Comments on: Why we need Creative Technologists

By: Siminki

Siminki — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 07:42:40 +0000

Interesting – not heard of this role before although I’m guessing my Masters course in Creative Technology in 1999 qualifies me a little Having worked across design, front end dev and UX in the past I sometimes struggle to define what my exact role is with so many specialist positions being created. Whats the real difference between this and a UX designer would you say?

By: Evan Jacobs

Evan Jacobs — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 14:56:35 +0000

I agree, 100%. I’ve been branding myself in this fashion for a while, though under a slightly different name of “Marketing Technologist”.

The skill set is the same though, regardless of the name.

By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 08:25:28 +0000

@andrea – i can’t credit for that one i’m afraid, it came from Rei Inamoto, CCO.

I totally agree with him though

By: Andrea

Andrea — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 20:01:36 +0000

Ah Andy, I love the idea of being half hustler, half hipster. Wonderful.

By: craftedpixelz

craftedpixelz — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 17:28:49 +0000

@Andy: Your slideshow sums it up really well. Thanks for sharing!

By: Andy

Andy — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 15:15:59 +0000

Great stuff, couldn’t agree more.

Talking of Venn diagrams I made a short presentation a while ago on this very subject – updated (including a link to this post) & uploaded it today.

It’s still a WIP so any feedback would be great but it does hopefully help explain the role to those who still don’t get it.

http://www.slideshare.net/andrewrobertnewman/creative-tech-publics

By: Andrea

Andrea — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 11:56:30 +0000

Dude. I totally agree with you that some agencies don’t have the people or skills. And if they do, they have too many layers of approval between an idea and an actual ‘yes’.

I can’t speak for agency feuds and the likes but I do remember seeing some random job advert at one point describing a creative technologist merely as someone ‘aware of’ technologies and how to use them creatively. So I get why W+K would say they don’t want that kind of role, but at the same time we seem to have a communication breakdown when it comes to the title.

I think we need a venn diagram of sorts…art director, coder and even project manager to some extent. It’s some sort of holy trinity that the role we all have in mind probably should have.

By: iamkeir

iamkeir — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 11:55:57 +0000

Very nice description – much less of a ‘buzzword’ to me now, can actually see true value in that role. I’d say it is something a lot of us web folk already do without realising it.