Mint Digital

Kevin Slavin, co-founder of Area/Code, spoke at the RSA's Playing The City event on Wednesday night.

Area/Code's initial focus was creating games that use technology but take place in the real world, like PacManhattan. Some of their recent work has had a TV focus, like Parking Wars or Sopranos A&E Connection.

Mint has gone in the opposite direction. We started in TV and, with Football3s, are moving closer to the real world. It felt like we are interested in the same things but from different perspectives.

I can't do justice to his talk, but here are a couple of nuggets.

A couple of weeks ago documentary film maker Adam Curtis spoke at BBC Vision Forum on his latest work, a co-production with installation theatre group Punchdrunk, called It Felt Like a Kiss.

A few notes:

1. The internet is changing the dominant sensibility from wanting to be told stuff to wanting to experience stuff.
2. Punchdrunk has cottoned on to the fact that personal experience is the most important thing. Everything else, TV included, feels thin.
3. The internet, on its own, can't do stories. Hybrids of TV and the web may be the way forward.

Last Thursday, I presented at 2-screen.

The presentation was broken down into 3 parts:

1. About Flow
2. Flow as a framework for design
3. TV programme patterns

This post discusses parts 1 and 2. Part 3 will arrive in a separate post.

The 2Screen event has reached capacity. If you'd like to come and haven't got a ticket, you can add yourself to the waiting list. We'll do our best to fit you in.

Thanks to everyone who bought a ticket. Look forward to seeing you on the 24th.

Often we go to and organise events talking about the future of the Internet and at these things we can get well ahead of ourselves speculating about the next fandangled widget or some 'seriously smart guys' or other. This morning at about 11am, a man came to our offices, walked through the door, stood in the middle of the office and said "Have you got any work or jobs going here?".

‘How does the web make you feel?’ MediaSnackers asked young people, to discover their emotional response to the web. ‘Naked’ was the reply from one 16-year-old girl. (She didn't have virus protection)

This morning, to drum up support for Football3s, we set up nets on Parsons Green and offered passing footie fans the chance to win a signed Chelsea shirt. How did they get the chance to win the prize? Well they simply had to knock one out of three penalties past "the Goalie" (aka Mint's finance guru Colin Roughan who was one of the best GKs to come out of Acton in the '90s where he played with Kevin Gallen).

If they managed three out of three then not only would they get the chance to win the shirt but we also promised them a pint over at the nearby White Horse. Luckily for Mint, the GK had his eye on the ball AND the finances (its over £3 a pint in the White Horse) and nobody managed three out of three. Nobody that is apart from my good self and sadly I was excluded under the Ts and Cs as an employee of Mint Digital.

If you'd like an invitation to the beta launch then please email score@football3s.com stating the club you support (eg Swansea City).

The best things in life are three.

I think last weekend might have been the greatest weekend of sport in my life:

1. WHAM - Come on you Swans

First up, the Swans drew 1-1 against Fulham in the FA Cup 5th round. Even though we deserved to win, the benefit of that result is that some American Mints will be able to come cheer on the Super Swans on the eve of the WebApp weekender.

2. BAM - Land of my fathers

Then in the evening, Wales defeated England in the rugby. I’m gutted that I couldn’t attend (thanks to Wil Stephens and Huw Eurig Davies for offering me a ticket) due to the knee surgery I had last week but I enjoyed watching the match from my sofa with my Mum running around getting me beers and snacks the whole time.

3. THANK YOU MAM - Football3s

Sandwiched between the football and rugby was the first ever live game of Football3s (we played along to Portsmouth vs Man City). Football3s didn't work from my house but I understand the other Mints had a whale of a time. I am sure that we'll fix the bugs and get the game running smoothly ahead of our Football3s launch party on Monday 23rd. After that we'll be inviting people round to play along to most evening premiership matches. Sign up here if you'd like an invite.

Osama bin Everywhere is a cross-platform documentary we produced last year. (Osama Loves is the web part.)

It aired for the second time last week. For some unknown reason, we got far more feedback this time.

Here are some comments:

"I am a Catholic and father to 6 children. Having just watched Osama bin Everywhere, I feel this programme should be shown to every child in every school in the UK regardless of religious belief. How refreshing it was to watch. This young women deserves public recognition and a national award. The comments made and feelings expressed by all the Osamas were a true insight to Muslim people and the meaning of their religion. The programme should be shown in a primetime slot to maximise the effect of its message. Bad people are bad people, they don't need to blame their religious beliefs. We all know who they are in our respective communities. Congratulations to all involved. Thank you again."

"Not really a press enquiry but please pass my congratulations onto Farrah - I taught her at school in the 1990s. Watched today's Channel 4 programme whilst at home recovering from surgery. Very, very proud of what she's become - but not at all surprised!"

Hemlock is Mint's toolkit for building Flash applications that support real-time many-to-many interaction. Hemlock is open source. We hope to release it mid-February.

Thursday's mashup* event is about the 'Realtime Social Web'. We will be demoing two Hemlock applications there to show the type of application it inspires.

I've recently discovered e-mint. It is a Yahoo! Group that discusses how to run online communities.

They are a friendly bunch, as shown by the warm welcome I received from Tamara Littleton of eModeration:

"We worked with a Mint Digital application on a very successful social network for ABC Family over at Disney [Virtual Rush], we love you guys :)

Not everyone puts as much care into the moderation tools. They're often an afterthought so it was good to work with people who thought about how moderators would use the tools."

It's reassuring to see that e-mint possesses the very features of online friendliness that it exists to promote.

Mint is working on a new project. It's about wisdom. I can't say much more than that right now.

Today, I stumbled across a new book. Wisdom. It is "inspired by the idea that wisdom is the greatest gift one generation can give to another."

Andrew Zuckerman, the author, says:

"My whole life I've looked up to older people. It just seemed logical to me that these are the people that have done it. They've got all the secrets. Why wouldn't you ask them?"

Thanks Andrew. You've created a wonderful piece of work. Mint is inspired.

When Ned Canty from NYTVF approached Mint about hosting an event, he was keen to avoid the typical panel format. He wanted something that focused on the creative challenges of producing cross-platform entertainment.

Inspired by Wikinomics, I thought I'd try an open source approach to the ideas development process.

Creativity Live was a mass-participation brainstorm between three sharp digital minds (Ian Schafer from Deep Focus, Paul Kontonis from For Your Imagination and Tom Ajello from Poke NY) and 150 audience members.

Last month was 2gether08. The stand-out speaker was Russell Davies who gave a wonderfully counter-intuitive talk on how being clear often runs counter to being interesting.

Also Julian Baggini was great talking about his Welcome to Everytown experience. At a technology conference, it is easy to forget how important locality is to most people. Two thirds of Britains live within five miles of where they were born.

Mint was proud to premiere Web 2.0: The Musical. It looks like we'll perform this nonsense again. Watch this space.

Also, I made a speech on How to be Generous. Here's the Guardian's take on it. This blog post is sort of my summary.

Today, on August 1, 2008, both the UK and US offices of Mint Digital internationally celebrated the first Ron DeVera day. Simply put, Ron was the first employee hired by Mint Digital to sport a mustache. Since his arrival at Mint, he has ascended to near legendary status through his relentless work ethic, peerless HTML/CSS/JS skills, and his total domination in all company award categories. All these traits are personified by the tasteful choice of facial hair that has endeared Ron to Mint.

In the quest for the secret to the DeVera mojo, Mint Digital requested that all employees cultivate what is known simply as "the look". All the entries have been digitally documented and uploaded to Mint Digital's photo challenge site which was developed at this year's WebApp Weekender. Anecdotally, Mint has found that the mustaches have improved the collective morale, increased individual productivity, flattened the learning curves for difficult technologies, enhanced creative output both qualitatively and quantitatively, and have provided numerous unspoken benefits outside of the office as well.

Personally, I must say that I was confronted with aesthetic choices of uncommon weight and subtlety. When I fashioned my mustache early this morning, there was a temptation to be outlandish, a seduction towards the theatre of the garish.

However, I reflected and stopped myself immediately. This was no banal mustache-growing competition one might find in some underfunded regional circus.

This was Ron DeVera's day.

Sometimes Tom likes to work in private.

I have just come back from Digital Hollywood where I spent the whole of last week. Highlights included:

• Listening to Chuck D, founder of Public Enemy speak. I reckon he might be the best speaker on digital publishing that I have heard. Some highlights included:
• Don't worry too much about contractual terms and other barriers to getting stuff out there. If you have a good idea it's most important that you just get it out there. The deal will fall into place;
• When somebody compared UGC to McDonald's and said that people prefer editorially selected content (fine restaurants where people were prepared to spend big money) to UGC (McD's), Mista Chuck pointed out that whilst nobody ever reheated a Big Mac, if you bite into a fresh one, it tastes really good (and so it is for UGC).
• What was most special was that Chuck D used 10 words when most people would have used 100 and he clearly had not just read a bunch of blogs and regurgitated the consensus. Maybe not surprising given that he has a track record of innovation in music. Afterwards I got the chance to trade a few stories with him from back in the day (him from Long Island, me from the Swansea Valley) as per the photo (apologies for picture quality but this was taken on a 59p hamburger of a camera phone);

Just in case anyone is looking for something to print off and read in the park, here are two articles that have inspired us Mints recently:

Gin, Television, and Social Surplus by Clay Shirky. Is Mint trying to solve this problem or make it worse?

Sign Up Forms Must Die by Luke Wroblewski. We've been designing flows along these lines for a little while now. It is nice to see someone voice this approach.

The last two days were demanding. On Thursday each team worked on the presentation of their idea.

Friday was pitching day. It ended on a high. The BBC commissioned Different and Mint to develop the "Doctor Who: In Parallel" idea.

We've just launched the Lonely Planet Desktop Countdown.

It's a neat little app that counts down to your holiday. Every day it offers you a local tip and tells you the weather in the place that you are travelling to.

The app is part of the promotional campaign for the Lonely Planet Encounter city guides. Over the next few weeks, the Desktop Countdown will be promoted on coffee sleeves at 14 locations in London, banners on Yahoo! Weather and on London Underground posters. The total reach of the marketing campaign will be to over 3.6 million people. We snapped this Lonely Planet Desktop Countdown poster at Vauxhall tube, round the corner from our office.

From a technology point of view it is pretty cool. It is the first time Mint has used Adobe AIR. AIR is Adobe’s platform for creating desktop apps. It brings the web closer to our desktop. It blurs the boundary between online and offline. In short, it opens up a bunch of new possibilities.

Have a read of 6 Adobe AIR Apps to check out to see what other uses people have been making of AIR.