I work as a product manager of web analytics for the 
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I am interested in a wide variety of things. Painting, cycling and video games are among my favorite activities.             |
I really like it when an artist takes on a public space and changes it. It’s not graffiti (they’re not marking space like a dog) but rather changing the space and they was we feel about it. I remember walking down King street and coming across a “Designated homeless sleeping area” which consisted of a spray painted dotted line in a rectangle around a heating grate. It made you think, not long or too deeply but left you with something, a brainworm if you will. I wish I had taken a picture of it.
I find the work of Banksy is like that. This piece here on the left is on the dividing wall that separates Palestine and Israel. The image, two kids playing on the beach with sand pails and shovels seems pretty innocuous; but the image of paradise, peeking through crack in the wall makes a subtle statement. Brainworm!
This image of hunters, painted in what looks like Africa, hunt a buffalo created from chipped paint. Perhaps a comment on what was lost? …not unlike the wall in Palestine. Brainworm. Anyway what got me thinking about this is another website I stumbled across. Site Interventions. This is a little bit of dry wit with some playful materials which combine into a pretty neat brainworm. Check it out.
Awhile back I posted about some issues I had with my investment firm and an attempt to get a specific question answered from another. I received a phone call today from Scotiabank iTRADE and a comment on that very post. Here is my reply: Sophia, now who is being the self indulgent twat? Oddly enough your comment comes the very same day that Michael from iTrade called me to say that iTrade had made updates to their email system. Coincidence? I doubt it. Here is a copy of my email, for your own edification:
Their reply wasn’t automated or at least the signature on it (which I took out) seemed to indicate someone had read it. All they had to do was say, “You can find that information HERE” or “Yes, they happen the same day”. Michael was able to answer my question without hesitation. So why couldn’t their email? or better yet why wasn’t that information easily found on the website. The whole point of using online banking is because it is faster and easier. As for your snotty comment about blowing them up, don’t be stupid. I simply took my business elsewhere and they lost the opportunity to manage my retirement savings. In fact, they wouldn’t even need to manage it. I’m doing that, they just needed to process the transactions! Companies should care about my ingenious ideas or any customer’s ideas. For every person like me that is pissed off enough to post about it there are a hundred more who just silently go elsewhere. It is the accumulation of people like me that made them a multi-national corporation worth billions of dollars. Speaking of money, do you have any idea how much they spend trying to acquire new customers? Millions. So if they cared enough to provide users with an easy to find “contact us”, they cared enough to have someone respond to my email and they cared enough to have someone look up my contact information from an old contact and call me to say they’d made improvements, they should care enough to make sure that the email is properly addressed and answers the users needs. As for you, you may not like what I have to say, or how I choose to say it but there is no point in getting your panties in a twist over it. I stumbled across this comic today called Savage Chickens. My favorite part is the trademark.
Recently after watching “The Hour” I posted how Kevin Smith needed to loose weight. Well apparently Southwest Airline agrees with me. Mr. Smith was recently kicked from a flight for being too fat. Smith responds to the incident on his blog. Check out this email I received today in my inbox:
There’s nothing wrong with it right? They have it personalized, there are very clear offers, they might be relevant except… I just bought a fucking ticket to Tokyo. Sending me a cheap offer three days later is like telling customers, “Gee, you should have been here last week when we had everything 80% off.” It doesn’t make me feel good. I can’t change my ticket and now I feel resentful and cheated by the price I paid. Unless you’re planning on honoring it and giving me the discount don’t tell me about it! Recently in the Toronto news there has been a fair amount of traffic around the issue of social media and the TTC. The media has managed to make a mountain of a molehill and managed to distract the union and it’s head Bob Kinnear from the issue at hand. That however isn’t what interests me. What I find fascinating is the use of social media and social networking tools in this debate. It started with this photo:
If I had trouble staying awake at work I would immediately go and talk to my boss, explain the situation and go home. If I did need a nap I would take it in a lounge or employee area where I was out of the way and certainly out of the public eye. The interesting thing about this picture however is how it made the rounds and media explosion ensued. First media was talking about Twitter and Twitpic and all the different ways people can share images. Next this video appeared on the internet of a driver taking a coffee break in the middle of his route. Apparently this poor guy is now suspended pending an investigation. The description reads: “TTC driver taking a coffee break in the middle of the shift while leaving the bus with passengers behind – The driver did it every week night in a period of 2 weeks (total of 10 times)!”
Are you kidding me? You’re actually going to defend this by talking about urinary tract infections?? That’s probably not the best way to handle this. A more appropriate response would have been:
Of course, that would require streetcars to have a schedule but I digress. This stopping issue wouldn’t be a problem except it has happened many times and now with cellphone cameras and Youtube anyone can be a reporter: The problem with reporting however is that there is a bias, and no journalistic ethics need be applied. This kind of guerrilla journalism isn’t about reporting on events or distributing information it is about pushing an agenda. Every photographer makes a choice when he or she chooses to point the camera. And that isn’t to say this media blitz is all one-sided either. All the streetcars have cameras in them now. The CBC has a video posted of a driver needing to fight a passenger off of the bus. And the TTC employees have posted their own Youtube videos: Personally I applaud the TTC putting cameras on the streetcars. It not only ensures the safety of the drivers but the passengers as well. And no one deserves to get assaulted while at work no matter how late they are! While I support the TTC I suggest the footage should be kept off of the internet. A Facebook group called “Toronto Transit Operators against public harassment” which describes itself as “a group where Operator’s can give suggestions on how to fight back to the recent photo and video harassment from passengers just looking to make trouble for us.” cropped up not long after these videos appeared. At one point they were reportedly advocating a work to rule policy to combat what Union boss Kinnear described as, “ an entitlement to film our operators in the performance of their duties”. That Facebook group started out public but quickly became private after the public lashed back on the site. What is interesting is there is another Facebook group for “Employees of the TTC” and it is open to the public. And the public is beginning to lash back again. This is a social media disaster for the union and the TTC. First off you have to have a strategy and a clearly defined purpose when deciding to engage in social media. The last thing you need is a mouthy employee to write something rash which further damages your already battered reputation. You also don’t want to add fuel to the fire of the malcontents The Union, if it had any brains at all would ask it’s members to kindly stop attacking the public, because right or wrong, if you argue with a troll it only gets stronger! That isn’t to say there hasn’t been adult and measured discussions but if the Union, or the TTC decide they want to hash it out in the social media space they had better get a game plan together. The public has been in this space for years and they had best catch up before they try to go troll hunting.
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