Mr. Picassohead

Here’s a wonderful example of creativity on the Web. The guys at Ruder-Finn created Mr. Picassohead and I hope you’ll not only take a look, but create your own (click Play). Over 680,000 people from all over the world have created wonderful art using this cool little tool.

Forrester has been estimating that about 10% of the people online are “Creators.” Well, this is about as close as it gets to the perfect definition of that group.

The guys are Ruder-Finn say that you get an amazing perspective of the world from the art.  When there were bombings in Spain people created amazing Picassoheads illustrating  sadness throughout the country.

Figuring Out Knowledge Management

We are trying to tackle one of the most difficult issues I’ve dealt with in a long time – how to manage knowledge across our entire organization. How do you capture knowledge, transfer it from person to person across several hundred people in many geographic locations? And how do you do it fast enough to keep up with the knowledge explosion that is occurring in our business today?

We’re working on addressing the means, the will and the skills all at the same time and it is extremely challenging. Just communicating inside our organization about the work we are producing – sharing what’s new is a big issue.

And to further complicate the issue is how do you enable teams across the enterprise to not only share knowledge, but actively collaborate?  I really think this is the number one issue at T3 today and we have to get much better at this and do it quickly.

I’ll be sharing more info as we move down this path.  Open to ideas and best practices from anyone!

Ben Dunlap – TED

Take a new minutes and learn about friendship, courage and a passion for life.  Ben Dunlap talks at TED about the Hungarians in his life.

Lessons in PR

Local politico Reggie Basher taught me years ago that when someone hits you with negative PR you have to respond with solid punch – not defending yourself aggressively is usually disaster. Yesterday, Mia Farrow’s activist group, Dream for Darfur, issued a report card that criticized most of the major Olympic sponsors for their actions in Darfur.

Kelly Brooks at Coca-Cola apparently subscribes to the Reggie Basher school of PR with this punchy response:

“For an organization that has not eased the suffering of a single individual on the ground in Darfur to criticize those who are helping thousands every day is more than ironic,” a Coca-Cola spokesman, Kelly Brooks, wrote via e-mail. “This is not a report card on sponsors’ good works, this is simply a report card judging companies solely on the basis of the Dream for Darfur yardstick — a company’s willingness to publicly pressure a sovereign nation to intervene in the activities of another country.”

Not taking sides either way here, but it is a great lesson in managing negative PR.

Good news for all you Darwin junkies

The complete work of Charles Darwin is now online. Published to the Internet about a week ago, the site has over 43,000 pages of searchable text and 150,000 images. The site also provides the largest collection of Darwin’s private papers ever published thanks to permission of Cambridge University.

One of the interesting elements of the site is a virtual bookshelf of Darwin’s work. The books are lined up online and when you click on the book it opens and you have access to all the pages.

This is yet another stunning example of the power of the Internet!

Planning the new Austin building

We spent time this afternoon working with John Blood and team on the new building floor plans. They are making real progress and this will be a stunning project when finally completed (probably two years out). This is a 1950s office building located in the center of Austin, right across from a hike and bike trail and public park. As we begin to open the space up we are finding amazing original concrete walls and ceilings that we’ll leave exposed. This is such an interesting project because you literally have to tear into walls to see what the core building is like.  As they say, “It has great bones.”

Our goal is to make the building a crowning example of how to take an older structure and make the remodeled building as green as possible.  Hopefully, we’ll be able to make huge improvements on utility consumption and use green materials throughout.

Facebook’s Lexicon

So here’s something to play with – Facebook’s Lexicon.  It’s a tool to see how frequently words are used on Facebook in profiles.  It’s a pretty interesting view of the Facebook world.  The illustration above compares the words beer and wine.  And then you start wondering why beer spiked in March.  This stuff drives me crazy.

Deconstructing Sheehan’s Brain

I’ve heard Glen Sheehan speak about digital strategy on many occasions and he always starts with these core concepts – and I usually nod my head in agreement with him.  But today I took a deep dive into these concepts to see if I really understand what the hell he is talking about – and my conclusion is that I’m not entirely sure.  So I’ve framed up my interpretation of these large concepts and I’ll let him check my work early next week.  If I pass, I’ll share it with you.

If you think you know what this really means – please share.

Gay Got Bumped By the Pope!

Gay and the T3 baby program were scheduled to be on ABC’s Nightline this week. But here comes the Pope and so the story has been delayed until sometime next week. I’m here to tell all of you that she has not been at all understanding or gracious about this. It is a bitter pill for her to swallow!

Where are the Characters?

So Gay and I both grew up in small Texas towns that were full of characters – interesting, unsettling, just plain weird – but characters. So you can imagine my delight when I came across W.W. Green’s business card. Now here is a renaissance man that we should all befriend. Who knows when an uprising might need to be quelled?

This card makes me think of the Norfolk Hotel in Nairobi, Kenya. At the turn of the century it was not uncommon for sportsmen to run a tiger through the middle of the town and rope it for the entertainment of the guests at the Norfolk. We need more characters and tiger tamers!

Looking at the Internet from Sint Maarten

I’ve spent the last couple of days in conversation with my good friend Patrick Farley and his son Julian discussing ideas they have for a new business serving many of the owners of villas in the Oyster Pond area, which is a community on the island of Sint Maarten – an island in the Caribbean.  What is so interesting is that these two guys are visioning a business built on connecting people all over the world with very simple online tools. What is so interesting is that they are building a physical community using a digital community. Weird? Yeah, but you have to give them credit because it works.

Here’s the quick story. Oyster Pond is a neighborhood in Sint Maarten. There are about 40 villas built on an amazing hillside with sweeping views of the ocean. But last year the community was in a bit of disarray. The streets were in terrible condition and petty crime was rampant. In steps Patrick and a few other supporters and he pulls together all the owners (most of whom live all over the world) into a virtual community. To make a long story short – he has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for road and crime prevention efforts and has been terrible effective.

But that’s not the real story. What he has done is leverage the digital community to build a much tighter, more personal real world community. All of the sudden the villa owners know each other, there are happy hours and open houses, people are getting to know each other and connecting friends and family in a way that would have been impossible without Patrick’s digital community.

What has happened here is a tiny microcosm of the power of the Internet. But it is a powerful microcosm and provides hope for us all. It is incredible what people of good will can do with a little technology support.

Thanks Patrick.