UniPHY Promotional Video - And Who Said Scholarly Publishers Weren't Creative?

UniPHY is the American Institute of Physics’ social networking experiment. How would you promote such a thing?

Well, Terry Hulbert and friends put their answer on YouTube, so it’s fair game:

Nice use of robots, music, and homemade video.

Kent Anderson

@kanderson

Kent Anderson is the CEO of RedLink and RedLink Network, a past-President of SSP, and the founder of the Scholarly Kitchen. He has worked as Publisher at AAAS/Science, CEO/Publisher of JBJS, Inc., a publishing executive at the Massachusetts Medical Society, Publishing Director of the New England Journal of Medicine, and Director of Medical Journals at the American Academy of Pediatrics. Opinions on social media or blogs are his own.

Discussion

4 Thoughts on "UniPHY Promotional Video — And Who Said Scholarly Publishers Weren't Creative?"

Hope they got permission to use the sound track, or do they consider this “fair use”?

By Sandy Thatcher
Mar 15, 2011, 7:52 AM

Am I missing something here? The message I got out of that was that I can get a free toy at their booth if I go to a meeting. What exactly does a bunch of windup toys tell me about their social network and why I would spend any time using it? Is it meant to portray the soulless nature of the current academic climate, where all are forced to march in lockstep, er, dance to the same tune as identical automatons? Or am I going too deep?

Seriously, this tells me nothing about the product itself.

By David Crotty
Mar 15, 2011, 9:51 AM

no David, you’re not going deep enough… you’re on the right track though. the robots are the site’s users, that much should be obvious. but then there’s the layers added: they’re all blue, which you’d think would mean that they’re sad, but it’s actually a comment on the uniformity (“uniphy” also alludes to this…) and the video bemoans the lack of diversity within the physics world.

now, on to the song, which, as you know is a thinly veiled allegory of the dangers of capitalism.

so, the question becomes, why did AIP want to publish this “viral” video? the answer is simple: publishers who embrace the socialist ethos of their working-class authors will become an army of their own. the revolution will not be televised, but is taking place in our universities and labs.

or maybe it’s just a silly video. in the words of some guy sitting behind me while i watch this video and type these words in Starbucks, “haha, wtf?!”