War on Stupid at DMA

 Earlier this week I was up in Boston co-presenting "The War on Stupid" with Andrew Davies, a designer extraordinnaire with Paragon Design. As part of the Geekend Roadshow we presented at the Direct Marketers Association conference. It went well, and the crowd seemed to enjoy it. If you read/speak Danish, let me know if this article about the talk is good or bad.

The basic idea is that people need access to important information about the world around them, but most people either don't like to read, or never find time to keep up with more news than what is available via cable news channels. They are left under-served in the realm of informational nourishment. We propose to combat that through the collaboration of creatives (designers, illustrators, filmmakers, sound designers, etc) with 'sense-makers' (journalists, research scientists, etc) to turn complex ideas and data heavy material into short videos.

We created a demo of our idea. Drew took a 3-part investigative piece that I did about a nuclear reactor project outside of Augusta and turned it into a minute-and-a-half long motion graphic video. Check that out here.

You can follow the War on Stupid blog, which highlights other folks working in the realm of information translation.

The War on Stupid demo

Last October, I collaborated with graphic designer Andrew Davies from Paragon on a presentation called "The War on Stupid Needs You," for Geekend. We discussed how the increase in information available to people hasn't been accompanied by any increased ability to process or analyze that information. We talked about how "data" collectors like scientists, journalists and others need to develop new relationships with digital creatives like designers, filmmakers and illustrators who will translate complex ideas into more palatable info-tainment.
As a demonstration, we worked together to take a 3-part series I wrote about funding for Georgia Power's nuclear development of Plant Vogtle and turn it into a short animated video.

Nuclear Bailout from Andrew on Vimeo.