╰┈➤Nº304 Do or Die but Do You Need AI? 🤖💭

Eurobike coverage! The SRMR film Reasons to Ride and Feather Cycles' summer moves! Path Less Pedaled found the weird stuff, Ole Bouman rode to China, and Adeline Moreau's portfolio. Schicke Mütze turned 10, 8 lessons from Holland, a Sincio De Acero shop visit, and Crazy Wisdom with Andy Anderson!
╰┈➤Nº304 Do or Die but Do You Need AI? 🤖💭
Eurobike 2024 was a blast! We posted Day 1 and Day 2 & 3 Recaps on insta. Thank you to all our clients who make this all possible and the community that came out to our 3rd Annual Show Dinner with CRANK! Communication. We'll be back next year for our 11th show! :)
Table of Contents
Kike (pronounced keykay) is back this week with another newsletter intro! 📷: Quinda Verheul
“If it works, it’s obsolete” – Marshall McLuhan, 1964, p.13

And AI currently works. It saves time, resources, what the heck, even people. The best explanation I ever heard about AI was in WebSummit by the Google machine learning manager ‘machine learning means machines understanding context’, which is as simple as a machine being able to understand ‘make this blue look like the mediterranean in the early morning’, vs giving a hex code.


We’re relatively fresh off Eurobike, and both AI and authenticity have been a recurrening topic with brand managers, journalists, and industry colleagues. This felt especially fitting on the heels of my last segment in the previous newsletter. We live in a hyper alert, hyper liquid, hyper irrelevant, hyper abundant content world and we all start to acknowledge that we’re done with it.

One of the brand managers I spoke with went further and told me

"we’re becoming an AI brand, and I can’t take it anymore".

The future is built by plenty of things that currently don’t work or belong– or seem to belong. Ideas and things that don’t fit, follow a trend, or make much of a sense within the current context. By definition, things that create the future, do also change the context, so they can’t be based on contextual intelligence.

Your true voice, community, and stories that will have the power to shape the future won’t be based on a mediocre usage of contextual instructions. They will require creativity, some awkwardness, a very sharp vision, and plenty of passion. So next time you’re about to use any AI tool, maybe check this list before:

  • 🕒 Can I take ten extra minutes and write it myself?
  • ☕ Could I even go for a coffee or a walk and come back to try to write the idea again?
  • 🤖 Do I want to train the machine or my brain?– creativity is also a muscle, you use it, it gets stronger
  • 🎯 Is this message related to the core of my brand values?
  • 🔚 If yes, give it a bigger effort: you don’t want to become an AI brand because even if this works now, you may find you'll be obsolete before you realize.
  • 💡What inspired me lately?
  • 👾 8/10 it wasn’t an AI-generated content
  • 💭 Why did it inspire you?
  • ╰┈➤ How can your brand share an inspiring message/story?

That the industry is already aware of this hazard gives me the hope that we will continue to bring things forward, to the future. We’re a bunch of weird people that somehow all love two wheels with sometimes three triangles in the middle– isn’t that weird!

thank you for reading,

Kike

p.s.

further reading: relying on AI will impede your growth & I will fucking piledriver you if you mention AI again.


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Bikes

2024 Eurobike Finds (Part 2): Wild Cargo Bikes, Magnesium Pedals, Triple-ratchet Hubs, And Much More…

Eurobike 2024 Part 2
Fave bike of Bespoked Manchester? Eurobike? 2024?!
2024 Eurobike Finds (Part 2): Wild Cargo Bikes, Magnesium Pedals, Triple-Ratchet Hubs, and Much More...
After exploring the vast expanse of 2024 Eurobike, Logan compiles a massive roundup of the most interesting bikes and gear from the expo…

Click here for Part 1. p.s. Logan's part 2 coverage has some great Omnium snapsready to take on the 4,000 kilometers between Spain and Italy for the 1st Via Race!)

Reasons to Ride : a film on SRMR2023

Coffee in hand? Take 15mins to soak in this sublime short docu on my favorite ultra. Certainly one of the crazier things I ever did when I 'raced' SRMR Nº1 back in 2018.

Feather Cycles: Summer 2024 - Lead Times, shows, making moves!

Summer 2024 - Lead Times, shows, making moves! — Feather Cycles
Custom bikes, hand made in the UK. Feather Cycles lead times and waiting list. WKNDR bikes. Bike repair and servicing in York. York bike box hire. Bike fitting in York.

Ricky recently got a shout here but I'm so stoked on his recent Australia trip, new workshop & Weekender that I had to link to his latest blog post too!

Ideas

26 WEIRD and AWESOME Bike Accessories from Eurobike 2024 (No One Else Talked About)

Also worth a watch: Path Less Pedaled Best EUROBIKE Trends No One is Talking About.

A Life-time Cycle: Catching Up With Ole Bouman, After 9,300km Of Cycling

VOLUME editor-in-chief Ole Bouman rode 10,000km to China from Amsterdam in 139 days. This is a thoroughly fascinating interview with him!
“You can stay within your bubble forever and keep imagining other countries and people as dangerous, as extremist – until you go there.” – Ole Bouman

Adeline Moreau Selected Work

The friends section was pretty packed with this issue, so Adeline's portfolio made it into the ideas section. Fittingly, she also has lots of great ideas! Fun fact: I once commissioned her for a family portrait.Hire Adeline! : )

Friends

Hindsight is always 20/20 – Ten Years of Schicke Mütze

Hinterher ist man immer schlauer – zehn Jahre Schicke Mütze
Wir haben in den vergangenen zehn Jahren netterweise viele tolle Komplimente bekommen, aber ich persönlich habe mich sehr über die Aussage gefreut, dass Erfolg und Bedeutung der Mütze das Ergebnis harter Arbeit sind. Nicht, weil ich die Qualität einer guten Idee nicht wertschätzen kann, sondern weil ich glaube, dass la

Congratulations to our friends at Schicke Mütze on this mega milestone! Here's some great Eurobike images from the Mütze fam as well including at the Twotone/CRANK! dinner!

8 micromobilty lessons from Holland

Eight lessons on bike mobility from Holland — Better Atlanta Transit
After a fact-finding (and fun-finding) mission to the Netherlands, Walter Brown brings eight lessons about bicycle mobility back to Atlanta.

I love seeing my city through visitor's eyes and the hope inspired to bring this two-wheeled way of life back home with them!

Sincio De Acero: A Shop Visit and Showcase at Santander, Spain’s La Pindia

Sincio De Acero: A Shop Visit and Showcase at Santander, Spain’s La Pindia – Fernando Quintana & Norbert Toth
When Tomi opened his shop, La Pindia, he decided to throw a one-day bike show with framebuilders from all over the Iberian Peninsula. Due to the shop’s focus on handcrafted bikes, over a dozen bikes from various makers were brought to show the state of the craft within the region. Learn about the framebuilding community of Northern Spain and what ties them all together, and don’t miss some amazing bespoke builds. The North of Spain might not be in the spotlight as the most popular cycling destination in the country right now, but cycling culture runs deep here, even if still…

My friend Norbert from Norka Bizi once asked me about how to get on the Radavist. i said, you've just gotta have a great pitch. This 'scene report' is great indeed!

Radness

Crazy Wisdom with Andy Anderson

Haha! Every Andy Anderson edit is amazing and this one it off the charts when you skate or not!

Thank you very much for reading!
Here's to doing it without AI this week!
Written by
Jon Woodroof
♥️ @Kristyspark✨, Otto, Mira, Errol, Simone, Brayden & Rowan 💡 living the dream @Workspacesix & @Twotoneams 💌 I love to send special stuff to special people weekly.
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