Digital Thinkers
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Mike Arauz is a Strategy Director at Undercurrent , and lives in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Since moving to New York City in 2000, Mike has led many lives. Starting as a theater actor and director, Mike studied acting at The Atlantic Theatre Company, and performed improv and sketch comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. Next Mike dabbled in photography and conceptual art. Mike's piece "I Am _____", an unironic commentary on the ironic t-shirt, was part of a traveling group art exhibition "Pattern Language: Clothing As Communicator" organized by the Tufts University Art Gallery from 2005-2006.
Mike Arauz
Talent imitates, genius steals
I wrote this piece about engagement for the very nice people at Hall&Partners, for their new magazine. [Have a look if you get a chance, it has excellent contributions from Lawrence Green, Mark Earls, John Hegarty, and Sarah Morning among others.] However, I think it's important to understand that the nature of relationships between human beings and brands is of a qualatitively different nature than one between human beings.
So Sticky
Instagram was built to blow up The start-up launched last October 6, 2010 and within six hours it’s back-end became overwhelmed. Co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger quickly switched over from a single server in LA to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, or EC2 (**that’s as techy as this post gets, I promise!) It basically gave them the ability to minimize downtime and continue to scale the app as it grew. Last week Instagram announced that it’s reached 7 million users and over 150 million uploaded photos. And according to Systrom, community members are uploading photos at a rate of 15 photos per second.
March 2012 is a big month for viral ideas that change the way people think about more than just LOLcats. Here are four that happened in the last week or two and each brings its own lessons: Marilyn Hagerty's review of the local Olive Garden was a huge Twitter sensation, an easy target for ironists in search of something to snark about.
Seth's Blog
Business and marketing blogs
Local bike shops (LBS) are the life-line of the cycling world. When you find a good one, you will have both a resource and a community. Unfortunately, in my experience, a visit to the LBS is something I often dread, rather than look forward to. That’s why I am continually impressed every time I hear about Northern Californian bike shop Studio Velo. I’ve come across the name in various cycling blogs, but only recently sat down and took a good look at SV and what sets them apart.
Josh Spear, Trendspotting
"Brainstorming groups produce more ideas than an individual but fewer and poorer quality ideas than from individuals working separately. In other words, brainstorms dilute the sum of individual efforts." Diehl and Stroebe 1991 Jonah Lehrer's new book on creativity seems to be getting quoted in all sorts of places which is a sure sign that it's got some interesting thinking in it. One such thought is around just how inadequate brainstorming is for the purpose for which it is commonly deployed - the generation of good ideas. One of Osborn's original rules for brainstorming focused on quality through quantity, working on the assumption that the more ideas that are generated, the more likely a radical and effective solution would be found.
Only Dead Fish