There are many ongoing discussions about “Innovation” these days both in traditional media like magazines as well as on the web (representing new media). In many cases “technological invention” is the enabler for a set of “derivative applications” which we (might) call “Innovation”.
Two recent “derivative applications” which are good examples for this are “Weblogs” and “Podcasts”. The former enabled by Open Source content management software in combination with cheap webspace and the latter enabled by the iPod.
While a broader public (read my posting from last Saturday on this ;-) seems to have started to understand what “Blogging” might be about, from my perception “Podcasts” still are fairly knew to the average individual. Consequently there are many people out there who are experimenting on reasonable applications of these means (or can we call them “technologies”?)
Some weeks ago I’ve been contacted by Chris Gee from “thePreparedMind.com”. Chris started blogging in April this year and ever since he’s produced a lot of useful brainfood. As a trained graphic designer and owner of CUBEinteractive/NY he has decided to use his blog for pushing the design profession further:
“Ever since I started in this industry in 1989, I have heard graphic designers complain about how our industry receives too little respect from clients and the business world in general.
The how’s and why’s have been discussed and re-hashed endlessly but now it’s time to start confronting some realities about our industry, as well as to start discussing solutions. What do we need to do in order to gain more respect from the business world? From our clients? How can we, as an industry, improve our core business practices and the way we deal with the business world and clients? What ARE our core business practices? Do we even have any to speak of?”
Recently Chris started to extend his blog and support his mission by the use of podcasts as well. So far he has conducted 4 interviews with people from various backgrounds and he posts them as podcasts on his blog. Since podcast #3 Chris also supplies “Show notes” accompanying his podcasts which make it easier to browse the approx. 60 min. MP3–files. Great idea and service!
Last Friday I’ve had the pleasure to be interviewed by Chris on the state of the design management profession and he’s posted our conversation last night. Even though I’m somehow used to talk in front of larger audiences I’ve been quite excited about the chat setting enabled by Skype and the fact that our dialogue will be dispersed to an unknown number of listeners worldwide. I’m still doubting if I’d like to re-listen to my (clearly personal) statements ;-)
Finally I’m proud to be the successor (in terms of podcast numbers ;-) of GK vanPatter of “NextDesign Leadership Institute” in NY City whom I’d wish to meet or at least talk to soon, because:
“At the core of NextD is the belief that the traditional model of design leadership needs to be radically reinvented to better adapt to a radically changed marketplace. The ultimate goal of NextD is to help expand designs’ reach.” (Read: What is NextD?)
This is exactly what “Vol. 2: design-management.de” wants to contribute to and what I try to achieve with my strategy workshops as well! More to be posted soon and please drop us (Chris and myself) some feedback on podcast #5.
