The Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the Atomic Age, the Jet Age, the Space Age and the Information Age - every technological era has brought about profound effects on socioeconomic and cultural conditions. They've reshaped human behavior and reset reality.

But, before the full effects of each of these technological developments have taken hold and fully permeated the collective understanding, people and businesses undoubtedly found themselves navigating a strange "in-between" time - a time where future visions are uncomfortably mingled with legacy artifacts and pre-existing expectations.

Today, in the Connected Age, technological innovations are bringing about seismic shifts in our reality every day. The dust is far from settled, and perhaps, it never will be. For businesses and brands this uncertain and unpredictable landscape is wrought with danger. Red herrings, pitfalls and fruitless dead-ends surround us, while opportunity is elusive.

But fear not, Larry Johnson (Odopod's Associate Director of Strategy) and I (Director of Brand and Strategy) have been hard at work cataloging the common mistakes, collecting helpful techniques and distilling best practices to survive and thrive in today's in-between times. We've compiled them neatly, into a presentation of course, and would love the opportunity to share them with you, our industry friends and peers at SXSW 2012.

But we need your help. Please vote for our SXSW session: Danger is Everywhere: Illuminating common pitfalls of marketing's in-between times and take a peek at some example slides here.

This preview is just a taste of what's to come. We promise to keep it short, sweet and useful so send us a vote and we'll see you there.

The Small Agency of the Year Awards was held in Denver last night to honor and celebrate the work of small and mid-sized agencies around the world. Presented by AdAge and Creativity, the annual event is designed for agencies to gather and discuss the unique challenges faced by today’s market.

Founder and Creative Director Tim Barber was present at the conference to accept the honor of Small Agency of the Year, West Region in which Odopod was co-named with Zambezi, an agency in Venice, California.

AdAge quotes, "[Odopod's] 55-person shop's clients include Sony, Electronic Arts, Tesla Motors, Google and IWC. While Odopod does traditional advertising and branding, what caught the judges' eyes were the retail experiences it created for Tesla, the Trends Dashboard and website it created for Google, and the EA Download Manager, which did for EA Sports' PC games what iTunes did for Apple."

We're extremely thrilled to be recognized for our work in both communications, UI innovation and product work. This combination allows us to step out of the box and innovate for our clients at a fundamental business level.

Odopod was also recently recognized as one of the “Top 25 West Coast Agencies to Watch” by iMedia - a group that closely monitors and recognizes the agencies that move, shape and lead digital. Odopod was named as a key agency that has advanced interactive marketing through big ideas, brilliant creative, cutting-edge technology and pursuit of excellence in the digital space.

Thank you to everyone who continues to celebrate our work. With so many big things happening here, we couldn't be more proud and thankful to be recognized for all that we're doing.

We learned a lesson pretty early on as we tried to figure out what to do with our live stream on FWATV: if you want to make something cool, give it to the nerds.

Since we've given our development team the camera and the freedom to do with it whatever they wished, we've gotten nothing but exceptionally cool experiments in live video by hooking up Processing and Kinect applications to our feed.

We've applied various "filters" that react to movement in our studio space. To name a few, we've had a filter that makes the scene look like a giant, moving painting, a filter that applies tiny bursts of pink bubbles that appear when anyone moves, and a Kinect application enabling odopodders to draw via hand tracking.

Check out the gallery of filters we've used so far and tune in each Thursday from 2-3pm PST on FWATV as we continue to experiment with live video using Processing, Kinect, and whatever else we can dream up.

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of attending the Eyeo Festival, a gathering of the world's best data visualizers, creative coders, and other like-minded folks. Over three packed days, sessions tackled thought-provoking topics such as the role of data visualization in social justice and how the seemingly absurd can contribute towards the greater good. Speakers presented groundbreaking work, some for the first time. Interspersed were workshops ranging from an introductory course to physical computing with the SparkFun ProtoSnap Arduino board, to a hands-on "conditional drawing" lab. In all, it was an incredibly inspiring experience.

Energized by the conference, I took a quick stab at making a few of my own visualization experiments, focusing on the subjects closest at hand: fellow employees at Odopod. Here’s an example of one question I attempted to answer: Assuming work begins at 10AM, what does everyone's morning commute look like? Using self-reported data from Odopod's own, I was able to plot a simplified visualization of the daily morning migration.

Click here to see the visualization in action »

What you’re seeing is a simplified map of the Bay Area, with the starting points of various Odopod employees, flashing as they leave the house in the morning. Hover on the dots to reveal who they represent, click & drag the bar graph to scrub through the timeline. In a future version, we might plug this in to Google Map's API and try to implement intelligent path-finding, or explore differentiation between transportation methods (such as drivers vs. walkers). For now though, I think it's a fun little diversion that lets us make some observations that we normally wouldn't be able to.

I look forward to utilizing the skills I’ve learned in future projects here at Odopod.

Last year at this time, I wrote a post entitled If you want a Job at Odopod, go to RIT.

A year later, I’m just back from my third trip to the Rochester Institute of Technology for Creativity: Careers in Motion and everything I wrote in that post still stands.

I was attending and speaking at the event. It’s a forum for students in RIT’s new media program to meet prospective employers and get feedback on their portfolios. Although it’s not billed as such, for almost everyone attending it’s a recruiting event.

The reality is that it’s a feeding frenzy.

From my perspective, it’s fascinating. Imagine a gymnasium full of representatives from the best new media companies in the world, as well as some big ad agencies and PR firms — all sitting at identical folding tables, all feverish to recruit RIT’s latest group of new media graduates. Many of these companies were making offers on the spot. Some even arrived a day early to meet with, and try to scoop the top students.

That’s because RIT is producing the best new media talent in the world.

As I described in last year’s post, the students graduate with a focus either on design or development. The program is designed to have them work both independently as well as in teams, very much as they will when they come to Odopod.

As a result, almost all the students are remarkably well rounded — many of them with abilities in both design and development. I can also tell you from past hires that the rigor and intensity of the program teaches them the value of hard work and independent initiative.

They emerge from RIT with the skills to do exceptionally well in a challenging and fast-paced company like Odopod.

My only lament is that there aren’t more of them graduating, either from RIT or other schools in the US. We need more RIT graduates and more schools producing graduates of their caliber.

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This year I attended my first SXSW Interactive. It was, in a word, overwhelming. However, even as a freshman, I did manage to find a few good hacks...

Continue Reading »

This year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) was the biggest one yet - attendance-wise and number of exhibitors. There were tens of thousands of square feet to cover and lots of meetings to schedule, so it felt pretty darn big to me. We were there to spend some quality time with our clients at UFC and Sony and get a first-hand look at all the new electronics and gadgetry, of course.

Here's a quick look at what stood out.

Everyone’s excited about tablets!
There are a ton of new ones. Some from larger names, like the Samsung Galaxy or the Blackberry PlayBook, some from smaller names like Acer and AOC.

The jury seems split on the perfect size. Some like the larger size (10 – 12”) since they have big screens and are perfect for around the house. Others like the more portable 7” size. And the 4-5” tablet/smartphones seem to confuse a lot of people in terms of the purpose and whether it’s really all that different from a smartphone. I spent some time playing around with the Galaxy and liked it. To me, it seems easier to tote around than an iPad.

The Perfect TV
It seems like the manufacturers have no idea what anyone wants in the perfect TV so they’re trying a bunch of different things to see what sticks.

Connected / Smart TVs — Sony’s and Samsung’s connected TVs were big hits and everyone is excited about the potential but I wonder how people will end up using the smart functionality in real life.

Thinner and Sleeker — Some of the new TVs are super, super thin and mega huge.

3D — Despite slow adoption, everyone is still plugging away at 3D TVs. The prediction is (and I agree) that until they manage to do away with the glasses, people are not going to be buying these in huge numbers. Despite my best efforts, I was not able to find a 3D TV that didn’t make me feel car sick.

TV Everywhere — Beyond just the manufacturers, it’s all about having access to TV on every device, in any situation.

“Smart” Everything
Electronics are getting “smarter.” Cars that teach you how to brake better to save electricity. Washers that text you when the cycle is complete. Gadgets that update you to where your dog has wandered off to. Bands and widgets that track how you’re sleeping. I really liked all the smart appliances but again, wonder how people will use the functionality in their real lives. Lots of cool ideas here, we’ll see what pans out.

Gadgets Need Accessories
A big surprise for me was the number of booths (there were whole sections dedicated to accessories) that just showed the latest accessories for your gadgets — sleeves, skins, speakers, battery extenders, holographic external keyboards, etc.

But CES wasn’t just about seeing all the latest electronics. We had several productive meetings with existing and prospective clients. We'll continue working with Sony as they roll out their marketing plan for 2011. We’re forging new relationships with UFC departments, bringing some proactive sponsorship ideas their way that leverage the new and improved UFC.com. And finally, we’ve been asked to put together some proposals for a few new clients.

All in all, a successful and somewhat exhausting few days.

Everyday at Odopod, we're challenged with a huge spectrum of client needs. We get to dive deep into their businesses and create innovative work for some amazing brands. But there are some ideas that we just don't get to make. Some skills that we just don't get to use. So we decided to turn inward, develop our own ideas and make things.

For two glorious days, Odopod shut down to work exclusively on projects of our own devising - and for those 48 hours, it was all invention...

Here's how it all went down:

A few weeks before Hack Days we put out a call for project submissions to our entire studio with only one rule: describe your idea in less than 100 words. At the end of the call, we selected eight projects to prototype.

We split up into small teams comprised of all disciplines - everyone participated, bringing a unique set of skills to the table. People soldered and sketched, filmed and photographed, coded and glued. There were acts of physical computing, drafts of architectural plans, and a ton of work we don't see everyday.

It was hard work, but well worth it. Here's a quick overview of the prototypes we created:

More after the jump »

In the spirit of making things, we're closing up our doors this Thursday and Friday to work on Odopod Hack Day projects. These are the projects and ideas that we've always wanted to create. For two days, we'll do what we want. No clients. No messing around - and in the next few weeks we'll share the results...

If you don't know Planningness, here's the short version: it's two days of provocative sessions led by industry brains, followed by hands-on audience activities. Learning, then doing. This year it was held simultaneously in Brooklyn and Denver.

During my two days in Denver, certain themes emerged: ideas I'll probably be pre-occupied with over the next few months and years.

(This is meant as a Cliff's Notes view - check out the individual presentations as they're posted here to get the full story.)

So, recurring ideas:

Driving groups to participate is an increasingly crucial skill
Definitely the most pervasive topic at Planningness, popping up across many sessions. Mike Arauz (Undercurrent) put it most poignantly: "We will be judged by our ability to engage networks."

Len Kendall (The3six5 project) offered his learnings on creating participation - with the frank reminder that because we do this in the service of brands, we're starting from a disadvantage. And John Winsor took us through his ongoing adventure building Victors & Spoils, as he braves change and turns the disruptive power of crowdsourcing on our own industry.

Agencies need more scientists
I'm not talking about the usual marketing pseudo-science, shallow research and half-baked venn diagrams. This is real science, the stuff that thrilled you as an 8-year-old. A session by Craig Elston and Ethan Decker of Integer Group showed us to how to hack people (well, nudge them at least) using behavioral economics and cognitive psychology. Meanwhile, Stamen showed off their gorgeously-geeky, math-and-data-driven take on storytelling.

Planning is splintering into many wildly-differing roles
The aftermath of digital is conjuring an endless variety of alternate reality versions of both planners and strategists: from specialists to generalists, from crowd-wranglers to curators and beyond. And in my chats with the folks sitting around me I'd say that the audience was made up of people who do very different jobs under the same (couple of) titles.

Whether this is a good thing or a danger, I don't know yet.

We're at our best when we embrace change
We are an industry in the midst of change - technological, cultural and economic. Which brings me back to the closing Q&A by John Winsor - one person who seems entirely at home in the chaos - during which he answered the audience, over and over: "That's a good question. I don't know. We're gonna have to try it and see what happens."

In other words, it's a fun time to be doing this. Get excited and make things.