Category: Government

Designers needed to help ColaLife turn this crate into a thing of life saving beauty

Coca-Cola crate by S1m0nB3rry.

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Dimensions are 36cm in height, 42cm in length and 32cm in width. Can you help find a way to use this crate?

And let’s imagine all the answers we will have to come up with. Like
“How are we going to incorporate non-Coke items in Coca-Cola crates?”

Questions like this spark other questions like “What are the
dimensions of the Coca-Cola crates and bottles used in east Africa?”
and so on.

Can anyone with thoughts, answers or more questions please post them here by commenting? Click here and scroll down.

More from Simon here.

Update:  I’ve also just e-mailed the product design course at Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, part of Birmingham City University.  Worth a try! If any of the students pick up on this let me know, I’ll happily praise them to the skies, as I’m sure will others.

Seth Godin’s First Law of mass media:

Organizations will work tirelessly to de-personalize every communication medium they encounter.

Email used to be honest interactions between consenting adults.
Facebook pages (and Wikipedia, too) were built by people, not staffs.
Twits came from real people, and so did instant messages.One by one, the mass marketers have insisted on robocalling,
spamming, jingling and lying their way into our lives. The pronoun
morphs from “you” to “me” to “us” to “the corporation” …

The public works tirelessly to flee to actual interactions between
real people, and our organizations work even more diligently (and with
more leverage) to corporatize and anonymize the interactions.

Fascinating observations found here. At this stage I am working with organisation try to persuade that social media is about the individual and the personal. I’ve not yet thought that if/when I win that battle there will still be substantial forces of de-personalisation trying to undermine that work. I’m hoping that the right way will be so liberating and so transparently useful that only a lunatic would want to go backwards. Umh….

Hattip. See also.

Youth Citizenship Commission

Priorities listed here:

Terms of Reference

The Commission will focus on young people aged 11-19 and will:

  • Examine what citizenship means to young people
  • Consider how to increase young people’s participation in politics; the development of citizenship amongst disadvantaged groups; how active citizenship can be promoted through volunteering and community engagement; and how the political system can reflect the communication preferences of young people.
  • Lead a consultation with young people on whether the voting age should be lowered to 16.

The Commission will report to the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for Justice, and the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families in spring 2009.

Views can be sent to the YCC mailbox – ycc@justice.gsi.gov.uk