Threads with Creds

Ross Zietz, Art Director for Threadless was in Sydney in conversation with David Marr. I must confess to not having bought a threadless t-shirt - so far - however I have admired many worn by a good Californian friend of mine: Darren.

http://www.threadless.com/

As you may know Threadless began in 2000 in Chicago with Jake Nickell and Jacob DeHart creating a site that allowed designers and creative people all around the world to submit their artwork, interact, gain exposure and generate a potential income stream. Little did they know it would grow to receive up to 150 submissions a day, a kids range, offers from Target and Urban Outfitters to distribute their gear as well as a retail store in their home town.

Threadless encourages and thrives on audience participation - in fact it depends on it. So they have found ways to encourage activity. If your artwork receives enough votes to get printed then you get up to $2500 + $500 for reprints. One chap managed to make $40K+ a year from submitting his work to Threadless. But it's not all about the fiscals. How would you feel if your design was worn my men, women and children all round the world? Or what about winning the annual bestee award.

Business schools find it all very fascinating, just how have these Threadless people managed to truly blur the lines between producer and consumer? It's quite simple really: give your audience some power - let them vote and determine what happens next. Respect your contributors - let them keep the rights to their artwork. Keep the lines of communication open and direct: blogs posts, emails are read and responded to directly by the founders. Stay true to the original philosophy: broker new relationships carefully - when Target wouldn't allow the artists name to be on the label Threadless knew it was not a good move so opted out. Keep experimenting and moving forward: harness new media such as Twitter to extend the offer - twitter tees where tweets can be submitted for voting and printing.

Russ spoke of an interesting marketing tool they stumbled upon a few years back. When people submitted their artwork they were immediately emailed a 'marketing kit' which enabled them to send out emails to everyone in their inbox to vote for their design. A rather snazzy way to bring new people to the site via a personal invitation.

With such an active online community Threadless are kinda running one big online focus group 247 ...

Now to buy my first tee.

Stories from the Field.

Last night I went along to DE's talk series, to hear Ronan Sharkeys stories from the field. Ronan is a delightful story teller and made some potent points not only for researchers but anyone involved in advocacy and social change. He challenges the myth that young people are apathetic and reveals many instances of engaged young people who have taken the time to write to the ABC, in great detail, about their concerns. I know from my own experience in the field young people do care and would jump at the chance to get involved - provided they feel like it's going to make a difference and they will learn something in the process.

Ronan feels the way to get young people more involved is to make them the authority - give them the microphone and let them investigate and tell the story. This has wider implications for the research process ... how many of us enable participants share their lives with us, on their terms? Would this mean sending out digital video cameras and voice recorders more often, asking people to take charge of how they'd like to report back to the researchers, giving them the power to truely represent themselves.

... We have done this and it can reveal some wonderful spaces otherwise inaccessible to a researcher - for instance one teenager gave us a tour of his shed, playing instuments as he told stories about his time spent in his shed. This kind of performative storytelling opens up a proximity and creates an intimacy difficult to replicate in a one on one interview or discussion group. The pace of the performance, the pauses and the changing energy levels of the participant bring us closer to their world.

The link to Ronan's talk is below:

http://digitaleskimo.net/blog/2009/05/11/de-talks-series

Thinking and listening.

While driving between interviews I happened to catch this amazing segment on Radio National about how young children are being taken through a process of philosophical inquiry.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/encounter/stories/2009/2542653.htm#transcript

According to Stephan Millett: What a philosophical inquiry does, is to first ask, what might this person be meaning? What are the possibilities of meaning that are inherent in this statement? Don't presume that at the outset your first take on it is the right take. I think that kids are an enormously rich resource for learning. Now I mean that in the sense that my job as a teacher isn't just to teach them how. I learn from them at the same time, so we actually engage in a learning community. The kids have different takes on things, they have different understandings, and their view might come to me as something completely fresh. And having a learning community, where it's a form of democracy, where voices are allowed to be heard, and I think when we hear the voices of our children, and we listen attentively, we listen very carefully to what they might be saying, and give them the time, and at least assume, prima facie, that they have something of value to say, then I think we can have a much fairer and more equitable society.

The audio of this show is wonderful: listening to 8-10 year old children discussing the nature of reality, the role of beliefs and imagination in a considered way is really delightful.