Hello,
My name is Samuel Mikel Bowles and I am an experience and interaction designer. I have been working on the web since 1996 and have survived <tables>, <frames>, the <blink> & <scroll> tags and many many inscrutable CSS hacks. This site contains selections from my portfolio.
Today I proudly work for Atomic Object, the best application development company in the mid-west (not that I am biased or anything.) Atomic Object develops applications for everything from iPhones, to integrated automotive systems, to amazing social web applications.
To make things slightly more confusing but so much more exciting, although I work for a small application development company based in West Michigan, I live in Seville, Spain. You can read my infrequent posts which even less frequently involve Seville at samuel.bowles.es. You can also find me on Twitter.
Listen & Be Heard
Duovox is a sort of manifesto in two words: two voices. I love working with web-based technology because I am passionate about communication. Not the kind they sell in traditional ad or “communications” firms that involves capturing eyeballs, or measuring impressions per thousand. The kind of communication that requires two voices. Dialog. Conversation. Listening and being heard.
The thing that excites me the most about the web is that it represents such a tide change. We have moved in the space of a decade from mass-media to media for the masses. The global stage has not been so challenged since at least 1450 when Johannes Gutenberg introduced the world to cost-effective one-to-many communication.
Radio changed things: moving public discourse into the home, allowing information to speed around the world faster and faster, entertaining, enlightening, and opening new worlds to its listeners. Television did the same. Who will forget the indelible images of the first flight to the moon, JFK’s assassination, the bombs dropping on Iraq, or the crowds singing, “I’d like to buy the world a coke and keep it company.”
Both radio and television, however, share an important characteristic with the printing press: they were both simply more powerful ways for an elite few to communicate their message to the masses. This is the key change that the web brought with it: it is fundamentally a two-way medium. The web represents the move from sending messages one-to-many1 (print, radio, television) to communicating many-to-many.
This change can be scary for both individuals and companies. The Message can no longer be fully controlled. We are now truly engaged in a global conversation. So, how does one adopt strategies to align themselves with this new reality? I see the quest to answer that question as my life’s work. I aim to help all my clients consider, harness, and fully realize the potential that these new technologies offer.
So how is your organization using the web to go beyond mass-messaging to mass-listening? How are you using technology to become a more and more responsive organization? I firmly believe that these and questions like them are the keys to success in this brave new world.
1 Or few to many.