Notes from 54th International STC Conference
Minneapolis, Minnesota, May 13-16, 2007

Closing Address: Acceleration Anxiety

Ze Frank

Ze Frank (pronounced ZAY) has unique experience doing new media design and marketing for customers, helping them understand viral marketing and the contagious media in which it takes place, and to think about creative development in general. Using plain language, anecdotes from the wealth of his own experiences, and rich knowledge of the industry, Frank walks audiences through the bizarre landscape of the internet and offers advice on how to approach it in a meaningful way. A funny and energetic presenter, Frank provides audiences with valuable ideas at the same time he inspires creativity.

Session Description: Frank presented a truly entertaining yet insightful look at how technology and creativity intersect, especially in web design, marketing, and new forms of media.

• Did an excellent opening stand-up routine on air travel, including some remarkable web sites, signs, etc.
   
• National Wildlife Strike site: e.g., there have been 2 badger airstrikes in Colorado over the past 17 years. If you don't believe that, go to the public-access sum-it-up-yourself page for all wildlife strikes in every state from 1990 through 2007, search from January 1, 1990, to April 30, 2007, for ALL states; download the resulting Excel file with 4,944+ hits (pun intended); and check out under the B's under CO for Colorado. Somewhere around Row 884, you’ll find the 2 badger strikes (unless another badger has struck since I posted these notes).
• Private airbag collector website
• Incredibly inane and superfluous statements in instructions


• Acceleration anxiety is on a sharp upslope in our profession.
• Frank's zany debut routine, How to Dance Properly, was sent to 17 people as a birthday party gag; within days, it had over a million hits.
• Presentation was a very effective mix of graphics, videos, titles, and speaker narrative... with superb timing.
• Web 2.0 = Crapucopia: But even though the content may be crap, the world at large is acquiring some of our tools in the process of generating it.
• Audiences are learning a new language, albeit with widely varying degrees of competence, and they want to have a new conversation... therein lies a potential marketing goldmine.
• Approaches to Web 2.0 conversation (blogs, MySpace, etc.)
   
• Ignore them
• Control them
• Shut them down
• Facilitating conversation: cultivating the energy
• Letting conversation emerge


• Examples of whimsical, user-created online games and creations
   
• Earth sandwich
• Human baton
• Haiku for recently neutered dogs


• http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/
• Technology is a facilitator for the human experience.
• Punctuation substitution... earthy variations of smiley faces for releases pent-up anger in e-mail.