Fun Friday Links: Creating Compelling Content, Programming Artificial Organs and Onion Talks

Welcome to Chelsi’s Number One Super Happy Fun Link Time, a weekly collection of cool discoveries from around the Web. Most times the goal is to get you thinking differently about communication, collaboration, culture, and life in general. Other times, LOLCAT ATTACK! Submissions are welcome, and you can send them to conspire@mindjet.com for consideration. 

The 7 Essential Elements of Compelling Content

Businesses these days know they need content, and they know they need that content to be interesting and sharable. What many of them don’t know, however, is exactly how to create that content.

I like this article from Steve Farnsworth, Chief Digital Strategist at Jolt Digital Marketing, because his instructions for creating compelling content are dead simple and, more importantly, they make sense. He also outlines why he thinks marketers might be having so many issues tackling the content conundrum:

“In many cases, I think, their main focus is management or strategy, not content creation.

“While they acknowledge the importance of—and need for—excellent content, some also tend to see content from a distance and stereotype it as a commodity that’s simply poured onto a web page like milk is poured onto breakfast cereal. In other words, they’re probably not close enough to the content creation process to offer a helpful opinion.”

The Biological Internet: Programming Artificial Organs?

Wow. The future is now.

In this article from Fast Company, Ariel Schwartz discusses a newly discovered way to use DNA to send data between cells:

“In the future–we’re talking decades down the line–the technology could be used in tissue engineering as well as in creating artificial organs and biomaterials that have no direct analog in nature,” she writes.

The Real You

This is a beautiful talk from Alan Watts, British philosopher, writer, and speaker, about who we are deep down inside. If you’re in need of a little pick me up (or just curious) hit that HD button and enjoy.

Onion Talks

I loved The Onion when I first discovered it over a decade ago, I loved it more when I had the pleasure of interviewing Baratunde Thurston, the publication’s Director of Digital, early this year, and I love it even more now that it’s mocking TED Talks (I also love TED Talks):