Posts tagged Music
Disco time baby!
May 21st
Summer is here. And Discoball arrived to our yellow office. So keep on rocking – as Henna is this picture, very exited.
Word of Mouth goes on in Twitter
Apr 25th
Warning: If you a new to Twitter, this post may contain couple of concepts that you may not know, and thus I recommend checking the Twitter 101 at the bottom of this post first.
The other day I was going through some random twitter updates based on my music, please list. I saw what I think was an update by AnnieMac, DJ and Radio host of BBC Radio 1 Friday night show. She was re-tweeting a post by dj zinc, about his new track being uploaded into youtube, ripped from Annie Mac’s show. I had heard of DJ zinc to be one of the pioneers of Drum’n'bass and a very good DJ, so I thought I should check out the track. I liked the track. It’s not Drum’n'bass but the sound is rather fresh. Track is called Nexx and is from the Crack House EP.
I liked the track, and did what I usually do when I see a new interesting looking person on Twitter: I checked the recent tweets of that person. I thought it would bring me value if I followed this person. Reasons I may not follow someone is excess tweeting without much content. For example, I wasn’t interested to hear a lot about Questlove‘s life so I decided not to follow him. He has over 1 300 000 people following him. I have like 400. Tatu thinks it’s quite a bit, and I started to think that too, until I saw the amount Questlove had and was returned to the ground. Still a long way to go. Oh yes, back to the case.
So I decided to follow dj zinc. And soon comes a new tweet by him. I use Tweetdeck to keep track of different lists. So on the already mentioned Music, Please list I saw a tweet by DJ Zink that I just started to follow: “i bought them pink ortofon needles but they’re not very good. nice clour tho.” See the picture below.
What does this mean? It means that it’s very unlikely I will never buy those pink needles (you use them in turntables to listen those old school records, LPs). Why? Well, just because a long respected member of a DJ community said that they are not so good. If someone says something on twitter about some product, I think it’s like printing it on the packaging of the same product. Probably though I would say Twitter is more reliable than the marketing department of a company.
So why should people care? What would this mean to a service company like Monkey Business? I think this is a good proof that the connections are really getting shorter. Because of Twitter, I hear random comments from people like Annie Mac, Dj Zinc, Tom Peters, Jussi Junikka, Esa Toivonen, Haloefekti and so on that I otherwise wouldn’t hear, at least not daily. (I currently follow about 390 people). My Social Media philosophy “gotta give chance an opportunity” applies very well here. And the consequence of these short connections and fast moving messages is that we as a company have to be transparent and consistent. We need to walk the talk in order to get the positive online-talk going on. And vice versa. If we do not do our work well, it may be so that the world knows sooner than ourselves.
Here’s a little glossary of terms used in the post above. A little Twitter 101 or ABC by @bananadotfi
1. Re-Tweeting: Sending again a tweet that somebody wrote
2. @ mentioning someone: When you @-mention someone, the someone is likely to read that tweet for sure as it’s saved on a specific spot in Twitter. A nice example was by @jeffjarvis I think who said that he had 199 @-messaged waiting for him after one talk in
3. Follow me on Twitter, Contact me through Twitter. -> It’s easy to say out aloud. Twitter allows people to communicate shortly about blog posts, new images, youtube videos etc. that either you put online you or you find online. It’s easy to share interesting stuff through Twitter.
4. Links to other medias, such as Youtube. -> One essential thing in Twitter in my opinion are ourgoing links. It has created, or at least brought into the public a bunch of URL-shortening services such as bit.ly. Normally the webaddresses are long so it’s handy to make them shorter so that you don’t waste your precious marks. One tweet is no more than 140.
5. Subscribing to someone -> Usually tweets are public, and anyone can subscribe to anyone else. It’s also possible to make your tweets private and then you can sort out with whom to share your tweets.
6. Recent Tweets -> A list of recent tweets of someone. Showing on the public page of a person. You can see list of my recent tweets here.
7. Providing Value -> I see the essential question related to Twitter for me to be: “How to provide value to my followers with 140 marks” It’s a joyful challenge sometimes.
8. Followers, amount of -> How many people are following your tweets. How many people see your tweet on their home page when you tweet.
9. Home page. -> Shows all the tweets by people whom you’ve subsrcribed in chronological order.
This post was based on a negative customer experience. It’s usually easier to complain than to thank. Let me sometime write a similar story that has a positive idea of some product or company. Although, actually this one started with the positive idea of Dj zinc’s song being tweeted around.
Monkey Christmas Calender – Day 3
Dec 3rd
Dear friends,
sometimes when you hear a good song it brings back good memories. July 2008 I had an oppurtunity to see Bruce Springsteen & E Street Band live in Olympic Stadium, Helsinki. When Max Weinberg hit the drums for the first time and Bruce let his guitar sing, I felt right away, that this is the show I had been waiting for.
The gick was in late july and it was a beautiful summernight. At the end of show, after three hours head blowing rockin, Bruce and the Band had one more suprise. Even though it was hot and sweaty, everybody had strenght rock just that one more song. Below you can check the video and please, sing along: Santa Claus is coming to Town!
With Yellow Regards,
Janne Monkey
Monkey Business Design Philosophy
Oct 30th
We are working on building a new lay out for our blog (and there’s a blog in Finnish coming up too!) and for that process I wrote out some of the design philosophy down. This is version 0.5 BETA but I thought I should still drop it out for you. Here’s the classic banana with classes drawn by Lady My of MyJok back in late 2007.
1. Our mission is to make the world more fun and yellow. Our design are also fun and colorful.
1. Things are as they look and feel to a person. Not as somebody intents them to be but as someone experiences them.
1. All yellow is good. Our graphics don’t need to follow one clearly defined pattern or a set of rules, but part of our brand is that the visuals change a lot.
2. A Banana drawn by Lady My is the banana for us. We will stick to that until something totally explosive comes to our way.
3. All monkeys and bananas are part of our design strategy.
4. Our graphics should be aligned with our style. That is yellow, playful and sincere. Our Graphics and Designs should enhance the same message.
6. We like skateboarders, clothing designers, surfers, musicians and other party people in general. The idea is to enjoy life and have fun. Our designs should also follow that ideology. We search for ideas and inspiration everywhere but nature and pop culture especially.
7. We like to promote a wide range of designs and designers. We work with people we like and think are cool. We want to have loads of different designs.
Have a yellow weekend everyone!
Ps. The book recommendation of this week is by Hugh MacLeod and is called “Ignore Everybody – and 39 other keys to creativity.” I read it over the summer and is a quick read and gave me quite a few insights. There loads of good quotes and even more insightful drawings. Some of the things he writes and draws seems a bit cynical to me but he cleared it all by saying this: “Anyone can be an idealist. Anyone can be a cynic. The hard part lies somewhere in the middle i.e. being human.” That’s the spirit I guess. You can read plenty of samples of the book at Hugh’s website.
Nic Mepham Singing the Blues about Yellow
Sep 7th
Our friend Nic Mepham, the creative agent from Kajaani Finland, also working for Intotalo Kajaani came by Jyväskylä this last Thursday. As he arrived in the evening he said that he has an intuition that we should go and visit Team Academy: “Maybe someone is there.” So I saw the bike of Petrus outside and I thought he was probably working on Team Mastery Arena but we found out that he was there for a training session of his new rhythm and poet orchestra Mahtavaa Tennistä (Amazing Tennis in English). He was there with a guitar and Nic wanted to participate. This is the result!
Quite amazing, isn’t it?
Nic also taught me (Ville) a little about how to sing blues, and we got into a deep dialogue about creativity, courage and coffee. Those three C’s are Nic’s thing. Aki of Spym was challenged about his thing and Petrus was encouraged to play his own songs. I think that’s what we should all do. Just as William Isaacs in his book Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together tells a story about one piano playing consultant who is being asked: “Who plays your music if you don’t do it yourself?”
Strangers, Friends, Customers & Salespeople?
Mar 5th
Something that’s been in my head recently is the idea from
Seth Godin. Or let me phrase it here as three questions: How to turn strangers into friends? How to turn friends into customers? How to turn customers into salespeople?
After reading this idea from Seth’s book Small is the new Big I realized that I had become all of a sudden into a salesman for a friend. Here in Jyväskylä there’s a man who organizes parties. Or not just ordinary parties but clubs with music that is not normally played in the nightclubs we’ve got here. Such as Funk, Soul and Drum’n'bass. And I happen to like such a music a lot. I didn’t know him until half a year ago when my former flatmate Bram met him first. Then Bram introduced me to him. Now he’s my friend. And I promote his events to my friends. By the way, the clubs are named sharply: Wake-Up (not organized anymore) and Remedy.
Let’s analyze this phenomenon a little bit. Why do I promote his events? First of all because I would go to them myself. I trust his skills on making good events. Also, it’s rare to hear real good more marginal kinds of music in here. I want other people also to enjoy Drum’n'bass. Also, I know that the event is better for me as well if I know people who are there. I like to dance with my friends. I think we can generalize this into making meaning. When you feel that something is meaningful in a way or another you will promote.
Another aspect I wanted to elaborate about Seth’s theory is the idea of turning friends into customers. This may sound harsh to many. It used to me as well. Because I used to have a mental model that business exists in order to make money for it’s owners and only for that. But how about social business? Or team company where you actually make business with your friends? The idea is to redefine what making business means. I like to know people I do business with. I like them to be my friends. And then there’s a change that these friends become also my salespeople. Is it ok? I think it’s ok as long as business is based on something else than money. If it is transparent and aims on creating benefit for all. Our business is not a zero sum game. Story by Ville.
Ps. The next Remedy is on the Friday 3rd of April in Ilokivi, Jyväskylä
Ps2. Photos courtesy of Joonas Nissinen
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