Resource Roundup: Things Agencies Should Know About

The last two weeks have seen a ton of content cross my screen. I’ll sifted through it to bring you some of the things I’ve found to be most important, which include articles covering planning, declining client work, the cloud and design, eBooks, mobile stuff, libraries, and even robots…

Heather LeFevre, head of planning at Strawberry Frog in Amsterdam, has created a Planner Survey that is worth your time to fill out. (Here’s why you should.)

David Sherwin, over at his ChangeOrder blog, wrote a good piece answering a question I know we’ve all asked: When Should I Decline Client Work?.

Adam Silver wrote a thoughtful post for Frog’s DesignMind blog (which you should subscribe to if you don’t already) asking, Are Our Lives Vanishing Into the Cloud? His answer delves into some things I’ve been thinking about lately involving how we “design” the unseen—and how much that really matters now that so much is being moved to the cloud.

On the “dystopia now!” front, Nicholas Carr posted on a disturbing legal development around eBook publishing: Florida legislators have passed a budget measure banning printed textbooks in schools starting in the 2015-2016 academic year.

There were a few interesting posts that I noticed in the flurry of activity after this month’s newsletter on The Future of Mobile came out. The first was Scott Jensen’s post (again at Frog’s DesignMind blog) on App Myopia. Also, check out Chad Udell’s piece from over a year ago on the same point, asking, Does Everyone Have iPhone-opia?.

…And just because I care about this sort of thing, watch this Atlantic Video of the Day on How Chicago’s Automated Library Works. Believe me, this approach to informational resource storage is going to become standard, which has major ramifications on how we experience information—in particular, how we browse it, discover it, understand the larger context and connections between, sources, etc.

Sherry Turkle, author of Alone Together, gave a long and fascinating interview with Krista Tippet, host of American Public Media’s On Being. If you haven’t read the book (I’m midway right now), I’d recommend it. Meanwhile, carve out some time to listen to the full 1 hour, 28 minute, unedited interview. If you’re interested in how technology is shaping our culture, robotics, social media, etc. (you should be), it will be well worth your time.

Finally, a few plugs:

Mark will be presenting on Planning the Modern Marketing Website at the Marketing Profs B2B Forum on June 15th in Boston. If you miss him there, we’ll both be at the HOW Design Conference in Chicago where Mark is presenting on How to Make Your Site into a Business-Generating Machine on June 26th. There’s still time to register.

If you’re a long-term planner, think about attending the HOW Interactive Conference in San Francisco on November 2-4. Mark and I have had the privilege of serving on the Advisory Council planning the event and we’ll also be speaking—Mark on SEO + Content Strategy, and I on Making Sense of the Data.