Hello Viking

NEW HELLO VIKING BLOG

Thanks for finding us here. 

We've moved Hello Viking's blogging over to HelloViking.com.

Please visit us there.

Homeroom: Our PhizzPop Design Challenge presentation

Just a few hours before Barack Obama was elected President, we were on stage presenting at the NYC stop in the Microsoft PhizzPop Design Challenge. Hello Viking collaborated with Magnet360 network member agencies Popular Front and InSite Software to respond to the challenge, then design and build a functioning prototype—in less than five days—in Silverlight.

The challenge was to develop an innovative interface for grades K-12; to improve the education environment for students, teachers and parents across all digital devices. 

Here's the presentation of our solution:

Our presentation came in second place!

Huge thanks to TJ and his crew at Popular Front, Darwin at Insite, Dan and Scott at Magnet, and Paul and Sean at Microsoft. 

Collaboration redux

Intriguing post over at Neville Hobson's blog today on a new kind of collaboration offering called Immersive Work Spaces from Linden Labs and Rivers Run Red. 

We use Apple's video iChat and screen sharing, which seems to work pretty well for up to four people. And there's always ooVoo.

It's interesting to see how this conversation around work, collaboration and telecommuting keeps evolving.

31onSaturday.com ad

We hear the way to drive traffic to your website is with a TV spot. So we made this TV spot. 

31onSaturday.com

This entire episode transpired inside 36 hours.

It starts with our friend Stephanie, who told us she wanted to do something for her pal Cortney, who's turning 31 this coming Saturday, October 18. She wanted to give her something...special. 

We thought, how about an idea?

What if we could find a way to connect Cortney with everyone else in the world who will be turning 31 this coming Saturday? And really, how many people is that?

Thus was born 31onSaturday.com. We launched it today, and we'd love it if you stopped reading this post to go visit it right now.

Okay, so how many people in the world will turn 31 this Saturday, October 18?

249,635 (very roughly estimated), including New Zealand footballer Ryan Nelsen and Pro Motocross rider David Vuillemin.

Or, one could say that 12.9 million people worldwide will turn 31 on a Saturday in 2008. And that's when it hit us: That's a lot of people turning 31 on Saturdays—we must do something.

So Cortney is not alone. We hope the friends and family of all those 249,635 lucky people will take a second to stop by 31onSaturday.com to pay tribute to their loved one and the connection they all have together. How could you not participate?

Each time someone makes a dedication to someone else turning 31 this Saturday, we'll reveal another 25 pixels of...something. The more dedications, the more we reveal. (Honestly, we only need about 12,000 dedications, or roughly 4% of the world turning 31 this coming Saturday to participate.)

That's it. That's the idea. Now, go make a dedication to someone turning 31 this Saturday. 

And happy 31st birthday, Cortney!

(Statistics via the U.S. Census Bureau World Population Clock and U.S. Summary. And let's note the World Clock data is always changing. Oh, and we're not economists or even statisticians.)

Managing *for* Creativity

Image from flickr by GeminiCai@SH

Teresa Amabile and Mukti Khaire at the Harvard Business Review have written an engaging piece in the latest issue called "Creativity and The Role of The Leader" (PDF excerpt). In describing the value and role of creativity within a very wide range of businesses, the authors note:

"What used to be an intellectual interest for some thoughtful executives has now become an urgent concern for many."

As Teresa's blog points out, "Big companies, unable to cultivate [creativity] within their own walls, end up buying it instead."

The growing need for more creativity within organizations isn't a surprise. As the article points out, business has succeeded in honing processes of optimization, distribution and execution to the Nth degree. Our on-demand supply chains hum. But as psychologist and NetFlix Prize contestant Gavin Potter points out in Wired, "The 20th century was about sorting out supply. The 21st is going to be about sorting out demand."

Creativity = Demand

And thus, figuring out how to manage for creativity (versus simply trying to control or organize it) is the business challenge of the future. 

As we've experienced over 20+ years working in and running small and large ad agency creative departments, managing for creativity has as much to do with willingness, temperament, attitude, patience, philosophy and optimism as practical considerations, like work flow. Or time sheets.

The currency is ideas. The more you have, the better your chances. The better your abilities to filter, the more likely you will be to succeed. 

You have ideas. Everyone does. That's not the problem. 

The problem is in understanding what the idea needs to accomplish, then mercilessly tuning that idea (or killing it, most likely) until it succeeds. You will kill more ideas than you tune or produce. Be quick. Get on with making new ideas. As an old mentor of ours puts it, "The business of creativity is learning to survive rejection."  

 

What do you think?

Telecommuting for fun and profit

Imagine our joy in reading "Home Sweet Office: Telecommute Good for Business, Employees, and Planet" in the latest issue of Wired.

"When gasoline costs $4 a gallon, companies shouldn't just be doing all they can to expand telecommuting — they should be scrapping their offices entirely."

"...time and again, studies have shown that telecommuters are every bit as engaged as their cubicle-bound brethren — and happier and more productive to boot."

Huzzah!

In the past 12 months, Hello Viking's employed 38 people across the U.S., and collaborated with 39 individual client contacts—entirely virtually. Everyone's happy, and the work has been great. We'd like to verify Wired's Mr. Know-It-All, Brendan I. Koerner, who posits, "Ditching the office could also provide businesses with a leg up in the scramble to recruit and retain talent. For starters, location would no longer limit a company's employment pool." 

Too true. 

We've seen the future, and we're living it.

Viking Smackdown Contest Winner

[Photo: Benny Mazur, under Creative Commons]

We have a winner!

Since we launched Viking Smackdown in July, over 85,000 people have played worldwide on their iPhones and iPod Touches. According to the server logs, some folks have even played for over an hour at a time. 

Maybe this guy is one of them.

We're proud to announce Jon Hurwitz is the official winner of the Viking Smackdown High Score Contest!

Jon plays Viking Smackdown in the Big Apple. He's an awesome fella. So awesome, in fact, that we'll probably be bringing the Smackdown contest-winning celebration his way in the future.

Thanks to everyone who embraced our debut in the iPhone space. Of course, you can continue to entertain yourself for hours playing Viking Smackdown. Just turn your iPhone/iPod Touch towards: http://vikingsmackdown.com.

Viking Joseph!

We're pleased to finally get around to blogging about the fact that Joseph Rueter is working with Hello Viking, focusing on strategy, media analysis and tasks like "bouncing ideas around" and "getting burritos." In all disciplines, Joseph excels. Lucky us!

Stop the presses

Adweek's picked up the news on Alan Pafenbach joining Hello Viking as Chief Creative Officer. (Thanks, Ellie!)

Tell your friends. Spread the word.

And please, renew your subscriptions.