New project: The Carbon Economy

For the second time in recent months XPLANE has partnered with The Economist to create a compelling video on a topic of global importance. After working together on “Did You Know? 4.0”, The Economist enlisted XPLANE’s visual communication expertise to develop “The Carbon Economy” about the growing importance of climate change and green technologies and solutions.

“The Carbon Economy” will be shown at The Economist’s upcoming Carbon Economy Summit on November 17 and 18, 2009 in Washington, D.C. The video is three minutes in length and includes simple visuals and a moving soundtrack to clearly convey the troubled state of global climate change and what steps must be taken to reach a positive outcome. The production was created using Apple’s Keynote software.

For more information on The Carbon Economy Summit, visit http://carboneconomy.economist.com.

Did You Know 4.0

XPLANE is happy to present Did You Know 4.0 — another official update to the original “Shift Happens” video. This completely new Fall 2009 version includes facts and stats focusing on the changing media landscape, including convergence and technology, and was developed in partnership with The Economist.

As Garr Reynolds mentions over at Presentation Zen this morning, yes, this project was created with “off-the-shelf slideware” (Keynote and GarageBand, actually, along with Photoshop and Illustrator). Content by XPLANE, The Economist, Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod and Laura Bestler. Design and development by XPLANE.

For more information, or to join the conversation, please visit The Economist’s Media Convergence conference site at mediaconvergence.economist.com, or stop by shifthappens.wikispaces.com for all things Did You Know.

Startup 101: Introducing Our Serialized “How to Build a Startup” Book

30 chapters on building a tech startup:

“Startup 101″ is a serialized book about the thrills and spills of starting a Web technology venture. It will be a regular feature in our new channel ReadWriteStart, dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs. Startup 101 is for first-time entrepreneurs who want to go through the whole startup life cycle – including raising money, building a valuable business, and making a lot of money by selling the venture or taking it public.

The founding entrepreneur is the hero and primary reader of this how-to guide. Most of what we say will be well known to investors and advisers who support entrepreneurs, but we hope they also find some value here.

15 Roles Every Startup Needs Filled

This post goes through 15 critical roles then suggests which ones can be added later. Lots of discussion in the comments too…

I’ve been thinking about how to prepare for Startup Weekend, which is approaching quickly. Part of the registration process was assigning yourself a “specialty”. Of the seven designations, I chose architect for myself, whatever that means. But the role-designation question might be useful, and I think it’s worth looking at all the hats to be worn and shared in a startup.

In my previous startup I tried to wear so many hats — too many — and we failed.

No Small Change: How Obama Reinvented Campaign Finance

Check out this new XPLANATiON that XPLANE put together:

“Barack Obama is the first major candidate to decline participation in the public financing system for presidential campaigns. He’s found a more effective way to raise money — by leveraging the power of the American people through online Social Networks.”

This work is released under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

RunMyProcess > On demand business integration and process management (BPM)

“RunMyProcess is a SaaS Web 2.0 integration platform which allow to automate, without any programming, the exchange between your internal information system, your partners or your software…”

Fortune: Steve Jobs speaks out

“In an exclusive interview, Apple’s CEO talked with Fortune senior editor Betsy Morris in February in Kona, Hawaii, where he was vacationing with his family, about the keys to the company’s success, the prospect of Apple without Jobs, and more. Here are excerpts.”

My personal war against Crackberry

“In this age of wireless Internet and mobile email devices, having an effective meeting or working session is becoming more and more difficult. Laptops, Blackberries, Sidekicks, iphones, and the like keep people from being fully present. Aside from just being rude, partial attention generally leads to partial results. Multi-tasking is a myth (and there are lots of other articles corroborating Merlin’s points). This is especially damaging in highly collaborative and interdisciplinary fields like UX. Here at the office, we’ve begun to make most of our meetings ‘topless’ (i.e. no laptops allowed). I’ve gone a step further by trying to ban any form of networked communication from the working meetings I put together. While my colleagues here at Adaptive Path have been tolerant of my eccentricities, it’s not so easy when working with clients whose companies have a culture of being always connected and checking. So, I thought I’d share a few tips I’ve picked up for getting people to put down their Crackberries and actually do some work.”

Wide vs. Deep

“I’ve got this theory about what it’s like to be a manager and what it’s like to be a developer and which role suits a particular individual best, and I think it explains pretty well why I deeply, profoundly hate the former and dearly, truly love the latter.”

Dashboard Recap: Recent Screenshots

“Faced with a lack of resources in the areas of dashboard design and best practices, The Dashboard Spy set out a few years ago to collect examples of the budding new business intelligence technology known as the Digital Dashboard. After asking his many fellow UI designers, information architects, project managers, IT experts and business users for example screenshots, he decided to post the examples on the web. Well, that started a site that has since grown to be the largest collection of BI interfaces available.”