PIXEL MAVERICK

I have the extremely rough task of visiting Boulder, CO next week to attend a digital workshop at Boulder Digital Works.  I am attending the workshop with Kevin Rothermel, a planner here at The Martin Agency who is a cool smart guy that you definitely want to work (in spite of his surly attitude and loud dinner voice).

In an attempt to share as much of the knowledge gained from the workshop as possible, Kevin and I will be providing the coverage of the workshop.  We will be tweeting throughout each day to capture & share some the great statements and quotes as they happen so you can steal them and try to pass them off as your own later.  Every evening we will each write a Daily Recap blog posts that will provide our overview on the day’s learnings with our key takeaways.

The knowledge we can share …the kick-ass awesomeness of Boulder, CO you will just have to be jealous about.

The speaker list is pretty awesome if you are an advertising geek like me.

Workshop Speakers:

• Gareth Kay: Director of Brand Strategy, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners
• Matt Howell: Chief Interactive Officer, Modernista!
• Edward Boches: Chief Creative Officer, Mullen
• Michael Tabtabai: Creative Director, Saatchi & Saatchi
• Alastair Green: Creative Director, Team One
• John Winsor: CEO, Victors & Spoils
• Kim Laama: Associate Creative Director, AKQA
• Scott Prindle: VP/Executive Creative Technology Director, CP+B
• Dave Schiff: Creative Director, CP+B
• Alex Burnard: Creative Director, CP+B
• Craig Bramscher: CEO/Chairman, Brammo

In addition to the great speaker list, the Session Topics that will be covered look very exciting.  All of it is relevant to what we deal with on a daily basis in the advertising industry, and definitely is relevant for what Kevin and I are seeing at The Martin Agency.

Workshop Session Topics:

There are four (4) hands-on workshop sessions that take place between the speaker sessions outlined below.

• Kick-Off: A three part opening that looks at (1) how things had worked, (2) why things are changing, and (3) the challenges facing organizations seeking to evolve.
• The New Digital Landscape: Interactive media work is typically a lot differ- ent from traditional media work. Look at the broad range of channels, the diversity of execution, and how digital work can differ in terms of schedule, budget and team structure.
• The Changing Client / Agency Relationship: How clients and agencies are changing the mechanics of their relationship to create a more progressive, more voluminous body of digital work.
• Defining an Audience: The age of the broadcast demographic is dead. A look at persona development and other more relevant means of identifying an audience and the segments therein.
• Creative Briefs in the Post Digital Age: Has the approach to writing a creative brief changed in the past two years? Has it stayed the same? How account planning and the briefing process is dealing with the challenge of creating work in today’s media environment.
• Integrated Concepts: A look at some of the best work in the industry. Then working backwards to explain how creatives interpret and respond to a brief, how strong ideas are conceived, how they’re presented to the client.
• The Agency Organization: The circumstances through which digital work is developed can be radically different than that of traditional. This looks at agency team structure, the physical environment of the agency, resource distribution, pressures on profitability, and how to stay nimble + motivated.
• The Client Organization: Clients ultimately determine the work that goes into market. This segment looks at (1) changes to internal structure that lessen bureaucracy and improve the quality of the end product, and (2) what can be done to get more out of your agency.
• Technology: One of the greatest differences between traditional and digital work is the role of the lead technolo- gist. This segment looks at when and how to inte- grate technology into the concepting process, and what type of technologist is required to fulfill this job.
• Production Process: An overview of the steps in the production process, including what roles are involved at each stage. Contrasts how interactive production / project management differs from that of traditional.
• How It All Comes Together: Focus on an industry gold-standard case study. From briefing to concept to design to development to launch – how it was all done.

So, if any of this sounds interesting to you — please check back with my blog and with Kevin’s blog during the early part of next week.  Also, if you are a master multi-tasker and can follow streaming tweets and still be exceptional at your job then follow our tweets during the day to see how things are going.

Mine – http://twitter.com/edubble_u

Kevin – http://twitter.com/KevinRothermel or http://twitter.com/MartinTweets

I stumbled across this really incredible documentary film today that provides a great look at where the web is today & where it is evolving to — Web 2.0, Semantic Web, Web 3.0 and other fun buzzwords covered.  The documentary does an excellent job of explaining the evolution in simple terms through a series of interviews with notables including Tim Berners-Lee (The inventor of the Internet …and the also name of a conference room at IMC2).

The film is about 13 minutes long and definitely worth your time.

The documentary was created by Kate Ray, a recent NYU graduate who works at a startup called Kommons.

The only thing about the video that I thought was a little random was the music choice in the early section.  It is has sort of a kitschy NPR feel to it I guess, but mostly it made me visualize that perhaps all of these interviews were actually being conducted by a older Jewish gentleman (A cane, orthopedic shoes, a plaid fedora and a 1960′s style tape recorder ….sorry the daydream got away from me).

According to RRW we are within 5 years of having the cool tricks of Minority Report right in our own living rooms.

You know which scene I am talking about.  Tom Cruise is flipping and waving all sorts of holographic folders around the room to navigate through a complex system & get the data he needs.

According to one of my favorite blogs, Read Write Web, I will be able to flip important data folders all over my living room before I am 40.  Hell Yes!! To back up their claim they showed this badass video of a company called Oblong Industries showing some of the gestural interface tricks they have already developed.  Since this video is already 1 year old I am guessing they have even cooler stuff today.

I just want to make sure that between big arm swooshes & wrist flips of highly sensitive work data from my lounge chair …that I don’t have bulky Nerd Mittens on leaving me unable to nimbly navigate a Smartphone or a bag of Cheetos.

I will take the cool half-gloves that Tom had and we will be all good thank you very much.

My son (5 yrs) continues to amaze me with his technological mastery.  A few months ago he surprised me with his iPhone skills which is what inspired the first “My Son Is a Genius” post.

Yesterday I found out that his tech genius extends to TVs as well and that it has some negative side effects.  He managed to navigate through the series of clicks and “nexts” to successfully purchase an On Demand movie that he wanted called “Aliens in the Attic”.

This could be a problem.

I am having flashforward style nightmares of a massive Verizon bill surprises, or worse …a WAY premature reason to have “the talk” with my little genius (“Alien Nymphos in the Attic” is a much different movie).

…maybe I need to get my son to setup the child security settings on our DVR.

PayPal recently opened up its platform to 3rd party developers.  Honestly I am surprised that they had not done this much earlier, and was a little shocked to see this news that seeking innovation from outside their walls was a new thing.

Nevertheless, they have opened things up and to kick this off they have launched a small campaign to get the ideas flowing.  Obviously they are hoping to create awareness in general, but also create some heightened interest from their primary target audience (primary target = ideally the 3rd party developers that are sitting on badass monetary innovation ideas).

They have developed a Microsite called ChangeHowWePay.com that honestly is nothing more than a landing page with the announcement, a twitter feed, and a request to start sending ideas via a twitter #hashtag.  They also created a commercial/ video that dwells on showing various future-states of monetary transaction.  Cheesy music track, but the content in the video is really good.  Cool thumbprint verification in there, but I was surprised to NOT see some use of a mobile phone as a method of user ID to complete a transaction.

Looking forward to what ideas emerge.  I have never had any issues using PayPal and think it is a great service.

I checked out Newssift today, and I must admit it was a pretty nice way to read the news.  Yet another nail in the coffin for Ye Olde Newspaper industry.

Side Thought: …Seriously, it must be really freakin weird down at the old Daily Bugle, or Weekly Gazette to write all those stories about how the Newspaper industry is quickly heading to the grave.  I wonder if the writers, proofers, and editors just wander around the pit all dead-man-walking style and go through their routine and publish these stories about their own demise as if it were any other obituary…

Newssift reminds me a lot of addictomatic, but what sets it apart from other aggregators is the superior information architecture that it delivers for the search/ topic results page.  The message hierarchy and overall layout is perfect for quick skimming (i.e. how people actually read), and I love the dashboard of graphs along the left side of the page.

I think this is what we will see as the ultimate replacement for the gasping Newspaper industry.  The news organizations that are in the most power should adopt this Newssift style as a replacement for their existing printed news quickly.  There will not be a need for thousands of independent newspapers down to the local level, so those who adopt this approach and perfect it now will reap the rewards.

Either way R.I.P for newspapers.  I admit that I will miss the feel of a good new paper on a Sunday …but will get over it and enjoy reading it on a Kindle or whatever improvement replaces that.

The US Government’s CIO, Vivek Kundra, is recommending a significant change in how the government approaches its information technology efforts.  He is proposing that the US Government should tap into the vast amounts of knowledge in the technology communities of citizens throughout the country.  Basically Mr. Kundra is very wisely capitalizing on the fact crowdsourcing a huge number of very smart people beats a bunch of MIT super-brains locked in a basement in DC anyday of the week.

As a big supporter of any model that takes a community approach I applaud Mr. Kundra on this recommendation.  It will be interesting to follow this and see how he plans to implement this approach and account for the following:

• Structure
• Security
• Politics

Structure: I would think that they will model the operational structure of something like this in a similar fashion to how the infamous Linux Red Hat open-source project was handled.  With key members of the US Government holding the most senior positions in the community, and some order of task/ group leaders filtering down to the regular developer who is contributing ideas and code from his laptop at home.

Security: At this point in our country’s technological evolution, the security of our information architecture is one of the most (…if not the most) crucial elements to our national security.  I will be very interested to find out how the US Government plans to handle this from a National Security standpoint.  With all of the people who will have access to this, it will be a monumental task to ensure a level of security high enough to not put our national security at risk.

Politics: How do you ensure that people who participate in this community are not using it to further their partisan politics.  It seems as though the higher level leaders in the structure would be able to manage this, but with the sheer volume of IT problems that the community will be working on it would be possible for sub-groups within the community to form and work to further their party’s agenda with the types of solutions they offer, argue about, and ultimately implement.  Great!  Just what we need, another battleground for the donkeys and elephants to fight on and piss off the public in the process.

I will try and follow this and will post on what I find regarding how this innovative idea of Mr. Kundra evolves.

Last Friday David Vogeleer (Flash guru extraordinaire here at The Martin Agency) showed some of us a very cool site called Xtra Normal.  It allows non-developers like myself with the tools to put together a short animation skit with no real skills necessary other than being able to type and having an imagination.

That does not mean you can make good content.  Most likely it will suck.  But it is very simple, and a blast to do.  I hope you enjoy my first film released to the public….not bad for 30 minutes and one too many mornings watching Handy Manny with my son.

You may have read my previous post about Wolfram Alpha, and how they are getting some serious buzz lately about their new search engine that is launching in May 2009…….wait what is today, ummmm? well I am sure it will launch any second now.  Well, Google did not launch any counterattack PR campaign or anything but they did comment on WA and basically politely reminded everyone that the 10 terabytes of data that Wolram Alpha can parse with their model is chump change to the 20,000 terabytes that Google processes per day.  In addition, they gave some sneak peaks of a few projects they are working on in Google Lab to advance search.

The Wonder Wheel looks cool, but is nothing new nor is it really even all that useful.  The Google Squared idea looks very interesting and could be a huge step in advancing search.  I do not have any solid details about how far out this is from making it out of Google Lab and into the mainstream.  Check out the video below for to see how Google Squared works.

If you have chosen a career in advertising, there are several career paths you can take to try and meet your personal and professional goals.  Some like working for small shops, others prefer to work for a large agency that is most likely part of WPP, Omnicom, Publicis, or IPG or some other conglomerate.  I don’t claim to have the perfect advertising career plan, but I do have a strong opinion that a healthy mix of Small + Big agency experience seems to produce the most talented people.

Far too many people that work in advertising have never worked for a small agency and I think that this is a HUGE mistake.  Based on what I have encountered thus far in my advertising career, the majority of the people who have spent their entire career working for a big agency have a big case of tunnel vision with respect to their specific role….account management, project management, producer, etc.  They were dropped into their respective silo their first day of work after college and never peered over their silo to truly understand what the other people on their team had to do in order to perform their duties.  It makes for Account Managers that are professional email forwarders…..Project Managers & Producers that can’t see past the structure of their timeline….and Creatives that don’t understand that their creative baby is part of the comprehensive flow of business operations for the agency.

In short, people who have worked for a small agency at some point in their career are more talented because they are more well rounded.

I definitely did not start out after college with a well thought out career plan for making it in the interactive advertising industry.  I think my plan was more like the mental version of a bar napkin sketch than a true career plan…a great idea that I was really passionate about but really had no clue how to go about achieving at the time.

Looking back, I am extremely lucky that I was a little clueless going in and started out working in small interactive shops over a big traditional agency setting.  I had the opportunity to learn the ropes in a small startup-style environment where you had no choice but to wear many hats and even as a rookie you could witness the impact that your effort had on the bottom line (i.e. in a small shop that means making payroll every two weeks…no pressure).  The experience taught me not only how to be an effective account manager, but I truly understood the role of a project manager, a producer, and even a copywriter when things were tight (…the hat list could include controller, human resources, and janitor among others).  Having this level of understanding of the other roles has been extremely valuable in collaborating with and managing people in these roles.

To make it clear that I am not a crazy person, I know that there are scores of examples of people who never set foot in an agency with billings less than $10 Million per year and are total rock stars that do not fit the stereotype I have described in this post.  I have worked with some of these stars at imc2 and work with some currently at The Martin Agency and they are truly great, but they are the exception to the basis of my argument.

I would advise anyone who is early in their advertising career to consider working at a small agency at least for a few years.  You will be better off for it.  You may even find that you enjoy small shops more, but even if you return to the land of big agency beauracracy you will be better off with the experience and your big agency will benefit from your rounded talents.