Every now and then when I spend time online I find things that make me shiver cause they’re so freakin cool. Today I found an open source project that matches that description and I’d like to share it with you. It regards an organization called Ushahidi and their kick ass crowdsourcing platform.
Ushahidi, which means “testimony” in Swahili, was initially a website developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. Ushahidi’s roots are in the collaboration of Kenyan citizen journalists during a time of crisis. Since then Ushahidi have grown from an ad hoc group of volunteers to a focused organization.
Crime reporting in Haiti with the Ushahidi platform
Now the platform is available as an Open Source platform and it kicks ass. It’s among the coolest mashup platforms I’ve seen. Since launch the Ushahidi collaboration platform has been used to collaborate on crime tracking in Atlanta, , wildlife tracking in Africa, monotoring of voting in Mexico, mapping the crisis in Haiti and even cleaning up after the Snowmageddon in Washington and a lot more. The platform lets you contribute via mail, Twitter, SMS and online reporting.
You might have read the book Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky. If not the short story is basically that Clay writes on how internet fundamentally changes the way we communicate due to the fact that this world wide web thing creates a never ever seen platform that enables people to create, share and consume information at a close to no cost. The Ushahidi platform is more or less rocket fuel for the ideas Clay is bringing forward in his book.
What do you wanna mashup? Head over to Ushahidi and get going!
People over here in Europe are getting ready to change their light bulbs at home due to a decision taken in the European Union a couple of years ago. This has triggered an earthquake of ideas on how to repackaging this old product that haven’t really seen inside of a designers room the last 50 years (or at least it feels that way).
This is more or less what the industry has offered us the last 50 years
Sometime last year I noticed that this business is on the move. As I was shopping bulbs it struck me that good shit is happening inside the hardware store on the light bulb shelf. What the light bulb industry is going through is a great inspiration for any business lost in history and it shows that once you get that ball rolling things will happen fast.
Here are 10 light bulb packaging concepts that leads this industry forward
Sweet and Informative from Greenlite found on Aaron Skippers blog.
Right now I’m trying to find the time to finalize a couple of posts hidden among my drafts. However I’ve got a quite tight schedule right now with 4 exiting speaking appearances (and another 4 closed ones) where I’ll be speaking about future communication, social media, branding and creativity the coming 2 weeks.
So, if you wanna tap into my brain before Easter you’re probably better off meeting me in:
Whatever you do and whatever you intend to accomplish in life one thing is for sure. It should be something you’re passionate about. Ask yourselves these 10 questions and if your answer is NO to any of them – quit and do something else.
Am I doing what I love every day?
Am I doing what I love every day?
Am I doing what I love every day?
Am I doing what I love every day?
Am I doing what I love every day?
Am I doing what I love every day?
Am I doing what I love every day?
Am I doing what I love every day?
Am I doing what I love every day?
Am I doing what I love every day?
You’ll see that once you start follow you dreams other people will notice a halo of energy forming around you. It’s the ‘halo of passion’. The halo of passion leads to success. Nothing is more true than this!
Winning clients is hard. Keeping them over time is even harder. Many of you might read this blog in order to do just that – win and keep clients. Then let me share my point of view on the subject.
How to hit your target
Innovation is what awards you with new accounts.
This is key. If your in a pitch situation you will not win by simply telling the client about your process, thoughts on strategy etc. The client have decided to try new blood and that means he/she wants just that – new blood. You will win clients by showing your [click to continue…]
I believe in the saying – ‘Sharing is caring’ and most of the post on this blog is about just that. Trying to get my head around things that could help brands and companies to outperform themselves. Now I need to cash in some of that sharing and the currency is cudos – your vote!
Vote for Ronnestam.com in Swedish YABA Awards
This blog has been nominated in ‘Trend’(I was awarded in more categories but they didn’t allow that which is kind of typically Swedish) category in Swedish Yet Another Blog Award. Please lay your vote on me by heading over the place where you vote for Blog of Ronnestam. Vote now and help yourselves in terms of securing a white leather lounge chair in heaven once you die. (or at least a fluffy cloud to lie down on)
This last year, 2009 has been a blast in many ways. Almost every day I’ve received interesting news from friends, other bloggers and my RSS feeds. Even thought we’ve seen one of the most severe economical downturns this year it seems advertising, communication and technology has been the business to be in.
Brands seem to have learned from the history and brand spend has rather gone up than down for a lot of brands. We’ve also seen Twitter and Facebook continue to grown faster than anything else on the planet and social media and open technologies has prospered due to that fact. The iPhone has continued to grow and Android is picking up it’s pace. Google has released lots of new cool products even though the Wave didn’t really become the clean double over head a lot of us expected.
Most brands have been looking for one-offs and as I look back at the 2009 Cannes Lions winners it strikes me that I can’t really remember one single campaign that stood out and changed the world of advertising. We’re slowly moving away from bought space to earned space, this is most certainly the reason why my brain plays these tricks with me.
I’m not gonna spend more of this post summing up 2009. Other people, papers, bloggers and personalities has done a great job doing this already. Instead let’s move on to 2010.
Click for a larger image
Here are the Brand and communication predictions for 2010 by Johan Ronnestam
REAL
This is more of a change in how we live, consume, work, advertise and communicate. We will of course use all technology available to become more real but we will strive to make things more realistic, true [click to continue…]
Who said Google Wave couldn’t be made to good use. Hmm…I sort of did at this networking meeting the other day when we talked about the biggest fails of 2009. At least we haven’t seen that many good cases yet but of course they will follow.
Whirled Interactive (same guys who gave us Pulp Wave) use [...]
One thing I love about the internet is the fact that suddenly you find things that haven’t surfaces for many years. Last week, thanks to AdLab I got word of a book by Douglas Atkin – ‘The Culting of Brands’. Douglas wrote this book back in 2004 but as I’m reading it I’d say it’s [...]
The Mobile Revolution. Have you heard that one before. Well, just when it’s about to happen thanks to the iPhone and the Android OS I’d like to launch a thought about the next revolution – ‘The Revolution of the Screens’.
A couple of month back I got my Amazon Kindle. I blogged about the Microsoft Courier [...]
Today I’m browsing for mood images. My search has led me to tons of newspaper blogs. Then suddenly as I noticed this comic strip below my heart stop for a brief second.
This piece of communication is so simple yet so strong. If this would have a been an ad that ended with ‘Send Money to [...]
ronnestam.com was voted Sweden’s first blog on Innovation, future trends and digital communication. It’s written by Johan Ronnestam. He's widely regarded as one of Sweden’s leading speakers and authorities in the field of modern creative and conceptual thinking and skill of innovating brands and their communication.
