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This is fantastic

Planning-ness is almost here

It's hard to believe, but Planning-ness is happening and is just 5 dats away. if you haven't bought your ticket yet, head to www.planningness.com and check it out. If you need more enticement, we've added a party on Friday night (courtesy of The Talent Business and our friends at Perreira O'Dell) and great sessions like these:



How to design a successful applications
Nick Baum - Google

The best applications work without the user ever having to think about how to use them. And yet, such simplicity is almost always the result of a long and thoughtful design-process. Using Google Chrome as an example, this presentation will examine how teams at Google design products that are used by millions of users worldwide. We will discuss how to make features discoverable, intuitive and delightful, as well as how to organize a team to continuously deliver innovative design.


How to create advocacy and conversation
Frank Striefler - MediaArts Lab

People don’t trust companies. People don’t trust brands. People trust each other.

Creating brand advocacy has never been more important. We rely even more heavily on WOM during a recession and people are now empowered with the tools to communicate with each other with or without brands involvement. But brand advocacy must be the responsibility of the entire company, not just marketing. Don’t build your advocacy and social marketing programs without a plan. Failing to plan is planning to fail.

Not only will this session gives you the reasons for this new brand mantra but also practical answers for the question on how to get your brand recommended and into the cultural conversation. We will start by sharing principles, insights, resources and tools before rolling up our sleeves for a work session on real brands: your brands. Email me at frank@mediaartslab.com if you would like to suggest the brand you work on to be brainstormed & ideated around. Warning: if your brand is chosen, you’re volunteering to lead your group during the work session.




How to Create Participation ( AKA You Can't Make me Like You)
Domenico Vitale - People Ideas and Culture

Are today’s brands really all the same? Is what we do as planners still based on the same foundation? Do “consumers” even exist any longer? Does communication work as it always has?

The world has never been more diverse in its proliferation of brands, products, channels and whatever else you want to throw in there. And, if we keep looking at all of this as scary and intimidating, or if we believe our job is still to just bring “insight” to the advertising process, we will disappear.

All of this has fundamentally changed the possibilities we have at our disposal. It has changed how we can communicate, build and create success for our clients. How our companies need to be structured and get paid. And, most importantly, it has changed the basic assumption that if you tell it, they will hear it and then they will come. Communication itself is no longer about just telling but about something much bigger, more interesting - something that can allow us to be more effective than ever. Not about changing people’s minds but embracing people’s minds – allowing them to thrive.

Maybe, this moment will make us scared enough to allow us to question the fallacies that have driven the marketing world for a long time. Maybe, just maybe, this moment will make us stronger, more valuable and more interesting. Maybe, we will truly start inspiring people on the street, every day, rather than merely trying to persuade them to do something they don’t want to do.

Great Googley...

A great Google presentation given at Adweek which highlights a lot of the great stuff done using their API's

Planning-ness is go !

After a lot of pleading, hounding arm twisting and a lot of help form many people, planning-ness tickets are on sale !!!

Please go to the site check out the speakers, sessions etc. But most of all buy a ticket and come on down


For those of you who can't wait until after the jump, here's the skinny...

When: October 16 and 17

Where: Academy of Art University, 60 Federal Street, San Francisco

What: A series of workshops over 2 days with speaker ranging from Organizing for America, the CEO of Posterous.com, Adrian Ho, an Emmy award winning documentary filmaker and more


Hope to see you there.


PS. In case any of you think this is my doing it all solo, this would not have happened if had not been for:

Cameron Maddux of Academy of Art for volunteering the space
Claire Dalton for all the legwork
Carol Weinfeld for being ready to do anything
Dylan Thomas and Rassak for the website
John Gordon for the logo
Jason Oke for the sposnorship sales effort
Gareth Kay , Adrian Ho , Lee Maicon and Ed Cotton for the encouragement

some new Kingsford work

Just in time for football season ...

More Planning-ness thoughts

After a totally insane journey to Europe (24 hours in a hotel in Newark included), I've had a chance to collect some thoughts and read some discussions on what this get together could/should be.

There's always a temptation at an event to go for a big overarching theme or way of organizing events like this, even if no one knows that topic when they show up e.g. Bar Camp. >But with many different type of people needing slightly different things from a conference, this seems to be a sure way to annoy more people than you please. It also seems a bit unnecessary - why not have multiple types of sessions for people to choose from (even if that means limiting the numbers).

So I've posted a few discussion threads suggested by various people here. They include sessions such as:

a) short sessions presenting, shaping and/or debating genuinely new ideas and approaches.

b) offering up your "trade craft" in exchange for someone else's (but all trading is done in public)

c) how to workshops on topics tangentially related to planning

d) open space sessions

This will all work if we can genuinely practice what we preach to brands - giving a little in order to get something in return.

Planning-ness 2009

So it sounds like all the creative strategists want an inspiring, instructive get together - which means something nothing like a typical conference.

Great - I'm in. And from all the comments below, on Facebook and Twitter it seems like a few others may be as well.

Here are a few thoughts and outcomes from some of the discussions and comments I've seen/had today:

a) Crowd sourcing ideas for how we organize it, where we do and who we invite seems like a good idea - but it needs some kind of co-ordinating group. So I've started a Planning-ness 2009 Facebook group to help us collect feedback and comments. It just seems like a better place to get input and ideas from a big group than this blog, and I'm hoping that people will not mind being volunteered to help do the actual co-ordinating

b) The idea of making this get together instructional - teaching people how to do stuff or think about issues - seems to be interesting.

Adrian made the excellent point that we need to approach the this get together strategically - there are a lot of interesting conferences out there. how is this different?

My (very) personal criteria for success would be to walk away feeling both inspired and that I can do something new - a new skill, approach, took etc. That kind of teaching happens in a hands on way - where we all join in.

c) Having a service component.

As with all good things, it seems really obvious now. But in this economy, with this President, it would be rude not to do something for others.

I would also love to have a brand set up a problem to solve - something for us to pitch in the way Planning for Good has done in the past. Are you there Google etc. ???

d) Logistics

OK - there's not much agreement here, but we will sort that out. That being said, it seems much more interesting to do this i our own time, on a weekend, crashing in people's houses (I still haven' given up the camping idea btw)rather than making it formal.


Lee and others have also talked about creating a brief for the conference. I'm not going to deign to write the whole thing (since most a lot of it is covered in this post and the last one), but I think the objective is clear:

Create a gathering of creative strategists that inspires and engages them, mentally and physically .

The rest is up for discussion