Visual rendition

Sorry I didn't post a sequel to the summit yesterday, I wasn't feeling well so I left work early and went to bed - I'm saying that because I forgot to take my notes from the summit home, so I'm going to attempt to sum up the two following morning talks in a visual way.

Google: The evolution of publishing in the digital future




Photography: ingorrr

Consider the Consumer: What makes for compelling and desirable digital propositions?


Photography: tHanApaT 2008


Photography: ckirkman

Changing Media Summit - Social Networking

After a nice introduction by Nick Higham and Emily Bell, the first main talk of the day was about social networking, with Travis Katz, SVP & General Manager, International at MySpace.

It was a nice talk, though quite mainstream, essentially about MySpace (surprise!). Maybe I could add here that most of the people attending the summit were from all sides of the BBC, major newspapers, from a few TV channels, and quite a few people from charities, governmental and non-profit organisations (they had a discount). A few marketing managers from other companies were there too, so a lot of people from "old media" and for whom most of the content of the summit was really new.

(I'm going to assume here that if you're reading this blog you know enough about MySpace, otherwise I'm sure there are better places to find out the basics about it)

I did learn a few interesting things I didn't know about on the video side of things particularly, MySpace TV announced two days ago that they had agreed on a partnership with Channel 5 to create a news program aimed at the 16 - 34 years old: link.

I didn't know that the online series they started, Quarterlife, had been bought by NBC. Now that sounded very cool and quite impressive to everyone in the audience, but looking into it the show was bought, NBC aired the 1st episode in February this year and cancelled it immediately for cause of dismal ratings, check the Wikipedia entry - which is not as cool all of a sudden... I guess it's a start though. I have to admit I heard about the show, seen the website, but never actually watched more than a minute of it - I don't know if it's good at all (that would be a no according to the NBC ratings).

This one I liked: he talked about the partnership they recently signed with Hammer Films to create a movie called Beyond the Rave that will be released online first in bite size pieces and then in DVD format.

Check the trailer here, it made me think of Dog Soldiers, but with vampires (and teens instead of the army, I guess).

And the film set:



Also in the interesting stuff, MySpace organised their largest live streamed concert to date for troops in Kuwait a few days ago as well: link

The rest of the talk was about MySpace and how great social networking is, that we've only seen the tip of iceberg, latest numbers and facts about MySpace, etc. The audience questions were (unsurprisingly) focused around asking if this was all for young people or whether any of it was relevant to older people (a notion often meant as "my customers/readers/viewers","the people with the money", etc.) - a recurrent theme throughout the day, but more about that in upcoming posts!

Veni, vidi... vici?

All right I didn't try the live blogging from the changing media summit yesterday in the end, but I took masses of notes (a victory in itself as for as I'm concerned) because I'm going to do a presentation for colleagues who couldn't be there and well, I'll also be blogging it.

It was a pretty interesting event overall, there were very few advertising/marketing/digital agency type people, but I was happy of a few things for sure:

1. I'm definitely on the ball with digital (quite a relief ;o), and I definitely feel more than ever that strategy is right for me.
2. It was good to have an insight into where a lot of the "old media" are at with regards to the "new media"
3. Some talks and panel sessions were great (some others not so much, and some others pretty bad, so a varied mix)
4. I talked with a bunch of great people from very varied backgrounds and industries.

I'll take time this evening to write a longer post getting into the heart of the event.

Changing Media Summit 2008

I'm really excited, it turns out George can't go to the Changing Media Summit organised by the MediaGuardian tomorrow so I'm going instead!

There's a pretty sweet list of speakers including Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist; Peter Fleischer from Google; to only cite a couple...

The talks are going to cover a variety of topics ranging from new media consumption patterns, the impact of the convergence of web and TV, future revenue models (big conversation about free, I would love to hear Chris Anderson on that, maybe some other time...), mobile media, UGC... I think it's going to be pretty intense! Particularly given I'm going to take notes for the rest of the agency and probably deliver a sum-up/presentation after the event.

Really looking forward to it - and it will give me plenty of stuff to blog about ;o)

China Pics

All right, I have to force myself to keep some kind of rhythm to this blog so the news for today is that I have (finally) uploaded most of the pics from my trip to China last year on Flickr: click here.

These are the scenic pictures, for the "people" pictures in varying states of drunkenness you have to be my friend on Facebook at the very least.

Enjoy!

Traffic

All right so it's late and I'm slightly drunk (meaning I have to be extra careful about typos) so I'm going to be short here, but I wanted to say I've just taken the time over the weekend to register on Feedburner, which I think is very interesting.

Apparently nobody's really reading (apart from my dad and my flatmate who I've mentioned in some previous post) so it won't matter much if I say I have no subscribers right now. On the other hand, it was fascinating to find out that I've had 35 visitors on my blog today and over two thirds of them were looking for the Nintendo logo. I wrote a series of posts about my favourite brands when I started the blog and was looking for work and it looks like that pays off more in terms of traffic than anything else I've written (not that I have so many pearls of wisdom to share, but it'll come...).

It's just interesting to find out that if I just copy logos and ads of popular brands on my blog, I'll get much more traffic... But then again, I'd rather have fewer people interested in what I have to write than more people just searching stuff on Google Images...

All right then, enough pointless rambling - I have an idea about a series of posts that could be very interesting and could drive traffic - and about ice cream! - let's see how that works out...

Weekend blog surfing selection

A really cool short in a world made of words: link.
(Incidentally, interesting banner – though radical - ad on this page, click the “Boss over your shoulder” button)
(found it here)

A new campaign for Coke Zero in Germany, very cool game and website: www.cokezerogame.de (in German)
Video demo of the game: link

English version coming out soon!
(realised by digital agency North Kingdom in Sweden, they do some amazing work: www.northkingdom.com)

New Lego Indiana Jones Advergame, pretty cool too! The game's actually not that easy.

Vive la France!

I love this new ad for the RATP (Parisian Public Transport Network) sponsoring the 6 Nations rugby tournament! Click to enlarge.

PS: I just realised France miserably lost against England this weekend... but I still love the ad!

Make your album cover meme

In a mini epiphany, I realised that I don't need to be tagged to participate in a meme... (Doh!) After all, it's supposed to self-propagate! I read about this cool meme in Neil's blog.

Instructions to create your album cover:
1. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.
2. www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.
3. www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4. Use your graphics program of choice to throw them together, and post the result in www.flickr.com/groups/albumdesigns/

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dvorscak/2272702185/

Here's mine!



"The other one snores" a hit album by the talented but unknown (and inexistant) 70's psychedelic rock band Steall Waterfall!!

Chinese Portrait Meme

I'm just getting up to date with reading my blogs and just read Iain's post replying to the 4x4 meme, and then went to revisit Chris Garrett's post on the topic. I really like memes, and since I haven't been tagged for any, I thought I'd take Chris on the idea and start my own! I hope people like the idea!

My blog's Chinese Portrait:

If my blog was an animal, it would be...
A fox. I like the classic ideas around foxes being curious and clever tricksters. I envision something closer Fantastic Mr Fox (one of my favourite books as a kid!) rather than the ones that hang around my neighbourhood's backyards - though I won't exclude them.

If my blog was a colour, it would be...
Red. The colour of revolution and raspberry ice cream! Or it could also be white, because vanilla ice cream is my favourite flavour.

If my blog was a natural phenomenon, it would be...
A shooting star. They can be hard to spot or be all over the night sky and they're gone in a second, but they hold a lot of meaning ("Quick, make a wish!") and leave most of us with a feeling of wonder and happiness.

If my blog was a mythological being, it would be...
Vor, from the Norse mythology: Goddess of curiosity and finding things out. (found that here). I like the idea of my blog being a collection of curiosities and finding things out is what I generally do before writing in it...

If my blog was a famous person, it would be...
Leonardo da Vinci. All right, it's a bit grandiose, but he's the archetypal Renaissance Man. Interested in everything, applied himself to a multitude of things and excelled in almost if not all of them. Excellence isn't there for this blog yet, but the first thing is to strive towards it and Leonardo did.

If my blog was a type of food, it would be...
The pack lunch your mom prepared when you were a kid. It's generally light and what's inside is always a surprise - though not always an agreeable one, but in the end you can reason it's been made with love and care.
____________________________________________________________________

Well, I think the rules are pretty self explanatory, copy the questions onto a post and answer... I guess you can put more questions if you feel inspired, but let's keep it at these 6. And then tag whoever you'd like to see the answers of, let's say at least two!

I'll tag quite a lot of people to start it off:

I'm tagging Chris Garrett, because that's where I got the idea of starting a meme.

I'll tag George - because he's my boss, and I might as well tag John, soon he'll also be my boss!

I'll tag Faris, Neil, Asi, Priyanka and Michelle - because I met them at the BeerSphere last year before Christmas, had a good time talking with them, and like their blogs.

I'll tag Amelia and Nick - because they took the time to meet with me when I was looking for work and gave me good feedback - and I also like their blogs.

I'll tag Ruby - because she recently left a comment on my blog ;o)

I'll tag Will - because he hasn't written a post in a while and maybe this will inspire him a bit.

All right that's all folks! Let's see if it propagates!

French Penguin

It's apparently a bit old, but I hadn't seen this ad and loved it, it appealed to my French side ;o)

Geeky news

A friend of mine just showed me this pretty cool little freeware called Compendium. I've just installed it and started playing around with it, it's really cool!

In the words of the creators: "Compendium is a software tool providing a flexible visual interface for managing the connections between information and ideas."

You can do things like this:



My friend is using it a lot for work, but he's also using it to map out information for the Vampire the Requiem campaign we're playing these days (a role playing game - not computer games, pen and paper type - I like it because we play with lots of twisted political intrigues). Work wise for me, I can see it being interesting to map out research information and marketing campaign ideas...

And to round off this post of completely geeky news, I've seen and held the new MacBook Air - it looks cool! But I think I'd rather wait for the next generation... Well anyway, I can't afford one right now, so it's a moot point.

Where the sun don't shine ... but still light comes out of it!

This new Greenpeace ad has been brought to my attention today, probably one of the weirdest I've seen... All in all strange, even more that I watched it without the sound the first time and missed the punch line - but a bit funny as well. What do you think?

The Great Football Giveaway

This is an amazingly inspiring project and a very moving video. The idea is simple: "No kid should be denied the chance to kick a ball about. It ’s one of life’s most simple pleasures." The project is to give away 3000 footballs to kids in Africa, it costs £10 - I just gave them two balls, go and give one out!

read more | digg story



I read about it first from Neil's blog.

Goodies

I've just received the first Matter Box, it's all very exciting! It's like Christmas here! I think it's a great idea and judging by the reaction of my nearby colleagues, there will be a lot more matter boxes going to iris next time round. Someone has already snatched up the Nintendo Wii wristband; the Sony Bravia Play-Doh will go to my Friend Alex who has some kind of addiction to plasticine and who's coming over for dinner this evening; there's the SonyEricsson Music Monster that we did at iris last year; and a few other things I have yet to go through...

Feeding myself

Geeky news for a change: I'm just trying out Netvibes and it's absolutely awesome so far! A friend had told me last month that it was a better aggregator than Google Reader, and he was right.
There are loads more possibilities and it also links to all the major sites used these days (email, FB, Flickr, Twitter, Del.icio.us, etc), I'm going to subscribe to plenty more blog feeds now - I'll never be able to follow everything, but now I'll have a easy visual way of checking out what interests me or not!

Have a break

I'm trying this new look on my blog for a little while, we'll see how it works out. I haven't had too much time to read blogs yet this week, so it might be all over the place already, but check check out the site for the latest Kit Kat campaign in France, it's really cool!!

Kit Kat: La Quête du Break Ultime (The Kit Kat Quest for the Ultimate Break)

The intro 3D animation is pretty good, but what I find amazing is definitely the prize! The principle is for users to upload a video of what "the ultimate break" would be and then visitors can vote for their favourite one. A great incentive and I think a good online use of the brand's image (well in France at least; it stayed "Have a break. Have a Kit Kat" ever since the pandas in 1989).

And let's have the pandas, I loved this ad as a kid:

Messy

I was just checking out Michelle's blog and the her latest post is about groups of people apparently fascinated with messy desks. I guess I get fascinated with people in general and their strange interests in particular (mine included!). This is my desk at home, so maybe It'll only appeal to a minority amongst messy desk aficionados, though even then I never would have thought anyone would be interested in ever seeing it on the internet. But I also love being surprised and thought I'd join in the fun:



Ah marvels of technology! A mere 40 minutes later (I'm still learning how to use a MacBook, hadn't opened iPhoto yet...) and voila! The relatively uninteresting desk I see everyday is now available online for all to admire!

I got a bit excited and thought there might be an interest in my messy table... And all right, I admit I dressed one thing up for the picture, can you guess what?



This is becoming like a complete anthropology class! Studying the Willem (Willemus Curiosos) in his natural habitat... If anyone has the courage and time for more fun online activities, I'd be interested in finding out what kind amazing piece of wisdom one could gather from the scattered items on these pictures...

Flex user group meeting

I went to the London Flex User Group Meeting last Thursday, it was really interesting. It was a special meeting, 2 Adobe Evangelists, James Ward and Serge Jespers (wouldn't you like such a job title? Sounds just a bit weird at the same time, though) came over to talk about the lates Adobe are working on as well as some of the new possibilities available with Flex Builder 3. About 250 people turned up in Shoreditch Town Hall, and Adobe gave out a lot of free beer, which is always good.

I was particularly impressed with a new product they're developing called Thermo, the intention of which is to bridge the gap between design and development. Looks really cool, check the demo video here.

They also showed some impressive functionalities with Flex, from optimising the size of applications to embedding HD videos in Flash Player. I'm no developer, so I didn't understand everything when they started talking about code, but it was simple enough for me to follow what the results are and get some insight into the next possible things in Rich Media Applications, which is cool. Oh, and did I mention there was free beer, too? It's the first time I go to a conference where the speaker stops in the middle and encourages everyone to go get themselves another beer! You could say I was slightly drunk by the end of the evening...

Thanks to Chester at Emak Mafu, and to all the other Mafus for organising the event!

Giant Spider Gone

I'm really enjoying working right by the Tate Modern! Yesterday, they started taking Louise Bourgeois' giant spider away:



Today there's only a few legs left, gently wrapped up, like some kid pulled them all off an actual spider... (hopefully kids don't wrap up those, that would be a bit worrying after all)



Maybe I'll manage to be there when they start repairing the big crack in the Hall in April, that should be interesting!

Weekend links and blog surfing

A pretty cool branding concept recently showed up in Singapore (from Faris' blog): Link

Essential tools for the discerning designer, The Design Police.

A series of waterfalls due to be set up as an art project in New-York, including one under the Brooklyn Bridge, it's going to be pretty amazing.

Apparently some people in Rome hadn't had enough of the Sony Bravia Balls ad and decided to do it all over again: Link

For the Marvel and comics fans, a series of Stan Lee tribute artwork. Some of it is really cool!

And finally, let's not forget the Beijing Olympics are coming up this summer. Adidas reminds us that there are a lot of people in China as well. Pretty impressive ad in any case:



That's all for now folks!

Knicker Picker

George pointed me out to this absolutely fascinating website and its very cool rich media features: Knicker Picker. Check it out!

Digital for Dummies

Photo by Clairity

I'm absolutely loving my new job!
Above any other responsibilities I've taken on, I'm going to create and lead a seminar to train some people at iris in the basics of all things digital.

Here is the premise I very quickly wrote to get the ball rolling:

“Digital for Dummies” - This new and exciting seminar could be for you if:

• You truly don’t get what the whole Facebook fuss is all about.
• You think del.icio.us is a website for food and gastronomy lovers.
• You know that Blogging is a bit like Curling, but played in the Summer Olympics.
• You heard that “Rich Media” was the new nickname for Time Warner.

I'd love to have all and any kind of suggestions from the blogosphere! (I still hate that word...)
What do you think are the most important things to cover for basics? (Imagine talking to a traditional agency suit wanting to get into digital, for example. I'm sure it happened to you!)

Looking forward to hearing from you!

New Job and Happy New Year

Looking at the date of my last post, I'm simply going to declare that blog writing is not going to happen daily here, at least for now. I might change that if ever I receive too many complaints from my faithful readers (my father and my flatmate, mainly), we'll see.

Anyways I started my new job today! I'm working at Iris, with the digital team. I'm starting as a digital recruiter, the plan being that I'm going to do that and start being trained in digital strategy after a few months. I've already met with some great people, they do really cool work and I'm looking forward to gigantic heaps of information and just plain stuff to take on board! (I get really excited when given loads of work and new things to learn, I'm a bit weird like that...)

So the next thing (even though this is my personal blog and doesn't necessarily reflect Iris' views and bla bla bla) is to anyone out there who might read this and be interested in finding out more about Iris, I would be more than happy to tell you about the agency.

I'll finish on the holidays (which happened already ages ago): Happy New Year!

I stayed in London and had a great Christmas with my little sister and plenty of good friends, and was at a really cool Rave party in London for NYE. It had been ages I hadn't been to one, and it had some really good sound systems (7 of them in total!). A whole group came from France with some friends, you can check out their music on MySpace:
My friend Ben [9mm] and Les Oiseaux de Nuit (that's a link to a video from a party they were at in 2006), from Tours. I had a really great night (and day, considering I left at 2pm on the first), danced a lot and met some great people!