4.30.14

• Lawrence Lessig and why the Digital Public Sphere Matters
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  Consumers of media and products - once treated as captive prisoner

• • Vanilla products marketed to the “average” consumer
  • “whitebread, middle-class, college-educated, suburban dwelling, 2.5 children, a dog and a white picket fence”
  • Fringe markets were forced to the center in order to consume
  • Media spoke at us, not with us
  • Radio/television/newspaper = one narrative
  • Now: the democracy of media
  • Crowd-sourced projects
  • Niche markets rise up
  • We create our own media narratives
  • Remix culture - reappropriating the creative voices of the past
  • Now we use culture to say something new and relevant to our lives
  • Authorities consider this “piracy”
  • “piracy has always existed
  • The very nature of how ideas spread means borrowing creative impulses from the past
  • Media scholar Lawrence Lessig: “This technique has been used by film and television producers for the last 50 years. The importance is that that technique has been democratized. It is now anybody with access to a $1500 computer who can take sounds and images from the culture around us and use it to say things differently. These tools of creativity have become tools of speech. It is a literacy for this generation. This is how our kids speak. It is how our kids think. It is what your kids are as they increasingly understand digital technologies in relationship to themselves.”
• Branding
• A brand is not just the visual elements associated with a product; it is the mission, values, key words and messages as well as the language used to describe it.
• TED Talk: How to Get your Ideas to Spread

• Prompts:
• What does Seth say about how markets have changed in the past 100 years? Why is it important?
• Create a "brand" for your product that includes verbal descriptors, imagery, a mission and core values - why your product is the “purple cow"

Research and Citation Workshop

• General to Specific
• Wiki’s are a place to start, not so great for a final citation. Use the citations at the bottom of the wiki article for external sources
• Key search terms - be on the lookout for parallel search terms and add these terms to your concept map
• Define Terms
• Check to see if you are taking for granted a personally or culturally-biased definition of a term or other grounding facts for your argument. *Ex: Charlotte Anderson's argument about what a "real family" is supposed to look like.
• Sources
• http://library.du.edu 
• Databases
• Google Scholar
• Skimming/Gleaning relevant information
• Abstracts
• Search function (remember to search for synonyms too)
• Citing - The three following styles are acceptable for citations as long as you are consistent:
• MLA
• APA https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/
• Chicago http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html

Charlotte Anderson - Pet Fish http://www.slideshare.net/EAADenver/11yo-daughter-makes-case-for-why-she-should-get-a-fish

• What she did well:
• Pre-empting her critics’ arguments/showing her rebuttal
• Comparing the quantitative bodies of evidence
• Visual Aids!
• Multiple solutions to addressed problems
• Setting clear timelines for action
• Use of humor to disarm critics
• Problematic areas:
• The cultural assumption of what constitutes a “normal” family. The assumptions surrounding familial normativity do not equally apply to all audiences.
• Arbitrary assignment of quantitative values to a solution (⅝) without rationale for that particular value.

This American Life Elevator Pitch http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/412/million-dollar-idea?act=1#play

• Listen for:
• Basic do’s and don’ts of elevator pitches
• Examples of the do’s and don’ts used

Susan Blackmore - Memes and Temes

• How does Blackmore's talk relate to the upcoming speech assignment?
• Small Group Exercise
• Groups of 2-3
1. Discuss pros/cons relative to your presentation for each of your top ideas. Which of your ideas present opportunities and challenges in illustrating:
• the need for your proposed idea
• the cost effectiveness of your proposed idea
• the return on investment of your proposed idea
• the benefit to standard of living resulting from your proposed idea
• the benefit to society/humanity resulting from your proposed idea

1. Share your branding statement with your group and, keeping in mind Miranda's lecture on identities, assumptions and generalizations, discuss any potential exclusions of groups from your branding appeal, and any assumptions that your branding statement makes about potential audiences.
2. Discuss with your group:
• What are the topics needed to research to provide support for the above points (need, cost effectiveness, ROI, etc.)?
• What are potential sources for this research? Are some research topics more appropriate for recorded information and others for interviews? Why?
3. What are some key search terms for each of your top ideas, and what are synonyms or different ways each of these search terms might be expressed?
4. Help the members of your group develop a research plan
• Evaluating Elevator Pitches
• http://mitgsw.org/2013/workshop/elevator-pitch-contest-page/