Here’s some information about information about information. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.  It’s meta information… like in the title and it’s EVERYWHERE.  It’s a trip when you think about it.  This entry was written for 52’s blog by Brian Belefant whose link to more info is included in the body.  Thanks Brian!

A picture used to be worth 1,000 words. But thatʼs no longer enough. When I import a picture into Aperture, I can append it with 52 meta tags –– words that describe everything from the focal length I shot  it at to its copyright.

This may seem fairly benign, but when youʼre sitting in the Newark Airport for five hours waiting to make a connecting flight –– as I am –– you have lots of time to explore implications.

My first notion is to think of it in economic terms. What used to be worth 1,000 words is now worth 1,052. Thatʼs a five percent rate of inflation, or deflation, depending on whether youʼre talking about the pictures or the words.

Words about pictures is only one thing, though. I write a blog (www.60secdirector.blogspot.com). Recently, I had a slightly uneasy feeling when I found out that people were blogging about my blog.

Sure, itʼs flattering. But some of the blogs that blogged about my blog have larger readerships than I do. Isnʼt that weird?

And then thereʼs the part about the information itself. My blog provides information –– itʼs bite-sized lessons on directing for aspiring filmmakers. But when someone blogs about my blog, theyʼre providing information about information.

Meta information.

And what about twittering, googling, facebooking, linking, tagging, and all those other verbs that didnʼt even exist 15 years ago, but now have infected our language to the point that theyʼre better understood than concepts that many would argue contribute more to our body of knowledge? Can you distinguish between “continuous” and “continual”? I canʼt. I used to know the difference. Now I have to look it up. But I can tell you how a blog is different from a tweet. Does that mean information about information supplanting information itself?

(Okay, bad example. “Continuous” and “continual” are words about information. But you get my point.)

Wandering around the terminal for the fifteenth time, I pass Starbucks. They have nine different words to describe coffee mixed with milk. And Iʼm not even talking about sizes or the adjectives you can apply to fine-tune your purchase, like “wet”, “dry”, “no-foam”, and “extra-hot.”

Outside Hudson News, thereʼs a huge poster for ʻLuckyʼ. An ad for a magazine dedicated to shopping. Or to put it another way, an ad for a collection of ads and information, much of which, Iʼm sure, refers to other information –– books, other magazines, movies.

If you buy the magazine, they put it in a plastic bag with pictures of magazine covers on it, presumably to advertise their availability to the other passengers waiting five hours to make a connection. Hudson News recruits you to disseminate information about information about information.

Inside Hudson News, my eye is drawn to a particular book. ʻPreciousʼ. Based on the movie ʻPreciousʼ, which was based on the book ʻPushʼ.

Huh?

A book based on a movie based on a book? They should make a movie about that. And if it does well, they can turn it into a book. And so on.

A couple more hours of introspection and I realize that all of this is inevitable. The information age is, after all, about information. And now that there’s so much of it, someone has to devise ways to make sense of it all.  More important, to make money off of it.

Speaking of money, remember back in 1971 when Nixon took the US dollar off the gold standard? Okay, me neither. But it was big news back then. Suddenly, a dollar wasn’t a proxy for a specified amount of a certain metal; a dollar was worth, well, whatever you could buy for it. Dollars went from being currency to information –– a representation of our consensus about objectsʼ and servicesʼ relative worth.

Thatʼs pretty analogous to the situation weʼre in now with information about information. If information is gold, then information about information is dollars, yen, pounds, pesos, and all the other pieces of paper that represent agreement not only about the relative values of commodities, but about each other.

I donʼt know if that blows your mind, but it blows mine. Especially when you extend the analogy to the explosion of options, derivatives, credit default swaps, tranches, and myriad other ways that money has been parsed since it stopped being money.

As they finally start boarding my flight, I realize that weʼre standing on the shore of a vast, unexplored continent of information about information and Iʼd be lying to you if I told you that a five-hour layover in Newark gave me the insight to see what itʼs going to look like once we get past the beach. All I know is that change is coming. And once it comes, there aint no going back.

And then I think, you know what? Someday, someone a couple of generations younger than me might find himself with five hours to kill while waiting to board a “flight” over the continent of meta-information. And maybe heʼll realize that once again, the landscape with which heʼs familiar –– the land he can comfortably soar over, recognizing the patterns that seem so perfectly obvious from 30,000 feet up –– is about to be supplanted by an entirely new paradigm of understanding.

Maybe heʼll think back to us and think, “How charming they seem now, those early pioneers who forged into the unknown and tried to make sense of it.”

Put that in your blog. Just, you know, please be sure to spell my name right.

This week in NYC, 52 LTD is attending Internet week.  Internet week is a festival of events celebrating NYC’s thriving internet industry and community.

Check out Internet Week’s Happenings

Located at Metropolitan Pavilion, Internet Week HQ features two main areas: Interactive Playground of 12,000 square feet of exposition space. This space will be both a place for attendees to meet, greet, and get a little work done, as well as hosting arts, technology, media and entertainment exhibitions and social events.

Topics range from Custom Silverlight controls, to a day dedicated to “IAmEffed.”  All this and more.. including parties galore scattered throughout various venues across Manhattan.

We already know cities such as Seattle and Portland boast a treasure trove of creatives. We’re still learning, however, about the ways in which creatives are, and will continue to be, economic drivers.

Daniel H. Pink, who served from 1995 to 1997 as chief speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore, sheds light on this subject in his best-selling book “A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future.”

“A Whole New Mind” synthesizes big picture trends to explain how a new epoch of our post-industrial society is rising and how right-brain types are the sort of entrepreneurs and workers who will succeed.

Pink suggests that we are evolving away from the Information Age, during which the left-brain dominant knowledge worker reined supreme and are moving into the Conceptual Age, a stage where creatives and other types of right-brain people take center stage.

The main characters in the Conceptual Age, Pink says, “are the creator and the empathizer, whose distinctive ability is mastery of R-Directed [right-brain] Thinking.”

We at 52 Ltd. enthusiastically recommend “A Whole New Mind,” which is a quick, uplifting read.

It brings clarity at a time during which the global situation seems increasingly complicated.

It tells us that we in the creative community are doing is the right thing-cultivation of creative types over the long-term will make us economically healthier.

Pink points to downward pressures on U.S. jobs, forces that he labels Abundance, Asia, and Automation.

Abundance, he says, has satisfied the material desires of many in the developed world. In turn, significance of beauty and emotion are heightened, as is desire for meaning.

Asia, Pink says, is fulfilling demand for white-collar left-brain knowledge workers, not to mention reduced labor costs. The dynamic is forcing knowledge workers in advanced parts of the world to “master abilities that can’t be shipped overseas,” he says.

Automation is impacting today’s desk workers the way it did for yesterday’s factory workers, thereby forcing workers to bring value in ways that computers never can, he says.

These forces, Pink said in an email to me, are likely to intensify during the current downturn.

“When consumers are strapped for cash and credit, they’re unlikely to open their wallets for modest, incremental advances in goods and services. They’ll do that only for huge, bold, conceptual leaps. As a result, for both individuals and organizations, right-brain thinking might be even more important, not less important, in a downturn,” Pink wrote via email.

In these economically challenging times, “A Whole New Mind” is a welcomed bit of encouragement, especially for those of us already honing these right-brain abilities.

“L-Directed [left-brain] Thinking remains necessary but no longer sufficient, we must become proficient in R-Directed Thinking and master aptitudes that are high concept and high touch,” Pink says in “A Whole New Mind.”

“We must perform work that overseas knowledge workers can’t do cheaper, that computers can’t do faster and that satisfies the aesthetic, emotional and spiritual demands of a prosperous time,” he says.

Succeeding in this paradigm, Pink says, amounts to understanding and mastering six specific high-concept and high-touch aptitudes. He calls these aptitudes “six senses”-design, story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning.

How Dan Pink Learned the Six Lessons

“These six senses increasingly will guide our lives and shape our world. But to many of you, this vision might seem dreadful-a hostile takeover of normal life by a band of poseurs in black unitards who will leave behind the insufficiently arty and emotive. Fear not. The high-concept, high-touch abilities that now matter most are fundamentally human attributes. After all, back on the savannah, our cave-person ancestors weren’t taking SATs or plugging numbers into spreadsheets. But they were telling stories, demonstrating empathy, and designing innovations. These abilities have always comprised part of what it means to be human. But after a few generations in the Information Age, these muscles have atrophied. The challenge is to put them back into shape,” Pink asserts.

Roughly three-quarters of “A Whole New Mind” is devoted to explaining these six senses in order that the reader can begin to master them. At the end of each section on the senses, Pink presents what he calls a “portfolio” of specific exercises applicable to mastering each aptitude.

For the left-brain skeptic, these exercises likely yield valuable insight into Pink’s thesis. For the right-brain creative, these exercises are a worthwhile reminder of the various facets of creativity.

Regardless of your thinking, the portfolios offer what seem to be good suggestions for cultivating creative aptitudes. Not to mention that the 50,000-foot view Pink provides via “A Whole New Mind” is important and illuminating.

New York City. The fresh smell of the subway on a hot day, the access to bland bodega coffee and New Jersey just a short hour away. Why did I move from Portland again? Although I miss the smell of fresh air, access to the best coffee culture nationally and snowboarding just a short hour away, the large overwhelming Italian family called (or pressured depending on how you look at it). What better way to reconcile my love of Portland then to open a branch of 52 Limited here in Manhattan? So here we are in a city that never sleeps, as experienced for the first time last Saturday with my friend Gina. I’m no spring chicken anymore. Regardless, I am very excited to be part of the 52 team once again and to be working with a close friend and now colleague, Ami Werner.

We have hit the ground running developing relationships with high-level talent, as well as clients, and are overwhelmed by the amount of events the city provides. Last week, among numerous other events for Creative Week, Brooks and I spent 2 days at the Creative Unconference sponsored by the One Club and Google. The format is simple: the participants create the agenda and ask for others in the conference to engage in their topic of discussion. You write down a topic old-school style on a piece of construction paper with a large (scented!) marker, pose these to the group, break and then venture to the group topic where you would like to contribute your time and energy. You can even switch between presentation discussions. Luckily, Brooks and I could tag team.

Highlights were the topics “The New Creative Agency” held by Matt Groves of Goody, Silverstein and Partners and “Building Creative Teams” led by Nick Law from R/GA. The overarching theme is that agencies are going to need to be flexible. The days of only needing Art Director and Copywriting teams are almost extinct. They are inundated with new systems, technological advances, blogs, twitter, facebook, engagement applications, iPhone applications, API; it seems it’s become more about the art of making things and the influx of information where once it was solely about the art of storytelling. The struggle for most agencies is keeping track of all of these advances while still trying to maintain the heart of what they do best. How do they communicate this within a new structure that changes so dramatically and consistently? Enter the creative technologist.

A self-proclaimed “geek” caught my attention immediately. Love those geeks. Richard Schatzberger of BBH is a Creative Technologist. He promotes the latest and greatest in technology while fluidly being able to take this digital lexicon and explain it in a way that clients and creatives can understand. Simply put, he doesn’t speak in code. What are the other overriding qualities besides being a tech geek? You need to be adaptable so you can move from team to team; the ideas created for the strategic group are going to vary greatly from the development team. You need to be good at making ideas better and more engaging: create a prototype so the team can hold it in their hands and play with it, look at the project through a new lens, create a different viewpoint, make the idea more viable. You need to be knowledgeable in tech trending. You need to get out into the real world and see how people are engaging with it. You need to be able to talk about hard-core technology, new platforms and API, make it sound fun and then be able to produce it. You need to be able to make RFID sound more interesting then Ashton Kutcher updating his Facebook status. For me, it’s easy. I own the entire Battlestar Galactica series. But, for storytellers, this will take an alchemist according to Richard. And that’s the real role of the creative technologist.

With all this insight and confluence of ideas, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Are we getting more or less connected? I sat drinking coffee yesterday at my local coffee shop in Prospect Heights trying to wake up (remember Gina and I were out until 6am?). With the little Italian I know, I recognize a young girl squabbling with her aunt about doing what she wants to do full-time without the support of her famiglia. I heard “disegno grafico” and we started chatting; she was a young graphic designer looking for work. I checked out her portfolio and gave her some advice on her resume. She’s going to teach me how to cook gnocchi. We did add each other to our facebook pages and I told her to follow 52 Limited on Twitter to hear about our latest and greatest events. Still, I’m consistently reminded that among all of these advances and distractions, the best form of connection is still meeting people face to face.

For more information on the Creative Unconference, go to http://www.creativeunconference.com/home/.

Steve spoke of the current state of the employment market within Portland creative services and gave advice for those seeking employment in the field. Insight was also provided into working through placement agencies, freelancing and the difference between working for a corporation or working for a creative company, such as a design firm or advertising agency.

Advice on resumes, interviewing, portfolios, and the importance of networking rounded out the discussion.