A Tour of ZAAZ

By Ryan Turner | Sep 18, 2009 9:44:07 AM

This is kind of fun. The folks over at Drifting Creatives posted a video of our Seattle headquarters, with my colleague Rachel as tour guide. I like how they captured our vibe, especially with the tunes that take me to my happy place:

Rachel walks you through our usability lab, talks a bit about web optimization, and even takes you behind the infamous Z-Bar.

You should come visit us too! See my previous post about our upcoming social media event.

Twitter: Trivial. Beautifully So.

By Ryan Turner | Nov 11, 2008 11:18:37 AM

I wrote a post a year and a half ago on Twitter in which I identified two types of use for it. This was at the height of the initial buzz about Twitter, and while some folks were really excited to finally see an HTML / SMS / IM social application, others worried aloud that Twitter, for the same reasons it offers such a low threshold of entry, would also tend to erode the quality of social relationships online. The thoughtful anti-Twitter point of view was that it encourages triviality, and the gist of my post was that while that may be true, there are times when trivialities are useful.

Since I wrote that post, I've become an avid Twitterer, and I have to say my perspective on Twitter, and indeed on triviality, has changed. I now see triviality as maybe the critical element of truly meaningful relationships, online and off, and Twitter has accordingly become one of the cornerstone services of my personal and professional social lives.

That sounds crazy, I know, and while it may be true that I am prone to crazy-sounding declaratives, I'm actually not kidding about this. I now use Twitter at work very frequently, mostly within my team, and it has improved our functioning and, dare I say it, made us closer, more personally connected.

Let me float an assertion: The deeper the relationship, the greater the proportion of it dedicated to triviality; and beyond, say, 90% triviality, the relationship isn't a relationship at all. And likewise with meaningful interactions--if everything is meaningful, it's not a relationship, it's therapy.

So here is my Bullseye Diagram of Love, illustrating the way I'm starting to envision online social systems supporting healthy relationships:

So I'm arguing for Twitter, or an analogous triviality service (ha!) as a supplement to existing relationships, not as a full-fledged social channel in and of itself. As a social network, I actually do think it's useless, or worse. And you can take that as a caveat.

But I am saying I think triviality in general and as supported by Twitter, in both personal and professional settings, is indispensable--that we can and should deliberately design it into social systems.

Justin Marshall on Social Media Marketing

By Ryan Turner | Jul 16, 2008 4:21:03 PM

Cross-posted from Web Social Architecture.

Here is the video of Justin Marshall's talk last week, titled Money, Media, and Your Mom's Peach Cobbler: Social Media Marketing Done Right. Justin is a colleague of mine at ZAAZ and a major contributor to our efforts in social media.

Justin's take on social media revolves around 3 critical points: Find your customer's shared passion, build value through community, and focus on strategic objectives. His talk includes some great stories and examples, including a sample concept for a social media campaign done right. (Are you listening, Whole Foods?)

Here's the 15-minute video:

And here are the slides, so you can follow along:

I'll be posting the other presentations from the event as I get them ready. Video processing, especially at my novice level, takes forever.

You're Invited: Social Media Event at ZAAZ Seattle July 8th

By Ryan Turner | Jun 30, 2008 10:58:45 AM

Cross-posted from Web Social Architecture.

People keep asking me when we're going to host another event at the ZAAZ office's notorious Z-Bar in Seattle. Well...

I'm super excited about the lineup for this event, which includes industry leaders from corporate, agency, and independent circles who share passion and expertise in the human dimensions of social computing. Knowing most of these folks pretty well, I think I can guarantee an evening of thought-provoking conversation.

The format for this event will be similar to the previous one I organized, which seemed to go pretty well. We'll have short talks from each speaker followed by a panel discussion. Plus, snacks and beer.

Here's the rundown on the speakers:

Brian Fling of Flingmedia is a full-fledged mobile design geek and human Swiss Army knife. His talk, "Mobile 2.0: Design and Develop for the iPhone and Beyond" will explore some of the social dimensions of the emerging mobile world.

My colleague Justin Marshall is behind some of the most exciting work we've done in social media. His take on social media for marketers, titled "Money, Media, and Your Mom's Peach Cobbler: Social Media Marketing Done Right," offers guidance for marketers looking to engage with customers online.

Samantha Starmer is a highly-respected thought leader in the local information architecture community. In addition to her work at REI, she co-teaches the UW Information School's Summer IA Institute. Her talk, "Single Athletic Female seeking Single Slender Male: The Marriage of Social Media and Metadata," promises to reveal the secrets of better online living through metadata.

Nancy White of Full Circle Associates has been doing online community since WAY before it was cool. Her broadly-ranging expertise includes online learning and facilitation, communities of practice, technology in the developing world, and social technology in general. Her talk is titled "Slow Community."

Wendy Chisholm is a former co-editor of the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and a passionate advocate for universally-accessible design online and off. She's currently working on what promises to become "THE book" on accessibility for the emerging Web.

We're really lucky in the Seattle area to have access to such quality thinkers and experts. I hope you'll join us, and if you do plan to attend, drop me a note at ryant (at) zaaz dot com so I can get a rough headcount.

The Facebook event is here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=66791410200.

I hope to see you there!

Stewardship Through the World Wide Web

By Leslie Louie | Jun 4, 2008 10:10:00 AM

First there was the cyclone in Myanmar, which snuffed the lives of 78,000 people. Shortly after, an earthquake in China killed another 68,000. As new reports of rising death counts and interviews of wailing Chinese parents poured across the media, I watched and listened with a sinking and helpless heart, asking myself how can I help? I’m not trained in survival or first aid skills. “Search and rescue” to me means locating my car keys. Unless emoticons and text message shorthand are recognized as languages, I can only be considered fluent in American English.  In the face of these disasters, I’ve been trying to reconcile my wish to heal the world with the reality of my life; that is, I don’t work in nonprofit, but I still want to contribute to bettering the world, to be one of its caretakers and to tend it with mindful stewardship. How do I accomplish this sitting at my desk, in my role as a website optimization test designer at ZAAZ? As if to answer my inner query, Nobel Peace Prize winner Jerry White of Survivor Corps came to our office to share his story and how the website ZAAZ designed for his organization is creating a healing community for survivors. ZAAZ made a website that’s being used as a healing mechanism for people all over the world? Wait a minute. That’s where I work!

As cofounder of Survivor Corps , Jerry speaks from experience on what it takes and what it means to be a survivor. While studying abroad in Israel, he stepped on a landmine during a camping trip and had to have his leg amputated below the knee. He is a landmine victim survivor. Jerry White is a visceral champion of landmine victims, rallying nations and enlisting public figures - most notably the late Diana, Princess of Wales – to support the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. In doing this work, he realized the need to focus not just on preventing more people from becoming victims, but also to aid existing victims in making the transition from victim to survivor. Survivor Corps does this by creating an online community that feels safe, offering support and connectivity for survivors of war and violence. Social networking isn’t new, I know. But unlike MySpace and Facebook, Survivor Corps’ site isn’t just a vehicle to serve up behaviorally based ads nor is it meant to become a hobby. Instead its aim is to aid, to assist, to inspire. It’s a loving community – a world within the world wide web – that the survivors themselves steward. A website that empowers people to see themselves as a survivor rather than victim? A website that helps these same people to create their own supportive network and to change the world around them? Whoa.

This brings me back to my reality. I’m not prepared to relocate to Myanmar or any other emergent natural disaster site. But what I can do is help to create a website that will endure long after the news stops headlining death counts. Jerry White’s visit helped me redefine what I envision as a "contribution" and to see that through my professional work in the internet, I can affect the humanitarian efforts that speak to my heart. I’m not there, searching for people in the rubble, but I’m here for the ones that make it out and the organizations that champion their cause. When we embark on projects like this at ZAAZ, our usability experts, designers, copywriters, project managers – we all take on the task of representing these people. I don’t know what website metric can measure this, but I know there’s value in that.

It's invigorating to realize that I can tend the world from my desk, by creating websites that connect people, empower them. Not every website we take on at ZAAZ has this aim, I know. Still, I’m proud to be a part of a collective that sees the value in these sites and takes the challenge when it can to steward the world. And you can bet I’ll be the first to offer up my skills when the next project like this presents itself.

This is not an email you want to have to send to your IT Dept.

By Jason Carmel | Mar 17, 2008 3:49:17 PM

Subject: new phone request

Hello Support,

As I mentioned to some of you in passing, I inadvertently dropped my cell phone into a toilet this weekend (note: the use of “inadvertently” in that sentence was probably somewhat unnecessary). I assure you that this happened as a result of a pocket malfunction, and not due to any “multitasking.”

As you might imagine, the cell phone is now working sub-optimally. Plus, it was in a toilet. Based on the limited functionality that the phone still has, I’m hopeful that the SIM card is still intact, but the rest of the phone has seen more than anyone in this world should be expected to, and may quite frankly need to be retired. Send it to a nice place, please. It was a good phone, and the world has not been kind to it.

I have the phone with me if you need to review it. It has been sanitized with alcohol, although I still might not recommend eating food off of it. 

Let me know what needs to happen and how possible it might be to get a new, non-toileted phone. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Thanks,

-Jason

UPDATE: I have received a new phone far more quickly than could have been reasonably expected, given the circumstances. There was a great deal of laughing and shaking of heads (deserved, some would argue), but the ZAAZ IT team were otherwise the very souls of responsiveness and empathy.