The 8 Strategies
1.Upstage the Man
Definition- This strategy is about not following the concrete way that a system works, and instead going above, or usurping the authority, of those who are in charge.
Class Example- The best example from class would be the various antics of the Yes Men. They would realize a pressing and important issue, and then frequently pose as a person of authority relating to this issue. They would then make outlandish comments and statements that the “real” person of authority wouldn’t necessarily make. By using sarcasm and deceiving these people, they get a huge amount of attention to the issue, and get their point across.
http://theyesmen.org/
Example- An example from my life using this strategy happened back in high school. Before I became class president, I was unhappy with the way the former president was doing things. Therefor, I met with many of the other students engaged in student politics, and introduced my ideas to them. By avoiding the president, I was able to get my thoughts across, and eventually ended up claiming class presidency for myself.
2.Crowdsource the job
Definition- Crowd sourcing can be one of the best strategies for someone to use on a project. If you can’t do the job alone, or it would be much more difficult to do alone, you can crowdsource it out to other people, having them do some of the work, which spreads out the workload.
Class Example- My favorite example would be the Johnny Cash project. To memorialize johnny cash, someone made a website where a music video to one of his songs is reconstructed using single frames drawn by thousands of artists. Anyone can go online and submit their picture of a frame of the video, which can be incorporated into the work of art. This was almost completely crowd sourced, pulling from many different artists who simply wanted to add their work to the project.
http://www.thejohnnycashproject.com/
Example- An example from my life would be the Wiscasset 5k to Benefit the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, a charity 5k that my two brothers and I put together and held in our home town. Holding a 5k is a tremendous amount of work, and we had to request aid from friends and family in order to advertise, set up, and actually run the race.
3.Aggregate, automate, and visualize data
Definition- This strategy involves collecting and organizing data in a way that is visual and appealing, making the information easier to understand.
Class Example- The “Conception to Birth” TED talk is an interesting example of this strategy. The video shows the process of a child growing inside the womb in a way that was impossible to see before. Because of the way the information was visualized, it made it much more interesting and easy to follow along and understand.
Example- I made a simple application that, when you enter in your blood sugar, over the course of time, a visual representation of your blood glucose levels is presented in a line graph. Although it is a very simple app, the impact it has is certainly large. The ability to actually see the trend of your sugars throughout the day can get you much more in tune with your body, and also allow for greater control and management of the disease.
4.Mobilize people
Definition- This strategy involves grouping people together who all support a certain cause or idea. If you gather a bunch of people who all want the same outcome, it can be very easy to gain momentum on a project, as opposed to if you are simply working alone or in a small group.
Class Example- The Tea Party Movement is an example from class. This is a group of people who stand for a certain ideal, and by growing and growing in numbers, while gathering as many people as they can into this cause, they are able to make a much larger impact on peoples opinions. There is always strength in numbers.
http://www.teapartynation.com/
Example- Again, the Wiscasset 5k that my brothers and I put on involved a great deal of mobilizing people. We reached out to friends, family and even stragners who were up for making an impact, and with the help of all of these volunteers we were able to raise over $2000 for JDRF. Something that could not have been done had it just been the three of us trying to do.
5.DIY–Do It Yourself
Definition- This strategy seems pretty self explanatory. What better way to do something than to do it yourself. This also involves projects where the point is to encourage others to do something themselves.
Class Example- My favorite example from class would be instructables.com. I’ve known about this site for a long time, and have made a few things using the instructions. It is an awesome site with thousands of DIY tutorials, from building a log cabin, to knitting a scarf. There are tons of things you can learn how to “Do Yourself.”
http://www.instructables.com/
Example- When I was working on a project to simulate the effect of a touchscreen on a regular laptop, I needed an infrared light pen, which is what picked up the “touch gestures.” instead of buying one, I made a “finger cast” out of duct tape, and glued an infrared bulb on the end. With the press of a button, then light would turn on, and the application would pick up the touch gestures you made. I think this is a good example of DIY.
6.Distribute and connect information
Definition- This strategy, I feel, is very closely related to the next one, “Share What was Inaccessible.” Both strategies seem to be about connecting people, information, and tools.
Class Example- Bittorrent is the example from class that I feel best illustrates the strategy. It allows one person to share a file, and when others download it, they can share it too. This makes the access to these files and tools much better, allowing people to connect in ways they couldn’t, as easily at least, have done before.
http://www.bittorrent.com/
Example- The first example that comes to mind is the google docs, and google drive, that I have set up and shared with my brothers. We have a lot of different files, games, apps, etc, that we like to share with eachother, but when we are away, which is usually a distance of 100 miles or so, it can be difficult to share large files and such. Google drive really lets us connect in a way we couldn’t without it. (Or a really long drive back home)
7.Share what was inaccessible
Definition- As I said before, I feel like this is closely related to the last strategy. This is about granting access to places, ideas, files, etc, for those who otherwise wouldn’t have access to them.
Class Example- Wikileaks is a good example of this strategy. Wikileaks provides fairly classified, or otherwise secret, information held by the government, or other organizations, that otherwise wouldn’t be made public knowledge. Although this site is very controversial to some, I think it’s a great source of information that, personally, I think is important to be aware of.
http://wikileaks.org/
Example- I recently got an Iphone 4s, and shortly after my girlfriend got an Iphone as well. An aspect of relationships everyone understands is being apart from one another for an extended period of time. That is why the app “facetime” is so important to me. I am now able have a “face-to-face” chat with her even when we are miles apart. I really appreciate this app as “sharing what was inaccessible” because being able to look at her, and feel like we were together, wasn’t accessible before.
8.Tap into local networks
Definition- This strategy involves networking with people in a closer, more localized fashion in order to accomplish a goal.
Class Example- Uncle Henry’s is a good example of this strategy. Mainers who have something they’d like to get rid of, or people in need of something, can post online or in the physical book, allowing residents of Maine to find things more easily. Since it is localized to this state and some bordering ones, you generally don’t have to travel too far in order to get what your looking for.
http://www.unclehenrys.com/
Example- Again, when organizing our Wiscasset 5k, we had to tap into local networks in order to receive help and advertise for our race. This involved newspapers, going to nearby schools and stores, and also use of social media, focusing on local people and networks in order to get a large of a following as we could.
Our Project
I believe that our project, ShootMaine, utilized almost every single strategy that we learned throughout the semester, excluding “upstage the man.” Our database was centralized around the idea that we would crowdsource, for people to submit their own locations to be added to the site. This takes the burden off of us, the ones making the site, and gets the users of the site involved much more. Visualizing the data, or the locations we gathered, was a big part in making the database’s appearance appealing. We tried, and I feel succeeded, to make a good looking layout of the images and locations to shoot at, making the acessability to the information much easier. We had to mobilize not only those in our group to go out and scout for locations to add, but also mobilized freinds and other peers to go out and submit locations to our facebook page. The DIY aspect comes in when the users actually go out and collect images for locations. Not only are they adding more content to the database when they submit it, but they themselves are gaining experience in finding good locations for films. Again, the point of the site was to distribute information about locations to film at to other students who enjoy making films, and sharing the information about locations that otherwise new incoming students may not have access to. (Sharing what was inaccessible) And finally, tapping into local networks was a large part of getting the site and most of it’s content up online. By having various friends here at school, and in other schools, as well as the rest of our peers in the class, go out and find locations to add to our site, we were tapping into the power of our local networks. We also had the idea of spreading coasters we made around to nearby bars, which would be very easy advertisement. Considering all that, I would say that our project did an excellent job of utilizing the New Media strategies we learned about in this class.