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In our industry, collaboration is put into practice every day. Whether it’s a group of employees working towards a common objective, agencies swapping secrets to execute a campaign, or a community of fans working together to get their favorite actor cast as the next Peter Parker, the idea of coming together to achieve a shared goal is a beautiful thing. But what really gets us at Denuo excited is a new kind of collaboration in which brands directly engage with consumers to create something neither group could do on their own. You may think you’ve heard this pitch before, just with a different label: crowdsourcing. But true collaboration is something different.

As my first three months here at Denuo come to a close, I can’t help but compare my new environment to my old. I began here as an administrative assistant in January, leaving behind a career as a massage therapist. I went from working at a small but busy spa one mile from my apartment to working in a giant building in downtown Chicago. My five hour work days that began at 3PM have become 8.5 hour work days that start at 6AM. A casual stroll to work has become a full-speed walk to trains where I sit for 50 minutes trying to avoid eye contact with everyone around me. And really, let’s not even talk about the elevators.

There’s a lot of data out there about us. In fact, it’s easy to forget just how much information various companies and organizations (and the Internet in general) know about us. The first page of Reflecteur this week looks at the ways two separate sites used infographics to display a huge amount of information with very different results:

* Where Americans are Moving looks at 2008 IRS data to map county to county moves. It’s your one stop shop to US migratory information and it only takes a few minutes of playing with the maps to realize that there are a lot of stories hidden within this data. Just click on ‘Detroit’.
* Watch a Phone Company Stalk a Customer is, not surprisingly based on the title, far more disturbing. This site maps, via a video, all of the data a phone company in Germany gathered on one of their customers over 6 months. It seems more spy movie thriller than real life.

Travel over to Page 2 for a bit more fun:

Page one features 2 reinventions:

* In an interesting twist to the reimagining world theme we often discuss, Picture Cook takes the stuffy old recipe format and redesigns it with a focus on experimentation. Even if you’re more into the cut-and-dry recipe format, these flowchart-like versions of recipes will look great on your kitchen wall.

* Travel Time Tube reworks the classic London Tube map. A fixture in the design world, this site completely changes the focus of the map from relation to time. Put in two stations and watch it change forms based on routes that take the longest.

Page two looks at two captivating photo collections:

* Ghana- The Electronic Dumping Ground of the World highlights the dark side of technology and electronics. Perhaps the ‘new gadget smell’ isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be?

* Finally, we get a glimpse of a somewhat odd underworld in Taryn Smith’s Contraband. These images showcase 1,000 various items confiscated at JFK airport in New York. Some items make sense, but some…. well you just need to see them to believe it.

Download issue 80 of Reflecteur here!

Greetings, fellow marketers. It’s me. Benny. I come bearing a simple request from the Game Developers Conference. Play deliberately. In your daily life, realize when you are playing something. Then, pay attention to why and how you’re playing what you’re playing.

It can be anything. Texas Hold ‘em with your buddies. Monopoly with the family. Angry Birds on your phone. Call of Duty: Black Ops against your brother from . Just play and pay attention to why and how you are playing. It’s really that simple. The why and how of this simple request are just a click away. If you’d love to read, mosey on down.