In partnership with Nissan, PSFK held an event on October 20 2009 to discuss the future of Pure Living in Tokyo. Piers Fawkes, founder of PSFK, moderated a conversation with an international panel of experts and covered topics that included sustainability, design, urban planning, technology and zero-emission mobility.

Before the event, PSFK spoke with Danny Choo about his views on pure living.

To catch all the images, video and discussion around this event – visit www.psfk.com/pureliving

In partnership with Nissan, PSFK held an event on October 20 2009 to discuss the future of Pure Living in Tokyo. Piers Fawkes, founder of PSFK, moderated a conversation with an international panel of experts and covered topics that included sustainability, design, urban planning, technology and zero-emission mobility.

Just before the event, we spoke to Mark Dytham (Creative Catalyst, Partner at Klein Dytham architecture, and Founder of Pecha Kucha) about his thoughts on ‘Pure Living’ and how he saw it manifesting itself in the world today.

To catch all the images, video and discussion around this event – visit www.psfk.com/pureliving

In partnership with Nissan, PSFK held an event on October 20 2009 to discuss the future of Pure Living in Tokyo. Piers Fawkes, founder of PSFK, moderated a conversation with an international panel of experts and covered topics that included sustainability, design, urban planning, technology and zero-emission mobility.

Peter Rojas, founder of gdgt spoke with PSFK before the event about his views on pure living.

To catch all the images, video and discussion around this event – visit www.psfk.com/pureliving

On August 6th, PSFK and YouTube hosted a Good Ideas Salon on the topic of community in San Bruno CA, at YouTube headquarters.

It was led by Mia Quagliarello (Product Marketing Manager – Community YouTube) who was joined by Jen Burton (Senior Community Manager, Digg), Heather Champ (Director of Community, Flickr) and Matthew Stinchcomb (VP – Community, Etsy). They engaged in an in-depth discussion on the communities on their respective sites, and shared tips on building, managing, and harnessing the incredible power of vast online audiences.

You can watch the video of the panel in its entirety below, or simply read the suggested takeaways:

Community management is the new brand marketing

All of the panelists recognized their users not only as the ultimate ambassadors for their brands, but also as the engines behind them. “[Community] is the brand; it differentiates us,” said Matthew Stinchcomb of Etsy. “If not for the community, we’d be ‘bad eBay with bad search’.” He also mentioned that traditional advertising (banner ads, etc) were simply ineffective- 90% of Etsy’s advertising comes from word-of-mouth. Embrace and empower your users, and let them carry your messages for you.

Keep it real

Stay focused on your users’ best interests, stick to your core principles, and always be open and honest. “It’s important to be able to make bold decisions confidently,” said Flickr’s Heather Champ. “Sometimes, you know that you’re going to piss off a very vocal minority, but as long you have the vibrancy of the community in interest and are transparent about your vision of the long view, people stay happy.”

Don’t forget the real world

Online may be where most of the interactions are happening, but the real world is important, too: meetups are a good way for users to meet each other and for staff to meet users, and they can help to deflate any negativity that might persist in places like forums. While the majority of these physical gatherings are user-organized, all three sites partake in events big (Digg’s annual SXSW bash) and small (whenever she’s in a new city, Champ will go out shooting photographs with local Flickr users; she says it’s a great way to see a new town). Etsy even has a work space in its Brooklyn, NY, office for its community to create crafts together.

Set clear rules of engagement

If you’re trying to build a community from scratch, it’s important to let growth occur organically, but you’ve gotta have a solid framework while it happens. These usually come in the form of Community Guidelines, and they are a must-have for anyone looking to have passionate communities carry their products forward.

Micro-communities

Matthew from Etsy discussed growing the community internationally, and kept mentioning the importance of “micro-communities”- and his hopes for strengthening them in the future by supplying users with tools that bring people with niche interests together (example: a group interested specifically in ceramics discussing topics/projects pertinent to them).

This past January, PSFK brought together our favorite innovators and thought leaders for our Good Ideas Salon London. There, Christian Nold, artist, designer and educator famous for his Biomapping project, discussed how design can create systems of trust within communities.

Picking up where the design panel left off, Christian elaborated on how new, performative and embodied approaches to engaging our surroundings and those around us can create powerful change and how designers can leverage technology to develop social relations through democratic procedures.

Coupled with a background in fine art, Christian describes the various ethnographic techniques he employs to find out what the real issues are, and then how he works closes with communities to provide solutions. They key he explains, is working with people so that when they walk away, they feel like they were really heard – inadvertently building a relationship of trust.

Filmed in December 2008, this Good Ideas Salon focused on Digital, exploring new ways in which individuals and brands are storing, sharing, and archiving their online narratives online. The panel, moderated by Piers Fawkes (PSFK), included Claire Hyland (Electric Artists), Johanna Beyenbach (Naked), Mike Arauz (Undercurrent), and Noah Brier (Barbarian Group) and touched upon a range of topics spanning from the evolution of virtual identities and collaboration to mobile technologies and the relivening of analog through digital.