IA book club - waiting list

Bizarre. There's now a waiting list for the book club.

All hail the IA Nerds.

IA Book club - FULL UP!

Amazingly, what i thought would be the world's most boring idea, an IA book club, has actually proven quite popular.

We've got 15 people coming now, and i think that's probably enough so I'll have to cap it there.

We'll see if this is too many and it needs to be smaller, or whether it can cope with more in the future.

I'd better get reading...

(p.s. my new colleague, the lovely Kamila, has already dissed the book. After i was enthusing about it, she had a look at it and said "the research he cites is good, but the thesis is intellectually weak". She's much cleverrerererer than me so i hope when i read it again i don't find out it's actually a load of rubbish. s'a good starting point for the book club discussion though)

all the ias

I don't really use or particularly get ziki.com, but it does have a useful blog aggregator (i'm sure there are loads of other better ones, let me know if so)

anyhoo, i've created a feed with a bundle of IA blogs on it, good if you want to keep up with whatever IA people are saying from all round the world without having to add them all to your rss reader.

The ziki is here

The list of blogs that i've added is here. I tried to get all of them that i could from ia wiki, but frankly got a bit fed up. There's plenty there, and if you want to be added, just drop me a line or a comment with your blog address.

IA book club - it's on

A mere month and a half after mentioning it here, and nearly 2 years after first mooting the idea.
I have, in typically efficient fashion, finally sorted out an IA book club.

There's been quite a lot of interest from the london-ia list, and Leisa's mentioned it here.
Hopefully should be good.

We'll be talking about this:


what: London IA Bookclub
where: twentysix London, 1 Dorset street, London, W1U 4EG
(more directions)
when: 7 Feb @ 7pm
Nibbles & Libation provided.

I'm hoping we can have them at various different agencies so that we get an opportunity to mooch around each other's offices.

Email me or leave a comment if you're interested in coming along. Be great to see you.

OFFER: If you don't want to buy it, I am also offering to get a couple of Loan copies for people, one has already been claimed. If you want the other one, let me know. In return you have to write a review of the book (500 ish words) and say something terribly clever at the meet.

BJ Fogg on social networking

Whilst delighting in the publication of this book justifying my innate untidyness, i came across this great blog reviewing it.

Also on it was a really interesting article about BJ Fogg's (he of persuadability fame) latest comments in New Scientist.

"If you offer people a chance to gain status, they will work for it

Fogg and his colleagues analysed hundreds of such sites and identified three stages to their success, which they called discovery, superficial involvement and true commitment."

The fun bit is trying to think up interesting ways that you can let people both give and assign status.

Islandoo (created by the lovely chaps at mintdigital) initially had a problem when they launched. They were relying on a 'friendship' relationship. Ie, a user could declare themselves a 'fan' of another user. The users with the most 'fans' rising to the top. But, much like myspace, people simply spent hours trawling round 'fanning' everyone they could see, requesting that they returned the favour. The most popular were the most persistent, not the most interesting people.

Instead they created an idea of a 'magic penny' which is a more limited rewards system. You are given one when you create your profile, and once you've given it away, that's it, until someone gives you one, which you can then pass on again.

There are also smaller different awards that can be given out like 'drinks' see this profile with some pennies and a drink on it.