This weekend, I was watching  a Japanese anime called Evangelion. In one of the episodes, I saw 30 seconds of footage, were one of the characters feels uneasy with freedom so, make him more comfortable they remove a degree of freedom (later on how they did this).

The 30 seconds sticked to mi mind, because the images easily portrait why creative thinking is hard. Creativity is define by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “the ability to create”. Generally, when we create something, we use another “something”, as a base and build on it, therefore we are not being creative, because we are not creating, instead we are building. How do we create, rather than building? Here is where “no hold bars creativity” helps. No hold bars creativity, is the process of thinking, where you have the freedom to come with anything, that yet can’t be describe with words. You may ask, when do you really need to go through this creativity process? Well dear reader, by asking you are already lowering your freedom and getting in your comfort zone. The same happens if you argue that everything has been already invented, that is a good start on caging the creativity process: with bars.

Here is the clip to complement the above:

As you can see, the character has full freedom, but he is uneasy. Things get better when a line is drawn and he can see where is the bottom and the top. With the line he achieves a sense of familiarity by walking, however he loses a degree of freedom.

If I ask you: create the craziest virtual world you can? Or the most innovative mobile phone, by doing so, I’m staring to limit you with the words: “crazy” and “innovative”. Asking question will not help you with the process, neither defining a problem, to archive this here are two steps:

First: don’t use the term “No hold bars” or any terms…
Second: create.

Based on Wikipedia a frame is a basic conceptual structure used to solve or address complex issues. So when you learn a new framework, keep the following in mind: a framework permits you to put a frame on your work, it’s not a tutorial, a recipe or a how to, it’s a frame (or structure) of work, nothing more, nothing less.

Why this clarification? Well sometimes you may learn how to use a framework using a example, and then your next implementations mimic the example, instead of using the actual framework. Frameworks exist to make our life easier with complex problems and give us a more concrete way of repeating the problem solving.  

Most commonly you may see the word framework in software programming. Software frameworks are design to make your life easier and raise the level of abstraction. If life becomes more complicated when using a framework, two things may be occurring: the framework sucks or you are not using it correctly. So next time you learn a new framework, take a step back and detached it from the example that is being used to teach it to you.

Enter Annika Lidne, from Lidne Inc. She is here to talk about hwy she loves social media and hate Facebook. Again I didn’t take notes (but next one and forward I did).

Annika starts with the walled garden effect and AOL. I have never heard about the walled garden effect, but knew about AOL and how it was the gran daddy of Internet (in USA) a decade ago. Basically the walled garden effect (for those who don’t know) it’s a closed set of services provided to users, such as Facebook. They want everybody and everything to stay in Facebook, because they revenue comes from on ads on Facebook. The problem with this is that sooner or later something better comes or people get sick of being “taken hostage” in this beautiful walled garden, so they leave. Such as it happened with AOL, since users needed to navigate the Internet through their browser. This  also was a pain for content providers because they needed to fit AOL requirements.

For more on walled garden check out this post. Here is a guy starts on justifying why he refuses to participate in social networks, which leads to the walled garden discussion.

Annika talked about how this is a women’s world since there are more girl or woman bloggers than men (she gave stats for Sweden, not the world which is suspicious since women in Sweden kick ass), the same with social network activity. But she forgot to mention that men still rule, even if there is a shift, we still rule (sorry but is true and it doesn’t mean it’s a good thing, but its true.)

Girls dominating social media should not be a surprise, since girls (in their teens especially) have this tendency to talk a lot. Remember back in the days when there was no internet, and how girls will also monopolized the phone for hours, talking and talking. Same today, but they got IM, SMS, they got social networks and now they figured out that blogs are a way to expressed out of the “walled garden”. All the  tools mentioned  above, help keep in touch with most of their friends on the same time, which is a way of life and not just a phase.

Teenage girls want to express themselves in so many ways; in contrast boys are happy with their video games and porn. (Yes I said porn and I don’t think today with the Internet a teenage boy haven’t seen a naked women in some way.)

For those that where at Facebook Garage, you may remember the presentation highlight was in the Q&A, when a guy monopolized it by attacking here and questioning why she hated Facebook. The guy needed a chill pill, since it looked like a vendetta against Annika. It just show how people are different and need different things. So if you need something more personalized and don’t have what it takes to do a social network from the scratch, maybe you can make one at Ning. At Ning you can create a  social network of anything, for example nustart students at KTH, Olimpia fans in La Ceiba or I want to learn Swedish but I’m lazy social network. I guess you got the point.

At the end of the day maybe Facebook is doomed, but blogs will live another day and that is why they state that the next social network will be wordpress.

Brit Stakston from JMW Kommunikation, presented on the state of mind companies should have when using the power of Media.

I don’t remember much and I wasn’t taking notes (for some reason) but what I remember she mention is regarding something about not getting what the the media mix was about. They say that the Internet is like the wild wild west without moral values and its out of control. And as Brit pointed out that in the real world also bad things happened.

I made a comment on how the company Procter & Gamble fired Axel Bringéus for his blog and how I was surprised. She replied about how the blogger backed out and didn’t defend this ground. And that he might have been paid really good money because it’s not easy to be fired in Sweden.

She made a good point: if your blog or whatever social media creates some controversy and puts you into trouble, the least you could do is defend it. Basically if you don’t defend it you are saying “you don’t care”.

Companies should learn how to deal with these issues and like Brit points out, understand full the media mix. Take for example what Nike did with in 2006, when it uploaded a video on YouTube. It looked like it was made by a fan filming Ronaldinho and showed off his skills with some new shoes, plus hitting the goal post various times with the ball. Based on the report by Inc.com fans first thought it was a legit fan, but then where upset that it was posted by Nike. But the buzz was created and did what it was to do: promote some shoes.

The facebook garage is over, but not my blogging. Had to change my plan.. was going to do life blogging, with pics but it was to fast paced. Also I had to lend the laptop to one of the speakers, so that stalled me a bit and again this is my first time in this kind of live blogging.

I took notes of the presentation and post on them later. It will not be just post notes but give a general opinion on the topic. But it has been fun and a good experience.

Well everybody is leaving so more to come soon

We are getting started…

There is a some people around…

with mahesh.. its his baby.. and he is so proud (he is also in my bizbuzz team )

The moderator.. with the cool shoes, headset and everything …

The  MySpace guy

Some pics from the first Facebook Garage at Stockholm (thanks to nustart)

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People preparing

some cool shoes

Here is the moderator, with the cool shoes

nustart and other setting up..