We had to arrive an hour and a half before the producer, actors and director arrived. During that time, the film publicists checked you in and lined you up in a particular location at the edge of the red carpet, which was set up in an L shape that led into the theatre.
The cast included talent Paul Giamatti, most known for his stunning and humorous performance in Sideways (aka I don’t drink Merlot), Amy Ryan and new to the stage Alex Schaffer who was a young boxer who tried out for a part for the first time. Tom McCarthy was the film’s Director/Writer.
Below is a live broadcast interview they did the day before the premiere which I attended as an observer.
Should you see the film? Absolutely! Here’s the storyline: disheartened attorney Mike Flaherty (Giamatti), who moonlights as a high school wrestling coach, stumbles across a star athlete through some questionable business dealings while trying to support his family. Just as it looks like he will get a double payday, the boy’s mother shows up fresh from rehab and flat broke, threatening to derail everything. As always Giamatti brings you in for more of his quirky and funny personality regardless of what role he plays.
Here’s a handful of snapshots I took at the Red Carpet Event:
Amy Ryan: warm, engaging, charming and playful
Paul Giamatti: funny, direct, warm, engaging….wish I had more time
Tom McCarthy: smart, honest, sincere, soive, reflective (also wish I had more time: we seem to have similar roots)
Alex Schaffer: youthful, shy, adorable….shocked to discover that it was his first time in a film role
Below is the video footage I took of the cast and director getting interviewed along the Red Carpet while I largely shot stills:
Here’s a review by the Christian Science Monitor. One other note: Tom McCarthy’s latest film (The Station Agent& The Visitor) was also a big fan favorite at Sundance. I had a chance to talk to him briefly and in my brief exchange, all I can say is thumbs up.
Seth Priebatsch who calls himself the Chief Ninja at a company with no vowels: SCVNGR! gave a keynote at the recent SXSW in Austin this past week. Talk about a mouthful….not a name I’ll ever remember but luckily his energy and conviction was addictive and engaging. He discussed gamification, location-based services, social media engagement and more as it related to businesses, in education and beyond.
Seth talked about education. School is broken because while it is perfect for ‘game mechanics’ it doesn’t work because there is no engagement in schools. “Kids are bored,” says Seth. “Engagement is a critical concept that any good game designer thinks a lot about. When you replace the real reward, i.e., learning for learning sake, with something that feels like a chore, i.e., getting a grade, kids get bored. Right now, grades are a simple game mechanic in education and that’s how we reward today. Grades are naïve implementation of a status mechanic. The problem with grades is that it’s a game where you can lose and in education, you don’t want anyone to lose.”
He challenges the audience with this question: “Why not create a grading dynamic based on progressions? Rather than grade on a particular test or one experience, you grade and give points based on progression – focusing on the positive. In this scenario you can’t fail, it’s more how quickly do you move from x points to y points, starting with zero experience for everyone. The idea is to have kids focus on the end result and on progression rather than grades.”
He then dissected Groupon and explored various game mechanics, what works and why:
Free Lunch – this is one of the most subtle game mechanics in the deck. It plays off consumers own skepticism. We’ve been taught that no free lunch exists, but what we see with Groupon, we see something that is too good to be true. With Groupon, the free lunch is justified, i.e., so many people need to sign up and if they do, we get the free lunch. The brilliance of what Groupon has done is that they can present the free lunch, play off the consumer’s skepticism, but guaranteed that the consumer doesn’t have to take any action to do it.
Communal Game Play – based on the idea that you can give anyone a complex problem, you can solve it using a community. As a community, if you share the deal with your friends, together you all win. Groupon uses this game mechanic as a kickstarter.
The Countdown – whenever you see a deal on Groupon, you see a countdown, which is a game mechanic that creates a spike in activity as you get closer to countdown zero.
Loyalty: the idea of being a regular, i.e., Norm at Cheers. American Express uses status really well, making you feel really special every time you move to the next level with different colored cards (progression game mechanics).
The Level Up Game Mechanic: unlocking a higher reward. You have different levels, i.e., good, better, best. Levels one and two are locked, they can see them but not have them. New comers move to regulars and they receive rewards for leveling up.
Inclusive Ownership – Exclusive ownership means that you get the benefit from owning something and no one else can benefit from it, i.e., the game of Risk is a great example. Inclusive ownership are group owners – everyone gets a benefit. Community gains from a group checking into a place.
Reward Schedules – the idea behind reward schedules is ‘what do I get for doing this?’ Everyone has introduced something you get for doing something, i.e., badges, lotteries, free drinks, points at a place, something that allows you to engage with a place. Rewards actually work really well.
Communal game play and communal discovery – The idea behind this is that you give a complex problem to a group of people and the community solves it together. The mechanics to make a group give something away that will be bad for them in the short term in order to have a better result long term. Decentralized leadership can solve complex problems so much faster than centralized leadership with communal game play mechanics in play.
People want to be part of something epic and work harder tha you normally would because you’re fully engaged and you want to be part of something greater than yourself. In other words, a Global problem with a local solution.
He also used examples by getting the audience involved in games he created to prove his points. Have a listen:
John Battelle interviewed Google’s Marissa Mayer at the one day SIGNAL event in Austin last week. Her answers were thoughtful and as always, her informal and breezy way of addressing a crowd was well received. Her most memorable ‘share’ had nothing to do with Google.
Having hosted the Obama dinner this past month when he was in the San Francisco Bay Area talking to technology visionaries and CEOs, she talked about what it was like to have the President in her home and things she learned about security (aka, oh yeah, there will be TONS of men in black suits standing outside my home which is across from an elementary school), and meal planning. Here’s the Business Insider overview on the dinner recap. It’s a great interview: have a listen.
Facebook’s Emily White talks about the use of social media and social platforms’ value in targeting smaller regions. She gave her talk on “hyper local” marketing and social at the SIGNAL event in Austin last week, which was held the day before SXSW kicked into gear.
At the SIGNAL event in Austin last week, Pepsico’s Head of Digital Shiv Singh gave a talk about the Pepsico Challenge and how they used social media to not just engage with new customers and fans, but how it lead to funding meaningful projects around the world. Shiv also wrote the book Social Media Marketing for Dummies. Have a listen below.
In this very short video clip (the last few minutes of his talk at SXSW this year), Gowalla’s Josh Williams talks about the importance of contribution. If we’re only creating apps and using game mechanics and location-based services (LBS) as a way to increase our social klout and play to our online egos, then the real value of these services will never be realized. The take away is: use these tools for the greater good and to make a difference in the world.
Being a passionate photographer myself and having lived and traveled to some of the pockets where JR shot hundreds of images for a ‘wish’ he had for the world, I couldn’t help but be a little more than intrigued by his project which just won the TED Prize last week in Long Beach, CA.
So, who’s JR? He is a photographer whose career began when he found a camera in the Paris subway. In his first major project, in 2001 and 2002, JR toured and photographed street art around Europe, tracking the people who communicate their messages to the world on walls. His first large-format postings began appearing on walls in Paris and Rome in 2003. His first book, Carnet de rue par JR, about street artists, appeared in 2005.
In 2006, he launched “Portrait of a Generation,” huge-format portraits of suburban “thugs” from Paris’ notorious banlieues, posted on the walls of the bourgeois districts of Paris. This illegal project became official when Paris City Hall wrapped its own building in his photos.
His wish for the world? I wish for you to stand up for what you care about by participating in a global art project, and together we’ll turn the world…INSIDE OUT.”
Here’s the idea: to participate.create a large-scale participatory art project that transforms messages of personal identity into pieces of artistic work. Everyone will be challenged to use black and white photographic portraits to discover, reveal and share the untold stories and images of people around the world. These digitally uploaded images will be made into posters and sent back to the project’s co-creators for them to exhibit in their own communities.
People can participate as an individual or in a group; posters can be placed anywhere, from a solitary image in an office window to a wall of portraits on an abandoned building or a full stadium. These exhibitions will be documented, archived and viewable virtually. Visit www.insideoutproject.net to participate.
Below is an exhibit of some of his work held at a gallery in Long Beach, the weekend after the TED Conference finished.
In the gallery, which was free to all attendees, you could have your photo taken and within minutes, you were given a larger than yourself piece of paper with your mug shot, replicating what he has been doing in developing countries. It’s symbollic of his project and the idea is to plaster your image somewhere to expand his idea and he hopes, to change the world.
The TED Prize is designed to leverage the TED community’s exceptional array of talent and resources and is awarded annually to an exceptional individual who receives $100,000 and, much more important, “One Wish to Change the World.”
Mashable’s Jenn Van Grove, IDG’s Pat Kenealy, The Next Web’s Hermione Way and ReadWriteWeb’s Mike Melanson do it up with karaoke at late night DEMO in Palm Springs.
And while we’re at it, VentureBeat’s Matthew Lynley, Owen Thomas, Anthony Ha and Matt Marshall can also sing.
Below, Anthony Ha sings while Owen Thomas dances in the background.
Below, I chat with Trendspottr’s founder about their new application, which is a curation tool that brings what’s relevant, compelling and popular around a particular topic at any given time. They are currently in private beta but the goal is for the free tool to consumers to be available by the end of the month.
