First, let me take this opportunity to introduce myself as the newly appointed Manager of Conversation at FITC. I look forward to being a part of this dynamic and game-changing team and I plan to make staying actively engaged and connected with the FITC community my top priority (while keepin’ things real around the office, of course.)

As you may already know, the charming Lindsay Munro has moved onto a new opportunity, and I am picking things up right where she left off. As sad as the FITC team was to see her go, I am proud to have been given the chance to carry the legacy of communications geekery.

With this newfound responsibility, I am fully prepared to bring an upbeat, kick-ass attitude, a ton of creative energy and a willingness to grow and learn to the table. If you have any comments, suggestions, concerns or brilliant ideas to share, feel free to reach out to me anytime. I couldn’t be more excited to be a part of the future and continuing growth here at FITC!

I have a feeling that I will get the chance to meet a lot of you over the next few months, so if you see me at an event or around town – don’t be afraid to introduce yourself! You can get in touch with me by email anytime at andrew@fitc.ca or connect with FITC online to stay up-to-date on what we’re up to.

Here’s where you can find us:

New media artists comprise the de facto unpaid R&D division of ad agencies and this is not sustainable. Artist and engineer Golan Levin illustrated at ETA why problems persist and proposed ways to work together.

New media who? There is a real diversity of artistic practices today. New media work is often created by independents as a way of exploring new technologies. These artists don’t have headquarters, just laptops. They work in makeshift labs and at hack-a-thons.

New media artists have had a tremendous impact on culture and most are not in it for the money. They cannot maintain cultural currency if they have to wait four years to patent work; they want to engage now. Their work asks important questions and often speculates what the future might be.

Take the 1980 Aspen Movie Map. With the help of a small federal grant, one MIT lab explored representation of place through multimedia. The result was a visualization of the streets of Aspen, Colorado. The project was awarded a Golden Fleece Award for wasting taxpayer money¾but the idea stuck and today we have Google Street View.

There are many ways artists apply work in various contexts and people will recognize when work is not authentic. Chris O’Shea’s 2009 “Hand From Above” was a public space intervention whose concept appeared a short time later in a Forever 21 billboard, prompting backlash. Graffiti Research Lab’s 2007 “All You See Is” laser project had 40 times the online views (with 1% of the expense) that Red Bull Cola’s rip-off did.

Why should you care? Your reputation is on the line. These artists are not obscure. They are among the most wired people on the planet and their fans will support them. It is also a matter of time before awards juries will catch on.

You might have to, or want to, work with new media artists one day. So, how can everyone get together better?

1. Call
Before you hire someone inferior, try the real person. No one likes to be copied poorly. Most artists just want to be contacted.

2. Share
Share the credit and everyone wins. Don’t wait for a backlash. Acknowledge ideas right away.

3. License
A license fee will cost a fraction of your budget. It can also build goodwill.

4. Release
After your campaign is over, open source the code. It’s a valuable way to earn points with the community. Some artists will charge less if you let it go. What would you do with it anyway?

5. Donate Money
Collectives such as Processing, Arduino, Open Frameworks and Cinder are developing tools to help you create. Small groups of people run these; support them.

6. Donate Effort
Hire a developer full-time to contribute to the creative community. You will benefit by receiving the contributions of other developers; they will have mainline access.

7. Buy the artists, not the art.
See someone whose work you like? Ask them what else they can do.

8. Practice Responsible Management
Keep a record of where ideas come from. Maintain credibility in perpetuity.

Stop trolling creative applications and start bringing artists into the fold. It’s the right thing to do and your reputation and your business will be rewarded.

You can view Golan’s slides here.

Failure sucks, nobody likes it, and we should change the way we talk about it.

So at ETA, Boing Boing Science Editor and New York Times writer Maggie Koerth-Baker took us on a journey of failures of the past.

In the context of technological innovation, failure is part of the process. We like to tell ourselves a fantasy about technology as though it is a process of inevitability—that innovations succeed by following a logical path—but the reality is a lot messier.

If you look at history, you see a world where good ideas fail. Take electricity, for example. It was not a sure thing.

Electricity took 80 years of tinkering with technology that was never quite ready for prime time. Then a demand had to be created. Fast-forward 40 more years. It was not until the 1930s to 1950s that electricity arrived in rural areas thanks to federal government initiatives.

In school, we are taught that innovation is a straight road to the future. This assumes that the thing that is best solves our problem until something better comes along. It also assumes that we will always choose the better thing.

Let’s consider instead how the theory of Technological Momentum views history:

• We create technologies, which in turn shape the way we live. It is that process that creates our reality.
• We are not logical creatures. We don’t base decisions only on how well things work. Technology does not exist in a vacuum; it is intertwined with culture.
• Time plays an incredibly important role. We choose our tools, our tools shape us, and that in turn determines our development.

Failure and success are not inevitable. They are not built into the quality of a technology. Technology and culture are two sides of the same coin. We fail for reasons that are tied up in the interaction between the two.

Companies don’t make technology; they make socio-technological systems.

As advertisers, you engage with the public. If you are waiting until a technology is completed before telling them about it, you are waiting too long. Researchers and communicators should be working together at every stage of the innovation process.

As custodians of brands, take advantage of opportunities to share interesting stories about your company. When you start telling the whole story, it changes the way your customers expect innovation and perceive failure. It changes your place in history, and theirs. It changes everything.

ETA 2012 opened with inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil discussing creativity in an era of accelerating technologies. How do these changes impact our business plans and our brands? What will the terrain look like when external technologies meet internal biologies?

Communication technologies have always guided the rise of human civilization, and continue to speed up. While the printing press took 400 years to reach a mass audience, the telephone took 50; the cell-phone took seven. Social networks took only three.

Why the acceleration? The answer lies in the exponential growth of information technology. These technologies are democratizing and pave the way for radical change. Kurzweil himself predicted that the Soviet Union would crumble at the hands of emerging networks that ran on email, teletype lines and fax machines.

Exponential computing transcends the thick and thin of world events in a trajectory curve, from one paradigm to another. The overall effect is predictable. So when brands create new projects, they must ensure they will work for the world of the future, not just for the world of now.

How do we look towards that world? Remember information technology builds on itself. We use the computers of today to build the computers of tomorrow. Smart phones are a million times cheaper and seven times more powerful than what computers used to be. In 25 years, they will be a billion times more powerful and 100,000 times smaller.

Manufacturing is the next revolution. Soon we will email attachments to each other’s 3D printers (today an acoustic guitar, tomorrow clothing and food). Every time price performance and capability reach new levels, new opportunities exist.

Health and medicine have also become information technologies subject to the law of exponential return. Such technologies will be 1,000 times more powerful in ten years and 1,000,000 times more powerful in twenty. By placing nano-engineered devices to work inside our bodies, we will be able to turn genes off, reprogram cells and use software to target genetic triggers of disease.

Today’s devices are powerful, but they function merely as gateways to the Cloud. We rely upon them as extensions of our brains—but soon they will interact directly with our biological neurons. Implants will provide us dynamic access to what we need, greatly expanding the size of our brains and extending our reach.

We’ll be putting our brains on the Cloud. We don’t need more information; we need intelligent assistance to bring us information we need. The Cloud will answer our questions before we even ask. The Cloud will become a part of who we are.

Working at FITC has been fun and challenging. I have met a lot of awesome people and had the chance to be a part of and support a community which has taught me a whole lot. I’m moving on and before I go, I’m on a mission to find the right person to take the reins and manage the conversation at FITC.

FITC isn’t an ordinary company and ‘manager of conversation’ certainly isn’t an ordinary position.

This job is a mash-up of community management, marketing and public relations. The manager of conversation is in touch with FITC’s attendees, speakers, sponsors, supporters, media and the technology and design community. The role requires someone social, dynamic, articulate, organized, hungry to learn and passionate of about design and technology.

FITC produces upwards of 15 design and technology focused events all over the world annually. These are all thought up and planned out with a small team and in a small downtown Toronto office with a casual atmosphere.

Responsibilities:

• Develop and execute event specific and brand-related digital marketing strategies.
• Manage various social networks for a number of events, from strategy to execution.
• Provide digital marketing direction and strategy to clients and event partners.
• Manage all in-kind cross-promotional agreements.
• Retain and recruit new partners.
• Execute media relations before, during and after events.
• Reach out to the design and tech community to promote FITC events and speaking opportunities.
• Manage FITC ambassadors.
• Stay up-to-date on relevant tech news, events and topics which impacts FITC events, topics and speakers.
• Assist onsite at events as needed.

Requirements:

• Experience in public relations, communications and/or marketing.
• Strong writing skills, from copywriting to editing.
• Experience in social media and marketing strategy.
• Ability to write and edit HTML.
• Ability to do simple work in Illustrator and Photoshop (ex. resizing images).
• Project and/or campaign management.
• Must have strong research skills.
• Must be sociable!
• Must be presentable. That doesn’t mean a suit.
• Must have a valid passport and the ability to travel when required.

Assets:

• Drivers licence and access to a car.

To apply:
Email your resume with a cover letter to lindsay@fitc.ca. Bonus points for creativity – tell me who you are in the most creative way you know how.

You can learn more about FITC at fitc.ca/about

We’ve got over 50 speakers presenting and here are just a handful…

Hydro74	GMUNK	Ben & Julia	Matt Lambert	Anrick Bregman
Theodore Watson	James White	Joa Ebert	Zachary Lieberman	Stacey Mulcahy

Want to see your name added to the list of speakers? This time around a select number of sessions will be programmed based on community submissions. That’s right, we want to hear from YOU! If you have something awesome you’d like to present or have something in mind that you’d like to see presented, be sure to submit your ideas and vote on others at fitc.ca/submit before October 31st at 23:59 DST!

You can find out more about the event at fitc.ca/amsterdam. Super early bird tickets are now on sale.

Hope to see you there!

With the collaborative efforts of each sector, a report like this could greatly affect the way we go about our daily lives. Embracing this technological change and enhancing research capabilities not only helps residents, it helps the entire province stay competitive, connected and opens up more technological advancements in the future. Here are some of the benefits:

• Mobile in education can change the way we learn, paving the way to more eLearning possibilities and keeping students engaged in a mobile, connected environment.
• Mobile in healthcare enables a move from acute-focused care to community and preventative care for Ontario residents in order to make healthcare services more public and efficient.
• Mobility in government can extend government e-services through mobile-optimized web sites and become more fast and efficient while still maintaining privacy.

A more mobile Ontario could be a real benefit, so the fact that this report policy is already on its way is inspiring, and paves the way to so much more. If you want to learn more about Dr. Sara Diamond you can follow her on Twitter @codezebra.

As Andrew stated, the first question you want to ask yourself when creating an app is, ‘who are you solving problems for?’ You need to recognize the customer market and their intent behind a purchase and make that purchase worthwhile with an app that encourages engagement and social interaction in an easy-to-follow format. Most of all, you need to relish persistent navigation and keep your users wanting more. Focusing on basic factors is essential to meeting the needs of your users without getting lost in your concept.

That said, Andrew also mentioned the importance of HTML5 and how, while still a little rough around the edges, it has the potential to offer more of those engaging experiences while still simple and straightforward for developers. HTML5 is rich with possibilities and is still practical to use without breaking the bank.

Once past the conceptual stage, Andrew talked about some other very important points when creating a great mobile experiences like creating a user story, having a goal you can measure, reach every customer and react to business changes instantly. These are each key factors you need to take into account if you want to make a successful, stable app for yourself or your client. The more you can familiarize yourself with these particular steps the more prepared and organized you’ll be in the long run.

Andrew gave a lot of helpful tips that I hope will help you and/or your business. If you’d like, you can follow him at his company’s Twitter page @weeverapps or at the below links:

weeverapps.com
cartanova.ca

The first seminar I attended was Becoming Social by Default on Mobile, presented by Boris Chan from Xtreme Labs. Boris expressed how the increasing amount of mobile apps has muddled the way we communicate and connect with others. While mobile technology has created a great amount of positive social change, the quality of apps hasn’t always been as remarkable and there’s plenty of room for improvement.

Boris expressed practical development and design approaches mobile developers need to keep in mind if they want to offer quick, satisfying social experiences on mobile devices. He even went on to mention some forward-thinking apps that are taking a step in the right direction, and how those development and design choices can help developers create even more fast and intuitive social experiences in the future. The world is our oyster, so it’s up to us to create those quality experiences. Take a look at Boris’s presentation slides.

After Boris’ enlightening session, I checked out Justin Kent’s presentation, Award Winning Apps. In a world where apps are extremely plentiful and varied, sometimes creating a quality app that stands out from the rest can be a tricky matter. In this seminar, Justin explained the fundamentals of creating an award-worthy app and how by following some basic steps any mobile developer is capable of it. With some proper care and attention, those dreams that once seemed too risky or unattainable are completely possible.

More to come about sessions from day two!

Steve Mason Director of Interactive Design, Obscura Digital	Golan Levin Artist and Engineer, Carnegie Mellon University	Ray Kurzweil CEO and Owner, Kurzweil Technologies, Inc.	Maggie Koerth-Baker Science Editor, BoingBoing.net
Chris Kobran Head of Brands and Strategic Partnerships, Kiip	Emily Hersh CEO, Interknowlogy	Jared Ficklin Principle Technologist, Frog Design	Moderator: Jason Theodor Creative Director, Publicis Modem

Attendees of ETA will have the opportunity to sit across the table from and get  in discussion with almost all of the event’s renowned presenters. Thirty minute presentations are followed by twenty minute discussions at round tables; each presenter changes tables every hour, providing unparalleled access to real conversations with leaders in the field.

While ETA is an invite only event, there are a limited number of tickets available via application. Want to attend? Apply here.

Complete event details can be found at fitc.ca/eta.

Looking forward to this!