This Is Beautiful is proud to help Kickstart this important documentary by Chad A. Stevens entitled The Coal War. Please pledge whatever you can to this project. There are 48 hours remaining and $10,000 left to make this happen.

We believe one of the biggest hurdles facing policy change to eliminate mountaintop removal is lack of awareness. If Chad can make his compelling documentary and reach more people with this horrifying reality taking place in our nation’s mountains, then maybe enough people will rally and our politicians will be forced to change their stance on the war on our health and environment.

Our Cree XLamp® Museum Display Piece designed for the Light + Building show in Frankfurt, Germany, April 2010.
24″H x 14″W, Mixed Media

Thanks to the guys at Artcraft for a great collaboration!

Check out more shots and become a fan of our team at http://facebook.com/thisisbeautiful

Panel Members
Elsa Vivero - VP of Sales for Weea (sales and distribution of Warner Music Group)
Dennis Switkin - Google
David Javitch - VP Marketing at ScanBuy
AJ MacGregor Dey - QRCodes.com - will allow you to see who has scanned the codes if they are using their platform.

Get a Reader
Link.me

David - ScanLife Mobile Barcode Solution
Code management platform and a mobile app for every OS
Included with new phones for major carriers including Sprint and Verizon.
This technology is open to any size business. Any type of object interactive. Outdoor, print, etc.

What is a code?
Binary code in an image. Software algorithms that translate the text of the message and encode it into the image.
One of the great things is that it’s instantly recognizable.

Dark lines have information. White space has no information. Contrast is read. You can store information, VCS, URLs, SMS, etc within the images.

Can you provide information on how many phones have this software on them?
3.5 - 4 M in Australia
4 - 5M in US
15 - 20M in US by 1st quarter of 2011.

The goal is to prevent typing on mobile devices.

Guidelines for deploying the codes. The trick is getting it right.

• Encode the data as small as possible. A tiny URL service is recommended. While phones have autofocus, it is still not perfect.
• Standard requires you to leave white space around the code. You are supposed to have 4 modules width in a code.
• You can add dark color, but 60/40 contrast if using color.
• Maximum of 25 characters before codes start to be unreadable on small devices
• About 1in is as small as you can get before it becomes unreadable.

What can be done to streamline backend servers to make it a seamless process? (SXSW had some problems with badge scanning.)
The issue was about registration processes. Some people had 2 profiles created and it resulted in multiple codes being generated.

The Vision. This will eventually allow point A to point B information easy to obtain. Coupon offers. Exclusive music. Special offers to create a complete experience.

A call to action is key to the success. Give people a hook! These codes allow for a connection between the physical and the digital easily. Code can be changed on the backend, so barcodes can be generated, printed, etc. and paths can be updated any time. So, if you wanted to point a code to your LinkedIn for a week, then make it point to a competition URL, you could do this easily from the backend using the same barcode image.

You can encode geolocations or other useful information.
Remember, smartphones are still only 20% of the market.

Paper printing. You want paper that does not reflect a lot of light. Avoid glossy paper. If it is reflecting light, it can make it difficult to scan.

Campaign Examples / Case Studies
1 Paramore
Campaign was in Hot Topic from August through October 2009. Allowed users to download exclusive Paramore tracks. URL to mobile site. 2/3 downloaded the reader. Over 1/2 of the people who streamed the tracks were complete streams of music through the software and not thru a browser. There was the opportunity to join newsfeeds and lists.

If your site is not formatted for mobile, do not use QR codes. People are scanning the codes because they are interested in byte-sized content. Codes should not lead to easily accessible areas like homepages. Success tends to come from exclusives.

They hoped for a quarter of interactions through the code, but they found that more than 50% did this. Wow.

2 HarperCollins
Lauren Conrad novel (LA Candy)
HC was one of the first clients to take a risk and put it in the mainstream
Can provide HC with information about where books are being purchased and being read which can be converted into book tours of popular areas, etc.
It has been fascinating to see the scanning increase as book sales increase.
Code scan takes you to the mobile site..Code has URL under the code so users who dont know what it is can visit it.. http://lacandy.mobi
The site also tells users what the codes are and how to use them with their devices.

The most widely deployed codes are barcodes on products. The benefit of QR codes is that they say CLICK ME.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO this is the last #sxsw interactive panel. I dont want to go home!!!

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Panel Members
Laura Fitton - Pistachio & oneforty.com
John Yamasaki - Yama - Community Evangelist at Seesmic
Robert Scoble - Scobleizer - Tech Journalist/Blogger/Rackspace
Nick Halstead - Aggregates every tweet
Amita Paul - Founder of Objective Marketer

What are the Top 3 most indispensible Twitter tools to you?
Laura - twhirl, Tweetie blah blah filler politically correct stuff no opinion
John - Seesmic Web, Tweetie,
Scoble - Tweetie, Listorious, Tweetmeme, Redux (shows all videos of people you are following)
Nick - Friend or Follow, Cotweet, Echofon
Amita - Objective Marketer, Tweetie

What could Twitter do better?
Nick - Because it’s so open, it has been harder for developers to make money. You build a site, go get traffic yourself, you cannot send emails, you can only communicate through the medium. facebook is different. Because it’s more closed, you have the user base set and can directly contact them.
Amita - I would rather let Twitter be what it is. It’s not Twitter’s problem, it’s the developers because they need to have a business model before they build an app.
Laura - More communication. Twitter is trying so hard to catch up with the developers that their silence is often fear-inducing. Innovation will get better when it is being sustained.

What is the greatest threat to Twitter?
Scoble - facebook, but Twitter keeps
Nick - activitystrea.ms, but no one is competing with them for at least this year
Amita - facebook.
Laura - Twitter is not going away. They are going to walk a fine line between innovating and letting others innovate for them.

What corporate tools are people using?
John - Google Buzz
Nick - Cotweet
Amita -

How do they keep tweets from the past few weeks?
John - Scalability is a problem with Twitter
Scoble - they need more metadata in tweets. If I could tag tweets, then I could search by tags.
Laura - disagrees with Robert. The Twitter ecosystem has it covered.
Scoble - you cant find the hudson river pic! You can through friendfeed because of metadata, but only because people commented on it.

Time: 4:08PM. Notes end. Panel ends at 4:30.

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Designers Accord
valcasey.com
DesignersAccord.org
@designersaccord

What is it?
They bring together Designers and Educators to address issues of Sustainability, Environmentalism and Social Impact.

• Try to tell honest story of sustainability.
• It's not about a checklist.
• It's a constant struggle.

They bring together Design educators to bring together Designers to address issues with Sustainability

639 Design Firms
33 Educational Adopters
32 Corporate Adopters
100 countries
6 continents

The media still talks about sustainability in terms of being Green. It is much more than this.
Bizarre ways to talk about sustainability and environmental issues. The issues have become much more complex.

This particular moment allows all of us to participate in the creative community.

Bruce Mau
2 fixed points. Every time you tug on the string, part of it will move. (I will recreate this diagram later)

7 ways to think about Sustainability in a broader way:
The interactive community will lead this movement because it requires systems thinking.

1. A system is more than the sum of its parts
HippoRoller allows other countries to move water and items from the heads of people to the ground, where it can be rolled. More water can be moved with less weight.
Problem: They were difficult to ship. Large, barrels. Could not find any recycled plastic that could be ruggedized to last. EcoNazis complained that it was worthless, not solving a problem because it was not 100% environmentally successful.

2. Feedback Delays and Bounded Rationality = Design Traps
Dell Eco Desktop. Problem is that we should not be designing another desktop.

3. There is no such thing as a side effect.
Taco experiment. Bought taco. All of the ingredients for one taco has traveled 64K miles around the world. Discovered the aluminum alloy in foil was from New Zealand

4. Creating the right measurement of success
The GNP is the American measurement of success. It's the measurement of money in the economy. It's the US measure of prosperity. It has ZERO to do with relationships and other items like medical, etc.
Groups that have created a project in India where ecological performance standards are being created for communities. These standards actually look at what that piece of land did in the ecosystem in terms of water filtration, carbon dioxide filtration, etc….and then they build everything in that same way. This means that everything new does nothing bad to the environment. This is the future. Our mentality of thinking about this short-termism will mean that one person or single group end up making decisions.

5. Selecting the correct lever for change
People tend to identify the wrong thing to change when they are trying to change things.
Naked Pizza. Four guys in New Orleans who built a <500 sq ft. pizza shack and turned it into a lab to make the worlds healthiest pizza. Take this and clone it. Build knowledge about nutritional health and teach the population about it. Using pizza as a Trojan Horse.
This is intended to tackle the problem on peoples' own turf.

6. Enabling new models buy recognizing relationships between stucture and behavior
Slinky in the hand. Why does the slinky fall when I remove my hand?
Box in the hand. Remove hand. Why does the box NOT move like the slinky? Different structure.

The HUB. 24 hubs around the world. Late coming to the US because they said no one in the US could realistically work in a collaborative environment.
shared space for entrepreneurs to allow them to brainstorm ideas about strategies, funding, etc. and putting them together to share ideas.

7. Issue-attention cycle: Degree of awareness is inversely correlated to the degree of productive action
When you get many people interested in a topic, people think "there's someone else doing this. I do not need to take part in it.

A system is a collection of elements and interconnections that are highlly organised to achieve an overall goal or purpose.

Architecture
LEED
OAN

Product Design
Cradle-to cradle
Okala Guide
LCA

Graphic Design
first things first
sustainable packaging coalition
sustainability checklist

What does the interactive community do? How can we shape the global community?

What if we used games to educate complex issues?What if Social Media was about Social Impact?
How can we apply systems thinking to communicate in entirely new ways? We do not have the luxury to decide when and how to do this. The time is now.

"Every profession bears the responsibilty to understand the circumstances that enable its existence." - Robert Gutman

Also: Ben Carey has some nice shots of the visual notes that occur during these keynotes. Check them out at http://bencarey.posterous.com

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Karaoke with the band! Many FailBlog moments ahead.

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Design Fiction is:
+ using stories to provoke imagination
+ creative speculation
+ suspending disbelief
+ an approach to design
+ material to think with
+ starting conversations

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These are raw notes from Cenydd Boyles’ presentation entitled Beauty in Web Design. They may or may not make sense.

Beauty in web design.
Cenydd Boyles

the point of beauty.
beauty affects us in profound ways. we are trying to make meaningful experiences and beauty positively affects emotions and experiences. we adjust messages by how attractive they are.this is a hard-wired response, not something we are trained to do or learn. beauty actually makes things easier to use. our brains respond differently to aesthetically pleasing objects. not only do we prefer using beautiful things, but we actually perform better when using beautiful things. it’s infectious. because it makes us feel so good, we want to share it. it’s why we put art on walls. tapping into these emotions is the challenge. it can change our perspective of the world.

beauty evolves.
art. the renaissance was a gateway to beautiful things…but the literal evolved into feelings. the abandonment of the literal. the invention of the daguerrotype, the microphone, the printing press. impressionism allowed art to take a break from reality and give the impression of a natural palette. dada and surrealism, found objects and subjectivity dominate this era. it’s beautiful if you find it beautiful.

Renaissance > Impressionism > Conceptualism > Installation > Interactive.

Is Art and our understanding of beauty changing? What are the new definitions of beauty?

Three types of Beauty.
1. Universal - based on universal principles.

2. Sociocultural - governed by standards of a particular time and place. fashion and music trends. it has so much power that it can actually override universal beauty.

3. Subjective - the likes and dislikes. it overrules sociocultural

How do we design for beauty?

Three modes of design.
1.Visceral - aimed at the gut. an instant reaction. the first sensations we get. biting into an apple. hearing a specific music chord. it’s something we feel, not think. focus on shape and form. to hit on us instantly to see if it’s something we respond to on a certain level.the impact of visceral design is 50ms. it hits us or it doesnt. on the web, it is almost entirely visual.

2.Behavioral - use. does it work? is it easy for me? does it sustain flow? does it behave like i expect? appropriate dimensions. mapped to mental models. sends clear messages about function. this movement has been successful, but is not enough. behavioral does not  always trump visceral design. done poorly, usability can be a real problem for a site. it can cause many issues. usability is usually useful and profitable, but not beautiful…and beautiful more often than not trumps usable.

3.Reflective - the most complex mode of design. builds on visceral and behavioral design. it asks questions like “does it fit in with who i am?” and “what does it stand for?”…it can change our personalities and moods. successful reflective design changes the way we think about things.

What should we do?
1. Get emotional. Tell Stories. The power of a good story is key. Content empowers emotion.
2. Think bigger. Because of the duality of web design (user and business) we have ignored the ecosystem of design. what is good for the community? what is good for our environment?
3. Lead. When did you last see a statue of a community? (LOVE THIS!!!) Be a leader with vision. Stakeholders take control, but
4. Think long term. how can we maintain interest after the lust has worn off? how can we keep people excited about the designs we create?
5. Broaden our horizons. there is art, architecture, packaging, education. the golden moment. the thing you always remember. the moment where your life is shifted. notice the world. breathe it in. if you are into web standards, check out flash. if youre a flash guy, learn about standards.
6. Be brave. we need to make statements. we should stand for something and convey our ideas through our work. when we have movements and communities blossom, they tend to stem from some standards being set. why are we debating techniques? there are far more philosophical items to consider.

designers are not heroes. we have to discard the egos. we have to solve the problems. there is no beauty in hero design. there is only narcissism.

we are the generation of designers that will crack these issues and create our own beauty.

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