lifted straight from my new favourite tumblr - jazz channel, coltrane’s giant steps in time with the written music. the genius doesn’t come though just the notes on the page but seeing them in time with his playing is humbling and inspiring:

currently showing at danziger in NY

a young jack nicklaus looks uncannily like an old chris tarrent

art recreated through lego by italian artist marco pece - more copie d’arte here

eşref armağan, a remarkable blind artist paints the all-new volvo S60, giving us a vision of a car which is due to launch next year and no one has seen yet.

see more of eşref on facebook

john gerzema makes loads of great points in his ‘post-crisis consumer’ TED talk about the opportunity coming of the financial crisis.

the overarching theme is the shift from mindless consumption to mindful consumption and the need for brands to find different ways to offer an exchange of value with consumers. these broadly fall under the following themes:

• providing different ways for people to pay with variable costs and dynamic pricing (micropayments, hulu vs cable subscriptions, blue collar yacht clubs)
• the importance of brands expressing and living up to their ethics and values through transparency and accountability (patagonia footprint chronicles, using twitter to encourage giving employees a voice etc.)
• durability and building products to last (cars now lasting 9 years on average in US, howies hand me down range, brown field developments)
• the focus on training/self improvement and people wanting to get their hands dirty with different forms of dyi (growth of self build, allotments, microsoft training programs)
• and the importance of community with consumer driven co-ops, local level information sharing, brands acting as community organisers and the rise of carrot mobs (crowd incentives rather than boycotts)

well worth the watch:

he may be the ‘apple pie’ of skating but tony hawk shows the sheer power of someone doing what they love doing.

skating is one of the biggest cultural phenomenon of the last few decades and has resulted in an entire industry being built around a group of people following their passion. likewise with hip-hop, gaming and graffiti, and if you combine two or more of these (like tony hawk has done with skating and gaming) then you’ve got the making of huge success.

the godfather of the commercial skating scene provides his top 5 tips to business insider:

1. make yourself your target audience – “go into business to provide a product you wish you could buy, but that doesn’t exist yet”
2. stay an active consumer in the market you sell in
3. don’t mistake buzz for success – “buzz is a great way to generate sales, but it is not itself evidence that your business is doing well.”
4. forget about the big picture – live in the details
5. you will fall – get a helmet

via @luketipping

some other skate related posts

more great stuff from gary vaynerchuk over here on his blog

like: “social media was called web 2.0 a year ago… and is going to be called media in a year”.

social media isn’t just the mustard, it’s the hotdog!

social media = business

Following lots of presentations on the importance of social media, here are a few thoughts on putting ’social’ at the heart of marketing plans. Very much work in progress so any thoughts are welcomed.

genius or annoying or only relevant to tourists on open top buses and youts playing loud music on their phones?

or all of the above?