that is completely unique and someone needs to see. You can show them that perspective!

It takes creativity to fix problems. Americans have been doing it for decades and now we’ve become so creative that we’re able to spend $1.22 for every $1 we earn. We don’t have that money but by a stroke of creativity someone has figured out how to spend it.

Granted, that’s a bad example because that’s creativity used inappropriately. Figure out, creatively, how to spend $.70 on each $1 you make while getting $1.50 of value for it. Now that’d be creative.

It takes creativity to make something out of nothing, a lot out of a little. That’s why art and design is often given the name of “creatives”. It’s that work that not everyone thinks they can do, but they CAN. You can! It’s only creative because they have the right tools and know the right questions.

After that, you just make up the answer. Because there are a million answers as long as you know what question to start with.

The guys that make millions are creative. They know how to make their own answers and find their own conclusions. Whereas “Joe the Plumber” (haha, it had to come eventually!), knows how to follow directions. He was trained and knows how to plumb pipes. He doesn’t know how to sell his services, manage his business, or handle all the necessary legalities. He’s a cog in a machine.

He’s a damn excellent cog but that’s all he’s allowed himself to be. Society says that being a cog is safe, it’s secure, and by being one, you can hold a steady roof over your family. But what happens when the axle turning that cog stops?

That cog, (you?), is dead in the water. So please, be creative today! Wait, put that creativity on hold for 2 minutes, and post a comment first. A creative comment! But be my cog and post one!

Humans have been around for a long time. This isn’t a post discussing exactly when, but regardless of who you talk to it’s been at least thousands of years. In that time technologies have come and gone with their times. Long ago, Egyptian times, we used papyrus for writing, for messages to be written on, delivered by a court courier and often saved in the database of all Egyptian databases, a pyramid.

Then people discovered different ways to make papers and inks. They were more cost effective and easier to produce. Enter the growth of literature, the Bible, organized religion, and government.

Fast forward to 2008 and 90% of the US population has broadband in their home. Which is absolutely mind-boggling! I remember logging on my first time when I lived in Colorado. I was all of 10 years old and we had a 56k connection with PeoplePC. You know who I’m talking about. Like AOL they built their business off of subsidized agreements. AOL’s agreement gave you free email, chat and browser as part of your internet connection. People PC on the other hand gave you the same plus a subsidized desktop computer.

It made computing cheaper for the masses.

Oh but that first time with the dial tone and the computers talking through whatever little speaker is on the motherboard.

That was the beginning of the Internet Age. It’s been all of 12 years and I like many of the people I know base our entire livelihoods around it.

But the Internet is not your only means of communication and business. It’s not your livelihood nor is it a lifeline. It’s a tool. Your network is your business. I’ll say that again for clarity: your NETWORK is your BUSINESS.

If I lost all my possessions, was living on the street, and had to start completely over, I could get back on my feet in a few weeks. I would begin calling my contacts, making new business plans, seeking work and putting the pieces back together.

Only recently have I truly began understanding this principle but it’s gotta be one of the best I’ve ever learned or can ever teach.

I’ve built a network of people that I truly love. These are the people, friends, that I’ve met through business, school, and in coffee shops that I love, and we mutually want to see each other to succeed. The networks of today are the tribes of thousands of years ago. It’s that group mentality that drives each of us. We group with like-minded people in order to accomplish goals.

The hunter tribes and nomads of humanity’s early life worked together. They hunted in groups, lived together and helped everyone inside the group survive. It seems to be something that a majority of people have forgotten in our time.

More people now than ever, live on their own in single room apartments, which is absolutely insane. We live in a different society now but those social groups, those networks, those connections operate in exactly the same way.

Working together is easier than working alone. Your business will grow as will each of those in your network. Great things grow out of groups because of the combined resources of many. The more people you know and can work with, the better off you’ll be.

So I want you in my network. I want to see you succeed, to be able to love you, and work with you in my business. Drop a comment and let me know what you’ve done to grow your network.

I navigated away from that page unfortunately (dang XKCD got me distracted!) Because upon returning my ad was gone! Now, it was very important for this discussion that I had that ad as a reference. I refreshed that page again and again. I’m pretty sure I spent enough refreshes yesterday for 10 or 20 people.

The initial frame said “Every 7 seconds a child dies from hunger or malnutrition.” That is such a striking statement. Aowh! I love it. But I have two problems with this ad.

1. The stopwatch clicks down from 7 seconds and then stops. The ad doesn’t restart; it isn’t a digital stopwatch that starts counting the number of dead kids. It just stops and waits for your response. A good ad has a great message and waits for you to answer it. A GREAT ad has an amazing message, grabs you by the arm, and begs for you to answer it’s call.
2. Digg is probably the wrong target audience for WorldVision. With the kind of traffic Digg has they’ll definitely get tons of click throughs simply because they buying from such a huge traffic source. Although little to none of those clicks will be targeted. There is a large group of progressive individuals on Digg, I’m not disputing that. But no one goes to Digg to find information about adopting an African child. It’s simply the wrong target and they’re most likely getting the wrong response.

How Could They Be Spending Better?

The concepts for WorldVision’s ads are amazing. They do a great job of tacking a difficult concept to grasp in only the few seconds you are viewing them. But they don’t grab you and shake you until you respond.

And ofcourse, the text needs to update every 7 seconds to add another child to the “dead list”. Now that may be a little morbid but it WILL force a response. Don’t you think you’ll get a bigger and better emotional response from telling someone how many people have died while they were screwing off on the internet instead of telling them how much of a difference they can make by burdening themselves with a new child?

Please comment below! What ads do you think could be done better? Tell me about your advertising that you need help with.

All this comes back to say that when I’m speaking to someone, be it you reading my blog, or a friend face-to-face, I make a point of not saying that I’ve been busy. Rather I say I’ve been productive or I’ve been working on a lot of exciting things. Something to that effect.

There’s so much more depth to the statement and it simply begs for a question in response. I absolutely love conversation so I will jump at any chance to further one. And over the past week or so I started realizing I was missing out on too many possibilities for good conversation by not posting to my blog of late!

I’m not going to post a screenshot of my last design. It just doesn’t need one. I went from one very simplistic, clean and stylish blog to another! But a ton has changed in those intervening months that necessitated a new blog design.

I’ve also combined by work portfolio with my blog. That makes it a LOT simpler for me to manage and likewise just as simple for people to access each then.

I’ve switched my hosting to (mt) MediaTemple! Woooh! I’m probably one of the last people to get on the bandwagon but I’ve finally done it and I can say enough good things about these guys.

I went to Illuminate Conference in October; it was amazing. Although if I were going to go into a full review of it at this point, a full month AFTER the conference I might not be the last person writing about it. I think I’ll wait until March or so until I give my full review.

I’m working on some very exciting projects though with some really cool people so the rest of the year is looking stellar and I’ll be able to close out 2008 as my best year yet.

I’ll be posting at least every other day if not daily from now on so get ready to hear some great ideas. (I want to hear yours too!)