Thursday, October 29, 2009

Ethnographic bartering

This is my dream camera. The Leica M9. Aarguably the world's best camera at this time. This is what Ken Rockwell has to say about it:

"The LEICA M9 is the smallest, lightest, highest-quality digital camera ever created by the hand of Man.

The all-metal LEICA M9 is less expensive than the old Nikon D3X, and weighs over four ounces (120g) less than the plastic Nikon D90! The M9 weighs only 2.4 oz (69g) more than the dinkiest Nikon D40!

The LEICA M9 is the most important digital camera introduced since the Nikon D1, the world's first practical DSLR, in 1999.

The LEICA M9 is a rangefinder camera, not an SLR.

The LEICA M9 is the world's best digital camera for travel, nature, landscape, interior and outdoor photography."

And I want one. But it costs almost £5,000 or over $8,000. Not including additional lenses.

My attachment to the Leica stems from my dad's beloved Leica M3 which I grew up with - which has also become the inspiration for the styling of my iPhone App.

So my challenge is to obtain this camera under my wife's financial radar. She would never let me spend this much money on a camera let alone a car. Although she did say she would get me one for my 50th birthday. I responded that if I didn't live to my 50th birthday she would spend the rest of her life guilt ridden about not having bought me the M9 when I asked for it. Predictably, she was having none of this.

So with resolve strengthened, I did a little research on-line and established that a gentleman called Christian Cerhardt is the US Marketing Director for Leica cameras. And late last night when everyone was in bed I crafted a carefully worded email to him with, 'I want an M9 - sorry for getting in touch like this,' in the subject box. In short, I offered an attractive barter/exchange. I would carry out a segmentation animation study for him to the value (and slightly over) of a Leica M9 with a few accessories.

He hasn't replied yet. I wonder if he will. I wonder if I will receive an email saying, 'let's meet when you are in NJ next week...' That would be amazing.

I will keep you posted on my progress. Stay tuned.

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Sunday, October 18, 2009

Some great PR on my App thanks to a friend or two


Here and here! Share/Bookmark

The accidental ethnographer

I have never attended a 'webinar' but this looks interesting.

On Thursday, Nov. 5th at 12pm ET a Dr Julian Goepp will present a talk on capturing fleeting or unexpected opportunities to harvest rich information that affects change.

It's free and you can register here.

A disclaimer - I have no idea who Dr Goepp is and I am certainly not endorsing this webinar. I just think it should be interesting. I will be attending.
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Friday, October 16, 2009

Changing behaviour

You may have seen this before but it's a wonderful experiment. An inspired experiment.

Anyway, enjoy.

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Thursday, October 15, 2009

Beta testing our ethnographic App

A few weeks ago I was sitting by the school pool watching my twins learning to swim. Next to me sat a dad whose line of work was IT. We talked gadgets, toys and cars before I finally ventured to test his boredom threshold with a full description of our new iPhone App.

I explained that it would allow as-live collaboration for field anthropologists/ethnographers, tagged video, still, audio and text capture, co-discoveries and more. All on an iPhone. He sat transfixed, much to my pleasant surprise, before saying:

"So let me get this straight, your App will enable people like me whose private information, habits, purchases, etc. are of such huge value to large companies to capture and sell my habits and behaviours?"

It was my turn to sit transfixed.

"Wow!" he exhaled, "that's awesome."

"Well, that's not quite what I had in mind for it but I suppose people could download it to their devices (not just iPhone) and use it to sell private information on demand. But I didn't develope it for that..."

My friend was not interested in ethnography. He had seen something completely different in this App. And I wonder, if it ever takes off, whether it will be thanks to anthropologists, ethnographers and sociologists.

I would be grateful for any comments on the above clip.
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